I played around a bit with redcape's sheet and never got ArP above crit or agil or exp. I still wouldnt ignore it, mostly as we are always going to have ArP on our gear whether we like it or not, it is a subpar stat but going for it instead of haste would be a good idea.

I guess for ulduar raid it may start to get more important than now(but once more never as the other stats).

It sounds like there's some square-peg-round-hole thinking going in here regarding ArP. You wanting it to work won't make it so. Think of it this way: ArP is budgeted on gear at the same value as 2AP. However, ArP does not affect Judgement damage, SoM damage, or Consecration damage. AP affects all of it. It's the same with haste. It's just not applied to enough of our outgoing damage abilities to make it valuable.

Theoretically, there may be a point at which ArP exceeds STR, or Crit, but we'll probably never see it. Or, the itemization will create situations where it's simply not possible to achieve. Haste and ArP exist on plate for myriad reasons: Warriors are much more physical based, and also generate rage faster with haste. I know that of all the stats, DKs hate haste the most. These stats also exist to create variety in itemization, and allow for growth of that itemization over the upcoming tiers.

As a player who raided as a hunter in BC, an example I use is going from Tier 5 to Tier 6: the next tier piece wasn't always a straight upgrade. You'd sacrifice hit for crit, or AP for AGI, and you'd question if your gear could support that piece yet. It's the same thing here. Good gear cannot exist without bad gear to compare it to, and great entry level raiding gear creates an arms race in later tiers. The mere fact that haste is on our first LK tier set says to me it's not so hot a stat, regardless of what the spreadsheets and websites say (and confirm.)

Haste and ArP are just not that great for Ret. Live with it and move on.

No one here is claiming those stats are great Cevil, and of course they're a waste of itemization that could be sent elsewhere. But we don't design the items and we know Blizzard doesn't make the most thought out decisions in terms of itemization so we have to work with what's there. I think the argument was that when deciding between which junk stat to use, haste or arp, arp can be the better performer once you have a decent amount of it. It makes sense, and all three popular calculators agree in numbers.

Hopeful we get agi and ap on T8, or at least some version of armoured to the teeth.

Don't fool yourself into thinking that Blizzard is making uninformed decisions when they itemize gear. They are well aware that haste and ArPen are weak stats for us. It seems pretty obvious that they're intentionally putting marginal stats on our gear so that we can see a larger increase in power as we move into later content without overly inflating the Ilvl of the items.

As for trying to nail down a value for the Haste vs. ArPen, as always, plug your stats into a spreadsheet and compare on a case by case basis.

Exactly, this is confirmed by Ghostcrawler himself:

It is not our goal to make sure that every piece you can get is perfect for your class or spec. A lot of the game's depth comes from those tough decisions when you're not sure if a piece is really an upgrade or not, or if that wasted stat is worth the other enormous stat on the piece, or if you are better off passing a minor upgrade to someone else for which it is a huge upgrade.

Upgrades are also boring if every piece = your previous piece but with +2 on all of the stats.

If someone just can't do their job because they lack critical gear, that's a slightly different issue. There have been cases where a critical item (say a tanking shield) was too rare, or upgrades were too hard to come by (say druid or paladin tanks in Sunwell). We think there is a little bit of that going on at the moment, but not too much, and of course we like to add more drops, vendor items, craftables and enchants and gems over time (and need room to do so).

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Could we get a statement on itemization?

If all sets and items were perfectly optimized for their intended recievers, EJ would be a great deal more boring place. As would the game.

The list looks good.

Assuming the character had the 3% ghost hit, you could swap out the Leather Gloves with Deadly Gladiator's Gloves (5% bigger CS is still a decent bonus).

My Rawr says Mirror of Truth > Bandit's Insignia (I included the damage proc in my Rawr).

Don't forgot to add the belt socket along with another Bold gem.

Why doesn't take anyone the t7-4 setbonus? I thought it was mentioned thad it gives an 3-6% dps increase. Are the set-stats so bad? Have someone a calculating for the difference of the best t7-4-bonus gear and the gear posted from peryle? And which items are the best when picking up the 4pieces-setbonus?

