My girlfriend recently had a baby so updates might not be quite as frequent as they were in the past!
02/09/10 --All sets are now updated with Lich King loot. I've only done one set for Frost for now, as I gather it's something of a niche spec these days.
02/15/10 -- Gem recommendations should be sorted now I think, at least in cases where the Optimizer is aware of the socket bonus. There's a question mark over the stat weights used for Blood spec, so I'll double check those in time
Zerack's gear optimizer
Zerack's program is an invaluable tool for finding optimal gear sets. It now features patch 3.3 support - see here if you want to check it out and contribute your own findings to the thread.
Our definition of 'BiS'
In the context of this thread, 'Best in Slot' is not necessarily an accurate description of what we're trying to achieve. If you want to determine what is the best item in a slot for your spec, then something like Lootrank or perhaps even Rawr will tell you.
However here we are trying to build optimal overall sets, which will occasionally mean eschewing a 'BiS' item if it doesn't fit with the rest of the set; if it has a lot of expertise rating that puts you over the expertise softcap, for instance. While you are gearing up you may find that the best item for you is not what is in these lists, so you need to use your own brain and a combination of this thread along with stuff like Lootrank and Zerack's optimizer in order to stay optimal while you work towards getting these sets.
Example: In the T8 Unholy section, the bracers listed in one set are [Bitter Cold Armguards]. In the context of the overall set, assuming you have all the other recommended items then these are indeed the best. However if you are gearing up and can use all the hit rating, [Bracers of Unrelenting Attack] are slightly better. This is why you need to use your smarts while gearing up. Kahorie's sim can help greatly with this, used in conjunction with Zerack's optimizer.
Boots: See individual gearsets for details. A run speed enchant may also be preferable for high movement fights (assuming no IUP), certainly if your tanks have one
Weapon: Fallen Crusader
Gems
Always use [Bold Cardinal Ruby] unless otherwise stated in the gearset table (click the images to see what gems are used)
Jewelcrafters should obviously substitute in [Bold Dragon's Eye] where appropriate
The gearset tables will show the best place to put blue/yellows for meta activation
I can't be bothered to update the T7 and T8 tables to reflect the 3.2 jewelcrafting changes. Sorry!
Gear tables
For Tier 7 there is just one set. For Tiers 8, 9 & 10 there are currently different sets for different conditions, and each set has a Horde and Alliance version. All Alliance sets take into account the 1% Draenei hit aura. This table explains what loot is included in each set, so pick the one that best applies to you:
Set 1
Set 2
Set 3
Set 4
Set 5
10-man normal mode loot
YES
YES
YES
NO
YES
10-man hard mode loot
YES
YES
NO
NO
YES
25-man normal mode loot
YES
YES
YES
YES
NO
25-man hard mode loot
YES
NO
NO
YES
NO
Due to feedback I have made it so restrictions on hard modes also apply to the previous Tier of content. For instance the Tier 9 'Set 3' does not have loot from Ulduar hard modes included for consideration.
Orcs, dwarves and humans may need to alter their sets slightly to make the most of their expertise racials.
Tier 10
Note 1: If you do not have access to [Shadowmourne], items to swap in are included below.
Note 2: If you do not have access to the ilevel 272 cloaks from TotC and they are the recommended option in your set, use [Winding Sheet] instead and make up the lost hit with gems.
Your blood t8 set is significantly below expertise cap. I've been playing with some gearlists myself and its very hard to maintain expertise or hit cap if you take 4p t8. You'll have to sacrifice 1 or 2 ArP items to get to the expertise cap, this is why i personally prefer max 2p t8 filled up with ArP items.
Questions is how much ArP do you need so you don't lose the dps gain from 4p t8.
Glad to see this thread, very helpful. I would suggest giving the top 5, or so, in each slot. This helps people pick upgrades when it's not the BiS. Something similar was done on DK.info but was specific to UH (DPS Death Knight Best Raiding Gear Available).
Glad to see this thread, very helpful. I would suggest giving the top 5, or so, in each slot. This helps people pick upgrades when it's not the BiS. Something similar was done on DK.info but was specific to UH (DPS Death Knight Best Raiding Gear Available).
The problem with several options is that it wont include calculations for hit and expertise. I prefer a BIS item list like this.
To the author: Frost builds will definatly also want the new Sigil!
Is gearing not different (albeit only slightly) for each spec? Would not gearing advice be better served in the different tree threads?
