Segment 48: Pawn

You’re running 5-mans, trying to gear up so you can level even faster, or run heroics, or raid. You see other people clicking “need” on gear that you think you might want, but you’re not sure if it’s really an “up” for you, and you don’t want to be “that guy.” What do you do? Pawn.

Pawn is an add-on that uses values from Wowhead to quickly compare loot items (or quest reward items) with gear you have equipped, and lets you know if it’s really an “up.” In the case of quest rewards, it will also indicate which item to take to vendor, in the case where none of the items will improve your current outfit.

Pawn can be installed and used immediately without any configuration; or if you’re the hard-core theory-crafting guy who spends days building spreadsheets, reading Elitist Jerks, and who runs Rawr and Atlas Loot, you can customize it for your fine-tuned needs.

Pawn is built to detect your class and optimize gear scores for you; again, you can customize it heavily, but for most players it will be more than adequate as soon as you install it. You can also share your own customizations (called “scales”), and import customizations shared by other players. There’s even a Web site dedicated to sharing them, linked in the segment notes.  And you can set up multiple scales (quite useful for the dual-specced player) and have multiple scores displayed on gear items.

Comparing drops or linked items to your current equipped gear is easy: Just right-click the item’s icon. If you would like to compare items in AtlasLoot, you can set up hotkeys for that purpose (the square brackets are the default, but if you have already bound them to other purposes, you’ll need to choose others).

There’s a pretty comprehensive ReadMe file included with Pawn; it includes almost everything I’ve mentioned here, and more.

One final note, not in the audio segment: the Pawn suggestions for gemming and reforging are also incredibly handy.

You can download Pawn from Curse or install it using Wowmatrix. Other Web sites and add-ons mentioned in this segment are linked in the segment notes at Wowphiles.com.

Music for this segment is from Jamendo.com and is entitled “Pay Attention” by Dead Pawn Company.

If you have a favorite add-on, or you’re looking for an add-on for a specific purpose, please drop me a line via email to AddOns@wowphiles.com or hit me up on Twitter.

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Segment 46: PlayerScore

The single biggest complaint heard in World of Warcraft is about pick-up groups, usually called “pugs.” Why? Because players join pugs without the proper gear or experience to make a successful run. In the past, group leaders (now called “dungeon guides”) had two add-ons to help them determine the level of readiness a player might bring to his pug, GearScore and SkillScore. Individual players could use them to determine their own state of readiness, and decide how to improve it. Both of those became outdated with Cataclysm.

Now, TenTonHammer has released an add-on that combines the best features of GearScore and SkillScore, called PlayerScore.

I chose to download the add-on only, but there is an option to download the add-on with an updater. Since I already have three updaters, I didn’t see the need; plus, I will be forever paranoid about EXE files in add-ons that don’t come from Blizzard. However, the updater also allows you to download new PlayerScore data from TenTonHammer, and to upload ratings you’ve given to other players, much like the Wowhead Looter. So again, it’s up to you. TenTonHammer makes it easy to choose.

Confusingly, the folder name for PlayerScore is GearScore. If you already have GearScore (or SkillScore) installed, you should remove it (or them) before installing PlayerScore.

Once installed, you may find, as I did, that PlayerScore is disabled. Enable it for the toons you want to use it on.

After you log in on one of those toons, you’ll find a new icon in the center of your screen, a warhammer. Drag it to where you want it. Then click on a toon you’d like to inspect (you can click yourself, which is a good idea for your first look), and either type “/gs” or right-click the hammer icon and choose from the menu.

You will be presented with a largish frame containing quite an array of data, including the old GearScore information and a lot of new data. Dungeon Guides will want to look at the toon’s capability in 5 man, 10 man, and 25 man dungeons.

Rather than go into any more depth here, I recommend you check out the PlayerScore site at TenTonHammer. Look yourself up and see how you’re rated. Decide for yourself if this is an add-on you need. I know I want it.

Music for this segment is from Ska4U.com and is entitled “Explosive” by The Planet Smashers.

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This week I was informed about a website that helps players find the best Cataclysm pre-raid gear for their class and spec. The website is Ask Mr. Robot.

Ask Mr. Robot is a simple and easy to use tool for finding gear. You select the icon for your class, followed by the icon for your spec. Then Mr. Robot does some calculations and brings up a list of gear that it considers to be the best options.

There are a few parameters that you can use to filter your options and force Mr. Robot to pick different pieces of gear. The limited number of options makes the process simple and not too overwhelming. Some other gear calculators have so many options to choose from that it can feel like the tool itself has its own learning curve involved.

