I'll be honest, your raid leader should be shot for thinking like that.

Not only does it

A. generate 50hp or some ridiculous low amount
B. It's a proc that doesn't go off all the time and very sporadic
C. Generates increased threat to you
D. Doesn't increase your dps in the slightest in fact it hinders you because you could be using Mongoose or +20STR enchants on 2 weapons.

BM is a cute enchant but you'd want it on a FAST weapon so it would proc ridiculous amounts to make it even quasi useful (which it isn't) but since you are going with 2 SLOW weapons it's a waste.

Smile, nod your head, and put mongoose on your weapons and throw down a healing totem. There you just did one better.

I used a BM enchant for kicks during KZ to test it out, the proc rate is horribly low. In my previous guild the MT was using it on his tanking weapon and over the course of a boss fight he'd have maybe 2 or 3 procs. It heals around 200 to each player I think. But as noted, definitely not the preferred enchant for someone filling a DPS/Support role.

Those are both precisely what I thought and countered to his request, thank you guys for verifying this for me before I wasted mats on a "trash" enchant.

I planned to go with crusader until I could get 2xPotency.

I had that enchant on my Grim tor's axe for a while on my tanking warrior. Really didn't do much for me or the group as a whole. When I slapped on mongoose, worlds collided, the angels sung, and tanking got a heckuva lot easier.

Why not Mongoose? Has that been discarded as a 'good' enchant after all?

No, mongoose is pretty much the best enchant. Crusader is nice and cheap, and slightly better than potency.

Haste effects always stack, and unless you have lot and lots of haste modifiers it will always be good.

I used to include sta/int in my lootzor, but there are two problems. First, it's a very subjective valuation, not at all objective like the calculated numbers we're working with from sims and modeling. Second, as has been said, it's often irrelevant. When I started boosting my AP more (as a result of the modeling in this thread) I found I could easily refill from Shamanistic Rage and maybe an Unstable Mana Potion (which I have plenty of from daily questing). Once you have enough mana to drop totems and shock for two minutes until Shamanistic Rage is back up, more mana is worthless. Similarly, if you have enough stamina to survive random AOE ability #34, if your healers are decent, more stamina isn't providing you with additional value -- and, like you said, almost every piece, rogue or hunter, has stam on it anyway.
If your guild is decent it should provide voids from disenchanted epics -- the rest would be up to you. Farm ore/herbs, start mailing all your greens to an enchanter friend and have him mail back dust/shards. That said, Mongoose does stack on top of Flurry, Mongoose > Crusader > Potency, though for very specific values of passive haste (which nobody has unless they are in BT gear) I would actually expect that Crusader > Potency > Mongoose.

PS. Yes we are referring to one-hand, not off-hand, when we talk about arena OH. However, it so happens that most shamans with access to Karazhan purples or crafted T2/T3 will actually use this weapon in their off-hand initially.

I just don't think we have the void's, my shaman's guild has been a revolving door of sorts and not alot of epics have been able to be busted - the rest I can get.


As far as the Arena OH, that is what I expected - because that is what I am saving my current points for atm. Because I am one nether shy of my Drake-> Dragonmaw upgrade for my MH.

Thanks for the response.

Go for 2x Crusader in the meantime, then.

Well if you do 8-10 daily quests every day you should be able to afford (depending on AH prices on your server) 2x mongoose in a week or less.

Lootzor seems to be a bit off, its not displaying much of the T4/T5 pieces and even some T6 is missing. "Missing" as in, it goes from epics to blues but not Tiered items.
Used these values - lootzor.com - World of Warcraft search and rate items - profile your wow character

No value assigned to strength, of course it won't show tiered items (which have lots of STR)

Whoah how'd that happen. Thanks.

Yes, and also one reason I dont like T6. T5 has agility and also a much better distribution of the valuepts. Damn, I really dont understand why enhancement T6 must suck so much.

The set really doesn't suck, its better than T5 even though it has wasted points in mp5.

