Originally Posted by Jenren22

I have the T9.25 helm, shoulders, and gloves. What i am thinking about doing is dropping the shoulders for the gloves, putting them to one side and going back to the non tier non hit shoulders from the badge vendor, my totc25 non tier legs and the Merlin's robe, essentially dropping the T8 bonus. As a 10man raider, trophies are hard to come by. I was very lucky to win two from a couple of totc25 pugs, and the gloves from VoA, but the chances of me receiving a 3rd trophy i can't really bank on right now, so the T9.25 legs are out of the question unless i get insanely lucky in VoA once again.

I used the Optigear programme which suggested this as the optimal gear set, equipping some hit items to make up lost hit. Simcraft disagreed when run through an optimal setup thinking i should go for the T9.10 chest to complete the bonus, however the stat weights i went by on Optigear are those from running a raid_T9 simcraft file which doesn't include a shaman thus no optimal raid setup, thus haste is valued much much more, hence why Optigear chose that combination.

I also did some tests on the dummy and found by just having the T8.5 chest, non tier items and the 2 piece T9 bonus, the dps was actually higher on average without both set bonuses. Thus the extra haste i gained really did make a difference. This was done in the company of a boomkin so i had the important raid buffs minus priest/mage buffs.

So, in your opinion, is it worth me dropping the T8 2 piece bonus for some nice crafted/non tier drops? Or will i be wasting alot of gold getting the robe? Since i only raid 10man, is it maybe safer to keep two piece T8 until i manage to get the T9 legs? (which i may not get for a very long time). The other option is to get the ilevel 232 chest to complete the bonus, keeping my non tier legs. Just feels a bit of a waste to put my 3rd T9 piece in the bank...