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.

Related posts:

1. Emblems of Triumph Pick Order (10 Man Raider)
2. Solve the Avoidance Problem, Eliminate Tank Gear
3. How To Tank as an Enhancement Shaman

The purchasable minipets continue to cause a storm across the blogosphere. I’ve already mentioned them here and here, but rather than offer another analysis on the Pandaren Monk as I did with Lil’ K.T. I’m just going to offer one finally post on it and then I’m leaving these two alone.

I don’t care what fears people have about Blizzard offering other things in the future (they can go ahead and put T5695 gear up for sale for all I care), as far as I’m concerned that is in no way a valid argument for anything.

The only argument I have found that is valid to any degree is not so much an argument as it is a failure to understand: How can you justify spending $20 on two pets?

To even things out a bit, let’s forget about the $5 donation to the MaWF and just look at it as a flat $20 price tag here with no further bells and whistles.

Cost Analysis
Actual Cost: One Pet
Most people are looking at this: $10 = 1 pet

What most of them are failing to see is that it actually works out to this: $10 = 50 pets

Which means the actual cost is: $0.20 = 1 pet

The reason for this is because each of these pets is a BoA item that is mailed to every character you have and every character you make in the future. Each account is able to have 50 total characters across all servers, and every one of them gets this pet for the same fee. Now, not everyone is so much an altoholic as my wife and I (both of us have had to delete toons for having reached the 50 toon limit), so not everyone is going to be able to see it that way. But, some people are as bad as I am, or even worse, and they actually get an even better deal than twenty cents a pop.

For the sake of consistency though, we’ll go with a maximum of 50 toons.

Actual Cost: Both Pets
Alright, lets open it up a bit and throw that second pet in there.

Most people see this: $20 = 2 pets

What they miss: $20 = 100 pets

Actual Cost: $0.20 = 1 pet

Now, the math here obviously comes out to the exact same thing because the cost is the same in both cases. We double the cost, but we also double the quantity purchased.

Perspective
To put that into perspective a bit, let us change what we’re purchasing to nails instead of vanity pets. As with any example, it’s not going to be perfect and any trolls can come by and chew on my nails if they want. Yes, nails are real world items that can serve a purpose and be functional, but that’s not the point. Read with the intent to understand, not with the intent to respond.

Example: We’re going to say that you just bought a beautiful Asian painting. The details of the painting aren’t important, but if you’re really interested I’ll tell you that it depicts a monk. You need to hang it on your wall, but you don’t have any nails. So you go to the store to buy a nail and find out that they don’t sell nails individually, they only come in two varieties and they only come in boxes of 50. Either nail would work, but the picture will hang a bit differently with one than it will with the other, and both ways appeal to you.

You aren’t sure which nail is going to suit you the best, but you know that you could probably find uses for either type. You also know that you only need a single nail, but having several might come in handy later on down the road. If you could buy a single nail for $0.20 then you would prefer to do that, but sadly the store doesn’t allow such purchases. So you have to decide whether you want one type of nail, or both types of nails, and you have to deal with the fact that you may very well be buying more nails than you’ll ever use.

My decision was to buy both types of nails and see which style of hanging appealed to me more, knowing that I could change between both styles of hanging whenever I wanted to by switching out one type of nail for the other.

Conclusion
The point of me breaking this down for you isn’t to try to convince you to change your mind on whether or not to buy them, the point is to open your mind a bit to help you see a clearer picture of what you’re actually buying. In essence, you aren’t just going to a store to buy yourself a nail, you’re going to a store and buying a box of nails. Whether or not you decide to use them all is up to you. You may only need a single nail to hang up that nice picture on your wall, but you’re buying a whole box that’s available for you to use if you have a want or need to do so.

How you justify the cost is dependent on how you chose to look at it. Did you spend $20 on a single nail, or did you spend $20 on a box that has 100 nails in it? The answer is up to you; it’s all in how you choose to look at it.

I didn’t spend $20 to buy my wife 2 pets, I spent $20 to buy my wife 100 pets, and she’s enjoying every one.

Posted in World of Warcraft Tagged: BoA, Microtransactions, Purchase, Vanity Pets

Related posts:

1. Faction transfers announced: Thoughts and opinions

Let’s take a look at some gear you can get fairly easily if you’d like to give tanking a try as a Shaman:

Helm:
Deadly Gladiator’s Linked Helm (49,600 Honor or 58 Emblems of Conquest)
Meta Gem: Austere Earthsiege Diamond
Enchant: Arcanum of the Stalwart Protector

Neck: Shard of the Crystal Forest (19 Emblems of Conquest)

Shoulders: Deadly Gladiator’s Linked Spaulders (31,600 Honor or 46 Emblems of Conquest)
Enchant: Greater Inscription of the Pinnacle

Back: Platinum Mesh Cloak (25 Emblems of Valor)
Enchant: Titanweave

Chest: Deadly Gladiator’s Linked Armor (49,600 Honor or 58 Emblems of Conquest)
Enchant: Defense

Wrist: Titan-Forged Wristguards of Triumph (15 Wintergrasp Marks of Honor)
Enchant: Major Stamina

Hands: Deadly Gladiator’s Linked Gauntlets (31,600 Honor or 46 Emblems of Conquest)
Enchant: Armsman

Legs: Deadly Gladiator’s Linked Leggings (49,600 Honor or 58 Emblems of Conquest)
Enchant: Frosthide Leg Armor

Feet: Titan-Forged Sabatons of Triumph (15 Wintergrasp Marks of Honor)
Enchant: Greater Fortitude

Ring: Mark of the Relentless (Heroic Trial of the Champion)

Ring: Signet of the Impregnable Fortress (25 Emblems of Valor)

Trinket: The Black Heart (Trial of the Champion)

Trinket: Essence of Gossamer (Heroic Azjol-Nerub)

Weapon: Aledar’s Battlestar (Heroic Trial of the Champion)
Enchant: Mongoose

Shield: Crygil’s Discarded Plate Panel (35 Emblems of Heroism)
Alternative: Royal Crest of Lordaeron
(Heroic Culling of Stratholme)

Totem: Totem of Splintering (15 Emblems of Heroism)

There are always other choices for gear that you can make, but this is a list of some of the easier to get pieces to build your Shaman tanking set.

For pulling mobs, Lighting Bolt, Chain Lightning and Lava Burst will help you pull and build aggro. While in melee range you will be using Frost Shock on every cooldown and always have Lighting Shield up.

If you need to taunt, you will use Stoneclaw Totem, Spirit Wolves on non-raid bosses, and also Earth Elemental when you are in trouble. Stoneclaw totem can also be used for damage mitigation to allow you a few seconds to heal.

Healing Wave should be used to help heal yourself to take some pressure off your healer and it can also maintain threat. Hex can be used both for Crowd Control on multiple mob pulls or when you have no other taunt abilities available and need to save a party member’s life.

This is just a beginner’s introduction to Shaman tanking but hopefully it will help get you started.

Related posts:

1. Patch 3.2 Preview: New Shaman Totem Bar [screenshot]
2. When DPS Goes Tank
3. Shaman Versus Druid

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.

Related posts:

1. LFM 5k+ DPS Only!
2. [Patch 3.2] Joining The Emblem Debate
3. Onyxia Returns for Patch 3.2.2

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!

Related posts:

1. Guest Post: Yuki Learns You Stat Weighting (p3)
2. Guest Post: Yuki Learns you Stat Weighting (p2)
3. Guest Post: Priests in Battlegrounds