I was feeling a little overwhelmed with making item looting decisions with this All/All gear, not knowing what each slot had to offer over my T3/4 VoA gear (and couple remaining HoT T4 *cough* terrible VoA heroics *cough*) so I set out to plot all the gear. Lo and behold, the below pattern emerged for every slot. The AC values are a little different depending on the slot but they still seem to respect the pattern and a couple slots have double items on a particular row (I left out the zonewide drops, +7 to all heroics and low heal/SD isn't helping anyone). Highest values in red. Second highest in orange. I know there were higher spell damage values than 22 in VoA so that either stagnated or T3. Much better heroics system with this method compared to last year though so props to Chandrok. My enchanter having some only row 9 gear options in VoA with things like 4 and 6 hAgi compared to being able to choose from rows 1, 5 and 7 now is awesome. Opinions on best class for each row? I'm thinking something like: 1. Tank, Bard/Enc (Necro?) 2. Pure melee 3. Pure melee, hybrid 4. Warrior 5. Hybrid 6. Pure melee 7. Int Casters 8. Priests 9. Priests, Int Casters (spell damage for mana trade off here)
Way too much work for no reason. Let me compare a few T1 raid items to show you how simple this is. Ear slot STA: 26 + 11 STR: 23 + 10 WIS: 20 + 9 INT: 20 + 9 DEX: 30 + 14 AGI: 27 + 12 CHA: 23 + 10 Shoulders. STA: 26 + 11 STR: 23 + 10 WIS: 20 + 9 INT: 20 + 9 DEX: 30 + 14 AGI: 27 + 12 CHA: 23 + 10 Face. STA: 26 + 11 STR: 23 + 10 WIS: 20 + 9 INT: 20 + 9 DEX: 30 + 14 AGI: 27 + 12 CHA: 23 + 10 Do you see the pattern here? The gear was obviously made with sets in mind, the heroics appear standardized for these sets. It's very, very, very simple and doesn't require more than waiting for sites like raidloot.com to get all the gear in there so you can compare it easily.
I don't raid so I don't know how long it's been standardized like this for you guys but the group game hasn't seen anything like this before. Heroics and stats were all over the place, piece to piece, slot to slot.
1. Every melee, Nec, Enc and Shm. Solid option for other 4 classes. Every other option is less AC which benefits no one, less HP which benefits no one, hStr is a virtually pointless stat, hSta is just HP which 1 wins, even the ~250mana edge for 9 doesn't impress any of the first 12 classes, the only hAgi upgrade is 1 point which comes at the expense of 4hDex and 6ac which is an unrealistic trade-off for any melee, highest hDex. 2. Piece of Halfling that had no reason what-so-ever to be made, just make more 1. 3. Piece of Halfling that had no reason what-so-ever to be made, just make more 1. 4. Piece of Halfling that had no reason what-so-ever to be made, just make more 1. 5. Piece of Halfling that had no reason what-so-ever to be made, just make more 1. 6. Piece of Halfling that had no reason what-so-ever to be made, just make more 1. 7. Caster option. Highest hAgi and spldmg at the expense of AC, HP and Heal. Mage and Wiz in particular might favor this one. 8. Piece of Halfling that had no reason what-so-ever to be made, just make more 7 and 9. 9. Caster option. Highest Mana and Heal at the expense of AC/HP or hAgi/spldmg. Cleric and Druid in particular might favor this one. Baby steps, all players have many options, maybe next year there will be reasonable trade-offs and genuine choices between the different options.
Fuvi is correct, I tried bringing this up during beta. A small differences in heroics is not enough to encourage someone to choose gear based on heroics. Same hp/ac/mana/sd/heal would make the heroics matter. Until then, tons of rot loot!
I originally had "None" written for a few but changed it to give them the benefit of the doubt. I guess to appreciate what you're looking at here, you have to understand what group gear went through from HoT to now. HoT was good. VoA was heroic downgrades all over the place. T3 VoA, where upgrades to HoT T4 should have started, were an absolute mess and I looted so much gear on buff bot 3rd stringers (2nd stringers had better HoT gear) it wasn't even funny. Some of T4 VoA managed a heroics push and some had clear (slight) upgrades, but some slots (melee rings) there were literally no heroic upgrade paths in T4 VoA from T4 HoT. This whole standardization is a million times better. What I tried to explain over and over last year when people kept saying "You have to consider the stats of the complete set of gear" (which is true for visibles, not non-visibles) is that whole sets of best in slot gear don't fall from the sky at once. You get a drop. You compare it to what you're wearing. Worse? Grats tribute. Row 8 here for example, while it might not be the final best in slot for my druid, most of it seems to be at worst a side-grade with increased hps/mana from VoA and in some cases a clear upgrade so I have no qualms about looting those pieces for now until the other drop comes (or comes twice since my wizard might be stealing some of those drops). This is in stark contrast to VoA where starting in T2 you were killing named mobs that were incredibly more difficult than HoT nameds and getting drops that you could only just stare at and struggle to figure out what to do with them. So again, big thanks to Chandrok for the changes he made this time. I don't know if we'll ever see something like Dald suggests where you get a choice of 50 spell damage for 500 less mana but like you said, this is a baby step in the right direction.
9 sets? are you serious? No wonder I've seen more melee bias items dropping. The names seem wrong as well, you have silken, which isn't aimed towards those who wear silk, we get stuck with hero which it more of tank name. 7 is clearly aimed at pure casters yet it has lower mana and hero int 9 is clearly aimed at healers and they also get the highest mana and hero wis. Where is the caster love?
7 is aimed at enchanters I assume, due to hagi as primary stat and boosted ac. 8 is aimed at necro/sham, but has the second least total hp. 9 is aimed at the rest of the casters and priests. Here is the chart from beta. There appears to be one heroic difference between primary and secondary and between secondary and tertiary. Groups look to be tank - 1 ber - 2 mnk/rng - 3 brd - 4 bst - 5 rog - 6 enc - 7 nec/sha - 8 wiz/cle/dru/mag - 9
Yes, lack of caster love. Setting all h/m/e the same would make people gear for heroics. As well as setting sd/ha the same. If wizards would have said hagi>hsta you would have gotten your own item. If half the classes get their own item, may as well tailor one for each class. But losing 200 hp for +1 sta and some other stuff is lol. There was amazing itemization with the new powersource, 30 purity augs, all the clickies. But when it comes to the stats....
So now chanters need Spell Damage and Wiz & Mages don't? Set 9 cannot be aimed at the pure casters as Spell Damage is the lowest of the 3 caster items, it looks like it is aimed at healers and pure casters got left out (wiz/mage) This itemization is a joke.
