I have a question regarding (4) set bonus for healing priests that only raid 10-mans.

I'm in a 10-man guild and the only tier gear I'll see for a while has ilevel 251. However, I can fill some of those slots with badge and crafted 264 items. The question is, is the 5% increase for PW:S and Renew worth of losing stats that custom pieces provide?

Shields generally account for about 30% of my "healing" and on fights that I'm holy Renew ends up at around 35%. I imagine those numbers are different for priests that heal in 25-mans, especially for those that spend a lot of time shielding.

Wowhead - Item Comparison Tool

By picking custom pieces over 251 tier gear (I have crafted 264 pants and I assume most priests use them too) I gain 25 intellect, 73 haste, 18 spell power and 3 gem sockets. I lose 63 spirit and 3 crit. By doing some simple maths I do think that it's better for a strict 10-man raider to go with the custom pieces until tier gear of higher ilevel is available, but I would like to get some response from those more experienced.

EDIT : Apperantly being nice is against the rules. I didn't realise it's alright for *some* people to repeat things, but not for others.

I just like to point out that this thread hasn't been updated in a month and there seems to be some outdated and questionable information and it may be leading some players in the wrong direction.

In the "Gearing Questions" section you have a line that reads:
Is the Ulduar information valid here? Is it a typo? Should current raiders be worrying about stats used back in Ulduar before some of the larger scale class changes?

Also, there is a section talking about gear/trinkets and there are world drops and T7 and T8, which I am sorry but is incredibly antiquated information and should possibly be removed.


Also, dont get me wrong, this is a good thread to have and you've obviously done a TON of homework on this, so thank you.

I did a search for this on the forums and could not find a good answer. Is there a reason your gear recommendations don't included 2-handed weapons?

TIA,

Reboshua

OK folks. Posting here since none of the mages I consulted was able to provide a clue.

Main question expanded: I have a mage. It's ffb/arcane. It's ICC-ready gearwise. His arcane dps is about 700 points behind his ffb dps (single target). Why?

This is my mage:
The World of Warcraft Armory - Chaon @ Madoran - Profile

I've conducted several tests on dummies to compare ffb and arcane specs. In all cases I used no other buffs than molten armor and arcane intellect. No flasks, food or external buffs were present. All tests were done as "till oom" tests with using mana gems, mana potion, evocation etc, and repeated at least 3-4 times each to reduce randomness factor. I've tried both using and not using the cooldowns of trinkets/internal abilities for each spec.

In all the tests, ffb was giving out about 700 more dps than arcane; thats something like 4.2k ffb versus 3.5k arcane.

Now, things I'm already aware of:
1) YES, I was using molten armor (and not mage armor) for arcane spec. Being actually a dps buff (compared to typical magearmor setup) for arcane, at a cost of reduced effective mana pool; problem is, even with this buff arcane dps is way lower.
2) Haste>crit for arcane and my gear is somewhat FFB (crit) tuned. OK; I have 3 sp/spirit gems and 3 sp/crit gems atm that benefit crit and not haste. All other gems are pure 23sp gems. There's no other place to "tune" my gear towards haste. If I replace all 6 those gems (sp/spirit and sp/crit) with pure haste gems, I'd gain 120 haste while losing about 80-85 (counting socket bonuses) sp. Would trading 80 sp for 120 haste increase my dps by 1k? I'd bet my account password that it would not.
3) My FFB rotation is typical (w/o cooldowns): keep scorch up, keep LB up, spam FFB, hit pyro on proc.
4) Yes, I am aware that LB explosions do some damage to adjacent dummy and affect my "single target" score a little. Consider them being 3k on average (2k to 4k with crits) and 10 second duration, that's about 300 dps incorrectly added to the picture of a "single target" test - but that STILL does NOT account for 700 dps gap with arcane
5) My arcane rotation is typical (again w/o cooldowns): ABx4, if MB proc - hit arcane missiles/MB, if it doesn't, hit arcane barrage.

So, what do I do wrong? Specs? Rotation? Being unaware of some factors that inflate single target value of ffb? Anything else? I'm REALLY looking for you help here.

EDIT: OK, torment of the weak. It's 12% more damage, or about 400 more dps. Still nowhere near close to cover and surpass the gap of 700 dps I'm seeing - EVEN if the target in question would be always considered snared (this isn't true at all).

You should never use arcane barrage unless you're moving and your AB debuff will fall of in consequence of that.

Rakot, the dummies aren't being snared in your tests so you aren't getting the benefit of Torment the Weak as Arcane.

Don't mess around with Culling the Herd, it is too small for you to waste a GCD on in the vast majority of cases. However, if T10-2 procs, all your previous buffs are suddenly void in comparison. So that makes pre-potting much less effective.

When T10 procs, check your timers on trinkets or any other momentary crit/damage buff with a cooldown, if they are about to come by, wait until the last few second of the T10 buff to reapply, you might just get those other procs baked into it.

Bunz,

this subject has been discussed a few pages back, i tried to search for the post that Mavanas did but couldnt find it, too early in the morning i suppose. Basically it said (from memory), is that a fast/fast combination of daggers offers an increase in dps in some gear set situations, but it's a rare case and should be confirmed using the spreadsheet, its the best and only really way to find out the answer for your gear.

Is optional to use any prismatic gem in my equipment to activate Meta-gem or i should stay with all gems i had already? I ask because spreadsheet tell me to use only Bright Cardinal Rubies and Stark Ametrines atm in my equipment (no blues so my meta isn't active).

If it's optimal to use Nightmare Tear to activate Meta which one gem i should change for?

Thank you for anewser,
Jingoo

@edit

To look at my armory just click my second nick here:
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Yes, you are incorrect. AGI is a viable DPS stat for Retribution. We have the strongest AGI to crit modifier of any melee class.

The answer to your question depends on the STR cloak you currently have and the AGI cloak you want to replace it with. In general the highest DPS cloak will be the highest ilvl cloak. In general an AGI cloak will provide higher DPS than a STR cloak assuming equal ilvl and secondary stat distribution.

If your friend is speaking of [Recovered Scarlet Onslaught Cape], then it's likely a DPS upgrade over any lower ilvl STR or AGI cloak.