Ask Mr. Robot does its calculations and pulls up the gear lists fast. There is no waiting for items to load from a database or pages to refresh. The downside is that it only gives you one set of gear. You can get it to swap out some items based on your option selections, but you aren’t able to see what your second, third, or even fourth best options might be for each slot. Having only one option at a time requires us to trust that Mr. Robot’s calculations are correct and that this is in fact the piece of gear that we should have in each slot.

In its current state, Ask Mr. Robot is a fast and easy way to get a list of gear available that will get you ready to raid.

There are a number of resources available for gear, including our own Cataclysm Gear Guide Lists, but I recommend that you add Ask Mr. Robot to list of resources and give this tool a try for yourself.

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I’m continuing my series of posts where I compile resources for players looking for the best gear to have in order to start raiding in Cataclysm.

See Also:
Cataclysm Pre-Raid Healer Gear
Cataclysm Pre-Raid Tank Gear

Below are some of the better gear lists I have found so far. I’ll keep updating this list as new resources become available.

Death Knight

Death Knight Pre-Raid Gear Guide

Death Knight Cataclysm Pre-Raid Gear List (2-Hand Weapon)

Druid

Balance Druid Cataclysm Pre-Raid Gear List

Feral Druid Cataclysm Pre-Raid Gear List

Hunter

Hunter Cataclysm Pre-Raid Gear List

Mage

Mage Cataclysm Pre-Raid Gear List

Paladin

Paladin Cataclysm Pre-Raid Gear List (Dungeon Gear)

Priest

Shadow Priest Cataclysm Pre-Raid Gear List

Shadow Priest Cataclysm Raid Preparation

Rogue

Rogue Cataclysm Pre-Raid Gear Guide

Shaman

Elemental Shaman Cataclysm Pre-Raid Gear List

Enhancement Shaman Cataclysm Pre-Raid Gear List

Warlock

Warlock Cataclysm Pre-Raid Gear List

Warrior

Warrior Cataclysm Pre-Raid Gear List

Warrior Cataclysm Pre-Raid Gear Guide

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SkillScore is a lightweight addon that will let you quickly check a player’s experience in specific raids.

SkillScore is a much more useful indicator of a player’s experience than GearScore, because it doesn’t depend on the luck of the Need or Greed roll. SkillScore will tell you how many times the player has completed ICC 10 and ICC 25, for example.

Similar to GearScore in the abbreviated mouseover display, SkillScore will give you a much more detailed tooltip by pressing . SkillScore caps the score for each raid at 1000.

You can download SkillScore from WoWinterface.

Music for this segment is provided by Freeplaymusic.com and is entitled “Virtuoso” by Akihiro Yamamoto.

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Let me start by saying “Thank you!” to Tonkah for the tip regarding the “freeze on training” bug. Disabling the Wowhead Looter add-on fixed it for me. However, it didn’t work for a friend who runs Fubar; possibly that’s difference that matters.

This week we’re going to talk about an add-on that may seem redundant; in patch 3.1.2, Blizzard introduced the equipment manager. The equipment manager “can… be used to just swap weapons or trinkets or put on that tuxedo to strut around town. It will not automatically switch your gear when you change your talent spec, but it will allow for an easy gear change between them,” according to Ghostcrawler on the official forums.

If you have a serious memory limitation, you can get by with the equipment manager. However, if you want more functionality, and finer control over your outfits, I recommend Outfitter.

Outfitter provides some automation, as well; for example, it will automatically switch between gear sets when you mount or dismount, and can be set up to change your “Tracking” skill with different outfits, such as Track Minerals when riding, or Track Fish when you have your fishing gear equipped.

Basic setup of Outfitter is very easy, although the advanced functions may not be immediately obvious. It’s reliable, stable, and well worth the small memory footprint it requires.

You can get Outfitter through Wowmatrix, or from WoWinterface or Curse.

Music for this segment is from Freeplaymusic.com and is entitled “Rambling River” by Steve Glotzer.

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With Ice Crown, I’ve decided to take a more proactive approach. I’ve looked at all the gear coming out and I’m looking to answer some basic questions.

Is there anything in the new Ice Crown 5 mans, Normal or Heroic, I need. Are there any slots where my current strong gear, like my 245 Bracers and Helm might be superior to what’s offered in the new Ice Crown 10 man.

One of the benefits to being a 10 man raider is that I’ve got significantly less gear to consider. If I was a 25 man raider, I’d have to consider all the 25 man gear, plus all the 10 man gear.

