A few interesting pieces on MMO-Champion so far:

Belt: Waistguard of the Great Beast: 367AC 29Str 28Agi 30Stam 18 hit 1Red 1Blue +3Str socket bonus

Chest: Vestments of Hibernation: 684AC 46Str 45Agi 36Stam 13 Int 150AC-Pen

Wrist: 317AC 21Str 22Agi 31Stam 10 Int 1Yellow +2str socket bonus

Feet: Footwraps of Wild Encroachment: 418AC 29Str 29Agi 28Stam 19Int 1Red 1Yellow +3Str Socket Bonus

Slikk's Cloak of Placation: 346AC 37Stam 16 Def 25 Dodge

Merciless Gladiator's Idol of Resolve: Your mangle ability also grants you 31 resilience rating for 6s

Idol of Terror: Your mangle ability has a chance to grant 65 agility for 10 sec.

The only PVP melee cloak is crit rating and AC Pen

There's some other DPS leather that's either more rogueish (crit rating) or neutral.

A couple slight dps upgrades or sidegrades and bracer itemization hole filled. I will reserve my rage on idols until the proc rate is discovered.

Maintenance Mode has datamined screenshots showing new items (mostly ZG).

Thoughts: at this stage it appears that they're itemised (like our existing gear) with the pre 2.3 setup, so have more strength than agility and also strength gem bonuses. Most of the items appear to be around ilevel 128, so are t5 equivalent. As far as tanking there are items for the 3 non-set slots, chest and cloak. There's also an idol with a chance to proc an agility bonus on mangle (okayish I guess, but a tanking idol should ideally be fixed). The new pvp idol is probably better for tanking though, 31 resilience on mangle but only for 6 seconds, so I guess it's a bit like shield block.

I wonder how easy it would be to convince blizzard to switch the str and agility on all our items (and socket bonuses).

ETA most of the above is badge loot. World of raids has it here: http://www.worldofraids.com/news/oct...ic-leather.jpg
http://www.worldofraids.com/news/oct...roic-idols.jpg

Expertise intrigues me, I hope to see this as a wider itemized stat on feral gear.

Comparitively, at 80 rating it will drop 5% dodges(parries), this seems like drastically better returns than hit rating. Assuming the itemization is there, I think that capping both Expertise and Hit will be optimal for dps as it will remove any chance for lost energy.

This is all assuming that Expertise works with Feral "Weapon" skill and doesn't just give us staff or 2hand mace skill while in feral forms.

The badge cost is kind of ridiculous, from what I've gathered most of those feral pieces are gained from doing heroics. Apparently they're about 35-70 badges a piece.

Badges will now drop from Karazhan and Zul'Aman bosses. So don't worry, no more heroic grinding.
Wow, that expertise stat was a bit of a surprise. Will be nice to see if we can use it.
But so far i have only seen it on Brooch of deftness Src

Thinking in terms of what loot people, who would expect to find possible upgrades amongst this badge loot, those vestments seem at first glance to stack up quite poorly against the [Breastplate of Malorne] and is arguably worse than good old [Heavy Clefthoof Vest] for tanking due to the, at that level of gear, real need for substantial stamina, as well being possibly inferior to [Shadowprowler's Chestguard] for dps. Does 5 agility, 14 strength, and 150 armour penetration really beat 24 agility and 8 hit rating? I'm at a loss for why the designers would choose to make the most expensive item slot badge item be without sockets for leather.

Agreed. Colour me unimpressed atm. Although given the recent changes to HotW and FAP I live in hope of some of those items being buffed.

Due to lack of sockets the chest is only comparable to the t4 one, and the belt is too hybrid to be of much use (weaker than the druid crafted one for tanking and the rogue crafted on for dps). The bracers are probably a tanking upgrade, but ask you to find more defense somewhere else (over the veteran's ones). The boots are better than the crafted ones because of the sockets, but not noticeably. In someways I'd be more keen to take some of the rogue items.

As for the other stuff, the feral idols are okayish, although for the badge one it will depend on the proc rate (the arena one might be better for tanking lol). The cloak is good, but once again is frustrating because of the lack of defence, so I'd just about prefer the illhoof one.

15.2 hit rating is +1% hit

1% less dodge is 4 expertise, which translate into 16 expertise rating. So they are roughly the same, with hit rating being better.

With that said, Expertise is still a very solid stat to go after

I'm honestly very unimpressed and one step closer to switching over to my fury warrior. ZA is gonna make or break the deal.

You can view the data mined ZA weapon models on mmo-champion, only one looks like it could possibly be a new feral weapon, the one with the Dragonhawk on top. Most of the loot is meant to be around T5 so I'm hoping that they'll make it a DPS staff but again this is Blizzard we are talking about and their logic could quite possibly go:
Karazhan 10 man had DPS staff.
Next 10 man must have Tanking staff.

