Tuesday, July 28, 2009

[Druid, 3.2] Emblem gear for bears

UPDATED: Changed Idol of Mutilation's ranking to reflect that the Corruptor's ranking is higher and only costs 19 emblems of conquest.

With 3.2 just around the corner, it's time to start doing loot lists. 3.2 is going to introduce a huge amount of gear obtainable via heroics, so similar to what 2.4 was like I'm going to first go through the various emblem purchases and tell you what to prioritize so that you don't waste your hard-earned triumph badges on random crap you don't need. No matter how shiny it is.

First off, tier gear: you can only get the 10-man normal mode tier gear from badges, and for the most part it's not that spectacular. Furthermore the set bonus is basically irrelevant for bears at this time; the 2pT9 bonus is odd and not that useful, and the 4pT9 bonus is essentially as good as the 4pT7 bonus.

But let's get to the filthy lucre, shall we? Here's the rankings I've used to evaluate all of this. And the first item up for bids is:

  1. Duskstalker Shoulderpads (45 emblems). Remember, the Ulduar hardmode shoulders from Iron Council are better than this (and everything else in Tier 9), so if you have those - don't bother. And it turns out - don't bother with your tier in this slot either, as these are better than the equivalent T9.25 items. Both are pretty poorly itemized for bears, but these are slightly better - and unlike the T9.25 gear these don't require a Trophy of the Crusade to get them. They're also about 12 points higher than the best non-hard mode Ulduar item, and they're pretty cheap.
  2. Clutch of Fortification (35 emblems). The only reason that these are this low is simply because there isn't such a huge jump between this and the next items in Ulduar. But right now - this is the best tanking ring for bears in the game. I suspect that one of the heroic-mode items from the Valkyr will eclipse it, eventually, but even then it'll still be very competitive. It's about 9 points higher than Leviathan's Coil and 5 more than Fate's Clutch, if that helps. Personally, because my rings kinda suck? This'll be my second purchase after the Idol, assuming Vezax continues to not cooperate.
  3. Glyph of Indominability (5o emblems). This isn't in wowhead yet and might not be around any more (I'll check tonight) - but wow, if it is...amazing trinket. The only reason this is so low is that the cost is very high and it is situational. But wow, what a situation. This is essentially a defender's code that is double the effectiveness of its normal use. With it and defender's code you can have 3000 armor extra. That's pretty nice. Again, I suspect there are other better trinkets out there (like Juggernaut's Vitality), but it's great. If you have good trinkets already, I would wait on this. If you don't, this is an excellent place to start.
  4. Hood of Lethal Intent (75 emblems). This is more of a kitty item than a bear item. It's better than the ilvl 232 tier helm, but slightly worse than the equivalent ilvl Tier piece. It is about 12 points higher than the best stuff from Ulduar, so consider buying it and using it until you get your T9.25 item and then swap this with your cat gear.
  5. Idol of Mutilation (25 emblems). Oh, finally we get a tanking idol that's an upgrade from Idol of Terror. And the proc is great, even with the recent nerf to dodge rating. Testing has it up almost 100% of the time, making this about a 3% gain in avoidance almost permanently. This should be your first priority if you don't have Idol of the Corruptor; nothing gives quite so much a gain in value as this does, badge wise. Except as Gescom points out - Idol of the Corruptor is available in 3.2 as a conquest drop.

    Now there may be some odd things you can do if you have both; you can swap idols and potentially get both procs up at the same time in bear, which is pretty awesome for avoidance if not threat. This isn't quite clear given this patch note:

    Items with Triggered Effects: These items generally have cooldowns on how often they can be triggered. Those cooldowns are now triggered each time the item is equipped (example: A trinket has a 45-second cooldown on an effect triggered by player attacks; when a player equips that item, the effect will be unable to be triggered for the first 45 seconds it is worn).

    It did not appear that the Mutilator or the Corruptor idol had a cooldown internally at all, but it's possible they do. If so, there's nothing useful about the Mutilator idol relative to the Corruptor Idol for bears. I'll make a bigger post showing why, but keep in mind how well druids scale with agility and how many ways agility gets boosted compared to dodge, and you end up giving up very little. The difference in avoidance between the two is about .5% avoidance pre-diminishing returns, and for that .5% you get higher crit rating and about 300 armor. The corruptor wins out unless you must have as much avoidance as humanly possible. On a side note, realize that this is the best cat idol if you have to mangle (and may be the best cat idol period depending on the cooldown rate for shreds), so it'll be pretty useful for cats anyway.
  6. Dexterous Brightstone (35 emblems) - this is here for completeness; don't bother with it unless you really want something for cat and have horrible rings for your bear.
  7. Runetotem's Handgrips of conquest (30 emblems) - these are actually worse than the T8.25 gear, but if you didn't get lucky from Mimiron these may be something important to pick up. But it's a pretty small upgrade from even Naxx. Still, these are the best gloves available purely from badges, so if you need an upgrade, here ya go.
  8. Runetotem's Headguard of Conquest (50 emblems) - these are the best of the lot in terms of an upgrade from T8.25 (about 7 points), but because of the non-tier item that's available, these get something of a downgrade overall. If you can, save your emblems and get the Hood of Lethal Intent instead.
  9. Runetotem's Shoulderpads of Conquest (30 emblems) - an actual slight upgrade from the T8.25 item, but because of the Duskstalker shoulderpads above and because they're only a small upgrade, I put them a bit lower than the handguards. Definitely pick up the Duskstalker's first, if only because they're 7 points higher than these.
  10. Runetotem's Legguards of Conquest (50 emblems) - another T9.10 item worse than the T8.25 items. If you need an upgrade in the leg spot, skip these and use your conquest badges on Leggings of Wavering Shadow instead - those aren't the best things ever, but they're only slightly worse than buying the T9.10, and you won't be wasting your triumph emblems.
  11. Runetotem's rainments of conquest (50 emblems) - these are just barely an upgrade over T8.25. Unless you've seriously been unlucky with drops, don't get this. In fact, it's much better to simply buy the T8.25 via conquest badges and save your emblems of triumph, so don't buy this at all.

1 comment:

runycat said...

Very helpful, as per usual. I keep trying to ignore my Bear set, even though I know full-well that it needs a lot of help to get back to where it used to be (especially since I've got a feeling I'll be tanking 10 mans again). This is sort of a dumb, picky thing, but the Tier gear for NELFS is actually called Malfurion's Battlegear. Obviously as a giant piece of steak you probably aren't concerned with this, but you might have some confused folks who wonder why they can't find this on a vendor.