Peryle: is the difference in crit between 21 crit rating and 21 Agility worth less than 4 Strength (8.8AP)? If it's worth more, then all Ret Paladins should be placing a Sovereign Twilight Opal in their shoulders and using Chaotic Skyflare Diamond.

I'm curious about the numerable gear set suggestions without 4xt7 as well. Never thought about not taking it, even if not using it would come out ahead on dps I think I'd still go with it for mana and convenience. Did anyone manage to crunch up anything on rotations with a 7sec cd Judgement? (admittedly that probably belongs in the retribution thread)


As for 21crit/crit vs 21agi/crit metas, wouldn't just using the spreadsheet values for the stats and count work? 21 crit rating is worth 21 * 78 = 1638, 21 agi is worth 21 * 74 = 1554. Since it was asked for, 4str * 171 = 684. A jewelcrafter would be able to activate both metas with the prismatic Jeweler's Gems so the 21crit one is slightly better for JCs no matter how you put it, unless I'm forgetting something.

A non jewelcrafter should look for a [Enchanted Tear] which is worth slightly more than a [Sovereign Twilight Opal] (I'm aware that it's not ingame at the moment but it should be come 3.1 so working with it for now); 1470 vs 1368. It would also take care of the yellow requirement in the case of the 21agi meta so we could assume that regardless of which meta you end up with you're going to use one such.

21crit activated with 1xSiren's Tear + 1x Sovereign Twilight Opal = 1638 + 1470 + 1368 = 4476
21agi activated with 1xSiren's Tear, plus Bold Scarlet Ruby in above Opal's gemslot = 1554 + 1470 + 2736 = 5760

Socket bonus value for blue gem needed to make 21crit equal to 21agi = 5760 - 4476 = 1284. Value in stats:
Strength: 7.5087 = 8
AP: 18.8823 = 19
Hit: 9.9534 = 10

8str is as far as I know the biggest socket bonus we can get that actually exists ingame. If you can activate an 8str socket bonus by using a blue gem that is not the Siren's Tear it will make the 21crit meta very slightly better than 21agi. So you basically need 2x8str socket bonuses - and, as far as I know again, that is currently not possible since only helmets have socket bonuses that large.

A very loose thought on gear, that would likely mean if going for 4xt7 and the Frosted Adroit Handguards from heroic Malygos as 5th item you'd end up using 21agi meta, a Siren's Tear in the Valorous shoulders and Bolds everywhere else apart from the Valorous Helm. If you intend to go for the Obsidian Greathelm as 5th, you'd use the Siren's Tear there and Bolds everywhere else.


My head hurts now. *takes on a lost puppy look and whimpers* Please do check if I've forgotten something critical.

--

So, what I originally came here for was to post a lootrank link with updated values since I'd fallen into the bad habit of using an old link with the 2.0 stats and decided to break it. Not sure if anyone else have done it before, but here you go: Loot Rank for WotLK

I'm seeing a lot of people putting down that the Deadly Glad Libram is on their wishlist. I am one of them, but wish it will probably remain. I know I don't have the time to put forth to get up to 2030 rating just to buy it. Does that put Radiance back on top or is the Savage Glad better than Radiance? Apologies for not working this out myself, but math confuses me beyond all logical reasoning.

Redcape,

Minor error in your default gear (very minor, just giving your a heads up).
For the 8 stats to chest enchant, you forgot to include the 8 Int it grants you.

Thank you for the loot link Izichial.
For giggles I went to wowdigger and equipped the best pieces according to the weight scale by red. Now I know most people are smarter then the average bear BUT I had to do this for my self. I equipped the best in slot and ended up with 515 hit rating So, once you hit your cap you need (or highly suggested) that you mix and match you gear choices.

I have three weeks left until the 25 man raids start in my guild. So that's three more 10 man naxx runs. Not counting any hit or expertise enchants or gems. This gear selection is obtainable from 10 man content. This set will give you 317 hit rating and 24 expertise. Yes I know 25 man will make me redo my shopping list but I thought people who couldn't leave 10 man might appreciate this.

