So it's a total of 180 hit rating, 184 by taking glove's bonus socket.
If you take Living Flame trinket (107 hit), it is a total 291 hit rating.
So no more gems needed to be caped.

Nice change

Pendant of Fiery Havoc Drape of Mortal Downfall BiS 239 items have hit as well. So an alternative would be using icewalker (since there's no alternative would be half wasted on the Living Flame set up) and one veiled topaz, which would leave you with illustration and Flare of the Heavens.

edit: linking wowhead ptr autocorrects to an invalid item. whoops.

Ignite doesn't overwrite eachother (most of the time :p), it splits "owed damage" over new ticks. Example: You crit 10000 and get 4000 ignite over 2 ticks (2000 damage per tick). You get 1 tick (2000 damage done, 2000 damage owed), then crit 1000 (400 ignite over 2 ticks). Your new ticks will be ([owed damage] + [new damage]) / 2 = 1200.

Yes, there is also a ring with hit rating.
So, We can have the oppotunity to skip the hit trinket in Tier8, which was a bit difficult in Naxx.

The original bonus wasn't completed when it was first shown.
I asked manly how ignites worked, and got a 1600 word essay on the subject.

Then he went and posted this little gem: http://elitistjerks.com/f75/t37364-f...9/#post1168006

It makes sense. I don't think the original TBC code was changed much beyond blocking rolls, they probably just added /2 to the existing "owed ignite" and called it, but this caused a huge number of issues with munching. It would make sense that they would have rewritten the code when they included Hot Streak to make damage output more reliable. I wonder how LO procs will behave on this one.

The 8% dot is still a far cry from Ignite especially when you consider how much of our damage it will eventually represent (not nearly as much as Ignite for Mages). The smaller the portion, the less painful the inefficiencies of the mechanic. And do we really know how the set bonus works in an empirical way? I was under the impression we do not.

P.S. Asking Manly about Mage mechanics is not something I would advise most people to do. The man knows more about Mages than I've ever known about anything in my life and he's not given to concision or summary. Only Manly would attempt to "clarify" in "a more readable format" and then post a mock-up of programming code.

If you have Illustration of the Dragon Soul you can count easily find out how many lightning overload procs you have on a fight in WWS.

My thoughts exactly on this.

No matter how it works, worst case scenario it is far better than our current set bonus.

I'm just glad 5 Piece Tier 8 isn't a "Bad" thing like it is with Tier 7.

As I said early in WOTLK when so many shaman were complaining about the "lack of hit on mail", now we find ourselves trying to find ways to get the best gear and not end up OVER hit cap....and it is only going to get worse as we get better gear.

BIS Pieces I can find so far are:

Frozen Loop: 46 Hit
Pendant of Fiery Havoc: 46 Hit
Drape of Mortal Downfall: 41 Hit
Tier 8.5 Set: 184 Hit
Icewalker: 12 Hit
329 Hit

or +40

Which means we have to drop one of the above.

The only items that have replacements that are perfectly itemized are Pyrelight Circle for Frozen Loop which trades 46 hit and 4 int for 46 crit or Pennant Cloak for the Drape of Mortal Downfall that trades 5 int, 9 Crit, 41 hit for 42 haste.

Hit gems in yellow slots are out of the question now when perfectly itemized and since Blizzard seems apt to continue adding spirit to so many caster items we are faced with a glut of hit with few options(so far) to drop hit in favor of better stats.

I wish they hadn't added that extra 60 hit to our set to be honest.

I'd rather have that extra hit, than the completely worthless mp5 that was on there earlier.

It's also possible to go 4 pc T8.5, we're not forced to go 5 pc. So you can always drop 60 hit there.

From the items we have seen so far - the likely combination will probably be 4pc and Runeshapers gloves

01.Flare of the Heavens
02.Living Flame or Eye of the Broodmother or Elemental Focus Stone
03.Guiding Star
04.Pendant of Fiery Havoc
05.Pyrelight Circle
06.Drape of Mortal Downfall
07.Frozen Floop
08. xx Shield (only found a mp 5 shield but thats not better as Kel Shield)
09.Belt of the Fallen Wyrm
10.Bindings of Wintergale
11.Runeshaper's Gloves
12.xx Boots ( ?? Lightning Grounded Boots ... Mp5 boots with blue gem socket)
13.Thunderfall Totem

This are the Items i think i would use.

Runeshaper's Gloves or T8 Gloves : I think t8 gloves, they have a little more crit and Iam Juwe( 3 Prisma Gems are in the Set) so i dont socket the blue Gem in the Runeshaper's Gloves ( so they are not better with 19 Spell in the two of them ).

The Hit Thing is my biggest problem because the Trinkets. Flare of the Heavens 100 % but what as secound?

so no need for a hit trinket. So we all kick out the Dying Curse, Living flame and Elemental Focus Stone are also crap.

Illustration of the Dragon Soul, Eye of the Broodmother (another version of IotDS but got crit and 100 spell lesser) or the Spellpower trinket with Haste Use from Thorim(i dont just know the name ^.^)

what u think?

sry for my english

Ohh I'd rather the hit than the MP5 myself, I just wish they'd been mindful of the cap and how few items either lack MP5, Spirit, or have hit instead.

Our choices of gear without one of those three things is limited and pretty much puts us on a very boring path of progression with no real choices involved. Most of those shaman here who know what they are about have the exact same gear.

Now THAT is an awesome idea. I hadn't even looked at the resto set to find perfectly itemized mail. That should open up a yellow slot to a hit gem to keep the set bonus and allow us to drop one of the above mentioned hit items.

