BiS or close-to-BiS gear for FB/FFB, by very definition of it, tends to shy away from spirit as the DPS return the spirit gives per itemization point is less than hit, sp, crit, or haste. Since ideally itemized sp/crit/haste items are few and far between, in order to not lose on Spirit conversion value, one has to pick up a lot of +hit gear, which makes +hit trinkets obsolete.

As far as the gear up strategy goes, it is simply "cap your hit with highest ilvl caster gear that you can get your hands on that does not have spirit but has incidental +hit, choose the rest of items by direct aggregate DPS value comparison in Rawr/spreadsheet". Obvious set bonuses exceptions apply. +hit trinkets consume a lot of your hit cap quota for gear and limit your choices of spiritless gear when you're close to BiS.

In order for trinkets with hit on them to stay competitive, they must have high amounts of hit to be itemized in the same magnitude as other same ilevel trinkets.

[Dying Curse] vs [Illustration of the Dragon Soul]
[Elemental Focus Stone] vs [Eye of the Broodmother]
[Living Flame] vs [Scale of Fates]

Nobody really knows how Blizzard itemizes trinket procs -- there is a lot of assumption that they simply "average" it out, but this is not accurate in the least sense as to how on use and procs work, so it's not a fair way to value a trinket. I'm not going to delve into speculation on how Blizzard decides on 765 SP for 10 sec or 432 haste for 20 sec instead of 430, but I'm certain that it is more finely tuned than people give credence.

With that said, I can't really compare 71 hit to 200 spell power, or 108 hit to 87 crit/125SP (furthermore, those may not even be modeled as a straight 200 or 125 SP as they have ramp up times and Blizzard may very well take that into account, as some fights with a lot of movement, there will be more ramp up time used than a straight nuke fight).

The problem is that, while 125 spell power is always going to be useful, as there is no cap on it, in order to compete with 125 spell power, you have to take a few roads:

- The hit has to be excessively high if we're valuing hit and spell power on the same level
- The hit has to be low, but the proc has to be exceptional
- Other stats have to be on the trinket ([The Skull of Gul'dan], [Serpent-Coil Braid])

However, because hit has a cap on it and we can't take "half" as much as we may want from another item, having too much hit on one item is always a bad thing due to hit increasing on other gear. Consider that a lot of hit you inevitably take due to 4P sets, but also because the alternative to that item is worse (IE, spirit/haste/spell power versus hit/crit/spell power).

With that in mind, it's easy to see why Elemental Focus Stone and Living Flame aren't grand. They have far too much hit on them. Naturally, they can work in sets -- all of their hit can be used. They provide great DPS. The problem is that other trinkets are far superior due to the itemization of other gear. In that sense, while they may be good in one setup, you should be able to take that same setup, switch out for a better trinket, and end up with better results by shifting hit around on other gear. It's much easier to work with items that have 30-40 hit on them than it is to work with items that have 100+ hit on them.

Consider [Unsullied Cuffs] vs [Bracers of Unleashed Magic] and [Wyrmrest Necklace of Power] vs [Pendant of the Shallow Grave], among other comparisons. In this sense, there are two things going for Dying Curse. First, it has low enough hit on it that it isn't drawing a lot of hit out of other equipment. That's not to say it is better than Scale of Fates/Eye of the Broodmother combination, or even Eye of the Broodmother/Illustration, but the second point is that its proc is rather incredible.

As for rings, my approximate list (order being best to worst) is something like:

[Nebula Band] [Conductive Seal] [Signet of Manifested Pain] [Pyrelight Circle] [Shimmering Seal] [Frozen Loop] [Inscribed Signet of the Kirin Tor]

It would have been better for Blizzard to split the passive item budget (even at a penalty) between hit and dmg (or crit) when creating these trinkets so they don't create such overloaded hit. Cap it around 30-40 max on a trinket. The problem is treating trinkets as a single-stat item doesn't work when they are +hit.

I hope that's something they consider because as it is, they're only really useful for things like holy priests wanting a large chunk of +hit if they're mind controlling -- we've been sharding them since the first drop.

The way to value hit trinkets vs non-hit ones and to be honest it applies to any piece of gear is to compare it to the same slot item with no hit on it. For instance calculate the dps gain from Eye of the Broodmother and DPS gain from Dying Curse as if you didn't need the hit.

Take the DPS difference between the two items and devide it by the hit on the hit item, that would give you some arbitrary number hit to dps or whetever you want to call it. By itself the number doesn't mean much but if you compare it to other slots you can see how 'expansive' comparatively is the specific item, you can take the base 'cost' from hit gems vs runed ones.