I am fairly impressed with the belt (367 armour, 29 str, 28 agi, 30 stam, 18 hit, BR sockets(+3 str)) though, I would really have loved it when I was at that level of gear. But its not much point with Deep Shadows for dps and Veterans/Natural Grace for tanking now. But for the level it is aimed at I think its a great item.

The Chest piece is a wierd one, as said above its pretty crap for tanking compared to T4 and even Clefthoof but I don't even think I'd take it for DPS above my shadowprowlers. Possibly if I hadn't bought Shadowprowler's already AND there wasn't a ton of other better ways to spend heroic items this patch but either one of these factors kind of renders it obsolete.

The wrist piece is okay for a DPS piece. For tanking I'd be loathe to lose my Veteran's due to its massive resilience going a long way to getting you crit capped in one item.
The wrists (21 str, 22agi, Y):
(assuming sotf, hotw, bok, 8agi gem)
21x2x1.1x1.03x1.1= 52.3446 AP
30x1.1x1.03x1.1= 37.389 AP

Total stats:
89.7 AP (89.7336)
1.2% crit

Compared to [Shard-Bound Bracers] under the same conditions:

28x1.1x1.03x1.1= 34.8964 AP
42x1.1= 46.2

Gives:
81.1 AP (81.0964)
1.12 AP

So the badge loot gives 8 more ap and 0.08% crit. Not an earthshattering leap but when you throw in the higher stamina and the 10 int I think its a solid purchase should you have any serious upgrades you want from the new heroic loot. Definately going on the shopping list.

Might also pick up the boots for tanking (still rolling with Zierhut's) but I think Edgewalkers still beat these for DPS. At a quick glance they both have the same agility, the same number of sockets and two bonus you aren't going to really bother with (though if lacking hit the footwraps offer a nice option of hit/agi gem, agi gem and +3 str bonus).

So the difference is really 29 strength and the non dps stats vs 44 ap and 13 hit.

29x2x1.1x1.03x1.1 = 72.2854
44x1.1= 48.4

So it comes down to the hit rating really. If the 13 hit rating is worth more to you than the 25 or so AP then keep Edgemasters, else this is actually a pretty decent upgrade. Colour me suprised.

But to be honest the only item that screams out at me from the heroic list is the cloak, and partially only because I'm fed up of looking at Gilded Thorium.


Edit:

Browsing WoWhead it shows the new Idol to be a 85% proc rate. You can bet your lifesavings thats gonna mean a hefty Internal CD

From what I have seen, the new Shapeshifter's Signet is ripe for selling it to the vendor. I thought weapon expertise would be substituted with Skill ratings on the ring, sadly this is not the case.

Here you go !

Pillar of Ferocity:
ImageShack - Hosting :: pillarif1.jpg

Wildfury Greatstaff:
ImageShack - Hosting :: wildfurynw0.jpg

Erm...

They just dropped the FCR without any substitute stats or anything?

...How odd. Surely this item comes in vastly underbudget now.

Damn it! Just passed [Ancestral Ring of Conquest] last night because I was barganing on using [Ring of Lethality] and shapeshifters

edit: too late

Wow, pillar still got str which is the most awesome stat for tanking ... oh wait, maybe not.
So they just upped AP but still left it as a sidegrade to wildfury, sigh. Why cant they just change the str into agi to make it really nice staff.

Thanks...and how underwhelming. While on the subject, what do people generally consider the better choice for tanking anyway? It depends on the encounter as well I suppose though, but Wildfury seems to get more bang for its buck.

I am also very disappointed with the Pillar of Ferocity, I just wish they would convert it to a dps weapon and add another tanking staff to BT.

Again Season2 Mace is way better then the Pillar. They have quite similar FAP now.

It also seems there is no new feral weapon in ZA.

what are the new stats of season2 mace?

Staff of Natural Fury: 712
Earthwarden: 712
Terestian's Stranglestaff: 829
Gladiator's Maul: 894
Wildfury Greatstaff: 992
Merciless Gladiator's Maul: 1010
Pillar of Ferocity: 1059

I don't have them on me, but I can tell you what it probably is: 1010 FAP since the old is 788.

It looks like a simple change of scaling modifier by (iLvl, rarity) from 1H to 2H, which means that whatever the FAP on your epic FAP weapon is now, the new one is approximately 1.282 times the old one (actual factor something between 1.281 and 1.282).

-----

It also looks after a quick reverse calculation as if all the new badge loot is of item level 128.

That makes me possibly even sadder about the badge druid chestpiece - even without making it an 8 item levels higher copy of Malorne, it should have been possible to design it such that it would blow either Shadowprowler's (23 item levels lower) or Heavy Clefthoof (14 item levels and one rarity level lower) out of the water or, failing that, at least provide a viable alternative to both of them, if it had to be made as a hybrid piece of gear.

Not just a hybrid piece, but a hybrid piece with no sockets.

In that sense if it had been 8 levels higher than T4 we could've socketed it for tanking.

Pretty sure there's heaps for ZA loot to be found so we might get some stuff there.
I also redid my dps calcs looks like most of those rogue badge items are better than anything before t6 content (pants are the exception).