As I looked over the gear, it seems the theme was pretty clear. The Developers think we are going to start having some Threat issues in Ice Crown Citadel. In almost every case, the Ice Crown Gear is usually on par, or a little behind, current gear obtained at the equivalent level (Normal to Normal, Heroic to Heroic, and Raid to Raid) in Effective Health and Stamina, but ahead in Threat stats.

There is some attractive gear in the 5 man Normal Mode for my Block Value set. The Gloves that drop have more Block Value than Tier 8. The Belt and Boots are the first Block Value items in those slots for 10 man raiders since Naxxramus. The Cloak that drops from the Normal is essentially the same stats as the Saronite Animus Cloak from Ulduar 10. For newer tanks, the Normal provides great gear including a Shield.

The new 5 man Heroic drops gear of equivalent iLevel to ToC10 (Item Level 232). In general, the loot is very competitive. It appears the Ice Crown Heroic loot is a bit more itemized to threat, while the ToC loot was itemized a bit more to Effective Health.

The Boots that drop from the Heroic, Black Spire Sabatons, have a bit more threat than the Greaves of the Lingering Vortex from ToC10, and their avoidance stats are more balanced. But they lack a gem slot which gives the Greaves of the Lingering Vortex higher Effective Health.

There’s a pretty good Helm, Second Helm of the Executioner, which drops in the Heroics. It’s really handicapped by its lack of Meta slot. The bigger issue is that Headplate of the Honorbound is better and is iLevel 245 and available for Emblems of Triumph which will be dropping in all Heroics.

The neck, Fossilized Ammonite Choker, is something I’ll be gunning for. It’s got more strength than Fortitude of the Infernal from Jarraxxus, and its avoidance stats are better balanced with less defense and dodge and the addition of some parry.

The shoulders you can get from the Heroic, Shoulderplates of Frozen Blood, are very comparable to Tier 9 but the Tier 9’s gem slot, and superior avoidance puts it ahead of these shoulders. In addition, I’m a big fan of our Tier 9 set bonus.

There are two different Tank weapons available, Falric’s Wrist-Chopper and Rimefang’s Claw. Both are very comparable to Shiver, but seem to be a bit more threat heavy. Falric’s is a nod towards Orc Warriors as it’s an Axe, while Rimefang’s will make humans happy as it’s a sword. So far, Dwarves are left out of the mix without a Mace, at least from the Heroics.

The first thing that jumps out at me as I look at the Raid gear is Marrowgar, Gunship and Saurfang are important Bosses for tank with 2 tank drops a piece.

Gunship provides the all important shield, Neverending Winter. It’s hurt by a lack of Gem slot which means the Aegis of the Colseum will actually provide more stamina. However, it’s got close to 500 more armor and 16 more Block Value so I’m betting their Effective Health is pretty close. Neverending Winter also provides the first Shield Block Rating we’ve seen in a while. With Chill of the Throne in effect, Paladins may need to Shield Block Rating to get back to the Block Cap. Gunship’s other Tank drop is a ring, Abomination’s Bloody Ring. It’s a fairly minor upgrade over the Emblem of Triumph purchased Clutch of Fortification. Compared to the ToC drop, Band of the Twin Valkyr, Abomination’s Bloody Ring gives you Stamina where the Band of the Twin Valkyr gives you armor, and the Abomination’s Blood Ring is a solid upgrade in avoidance.

Marrowgar provides a neck. Marrowgar’s Scratching Choker is a nice upgrade from Fortitude of the Infernal. Fortitude’s Expertise is converted to Strength on Marrowgars, and you get a bump in Stamina and avoidance. Marrowgar’s other Tank drop is a weapon and Dwarves of the World (of Warcaft) rejoice because it’s a Mace. The Brokenhammer is a nice threat upgrade, though Shiver will provide more Stamina thanks to its gem slot.

The last double drop Boss is none other than Saurfang. He provides a set of offset (non Tier) legs, Deathforged Legplates. They are a solid upgrade over the Tier 9 pants, but keep Tier 9 around for your Block Value. What will be more interesting is how they compare to Tier 10 which we don’t as of yet have stats for. If Tier 10 is really another skirt (UGH!) then I’m going to be rooting for these Legs to be a viable side grade.

Saurfang’s other drop is a set of Wrists, Gargoyle Spit Bracers. Wrists happen to be one of my stronger spots with the iLevel 245 Dreadscale Bracers from ToGC10. The massive amount of Armor on the Gargoyle Spit Bracers helps to make up for a lack of a socket and weaker avoidance stats.