What made Dying Curse so good was that it payed so little compared to other slots, the same thing makes all current hit trinkets so bad compared to the non-hit ones.

The amount of hit on a trinket doesn't matter per-se, it just makes it easier to swap gear when you don't have an item providing 30% of your hit.

Right Maje -- the problem is that Rawr is operating under set conditions. For instance, it's assuming that every proc is going to be used. "On Use" can be saved, whereas, it's possible that Dying Curse will proc right before Mimiron switches phases. It's possible to save Scale of Fates for XT's Heart, whereas there is no control over procs on trinkets.

Blizzard probably takes these things into account. In fact, I'm certain they do, else there would be no reason to put varying chances on procs (10%, 15%, 50%), and in most every case, procs tend to be worth more than on use when they are fully taken advantage of. The proc part of a trinket is certainly a large portion of its DPS contribution.

Also, I'm not quite sure I follow this part you mentioned, "as if you didn't need the hit." Why wouldn't you factor in the DPS gain from the hit you are receiving?

Because the DPS gain from hit is irrelevant; at the current gear levels you would want to be hit capped, it's a given, the calculation doesn't help with that it only calculates the tradeoff for hit, you're paying.

For instance I'll take [Unsullied Cuffs] vs. [Bracers of Unleashed Magic] the DPS difference between the two is 48 when hit capped the bracers have 36 hit, so that's 48/36 = 1.33.

Compared to [Sash of Ancient Power] vs [Leash of Heedless Magic] 37/43 = 0.86.

So it's much better using the sash and not the bracers when you need the hit. Of course it all depends on other factors like how much hit you need etc. But rawr does all that.

Gems for example are 30 dps for runed vs 0 for rigid so, 30/16 = 1.875 so you're better of using both the bracers and the sash before using gems (ofcourse barring the cases where you get overcapped). Gems are only good when you need the 16 or 8 hit and no more, for instance having 2 rigids is probably suboptimal unless you really don't have any good items.

If Kavan is right and we'll be missing 25% of our Hot Streak procs because it procs again before we can use the first one, then additional crit may not lead to that many additional Hot Streak procs. Even without that the marginal value of additional crit for Hot Streak procs starts going down after a 50% crit rate or so, which we have already surpassed.

It should read more like: crit rating will have a higher value, not being able to use 25% of procs will just make sure it's not ridiculously higher.

I would like to see your math behind this. As far as I can tell, we'll be using Pyroblast about twice as much as we are now.

Now I'm not the greatest person to ask to do the math behind everything, but it does seem to me that if such situations occur, haste loses a tremendous amount of its value to fire, but not all of it's benefit. I have estimated numbers to work with, but if someone can take the the gear from this new zone and check my napkin math, would be appreciated. I don't want to post my numbers now and be mocked for being far off base, so I'll let someone who knows how to manipulate the numbers properly do the work. Now of course there will arise the situation, especially with 4 piece t8, that the numbers will end up being skewed.

3.2 is out. Are you going to update on this thread or make a new thread?

I'm not really sure of the relevance of this thread. A lot of players have raised this issue up, and I definitely see their side of it: what good is listing a bunch of best in slot items when most players who will actually have a chance at getting best in slot items will be running Rawr themselves? On the flip side, there are players who are unable to run Rawr. However, my 'lists' are only the end of a spectrum. On the spectrum is every item combination possible. That item you pass up because it's not on a list could very well bring you pretty close to the results. This was evidenced easily when someone showed that the BiS Frostfire set results could nearly be mirrored with just a few items switched around from FB/TTW -- it came within like 4 DPS.

Some players have suggested I create some sort of upgrade list. It's a daunting task, especially with 3.2 due to Horde/Alliance item name differences, as I would have to list both. I'll figure out something though. This thread has a lot of things in it completely unrelated to best in slot (such as proc rate on lightweave, etc.), and I think that's a good direction for it to go (and if I need to change the first post and the thread title to reflect that, so be it).

Basically, you could spill all your gear out on the table and make the following decisions and most likely come out with the proper FFB/FB set:

1) Put on 4pcT9->2pcT9/2pcT8->4pcT8. The chest is the weakest piece of T9.
2) For each item level (258/245/232/226) equip slots in the following order:

a) Hit/Haste*
b) Hit/Crit*
c) Hit/Spirit*
d) Haste/Crit
e) Haste/Spirit
f) Crit/Spirit

3) Equip your best trinkets.

