[Leggings of the Enslaved Idol] from Freya-25-Hard look to be BiS over T-8.5 legs to me. But that would require a different T-8.5 piece that didnt have crit on it to full fill peoples 2 pc.

Perhaps it would be wise to wait until we know entire loot tables before speculating about best-in-slot. If you're not taking upgrades when they happen, regardless of best-in-slot status, you're holding back your raid.

I would like to clarify (even if the above comment is not directed at me) that my list in no way is looking to determine BiS. I do assume most people are in 4pc t7, and I think the jump to 2-piece is worth dropping the 4pc bonus. So since many moonkins will be in this situation, I figured it would behoove (lol cows) us to figure out which ones will give us the most bang for our buck while we progress and discover the rest of the loot.

I have to say my experience is quite the opposite. I run the same 25 man spec as the one I used in 25 man naxx and during 10 man XT I had no mana problems whatsoever because the fight was over so fast, while on 25 man I had to use innervate once to keep my mana up. I suppose I had all the good mana regen buffs when I went 10 man though, but I don't actually remember about the buffs.

If a piece of gear drops and it's only a minor upgrade to me, I would rather let someone else (namely a person that gets a bigger upgrade from it) have it. It's a bigger overall benefit to the guild this way.

Furthermore, if for example a pair of Legs is BiS for a healer but only 2nd-3rd best for me, I would always pass for that healer. That's because I would want to eventually replace it anyhow, whilst the healer wouldn't.

(Please note that I am speaking from a perspective of being in a guild where the loot system is "open" and no DKP is used. I understand that it works out totally differently if you are using a "closed" bidding system).

Now to try to explain the itemisation issue in more detail:

Pre-3.1, the BiS set-up was 4pT7 + Leggings of the Wanton Spellcaster.

Please note: I am using the following approximate stat weights to try to determine whether a piece is an upgrade. Those might be way off, of course, so criticism of them is very welcome (I do realise that Hit is theoretically worth much more than Spellpower, but I've put it on 1 because of its special status - it's either worth a lot if you're under the cap, or nothing if you've already reached it).

So to copy and paste the results from the list, linked above:

Conqueror's Nightsong Cover 394.2
Valorous Dreamwalker Cover 388.4

Conqueror's Nightsong Mantle 211
Valorous Dreamwalker Mantle 230.8

Conqueror's Nightsong Vestments 307
Valorous Dreamwalker Vestments 302.2

Conqueror's Nightsong Gloves 223
Valorous Dreamwalker Gloves 188.6

(I am not taking the Conqueror's Nightsong Trousers into consideration, because they are worse than Leggings of the Wanton Spellcaster.)

The numbers above are obviously not meant to be precise, by any stretch of the imagination. Just to be some kind of general indication of how big an upgrade an item is or isn't.

So let's look at our available options:

4pT7 to 4pT8

Adding it all up, the difference between 4pT7 and 4pT8 is 25.2, whatever that means. Of course the Shoulders are worth much more and the Gloves much less if you don't need the Hit, but for now I'll assume you do. (I wish I knew exactly how Loot Rank got those numbers. Is it just multiplying the stats by the weights and adding them all up?)

This "25.2" doesn't seem like very much, but that's before taking the set boni into consideration. I am not exactly sure whether 2pT8 is stronger or weaker than 2pT7. But there seems to be a consensus that 4pT8 is a very weak bonus.

5% crit on Wrath and Starfire equals a whooping 229.55 Crit Rating on the two spells that form the bulk of our damage - around 80% based on my pre 3.1 WWS logs (although I guess all the AOE we're using during some of the fights nowadays means that Wrath and Starfire will account for less in Ulduar). This seems to be way more than the "25.2" we would get from swapping the four T7 pieces to T8.

2pT8 + 2pT7/BiS Ulduar

In the posts above, Moonkin Kai and Eilt have suggested to go for this option. But is it really a significant upgrade for us?

Hit complicates a lot here. Which of the two pieces you would want to upgrade depends on your Hit situation. Head and Gloves are the biggest upgrade on paper, but assuming you were Hit capped, you'd then end up with a lot of extra Hit that you don't need whatsoever.

As Humbaba pointed out above, what also has to be taken into consideration is the comparison of four non-set BiS pieces against the 4T8 ones. T8 Head and Gloves might seem very good but there are two non-set pieces that are much more powerful.