The other tank drops so far are from Festergut. He drops a Back which will be a nice upgrade to tanks like me who are still sporting an Ulduar Back, or a Platimium Mesh Cloak.

Now we get to the good stuff. The Emblems of Frost rewards. For a 10 man raider, these will provide very solid upgrades and at iLevel 264, are the highest iLevel a 10 man Raider will see this expansion. These are the equivalent of hard mode loot for Badges.

The reward highest on my list is this beauty, the Corroded Skeleton Key. Yes, Virginia, that’s 228 stamina with an on use to give you a Power Word Shield.

Emblems of Frost rewards include a Chest, Cloak, Gloves, and a Belt.

This is also how you will obtain your Tier 10, and your Libram. The way Tier 10 will work is you purchase the regular Tier 10 with Emblems of Frost. Then you trade in your Emblem bought Tier 10 along with a token drop from the appropriate Boss to get your next level of Tier 10. It’s just like Tier 9 worked, only that you need your 232 before you get your 245. Hopefully that will cut down on people holing onto their badges and passing on the 232 gear to buy the 245 gear when they, finally, win a trophy.

But let’s not get too excited. Libram of the Eternal Tower is a fantastically named, but poorly implemented item.

Let’s look at what it does. Shield of Righteousness grants 73 dodge for 15 secs stacks 3 times. By the time you’ve got the full stack up, you’ve got 219 dodge rating. Because it’s raiting, you’ll be getting hit full force by Diminishing Returns and because it’s dodge, you’ll also take a hit from Chill of the Throne.

In addition, Shield of Righteousness has a 6 second cooldown, so it will take a minimum of 12 seconds to get the buff up to full power. Then if for any reason you have to change targets, or if the mob becomes untargetable, like the Worms on Northrend Beasts, or Anub’arak, you’ll lose your buff and have to rebuild it again. Basically, any where that Divine Plea falls off of you in current content would be a situation where the Dodge buff from the Libram would fall off.

Compare that to our current Libram, the Libram of Definance. Hammer of the Righteous chance for 200 dodge for 18sec. The Dodge buff will be active 18 seconds. Hammer of the Righteous cooldown is 6 sec, so you have 3 opportunities to proc it (at 6, 12 and 18 sec).

Chance to NOT proc it in 3 attempts= 20%x20%x20%=0,8%

so

Chance to proc it at least 1 time is 100,00%-0,8%=99,20%.

Now it’s Dodge Rating so it gets hit just like Libram of the Eternal Tower, but there is no stacking mechanic, so it’s up at full force the moment you proc it.

Even with both Librams at full force, you are only gaining 19 dodge rating which is going to be hit hardest by Diminishing Returns. It’s not going to be a high priority for spending Emblems of Frost, especially when I’ll need Emblems for Tier gear.

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Death Knight
• 2 piece bonus – Increases the damage done by your Death and Decay ability by 20%.
• 4 piece bonus – When you activate Blood Tap, you gain 12% damage reduction from all attacks for 10 seconds.

Druid
• 2 piece bonus – Your Swipe (Bear) and Lacerate abilities deal 20% additional damage and the cost of your Rip ability is reduced by 10 energy.
• 4 piece bonus – Your Enrage ability no longer decreases your armor and instead decreases all damage taken by 12%, and the periodic damage done by your Rake ability can now be a critical strike.

Paladin
• 2 piece bonus – Your Hammer of the Righteous ability deals 20% increased damage.
• 4 piece bonus – When you activate Divine Plea, you gain 12% dodge for 10 seconds.

Warrior
• 2 piece bonus – Your Shield Slam and Shockwave abilities deal 20% increased damage.
• 4 piece bonus – Your Bloodrage ability no longer costs health to use, and now causes you to absorb damage equal to 20% of your maximum health. Lasts until canceled.

The 2 piece bonuses are all 20% damage increases to some often used tanking ability. I like that.

The 4 piece bonuses are where it gets interesting.

Druids and Death Knights get a 12% damage reduction on a 1 minute cool down. Warriors get a shield that absorbs a significant amount of damage. Paladins get more avoidance.

This seems really odd to me and I am disappointed in the Paladin bonus.

To best understand the bonuses, we need to get some equivalence between them.

Let’s take your generic 40k Hit Point raid buffed Warrior. 20% of that would be an 8k damage shield. Using Trinkets, like Satrina’s Impending Scarab, and Last Stand, this shield could get upwards ofo 10 to 15k. But let’s stick with 8k for now.