With as much hit as comes on the 245/258 gear, you are going to wind up at hit cap very fast for FFB, and not to slow for FB. After that, it's entirely up to what you have access to.

* - Until hit cap

This thread helped me a lot on my way to my current gear.
Also discussion on several items helped me unterstand mechanics of the mage.

I hope you keep on going or start a new thread!
I know - not everyone (me included) will get access to the BiS items, but it helps a lot to have a list of
let's say the top 3 items per slot.

I agree this thread helped me decide to break away from FFB and go pure FB and now that I have full T8 its amazing! Thanks Enthorn

What helped me more than the BiS items was which piece of Tier gear was the weakest.
For T8 it was the gloves. Now you say the T9 chest?

Lets say you have 5P T9. What items are better than the 5th piece and worth swapping in?.
Which Tier gear is BiS?
Not sure the answer is that simple anymore with the larger range of ilvl gear available.

Cant be answered till all the gear is known. Even if one tier item seems "weaker" there may not be any "strong" off set piece to match it.

Enthorn,

I can make a pretty solid argument for the relevance of this thread even if you are using Rawr. Looking in Rawr will only give you the best in slot given your current gear set, not where you want to be longer term.

For example Rawr may tell me to go after an item that is a solid upgrade for me now, but isnt as good as the number three thing in the list that will be number one by far once I get my tier set bonus or something.

In my guild I am by no means the mage that gets all the loot so I have to be careful what items I go after. I have a second machine running Rawr, as well as having this thread open to see the long term goal of where I think I can get. In the end I make a judgement call between the thread, and what Rawr is telling me. I especially liked how you broke it down for Ulduar given my guild clears 25man, but not hard mode so I was able to focus on that section in particular.

Bottom line is that I use Rawr, and I find the thread extremely useful.

Thanks.

This guy summed up my feelings as well. If you decided not to continue with the thread. Thank you for providing information helpful to the mage community.

Hi Enthorn,

First time poster, long time reader. Similar to the last few posters while I use RAWR myself, I find this thread very useful for two reasons.

1) It's great to have the long term vision as mentioned above. I find that the relative item values that RAWR provides are largely influenced by your current Hit situation. For example, I've been directed by RAWR in the past to choose Cord of the White Dawn over Sash of Ancient Power because in my gear set at the time I was hit heavy, but I would have been making a serious investment in an inferior item and should (and will be) building my set around the better but hit heavy Sash.

2) The relative stat values that you provide from RAWR at the various levels of gear (no hard modes, 10 man hard modes only etc) are very useful to use in conjunction with RAWR. Personally, I use Lootrank.com, plug in the stat values and then compare the results to the RAWR item results. This helps me avoid the issue described in #1 since I can step back from my current hit situation and determine what the best Hit items are and then build from there.

Either way Enthorn, you've provided an incredible amount of very valuable information to the mage community and we're very thankful for all your hard work.

I'll be updating the thread, I just have to figure out how to go about doing so. I know there are a lot of players out there who don't use Rawr or cannot use Rawr for various reasons, and at least showing some of the "top" DPS sets that Rawr sets up is marginally useful for giving a somewhat approximate guess at what they can be aiming for. I still like Manly's suggestion though (it's buried several pages back) in listing items in a progression style. Just, with the different names between Horde/Alliance items, and with new items not discovered yet (since no one has done all of the hard modes, if any), it will take some time to set everything up.

A quick note though about the items from Heroic 5-man Coliseum.

[Gaze of the Unknown] + [Conqueror's Kirin Tor Tunic] should be better than [Conqueror's Kirin Tor Hood] + [Robes of the Umbral Brute].

[Kurisu's Indecision] is an upgrade over [Deathchill Cloak] and [Drape of the Spellweaver]. I use Drape of the Spellweaver over Deathchill because of the STA/INT, and the DPS loss is quite small. I'm not sure off the top of my head if it's better than [Asimov's Drape] / [Cape of the Unworthy Wizard] though, as with MA glyph and T9 2P, these give a decent amount of crit.

[Sinner's Confession] is definitely great if you're not hit capped (it's also the only ring I've seen with both hit and crit on it). However, [Etched Signet of the Kirin Tor] is better and is pretty easy to pick up. Although, I would skip both of those rings if you already have [Signet of Manifested Pain] and [Pyrelight Circle].

