[Druid, 3.2] Emblem of Triumph items for cats

And with the bear one out of the way, time to do the cat emblem of triumph gear. (Really, it's not that bad Jacemora). Fortunately all the prior items are basically covered save a couple trinkets, so that saves some time - there really aren't that many pieces from purely Emblems of Triumph that are obtainable, and the ones you might care about are fairly small.

The scary list - the one that has all conquest, valor, heroism and triumph loot - is coming.

As before, the gearing list is based on FeralByNight's system of weighing. Keep in mind that this is very, very dependent on other stats; do not use these values without understanding why they're good, and what to do if you don't have a ton of armor pen. In general a good rule of thumb is to use armor pen whenever the gear isn't going to be shared, and use agility whenever it is. If you don't have grim toll or mjolnir runestone, armor pen isn't as valuable as agility - but it doesn't really change these rankings at all.

The tier gear question is a lot more interesting this time around. The 2pT9 bonus is pretty good, though it's not as good as the insanely great 2pT8 bonus is. The estimates I've seen value the bonus at around 50-100 DPS, given that it's basically giving you a free shred while keeping higher rake uptimes up. The 4pT9 bonus is not nearly as sexy, by comparison. Ferocious Bites are a very small amount of overall DPS, even with higher gearing. 5% more crits on rips is very good, but it's not as good as the 2pT8 bonus or even the 4pT8 bonus, so realistically you should only break 2pT8 if you're getting a significant upgrade in the item quality.

Now, another interesting facet here is that because the gear is becoming better 'itemized' for rogues, it's becoming much better for cats and much worse for bears per item point. This is why, for example, hardmode Ulduar gear is so great compared to hardmode Coliseum gear for bears. The flip side of this is that cats are just getting more and more awesome.

If you want a summary of what to aim for, here goes:

For the Ulduar-25 raider who's got everything: Get the Ring, the Idol and the Hood. Don't bother getting T9.10 gear at all, as you'll likely get 2pT9.25 soon enough.

For the U-10 or lower U-25 geared cat: get the ring for sure. Get the Duskstalker shoulders. Get your T8.25 head and chest, then get T9.10 legs and gloves. If you're really wanting to push your DPS, go for the Hood of Lethal Intent first.

For heroic-gearing cats only:Get the ring first, then the duskstalker, shoulders, then the idol. Get the T8.25 head and chest as the biggest priority. Get the leggings of wavering shadow, and then get the T9.10 gloves - and maybe consider the T9.10 legs if you're running a lot of heroics. But since you're so starved for Triumph badges, the best upgrade by far is that ring.

1. Dexterous Brightstone (35 emblems) - This currently ranks as the second-best ring in the Coliseum, second only to a hardmode drop. While the loot lists are clearly incomplete, that doesn't stop this from always being great - it's about 5 points higher than the best ring from Ulduar save the quest rewards from Algalon. Because it's so cheap and because it should remain best in slot or close to it for a while, and that rings are traditionally hard to come by since so many other classes need them, I'm recommending this as the best thing to get early on. Of course, if you have two awesome rings disregard. :)
   
2. Hood of Lethal Intent (75 emblems). Remember where I said this was more of a cat item? Well, here it is. This is actually better than the T9.25 piece due to having hit and armor pen instead of crit and expertise, and all the other stats are identical. The reason this isn't quite as high is because of the expense, but make no mistake - this is 11 points higher than the Ulduar equivalent, and it will be an excellent upgrade for a while. It's also only a couple points worse than the hardmode T9.25 gear, again thanks to having armor pen and hit over expertise and crit. Definitely a good choice.
   
3. Duskstalker Shoulderpads (45 emblems). These are about a 7-point upgrade from the bset non-hardmode item in Ulduar, and a couple points better than Shoulderpads of the Intruder. They are almost identical to the T9.25 shoulders as well; they trade haste for crit. Personally I find crit to be better, but FbN values haste slightly more. In nay case, they're both very close, and because they're so cheap and require no Trophy of the Crusade, they should be a high priority for most cats.
   