For a 12% damage reduction to save you 8000 damage, you have to take nearly 67,000 while it’s active which should be roughly 10 seconds, which translate out to 6700 incoming DPS. (67,000 * .88 = 58,960, a difference of 8040 damage).

I think it’s fairly safe to say that most Bosses in Ice Crown will hit for more than 67,000 in 10 seconds, but I could be wrong. Shoot, I think most bosses in ToC do more damage than that.

The Paladin bonus is something of an oddball. Instead of reliable damage absorption (Warrior) or reliable damage reduction (Druid/DK), we get to take a chance, and roll the RNG of Avoidance.

I’m going to assume here that the 12% bonus dodge is not subject to diminishing returns because if it is, the bonus is flat out worthless. It’s already worthless against magic damage.

The real flaw in this set bonus is that a combination of ToC and Ice Crown gear may give tanks so much avoidance that the Developers need to make more damage from the Bosses unavoidable in order to really challenge your tank’s health. Unavoidable damage means that the damage can not be dodged or parried and the Boss can not miss. This is already happening, even in T9. In ToC the worst of the Boss attacks are all fully unavoidable (e.g. Impale, Freezing Slash, etc). 12% dodge against an attack that can’t be dodged doesn’t do much. It simply won’t be as useful whenever the tank’s survivability is challenged.

The irony to me is that we’ve heard from the Devs over and over about how they don’t like how high avoidance has gotten, and yet, here they hand Paladins 12% more avoidance. With this popped, a T10 Paladin might approach 80% avoidance. Palivasion, anyone?

12% dodge definitely helps you survive. It’s just that it doesn’t compare to the usefulness of 12% damage reduction or a 20% max HP bubble. So, yeah, I’m a little disappointed.

I’ve been firmly in the EH camp of tank gearing pretty much my whole career. 12% dodge adds exactly 0 EH. I would much prefer the Paladin 4 piece bonus be made similar to the other 3 tanks, and be either damage absorption or damage reduction.

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So here’s how it goes…

3.2.2 just dropped and you’re looking for a group to go try out the new Onyxia fight.  Problem is your still in item level 150 blues and greens.

If you’re asking for my advice here it is… DO NOT MAKE A GROUP PUT UP WITH YOUR LACK OF GEAR!

I mean even Samurai Mike thinks that’s wack…

In my opinion it’s considered pretty selfish to think you can join a group and have them drag you through an endgame raid (unless they know they’re doing it), just so you can go from iLevel 150 to 232 in one fell swoop.  There’s plenty of ways for you to get endgame geared really fast nowadays anyway so if you have a blue or green on you… replace it.

Here’s what you can do…

- Run heroics… get 226 helm, chest, pants, hands, waist, neck, relic…. 213 cape, boots, rings

- Run regular ToC and fill in gaps with 200 level epics (and awesome trinkets)… run it multiple times a day.

- Run heroic ToC for 219 weapons and gear everyday

- Run the heroic daily every day… in 15 days you can have a piece of 232 tier 9.

- Run Naxxramas to learn raiding mechanics.. it’s simple and will get you some 200 level epics and lots of badges.

Not only will doing this help you get gear… it will get you experience and make you a better player.

Now by no means do I call myself an elitist… I’m simply a realist.  In 10 man raids there’s really no room for slack on dps or tankage or heals… because of the limited numbers you all have to be at the top of your game.

For all those raid leaders… don’t let these people in… tell them to do their due dilligence, get their gear, then come back to you in a week or two… it shouldn’t take them any longer than that.

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Now with Crusade out you have 3 different levels. Crusade 10 will give you level 232 gear. Crusade 10 Heroic and Crusade 25 give level 245 gear. Crusade 25 Heroic gives the best gear at level 258.

The best gear from Heroic is available only after killing the last boss. The number of tokens you get will depend on how many ‘tries’ you had left.

Crusade 10, Crusade 10 Heroic and Cruasde 25 gear are all obtained with Emblems of Triumph. Crusade 10 gear is obtained with just Emblems of Triumph. Crusade 10 Heroic / Crusade 25 gear requires more Emblems as well as a Trophy that drops off the Bosses in 25man and from the Tribute Chest in Heroic 10. A full clear of the 25 man will yeild 15 Emblems and 5 trophies, a full clear of Heroic 10 man will yeild 15 Emblems and 2 to 4 trophies. You can also obtain Emblems from the Heroic Daily Quest.