Gearing is indeed subtly different for each tree which is why I have included different sets (you did see that, right?). Blood will tend to be quite different whereas Unholy and Frost will overlap a lot more.
As for whether or not this would be better off in the spec thread OPs, it's kinda moot because it's not there currently nor was it in the previous versions of those threads to my knowledge. I don't see any harm with having a separate thread for it for all specs, really.
To everyone else: I've taken on board your comments and will look at amending things accordingly when I get a sec.
A spreadsheet like Shandaras' hunter one would be great for this really so that we could properly test sets. Who wants to volunteer?
As methods stated in the Blood DPS thread here, the 4pc for Blood is roughly a 1% DPS overall increase.
Originally Posted by methods
Disease multipliers adjust the total damage of a strike after all other considerations. The T8 4P bonus increases the disease multiplier by 20% not to 20%. So for example:
HS has a disease multiplier of 10% per disease on the target.
HS = 3000 (assumed) damage before the disease multiplier.
After 2 Diseases HS = 3000*(1+10%*2 diseases) = 3600 damage.
With T8 4P and 2 Diseases HS = 3000*(1+(10%*(1.2 T8 4P)*2 Diseases =
HS = 3000*(1+12%*2 Diseases) = 3720 damage or a 3.33% ((3600-3720)/3600) damage increase.
This was probably explained either here or the old Blood thread. Hope that helps.
Something to think about when weighing the value of the T8 4pc set bonus.
You should make a seperate section for Frost. While they don't have to stack Arp like Blood, they don't have to avoid it like Unholy. It's just a good stat.
For now I'll make provisional lists based on non-hard mode gear (ie. ilevel 232 and lower). Once more hard mode loot has been revealed and it is more accessible we can alter the lists accordingly.
You guys may have missed this in the OP. Voldrethar is a hard-mode drop, thus is not listed. In my opinion, though, Voldrethar is BiS for any DPS DK.
Yeah the alternatives you guys listed there are ilevel 239 hard mode drops which means that, for now, I won't add them into the list. Obviously Voldrethar is BiS right now though, if only for its higher DPS. But if no one has realistic access to it and there's a good chance other, better ilevel 239 weapons are yet to be found, listing it seems kinda pointless at this point.
Also, 'Best in Slot' isn't necessarily what the thread is out to achieve, since individually the pieces mean little if, once you have them all, you are way over or under the hit/expertise softcaps. Really it's about finding an optimal overall gear set as opposed to just collecting all the 'best' individual pieces.
I'll do a bit more work on the OP throughout the day looking at each spec's stat weights, and I'll edit in the stats for each set too.
Great thread, please keep this updated as it will eliminate a ton of commonly/frequently asked questions that clutter up other threads. Also, please add the hardmode items in asap, many guilds are doing them this week and many more will be next week.
For your suggested Blood equipment, if you sub in Bladebearer's Signet, enchant the Gloves with 20 to hit, and also pop in one of the purple gems needed to activate Chaotic Skyflare Diamond (unless you have it on the Shoulders), you can reach both the hit cap and exp soft cap (the socket bonus for the gloves or shoulders pushes you up to the hit cap). That would free you up to use any weapon without hit or exp on them (like Rune Edge, or Lotrafen) and means you could later equip Voldrethar without having to shuffle equipment around.
You can also swap in Frozen Might of Hodir later and just switch a red gem into the gloves and put the purple gem into Frozen Might.
edit: norg pointed out in another thread that I made an error with counting the expertise. Swapping out Girdle of Embers for Belt of the Titans will compensate for the error, and grants you an extra two slots to make up for the Str lost on the item itself.
I've been working on a fairly simple program that uses stat weights with several other parameters to calculate the best in slot combination for a given set of gear. It's written in c++ and is fairly naive, so it suffers from the problem of speed of execution. However, the upside is that the results are guaranteed to be accurate and completely best in slot (for the given parameters) when it finishes running. That said, I'd be more than glad to post a compiled version (or source) of this after a few modifications to the program to make it appropriate to the task at hand. The specifics of calculation are:
Pre Calculation
After reading items, gems, and enchants from comma separated files, the program attempts to reduce the number of options being considered by eliminating all items that are strictly inferior to others in the same slot. That is to say, Any item with a lower value (calculated from item weights) excluding hit and expertise and smaller values of hit / expertise is eliminated from the potential item pool.