4. Idol of Mutilation (25 emblems). Unlike the data for bears, this is a great idol for cats; Rawr has this as about an 100 DPS upgrade over Idol of Worship, assuming that the 200 agility is essentially up all the time. Given that it lasts for 16 seconds and that it triggers off of shreds and mangles, I suspect that's right. This isn't as high a priority because simply other items give a bigger bang for your buck, but if you're hurting on an idol it's hard to go wrong here.
   
   
5. Runetotem's Shoulderpads of Conquest (30 emblems) - These are a fairly reasonable upgrade from T8.25 shoulders (3 points) and just barely below Shoulderpads of the Intruder. They're also quite cheap. If you desperately want to have 2pT8 + 2pT9 right away, this is a good spot to have. It's up to you whether the tier bonus and look is worth the slight downgrade from Duskstalker's.
   
6. Runetotem's Handgrips of conquest (30 emblems) - These are a slight upgrade from the T8.25 gear, (about .75 points), and are loaded with hit, making these possibly somewhat awkward to use. They're not a huge upgrade but are fairly cheap, and could be a decent spot to go 2pT9 if you've got good options in other slots.
   
7. Runetotem's Legguards of Conquest (50 emblems) - while these are a raw upgrade over the T8.25 item, they're not that great. Why? Because for Emblems of Conquest you can get the Leggings of Wavering Shadow instead, which are .08 points worse than these. Between the high cost and the alternatives that are available, the only reason to get these is because you really want a 2pT9 bonus.
8. Runetotem's Headguard of Conquest (50 emblems) - not a good choice at all. They're a small (1 point) upgrade over T8.25, but because of the excellence of Hood of Lethal Intent, they get marked way, way down. Since you can get T8.25 via emblems of conquest, these become even worse. They're also not well-itemized to begin with. A poor choice to upgrade overall.
9. Runetotem's rainments of conquest (50 emblems) - A decent upgrade over the T8.25 chest, but not an upgrade over a number of other Ulduar items like Winter's Icy Embrace. Still you should consider getting T8.25 with conquest badges anyway and do this later.
10. Shard of the Crystal Heart (5o emblems) - this one was tough. With the huge amount of hit, chances are you'd go over the hitcap on this. But it's otherwise great as far as trinkets go, and if you've gotten unlucky with trinkets it may be worth it to you. For me sampling this in Rawr, it looks like it's significantly below Mirror of Truth and DM:G, much less something like Mjolnir. And that's with all of the hit being useful; if it's not, then it's even worse. I'd skip it and go for those two instead if at all possible. If you're curious, the Mark of Supremacy is similar.
    

[Druid, 3.2] Don't get Idol of Mutilation for bears!

I alluded to this in my previous post on Emblem of Triumph gear choices, but I'll expand that a bit.

Idol of the Corruptor currently drops from General Vezax in Ulduar and will be obtainable for 19 emblems of conquest as soon as 3.2 comes out - and everything will drop emblems of conquest, at least. The proc is 153 agility for 12 seconds, and it has close to a 100% uptime since it can be refreshed with another mangle. If there is an internal cooldown it is less than 4.5 seconds.

The Idol of Mutilation costs 25 emblems of triumph, which are only obtainable from the Coliseum raids (10 and 25 man) and daily heroics. The proc rate for lacerate/swipe appears to be quite high and it seems to have close to a 100% uptime as well, and there appears to be no internal cooldown. The proc gives 200 dodge rating.

With the nerfs to agility and dodge rating, here's what each item does before diminishing returns factors in:

200 dodge rating / 45.2 = 4.42% dodge
153 agility * 1.1 (kings) * 1.08 (sotf + motw) = 181 effective agility /47.84 = 3.799% dodge

These are with the new 3.2 nerfed agility/dodge multipliers, in case you were wondering.