What’s really different about Tier 9 is that your pick order for Triumph badges really varies on what kind of content you’ll be clearing. I’m going to look at this from the perspective of a 10 man Raider doing Heroic/Hard Mode.

With any pick order, use common sense when applying it to your own situation. My pick order is going to be influenced by my own situation, and I’ll be sure to explain the reasons behind why I’ve used the pick order below. Keep in mind that you might get a drop that changes the pick order for you.

Book ‘em Dano

Libram of Defiance 25 Emblems of Triumph

I recommend the first purchase be the Libram of Defiance. This Libram gives you a chance to gain 200 dodge rating for 18 sec. each time you use your Hammer of The Righteous ability. It has a very high uptime. I always try to gear for the hardest content available to me and right now that Heroic ToC. The bosses in there hit HARD, so I want all the avoidance and effective health I can get.

That has a nice ring to it

Clutch of Fortification 35 Emblems of Triumph

The next target is the ring. The reason I have this here is you won’t be replacing it until Icecrown. Pair this baby up with the Loop of the Val’kyr from Heroic Twins and you’ve got quite a set. No other rings comes near the Stamina and Armor of these two rings.

A Tiered Approach

Now you start thinking about Tier Gear. You might need to buy some iLevel 232 Tier 9 pieces to give you a better shot at clearing the instance and getting the trophies for the 245 pieces. Remember you can mix and max 232 and 245 to activate your 2 and 4 piece bonus.

Your goal is to build up to the 4 piece bonus as quickly as you can. I’m a big fan of the 4 peice bonus which makes Divine Protection (our Shield Wall) usuable every 90 seconds. That’s incredible. You want that ability, and you want it now.

Tier Hands
Tier Legs
Tier Shoulders
Tier Chest
Faceplate of the Honorbound

Buy the non Trophy piece when have enough Emblems. As soon as your guild can clear Heroic and start getting Trophies, save up for the 245 piece, but don’t start back at the top of the list. Keep going down the list and then go back and replace your 232 pieces after you get the Helm.

Normally I would support the idea of buying the most expensive piece first, but here’s why I don’t agree with that for EoTs. The Hands wind up on top by virtue of the other pieces having good alternatives.

Your Chest and Helm should already be iLevel 226 items because both are available from Conquest Emblems. In addition, Anub’arak drops a 232 Chest. That puts both items on a lower priority to be upgraded.

The Tier 8 Legs are very well itemized, probably the best itemized piece of Tier 8.

The Shoulders are lower on the pick order because there’s a possible 232 and 245 drop available to you from the Faction Champions.

Once you are ready to replace the helm, I actually recommend the Faceplate of the Honorbound. It’s the same iLevel as your Tier 9 (245) and I feel it’s a better itemized piece. They have the same Armor and Stamina, but the Faceplate has superior avoidance, while T9 has superior threat. I gear for survival over threat. By using the Faceplate of the Honorbound, you will free up a Trophy to go to someone else in your raid making your whole team stronger.

Leave it on the shelf

Glyph of Indomitability

I’m not a fan of this trinket and wouldn’t spend Emblems on it. It’s a load of armor with a dodge on use. I prefer stamina which works against magic as well as physical, with an avoidance on use.

If you have more Emblems, buy Crusader Orbs and get some Saronite Swordbreakers made.

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My current pondering is what to do with my Emblems of Conquest. As you may know, my guild raids 10 mans only. We’ve gotten some Conquest through Emalon PuGs, but the Alliance having Wintergrasp is a rare occasion on my server. Then you have to hope you luck into a decent PuG that can down him, even nerfed. Most of our Emblems of Conquest come through various Hard Modes we do. But sometimes we don’t get the right people on for Hard Modes and can’t do them.

I’m not complaining mind you. I’m just trying to explain that that for my entire raid group the Conquests badges don’t come quickly.

I’ve currently got 19 EoC, exactly enough to buy the neck piece : http://www.wowhead.com/?item=45821.

BUT I could also save up for Tier Pieces I’ll likely never see like http://www.wowhead.com/?item=45632 and http://www.wowhead.com/?item=45638, but man, 58 EoC will take forever.

There’s also gloves http://www.wowhead.com/?item=45834 for 28, a Belt for 28 EoC http://www.wowhead.com/?item=45825, and some less than impressive Legs http://www.wowhead.com/?item=45842 for 39 EoC.