It's just sad there are non-set items that are superior for every slot. At least T5 had a great helm and gloves, T6 is consolation prizes across the board. Hopefully at some point they'll go through and re-itemize without the mp5, it's frustrating that they haven't learned from the mistakes with T4 and T5 though.

On an unrelated note, Thottbot now has pawn/lootzor style item scoring. The item search also gives you the option of only listing high scoring items, it's nothing new but since lootzor still doesn't include haste rating it's useful. The scores it gives are pawn style rather than the normalized values lootzor gives.

On that subject, I threw in all the best of slot mail pieces I could find into excel and calculated the difference between non-set pieces and Skyshatter including the 4 piece bonus. What do you guys think? If you take the formula at face value, it's better to get the non-set pieces and forget about Skyshatter. However, when I plotted it out like this, I noticed that the non-set pieces, being obviously hunter gear (they even look like hunter gear from what I gather) they have very little +hit. Now I know +hit has a relatively low value, and I've proven earlier in this thread that dropping really low isn't bad as long as you replace it with other stats. On the plus side though, going with non-set means more agility vs. crit rating, which means you will gain dodge too. Also, the non-set pieces are easier to get as they are sooner in progression and you would have to compete with less people (hunters only vs. warriors and other shaman specs)

So what do you all think? Is it better to go with the non-set? Or is there some reason to try and get the Skyshatter at least to the 4 piece (probably go with non-set legs still, as they are the most gain)?

BTW, I used epic gems in the gem slots for the calculations, so 10 str for red, 5str/5crit for yellow, and 5str for blue.

Edit: Sorry, forgot the conversion I used. Str=1.1, Agi=.97, CR=1, HR=.7, Atk Pwr=.5

So I think taking the ratios (ie dividing them all into 1) of these numbers would give the the associated weights for plugging them into lootzor?

So then weights are:
CR = 1
STR = 1
AP ~ 0.456
HR ~ 0.699
Haste ~ 1.11
Agi ~ 0.98

Giving this lootzor. Well unfortunately without the haste rating as of yet. Sorry if this is obvious to everyone, I'm just putting it down as I found the equivalencies confusing for a bit as my gear choice process basically revolves around finding weights to put in lootzor.

I'm starting to think personally that assigning some weight to stam is worthwhile. While I think that stuff like fel leather is a good gearing up option there aren't many boss fights (nor trash clears) I can think of where I would be happy to be kited out in items that haven't spent some of their item budget on stamina. I quite often find myself swapping for example gauntlets of the dragonslayer for fel leather gloves to boost my survivability in trash clears and aoeing boss. While armor can in almost all circumstances be considered useless I'm not so sure about giving stamina a weight of 0 or not including the dodge component of agility in it's item weighting.

Post 872 -
My opinion is to always take an upgrade when its available. If that means that a Tiered Set item is better than what you have, even though there is 'better' available, I'd still take the upgrade. I never wait for a drop and take things when I can. Look at the lootzor item listing for our currently accepted stat weights. T5 and T4 are at the very bottom, right next to each other. I think that Blizzard may have just declared set items to be the easiest item to get and therefore should be the least beneficial. That's contrary to how most players feel though - set items are "cool" and have bonuses and a unified look to them.

Post 873 -
I think all you've done is normalized the values to 1, its still the same ratio as if you hadn't done that. I just edited the front page with some material that Rob gave me and things should make more sense now. It also has a correct lootzor link on it finally.

It's worthwhile until you're through Karazhan I believe. As you need to prioritize stam gear until you can sit over 8500 or so buffed. After that you don't need to look at it any more. All the gear you'll get from 25 mans will have enough stam on it to keep you in safe territory.

I wore blue 'of the bear' legs that had ~60 stam and about 40 strength on it, with the 40 stam armor patch for a long time. That filled out most of my HP needs by itself.

Oh hey Malan. I'm not sure if it's been taken into account in the ratios, but seeing as Strength is weighted slightly higher then AP due to Kings, is Agility getting that same consideration? Trying to dig up the Agility to crit ratio now.