EDIT NVM

[Some thoughts on 3.1 gear at this point]:

In comparison to the Lightning Grounded Boots (LW boots that drop in Ulduar), Boots Fiery Resolution look like a stronger match (haste/more sp/2 sockets, although they have spirit).

Add that to: Sash of Ancient Power (43 hit and 2 sockets) + Conqueror's Worldbreaker Headpiece + 4/5 T8.5 Ele Gear (124 hit)

If one were to already have Pennant Cloak, one may consider passing on Drape of Mortal Downfall to keep haste. With Frozen Loop + Pendant of Fiery Havoc from Ulduar, one would obtain a total of 259 hit (gain an extra 4 -or- 30 hit via gemming).

I believe we could keep all 3 hit-rating pieces of T8,25 with Drape of Mortal Downfall and with Pendant of Fiery Havoc. That bring us to 267 hit rating (that's enough for Draenie). Instead of Frozen Loop I would just take ring from Kel'thuzad [Signet of Manifested Pain] which has almost same stats as current best ring from Ulduar for us - Pyrelight Circle.
But still I'm not sure which of these ideas is better, but something tells me that taking Restoration helmet and Frozen Loop would work better (if I count right it should add more haste but a bit less hit).

p.s. I still don't know how to create link for PTR items, so don't be mad about me :-)

You have to look at your entire set of gear when determining a progression path.

Because we get zero benefit from Spirit and very little benefit from MP5 we need piece of gear with neither of those.

There are few items that don't have those two stats, yet don't include hit either.

I don't see any viable necks without hit on them in the new content. That means we'd have to downgrade from our Wyrmrest Necklace of Power to a Cosmic Lights.

Same with Trinkets. What trinket options do we have with no hit on them?


Scale of Fates:
Equip: Increases spell power by 125.
Use: Increases your haste rating by 432 for 20 sec. (2 Min Cooldown)

Eye of the Broodmother\
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 87 (1.9% @ L80).
Equip: Each time you cast a damaging or healing spell you gain 25 spell power for the next 10 sec, stacking up to 5 times.

Illustration of the Dragon Soul
Equip: Each time you cast a damaging or healing spell you gain 20 spell power for the next 10 sec, stacking up to 10 times.

So without using a hit Trinket Illustration becomes our best trinket followed by Scale of Fates, then Eye of the Broodmother.

So really, Taking the T8 helm is NOT an option, especially for Dranei once we are perfectly geared in Ulduar gear.

Ohh and Cloth gear is not an option for most of us, atleast until all the cloth has that particular piece in many of our guilds. Blizzard really needs to focus on ensuring the best path of progression for us does not include cloth pieces.

Noone should want:

Sash of Ancient Power
177 Armor
+63 Stamina
+64 Intellect
Blue Socket
Red Socket
Socket Bonus: +7 Spell Power
Equip: Improves hit rating by 43 (1.64% @ L80).
Equip: Improves haste rating by 49 (1.49% @ L80).
Equip: Increases spell power by 81.

over

Belt of the Fallen Wyrm
739 Armor
+73 Stamina
+60 Intellect
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 49 (1.07% @ L80).
Equip: Improves haste rating by 62 (1.89% @ L80).
Equip: Increases spell power by 99.

I'm not sure about the crit vs. haste numbers after you factor the 2-piece bonus in, but when looking at the two trinkets it is effectively 87 crit vs. 72 haste (assuming you use the Scale every 2 minutes). Either way, there doesn't appear to be a massive shift towards one or the other.

No it is not much different, but there is also some leeway on when to use the haste trinket that you could factor in when combining EM, Bloodlust etc.

In my head they works out to be similar, but I'd still favor the haste trinket, especially when there are certain "Burn Phases" of some of the upcoming fights.

Having combed over the revised T8 set, I find the change of mp5 to hit to be quite nice, even if it may seem like an overabundance. Swapping out all my T7 set for T8, then swapping my current cloak for the Drape of Mortal Downfall, I'd be well over the hard cap for hit, which being in a guild with only 1 shadow priest and 1 moonkin, could be a situation I find myself in. I'd be able to swap out [Dying Curse] for a different trinket if either our SP or boomkin is present. Having such flexibility with gearing/trinkets is a really nice luxury...something that with current live gearing we don't have.

I think some people might not have seen the Flare of the Heavens updated stats when it stopped having placeholder stats (still not updated on wowhead, but screen here: Flare of the Heavens. It's 120 crit and an 850 spellpower for 10 seconds proc, so unless I'm missing something it would be one of the best choices we have available. With the currently known trinkets I would think you'd be best off with the Flare and the Illustration. I'm assuming a proc a minute on the Flare as it probably has the 45 sec internal like Dying Curse and similar trinkets.

I'm pretty sure with the new items we will have to keep whatever boots we had in Wotlk, we will to keep have for Ulduar.
The thing is I keep seeing the Eruption-Scarred Boots, but personally i think the Footsteps of Malygos are better.
I have just a 19sp gem in the Erupters, and personally, I'd take the 20 haste higher on the Maly boots over 1 crit and 7sp.
Can I get some feedback on boots in Ulduar, also what should we be aiming for a haste and spell power ration?

Ahh I hadn't seen the updated stats. Last time I checked Flare had crit and a dot proc. That is definately the best trinket....and it is going to be difficult considering we are the caster that benefits least from crit to justify it. Most Mage builds for example get over double the benefit from crit that we do.

The footsteps versus Eruption discussion has taken place in the gearing thread several times. The difference is minor but yes Footsteps are better.

So far our option in ulduar for a new pair of boots don't look too hot.