Still, even if you could swap things around to utilise the additional Hit, using the numbers above, I don't see any 2/4pT7 to 2pT8 upgrade being large enough to make up for the loss of 5% crit on our two main nukes.

2pT8 bonus was quoted in one of the posts as being around 9% extra damage on Lunar Eclipse. Does that together with the minor Spell Power upgrade make up for losing 5% Wrath and Starfire crit? And even if it does, does it result in anything other then a very small DPS gain?

BiS Ulduar (No T8 set used)

Currently known BiS non-T8 set items are:

Collar of the Wyrmhunter
Shoulderpads of Dormant Energies
Robes of the Umbral Brute
Handwraps of the Vigilant

If you managed to grab them all (which is very unlikely considering two of them drop from Hard Modes), you're getting an upgrade of "158.2." Does it make up for losing 2pT7/2pT8 and 4pT7? Probably. Does this result in a significant overall DPS upgrade, if you substract the DPS you'd get from the boni? It doesn't seem so. You'd get a fairly minor upgrade overall, unless I am mistaken. And let's keep in mind that the above set-up is not realistic for most players due to half of the gear being available from Hard Modes.

At the same time, from what I have seen, most other DPS classes will be getting decent gear upgrades with decent T8 boni on top. I don't care about my e-peen. I don't care about being lower in the WWS meters than pre 3.1. But if my fears are correct, the fact our T8 is so poorly itemised will mean we're going to fall behind other DPS-ers. And whilst we would know that the itemisation is the reason for it, non-Moonkins might be less understanding.

So that's what I meant, when expressing a fear that our itemisation is broken and that T8 doesn't seem to be worth it.

I am sincerely hoping that the logic presented above is flawed, resulting in my conclusions being wrong. If that is the case, I hope that one of the knowledgable posters here can point it out.

One thing that I've done to help with the different needs on Ulduar bosses is have my primary spec be a 58/0/13 build with Brambles and 2/3 iIS, while my secondary build is 56/0/15 with GW/Typhoon and 2/3 Intensity. The 56/0/15 build worked great for XT in both 25 and 10 versions (we stopped after AoI in 10).

I just want to have an idea of what my eventual BiS (or close to it) set will be so I know what to pass on to accrue brownie points with the cloth casters.

I find it interesting that Rawr optimizes a set and the highest dps rotation is starfire spam with insect swarm. I'm not saying that it's necessarily wrong, but it has me suspicious. It's around 6600 dps raid buffed on a 5 minute fight. Are other Rawr users seeing this. Note that I added a bunch of items from Wowhead that didn't appear to be in the latest version of Rawr, including several of the T8 items.

The main reason I stayed with CF on my AoE build was to lessen Hurricane pushback on XT and Kolo adds.

This may have been asked before, and if it has, I apoligize for the duplicate, but after wading through this thread it's all began to merge together.

Even without the insane amount of hit granted from tier 8, I can easily itemize to be well over the hit cap. Is it even remotely worth bumping up my hit another 2% or 4% to drop points in balance of power and place them somewhere else? I'm not sure if the gain is worth the loss of other itemized stats to go for the hit.

Thanks for the help.

So I just got through with Yogg in 10 and 25 man, and I gotta say that I don't see people having mana problems on this fight. I was running with 1/3 Moonglow 1/1 OoC and a lunar rotation.

And wow Yogg 10 man is a total joke.

Talking about making BiS list right now is totaly useless since we dont know which stats to value most at the moment so lets get that math done first. Which eclipse are we going to run in full ulduar gear? As i see it now we are looking to get very close at the crit cap if we are continuing with lunar.


5 moonkin aura 5 scorch 3 totem of wrath 3 IFF 3 imp IS about 30 crit in ulduar gear 45 crit from bonus, which sums up to about 94% crit chance on starfire. I don't remember the crit cap, but if i'm right it is somewhere along 70-80% which means we should either 1 we should avoid crit tottaly on gear 2 we should forget about 2set t8 3 we should start gearing for solar eclipses.

since i kinda failed math it would be awesome if someone could take a look on the numbers and estimate which eclipse we should be proccing with the different types of gear stacking either haste or crit.