[Spiked Titansteel Helm]
[Pendant of the Outcast Hero]
[Heroes' Redemption Shoulderplates]
[Cloak of Bloodied Waters]
[Heroes' Redemption Chestpiece]
[Bracers of Lost Sentiments]
[Rapid Attack Gloves]
[Girdle of the Ascended Phantom]
[Staggering Legplates]
[Death-Inured Sabatons]
[Sealing Ring of Grobbulus]
[Circle of Death]
[Loatheb's Shadow]
[Mirror of Truth]
[Death's Bite]
[Venture Co. Libram of Retribution]

There was a couple of other pieces I could swap out but it lead me to having more hit (like 330ish) and this is the best combination of gear I came up with. I like to maintain hit rating and not rely on a ghost hit that could get fixed leaving me in search of gear once again.

You would always get that because red's numbers don't change when you pass the hit cap.

An easy way to drop a lot of hit in that setup is drop the Legs (about 89 hit) to pickup Tier 7 legs. If ghost hit is fixed, you could just swap the legs back in.

So last night I ran WWS reports and looking at my miss % on patch I am not sure how I did. I would love for some feed back if this is the right place to do so.

3.6% on swing
2.4% on seal of blood
.6% on consecration
8.8% on crusader strike
4.3% on divine storm
66.7% on exorcism

Running 282 hit rating & 8 expertise. Next week I will use [Collar of Dissolution] instead of [Pendant of the Outcast Hero]. Which will put me over 295 and I "think" 13 expertise.
Wow Web Stats

Those % numbers are deceiving. Patch is still a very short fight, and the sample set is fairly small. E.g., you cast Exorcism 3 times and missed twice. Isn't the RNG just grand?

I'd say don't sweat it too much. But looking at your WWS, you didn't actually have a single miss on your attacks, only dodges. I'm guessing you have at least a little ghost hit. You might want to confirm with a session on the heroic training dummy. If it does turn out to be the case that you don't need much hit, calculate the loss of crit vs. the gain in expertise to see if swapping your necklaces out is actually worthwhile.

ArP isn't a great stat for Ret, but it does serve a purpose. Because it costs an increasing amount of itemization budget to pump a single stat, there exists a threshold where stat diversity becomes a better use of said budget. Stats like ArP and Haste may not be optimal for us, but they can still serve a purpose even without radical gearing choices to take advantage of them.

Right now i'm in the middle of farming my Nobles Deck, I am missing three cards. Right now my trinks are the Mirror and Fury of Fight Flights. During Deeps intensive fights I was thinking of Fury/Greatness. I kind of like the idea of roughly ~660 static AP+ the greatness proc. over a little extra crit and 10secs of 1000ap. What do you guys think?

As for my helm question, I have the fire scorched greathelm and I just got my valorous helm last night. If I replace the fire-scorch with the val I can still stay hit capped but I lost roughly a percent of crit and a like 20ap, but I get my 4set and my meta. Right now raid buffed im at like 46% crit chance. Do you guys think i should ditch the fire-etched? Im trying to weigh up the pros and cons. Insight please.

one more thing. I know haste is a bad stat to stack over others, but I do gain like 90 more haste rating fromt the val helm too. I leaning towards the val helm.

Item Comparison Tool - World of Warcraft makes it easy to see side-by-side comparisons.
basic break down though going with valorous assuming Relentless & Perfect Etched Huge Citrine(to balance hit difference):
+-0 str (after set bonus and gem)
-53.6 crit(after 21 agil from meta w/o BoK)
+94 haste
-12 hit(after gem)
+3% crit dmg
+4pc set (3% damage incease, in addition to 55mp5 - from [Tier Gear] in the Ret thread)

I'd go /w T7

A helm without a Meta socket is a large dps loss so swap to a Meta helm pronto. Also the 4 set is a really, really good bonus.

Yes, I figured that to be so.

What do you guys think about getting the deadly glad gloves for the 5% to crus strike (if I was able to stay hit and exp capped)?

Right now i have crappy heroes

I have my Hateful Gloves gemmed specifically for PvP so I wouldn't wear them in a raid right now. As time goes on I might change it but for now I'm still using Heroe's Redemption. I believe the other stats weigh higher on the T7 gloves since the resilience and stamina is taxed as a priority over damage on the PvP ones.

Also I've heard the Spiked Titansteel Helm is going to get nerfed a bit so that the stats fit its item budget. Depending on how steeply they nerf it I would remove it from the wishlists people have been posting :/