I could also use them to buy Runed Orbs http://www.wowhead.com/?item=45087, to get the Blacksmith crafted Boots and Belt made, but I’ve only got enough to buy 1 Orb and those recipies take 6 each.

I know these badges will drop like candy next patch, but I’m trying to decide what to do with them today. Next patch will have a whole new set of gear for me to chase.

I’m tempted just to buy the Neck and deal with it from there since I’m still wearing Heritage.

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As stated last week, here’s the post outlining how to determine weights to plug into lootrank to figure out your best in slot.  It’s a general list written by (alas) a DPS-type, so it’s not aimed at healers specifically, but I hope you all can still find it useful.  Yuki’s been my guildie, my buddy, and enabler of my anime addiction for several years now.  He’s also the first person who told me that such a thing as mathcraft exists.  Be warned, there’s numbers ahead.

Step 1:  Choosing A Baseline

In order to compare various stats that scale in wildly different ways, the easiest solution is to create a baseline to compare.  Traditionally, this is either Attack Power  (Effective Attack Power or EAP) for physical classes or Spellpower (Effective Spellpower or ESP) for casters.

Why are they chosen?  Because their effects on damage are very easy to measure.  You could potentially model in terms of direct effect (that is, you could chose the baseline of “1 Effective H/DPS”), but that would make some of the calculations a bit messier and would make the resulting values a bit harder to read, as well as making the model even more sensitive to changes in other stats, so it’s generally better to stick with the simpler version.

You also need to decide at this point whether you’re going to model things that simply provide a percentage increase to your baseline (for instance, the 10% AP buff).  You can in theory leave them out because they can be “canceled out” in that they provide the same benefit to all stats once you’ve converted them to the baseline, but this may not work entirely in practice, which is why you sometimes see stat weights with have things like “1 AP = 1.1 AP” or the like.  I prefer to leave them in even if they’re notationally confusing, simply because it makes the model more robust.

Step 2:  Doing the Easy Math

This is the easy part:  calculating the stat weights for things that simply convert directly into your baseline. For instance, a paladin gets 2 AP from a point of Strength, so before considering other matters, Str would have a value of 2 EAP.

Next, include other scaling factors like talents or percentage-based buffs. Because most paladin builds that care about strength have a talent that increases your total strength by 15%, a point of Strength from gear actually gives you 1.15 strength; furthermore, you should have Blessing of Kings for another 10% (and these are multiplicitive), so the final weight is 1 Str = 2.53 EAP (actually it’s not because I haven’t included Sheath of Light, but I’m simplifying for pedagogical purposes)

You should also take this opportunity to convert stats into their “effective values” of other stats. For example, 166.6… Int = 1% spell crit = 45.91 Critical Strike Rating, so 1 Int is approximately equal to 0.2754 Critical Strike Rating (this math is, of course, for the base value of Int; once you include any talents that increase Int by a percentage and Blessing of Kings, you will of course have a higher amount of effective critical strike per point of Int).

Mana regen is a bit of a special case since it scales with other stats, so we’ll leave it to the side for now.

Step 3:  Setting the Baseline Stats

Because some stats scale as a percentage of your totals (Crit, Hit, Haste, ArP, etc), and other stats scale with each other (Int & Spi => Mp5), in order to compare them, you need a baseline set of stats.  This step is why stat weights will always vary as your gear varies:  where the baseline is set has a fairly direct effect on the values of the various stats, so as you move the stats of the baseline around (by changing the gear, which adds and subtracts stats from your baseline values), your values for each stat will change.  This step is also why people calculating these things rarely agree on the exact value of any given stat.

Most stat weights are done with either a sort of “average” stat mix for a given tier of content (that is, “we expect that most people doing this content will have X spellpower, Y% crit, and Z% haste on their gear when they start”), or by taking the best or average gear from the tier below and using that as the base.  This produces numbers which are not terribly accurate to anyone in particular’s circumstances, but it can be useful to spot trends in gear scaling at your content level; it’s also the only option you have if you’re looking to provide weights for a class/spec rather than for yourself.

If you’re doing this for yourself, the ideal choice is your actual current stats! That way, your final results will tell you what effects adding or subtracting stats will actually have on you.  This is a very good approach for checking out a single piece of gear, but it’ll still be problematic if you’re just trying to figure out what the best overall pieces of gear are for you, since it’s somewhat piecemeal.

At this point, you should also be able to calculate your “effective mp5″ per int or spirit, since you can plug the base values into the regen formula (which I don’t have handy since I don’t ever use it), and then figure out how much MP5 a point in either one would be worth.