The reasoning for this is sound, if confusing. Hit and expertise have varied values based on caps, meaning that you cannot simply equip the best overall items and get the best set. This is the entire purpose for this utility. However, if you have an item with for example 100 points of non-hit, non-expertise stats and 0 hit or expertise, it will be inferior in all potential gear sets to an item with 110 points of non-hit, non-expertise stats and 0 or more hit and / or expertise.
The same situation applies for enchants. This is mostly relevant for the Icewalker enchant, since using it can affect the balance of hit on the rest of your gear, meaning it has a dynamic value as your gearset changes.
Gearest Calculations
The program naively iterates through all possible gear sets. When a gearset is chosen, the program checks several constraints (Did I meet any specified set bonus requirements? Do I have at least two gem slots? Am I above the specified minimums for specific stats?) From this point it's a simple weighted stat system to determine relative value of a given set. The program tracks the top several sets and spits it out at the end of execution.
Assumptions
I make several key assumptions here, but I'm fairly certain that no one will argue with them. They can actually be overcome quite nicely, but it exponentially (read: trillions of combinations) increases the complexity of the run. I assume Chaotic Skyflare is the desired meta. I assume every slot will be gemmed with a Bold Scarlet Ruby - replacing two gems with the Sovereign cut is left as an exercise for the player.
Now, please realize that this isn't the most graceful way of doing this, and I know it. Item lists have to be created by hand and turned into *.csv files. Right now output is simply to the terminal, but it's manageable. I've been planning to run this thing once I know all the hard mode loot (for a truly 'optimal') setup, but it would be quite easy to simply limit it to normal mode iLevel loot. If people are interested I'll post it later today to mess around with. No promises on how to compile / run it. I've fairly limited knowledge in that department.
Regardless, I hope that helps our quest for best in slot gear for our various specs and tiers. I know I never like not knowing with absolute certainty what our best in slot is, which is why I made this utility.
I am currently 51/2/18 spec with 4pc T7.5 and I've recently received several pieces of loot from Ulduar. I was considering on breaking my set bonus, but I am not entirely sure how much the 4pc bonus is for blood DKs. I assumed it wasn't nearly as valuable as it is for Unholy, but am not sure if the trade off for more stats over a set bonus is worth it. Any thoughts on the value of 4pc T7 bonus?
Zerack: Sounds interesting -- I look forward to seeing it.
Kaejin: Done. Seems like a better set overall than the one I had initially. As you quite rightly point out, the ability to pick up Voldrethar without having to shuffle other gear around is quite useful. Although of course other ilevel 239 pieces will probably necessitate gear shuffling anyway, which is the main reason why I'm not including any until they're pretty much all discovered.
As I said before, 'Best in Slot' is misleading in a way and we're actually after an overall set. A great team rather than a collection of talented individuals, so to speak.
Infiniteone: Since the 3.1 buffs to haste you are probably right, at least for Unholy and perhaps Frost. I'll change it.
Kalian: I know I've seen some discussion on this in the Blood thread, mostly by Methods. Might be worth searching his posts there as I don't know the answer off the top of my head I'm afraid.
I am currently 51/2/18 spec with 4pc T7.5 and I've recently received several pieces of loot from Ulduar. I was considering on breaking my set bonus, but I am not entirely sure how much the 4pc bonus is for blood DKs. I assumed it wasn't nearly as valuable as it is for Unholy, but am not sure if the trade off for more stats over a set bonus is worth it. Any thoughts on the value of 4pc T7 bonus?
Rough & Dirty calculation: 4p7 adds roughly 20rp per 20sec rotation, so it's adding extra Death Coil every 40 seconds. Get your average death coil damage from recount or guild raid logs and divide that number with 40. You will see rough dps increase for blood.
Rough & Dirty calculation: 4p7 adds roughly 20rp per 20sec rotation, so it's adding extra Death Coil every 40 seconds. Get your average death coil damage from recount or guild raid logs and divide that number with 40. You will see rough dps increase for blood.
It is only adding another Death Coil if you aren't GCD capped. If your rotation can make use of all available GCDs without the set bonus, it isn't a huge deal. It will help you reach max runic for a DRW, and keep your runic higher to give a little breathing room for the DS glyph. Since we were able to fill out a rotation in BP pre-3.1, you should be fine breaking the 4p7 for ArP gear.
04/22/09, 10:58 AM
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