Monday, October 5, 2009

[Druid]Bear loot list updated for Ony, PvP

As promised a bit ago, I've updated the loot list for Onyxia and PvP gear and posted it back in the usual place. Go check it out.

It's using the wowhead rank weighings instead of the rawr weighings, so a couple things moved around and the scale has been slightly altered. The most notable changes came at weapon...which is probably something I need to alter. Origin of Nightmares doesn't compare anymore to the higher weapons ,even with all that armor on it. Large amounts of damage are important on a weapon simply because while druids don't scale well with AP, AP is about the only thing that druids get more consistent threat with - and there are simply boatloads of Feral AP on weapon upgrades. Each tier of weapon upgrade gives about 300 more feral AP, and that's simply impossible to ignore as far as damage goes. It's not the best - but bears are starting to feel the pinch. You're simply not going to get that kind of DPS/TPS upgrade from anywhere else.

As to Ony loot, the skinny is this : the helm is passable but not stellar, the neck is similar, and the rings are awesome. The weapon is surprisingly weak, which is another reason to correct the rankings.

In any case, I've changed the rankings slightly as well to increase the value of expertise. This didn't change much. I've also added an updated field to show what, if anything, has changed.

10 comments:

Willowbear said...

Thanks Kalon. Much appreciated. I can echo that comment on Origins and threat. I desperately need to upgrade that for a threat boost.

I picked up the Ony helm as an upgrade to my Hood of Exodus (yes I was lucky enough to see this in Naxx). Trophies in Crusade25 are still going for high bids and frankly the helm isn't too far off from the T9.245. It will tide me over and I can use my bids on weapons, jewelry and trinkets for now.

J said...

From today:
Damage from the weapon is more important than ever due to how well bears scale with feral AP and in general how much more important threat is.

From the other day:
Threat for bears scales very poorly. That early threat bears get is primarily because of frontloaded awesome threat from maul, lacerate and FFF. As we scale with gear...we will not see as high of gains, especially compared to some other classes who don't have these things.

Maybe I'm being dense (it's known to happen), but which is it? Our threat scales well, or not?

To me personally, it feels like 'not'.

Kalon said...

Willowbear - thanks. The Ony helm is definitely a viable upgrade, and it's not that far off from anything else. It's just a bit ugly ;)

J - sorry, it's a bit imprecise. By 'how well' we scale with AP, I mean to say we don't scale that well. We scale better with feral AP than AP thanks to predatory instincts, but neither one has us scale that well.

I'll amend that, but basically the reason you want to upgrade is that while we don't scale well with AP, we do scale pretty okay with 800 more AP :)

Willowbear said...

Yeah, well I'm getting used to the antlers. I've always been more about functionality than aesthetics anyway. And what's with Blizzard's antler fixation for druids? First the T2 helms, then the T4 helms, and now back to the T2butreallyT9ish helm.

Onyxia has been kind to me. First the helm on 25s and now on Ony10 I picked up thunderstrike to replace Origins. I'll miss the armor and agi. But the threat boost from the AP increase as well as the added expertise and sta (however slight) are more than welcome.

Cuer said...

Thanks so much for keeping these lists up to date, Kalon; they're a great help.

One request: can we get a link to the Wowhead rankings you use to generate these lists? It's nice to be able to check it afterward, as more new gear shows up.

You're right about the weapons; Reinforced Thunderstrike is a more solid upgrade than the standard lists would suggest. Switching to that from Origins has helped my threat dramatically. It's great to have a weapon with a nice chunk of Expertise built in; it allows using PVP gear in other slots without as many worries about threat generation. Given how well DPS is scaling upward compared to tank threat these days, that seems more of a concern than ever.

Kalon said...

Cuer, thanks for writing. The wowhead links are on a sidebar on every single page towards the top. I'll also start embedding them for those who are reading this via a feed.

Wolfblitzer said...

So today, I did a Wowhead search, for all leather armor, equippable by druids, with an ILVL of 245 or greater, with expertise on it. The only items on that list are the T9 helm, the Onyxia helm, and the boots from heroic Acidmaw. Where did all our expertise go? Upgrading from my mix of Naxx and Ulduar stuff to a large chunk of leather from 25 man TOC has seen my expertise completely tank.

Unknown said...

I'll be picking up that expertise trinket specifically because of that. I was pushing 42 expertise... now I'm down to maybe 28. Keep in mind the neck from Ony has some expertise on it, so I've been swapping it with Muse at times (e.g. Twins)

Endas said...

So after running Ulduar (10-man) for close to every week since it opened, the Mark of the Unyielding finally dropped this week. Does the armor of that really push it up above the normal 10-man Endurance of the Infernal? I have no doubt about the heroic 10-man version... that one would fit nicely around my neck. :) Thanks.

Kalon said...

Hey Endas -

My view is that Mark of the Unyielding is very strong, but the biggest problem is the lack of expertise relative to fortitude or Boundless Ambition. Boundless is actually better in my mind despite missing the avoidance due to the armor and expertise. Fortitude is good because of it but misses armor; Mark is the opposite. Before I got the Gorget I used all three depending on the fight, but now I just use that.