Continued in: Yuki Learns You Stat Weighting (p2)

Thanks for reading part 1 (of 3) of this week’s Overwhelming Numbers series.  God I love guest posters!

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The existing achievements to collect 1, 25, 50, etc. Emblems of Heroism, Valor, and Conquest have been converted to Feats of Strength since Heroism and Valor Emblems are no longer attainable.

New achievements have been added to collect various amounts of any combination of emblems.

So everything that is currently in game, except Ulduar25, will drop the same Emblem. The tiered emblem system is officially being scrapped.

I’m really torn about this change. It opens up an entire segment of gear that was previously unavailable to me. We were just starting to get some Emblems in Conquest in our Raids as we did Hard Modes, but not very many. Now I’ll be able to stockpile a mess of EoConquest. I should be able to buy the Runed Orbs I need to get the BoE Blacksmithing Boots and Belt made for both Ret and Prot.

I speculate the Emblem of Triumph is the new Emblem that will be dropping in new Raid, The Crusader’s Coliseum. The new raid is actually 4 raids in one. It will have normal 10 and 25 man modes plus a Hard 10 and a Hard 25 man mode. The really nice change here is that the Hard modes are on a separate lockout. You can do normal mode AND Hard mode in the same week. Hard mode will be called Heroic.

Emblems of Triumph will drop when run in both 25 man modes and 10 man Heroic. 10 man normal will likely drop Emblems of Conquest. Of course, this is all speculation at this point.

It’s remarkable to me that Emblems of Triumph will be awarded by doing the Daily Heroic and Daily Normal Dungeon. We’ll have to wait and see what is available to purchase with Emblems of Triumph but I would expect it would be Crusader Coliseum level loot.

This would assuredly get Honorshammer back in running Heroics, and running them often. People are always looking for a Tank to do the Daily Heroic.

So yes, I’m pretty excited about having some additional gear options opened up to me.

This will also help the raid group since we’ve had some turnover. Real life has taken the priority it needs to take for a couple of our core team. We have to gear up some new raiders and teach them the ropes so to speak.

This change will make it much easier to get them up to the level of the rest of the raid fairly quickly. That is a positive for my raid group.

But I’m also concerned.

The Emblem change may make it tougher on Raiding guilds. Loot is a reward, a trophy, and it’s a tool for seeing more content, but it’s also a motivator. I speculate it will be harder for some Raid leaders to get their groups to wipe for hours on content. Some of those raiders are going to be thinking to themselves, why are we doing this? We could be getting just as good, if not a little better gear by facerolling our way through Kara….err I mean Naxx, and Heroics. And to a certain extent, they would be right.

If your raid has people who only raid for gear, you might have trouble motivating them. Money or gear doesn’t change a person so much as it reveals a person.

Although, I think if I’m honest with myself what really bothers me about the Emblem change is that a guy who dinged 80 last week could be in the same or maybe even better gear than a person like, oh I don’t know, let’s say… me! I’ve been around since the opening of Wrath of the Lich King.

I guess I want to have some advantage for playing longer or having been around that long.

Actually I do have an advantage. Unless we’re talking about an alt, that person who just dinged will not know what it was like those first couple of weeks in Ulduar. They won’t have any clue what it was like questing through Dragonblight when it was buzzing with activity, or doing Heroics in mostly blue gear. I got exactly what I paid for: exploration, progression, and entertainment.

I raid because it’s fun to raid. I love getting loot as a reward, and as a tool to be ready to tackle the next raid zone. I do like the fact that I’m one of handful of people on my server to have killed Yogg Saron on any difficulty (10 or 25 man). I love that we got a server first on Shadowdodger.

I guess I just want some way to be recognized as a deep end game player. Gear is part of that, but titles and achievements can serve that purpose as well. I suppose it’s why I still wear Hand of A’dal around Shattrah. I can’t wait until I can wear Conqueror of Ulduar, or Starcaller.

New people or alts getting gear through the new Emblem system won’t diminish my fun in Raids at all. Sure, they’ll have gear. I hope they go out and have a blast with that gear.

Maybe it will help some guild get over a stumbling block like Thorim or Mimiron, or maybe it will help them finally down Yogg. Even better, perhaps it will give a Naxx guild confidence to go try Ulduar. The place is a lot of fun to raid.

Raiding is fun, why wouldn’t I want others to experience the fun I’ve been having.

So overall the Emblem change is quite good. I have to be honest with myself about what bothers me about it, and I soon as I am, I realize that it’s not anything to be concerned about.

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