As always, you should set up Rawr around which items are available to you, not necesarily which items you will have down the road -- although that can be equally important. An item may not look like an upgrade at first, but running Optimize with that item included could give better results. This is especailly true now that gems have been upgraded. This does a few things: since socket bonuses have changed, the value of certain gem combinations have changed. Where before it might have made sense to use an orange/blue gem and grab the socket bonus, now it may be better to use two runed gems and skip the bonus. Some items were on the edge with one another as well, and the gem bonus has helped push things in the favor of the item with sockets (example: a staff or a chest piece with 3 sockets versus one with two or less).

Also, [Emblem of Triumph] are extremely easy to get (2 per day from daily and 3 from 10-man Northrend Beasts encounter, and then however many from 25-man). That's at least 20 per week minimum for the time being. There are a lot of items to be bought with emblems this time around (all set pieces, notably). I'd definitely pick up set pieces before things like rings or whatever else.

I made my BiS list based on the items discovered on mmo champion (which seems to be the whole thing!)
Just gonna need to wait for Rawr to upload everything to confirm it but it should be there eventually.

Note that this is with a 20/51/0 build that has 3/3 student of the mind. This is also using JC and tailoring as professions.

There might be some errors with horde/alliance items name but you should be able to find your item version quite easily.

head: Sunstrider's Hood of Triumph (chaotic skyflare, 12sp/10 spirit, 30sp/20 crit enchant) *
neck: Cry of the Val'kyr (12sp/10 haste) *
shoulders: Sunstrider's Shoulderpads of Triumph (12sp/10 spirit, 24sp/15 crit enchant) *
cloak: Aethas' Intesity (23 sp, lightweave) *
chest: Skyweaver Robes (12sp/10 spirit, 12 sp/10 haste, 23 sp, +10 all stats) *
bracers: Dark Essence Bindings (12 sp/10 haste, 30 sp enchant) *
hands: Sunstrider's Gauntlets of Triumph (39 sp, 28 sp enchant) *
belt: Belt of Tenebrous Mist (12sp/10 spirit, 39sp, 23sp) *
pants: Sunstrider's Leggings of Triumph (12sp/10 haste, 12sp/10 haste, 50sp/20 spirit enchant) *
boots: Sandals of the Mourning Widow (12sp/10 spirit, 39sp, 12 hit/crit enchant) *
ring1: Lurid Manifestation (12sp/10 haste) *
ring2: Firestorm Ring (23sp) *
trinket1: Reign of the Dead *
trinekt2: Flare of the Heavens *
weapon: Mortalis (12sp/10 haste, 63sp enchant) *
off hand: Talisman of Heedless Sins *
wand: Petrified Ivy Sprig (12sp/10 haste) *

369/368 hit needed


1174 stam
1180 int
394 spirit
3054 sp
818 crit
569 haste
369 hit

That's a melee ring, I assume you mean Lurid Manifestation/Band of Deplorable Violence.

I get the exact same set, however, using Petrified Ivy Sprig(and a couple more sp+hit gems) and dropping the hit boots for Boots of the Mourning Widow produces significantly higher(+50-60) dps when I ran optimize.

Head Sunstrider's Hood of Triumph [meta/sp+spi]

Neck Wail of the Val'kyr [sp+haste]

Shoulders Sunstrider's Shoulderpads of Triumph [sp+spi]

Chest Skyweaver Robes [sp+spi/sp+hit/sp]

Waist Belt of the Tenebrous Mist [sp+spi/sp/sp]

Legs Sunstrider's Leggings of Triumph [sp+hit/sp+hit]

Feet Boots of the Mourning Widow [sp+spi/sp]

Wrist Armbands of the Ashen Saint [sp+spi]

Hands Sunstrider's Gauntlets of Triumph [sp]

Finger1 Lurid Manifestation [sp+haste]

Finger2 Firestorm Ring [sp]

Trinket1 Reign of the Dead

Trinket2 Flare of the Heavens

Back Aethas' Intensity [sp]

MainHand Mortalis [sp+haste]

OffHand Symbol of Transgression

Ranged Petrified Ivy Sprig [sp+hit]

10072.9 dps with NO professions selected, 300 second fight duration, 3/3 SotM.

[wrist] Armbands of the Ashen Saint -> [wrist] Bindings of Dark Essence, with all your hit gems swapped to SP+Haste seems to produce almost identical dps, optimizer seems to pick one or the other based on very slightly different fight/talent settings.(2/3 SotM + 1/3 Arcane Med vs 3/3). Generally speaking, I'm inclined to like sets that don't rely on hit gems because it makes swapping gear very annoying, so I like Bindings of Dark Essence over Armbands.

I haven't been able to find any settings where the optimizer doesn't pick Petrified Ivy Sprig, though, so I think it is very clear bis still, ironically.