So the Mutilation idol gives more dodge %. That's not a big surprise, though with all the stat multipliers it's less than you might think. Even if the multipliers don't take into account, it's about 3.2% dodge.

However, that's not all that agility gives you. In this specific case, you're also gaining 362 armor and 2.2% crit. Is .6% dodge worth 362 armor and extra crit?

According to Rawr, nope. Even removing all threat value, the Idol of the Corruptor wins over the Idol of Terror by about 16%. If you factor in threat it improves even more. This is fairly intuitive, especially given what we know about fights in Ulduar.

Now, there's a wrinkle to this. Early in 3.2, it was possible to swap idols and have both procs up simultaneously. Later on in the PTR they added this confusing bit of verbiage:

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).

The problem with this is that as far as I can tell, neither idol has an internal cooldown of any sort. Have they added one since? If they haven't and if this doesn't apply to things in a generic way (ie, giving everything a 5-second delay on equip regardless of ICD), this trick will still work. If you macro all your attacks to something like this:

/equip Idol of the Corruptor
/cast mangle

/equip Idol of Mutilation
/cast lacerate

You should be able to get both procs up all the time. Note that this is not tested on live, so don't take it as gospel; while I suspect that it does work, I can see it going the other way. If so, one of the better things you can do when threat isn't an issue is to use those macros - you'll gain 2-3% more dodge just from doing that.

If anyone else on the PTR has the emblems to test this out, I'd appreciate it; mine were wiped along with all the emblem gear I had bought.

[3.2] Tier rewards part the second - don't do this, please!

This is a followup to an earlier post about tier rewards. And it's based on the PTR currently.

Right now, instead of what was listed before, each ilvl 245 item requires a Trophy of the Crusader token. This is in addition to the Emblems of Triumph tokens that they require, so items that cost 75 triumph emblems before also cost 1 Crusader token. These are soulbound, and as far as I can tell only one drops per boss on 25-man. 10-man does not drop this token.

ilvl 232 items are unchanged from prior prices, and are 33% less than their 245-ilvl counterpart.

And finally, each boss drops 3 emblems of triumph.

I know this is preliminary, and things can change. I also know that communication is good for actually getting things changed if they suck.

I'm...not thrilled with this idea of progression. For starters, it means that heroics and 10-man content have exactly the same access to gear, save that 10-man content rewards more badges so you'll get more gear quickly. But the actual gear? It's the same. This doesn't strike me as reasonable, but it's the same deal as it was in Naxxramas. If you liked that, you'll love this.

Second, it means that anyone who does 10-man content and 25-man content will gear up at about twice the rate that anyone who does only 25-man content will. Even if you get the tokens in 25-man, you still need those emblems - which means the token is worthless until you get enough tokens. That's not necessarily bad; it's essentially rewarding those people who do more to get more, and they get more of what they want. They can run 10-mans and instead of getting 'useless' tier tokens, they'll be getting closer to actual tier drops. That's kind of nice, actually.

Third, it means that doing daily heroics is (on a weekly basis) worth as much as doing all of the Argent Coliseum. There are 6-7 encounters that we know of (depending on how you count them) and if they all drop 3 emblems, that means 21 for a full clear. Which so happens to be exactly the amount of emblems you get from doing the dailies.

To put this in perspective, it costs 75 emblems + a trophy of the crusader token to get the high-end items like a tier chest piece. Someone who does nothing but 25-man content (assuming they clear it AND assuming they are in for every fight) will get that piece after 4 weeks.

Someone who does 10 and 25 man will get it after 2 weeks.
Someone who does 10, 25, and every heroic they can will get it just a bit after one week.

Fourth, this absolutely fucks over guilds with people on backup, in terms of their loot. Because emblems are tied innately to actual gear they care about, sitting on backup means you're getting further and further behind on getting that tier gear. Even if you get the trophy of the crusader token, you'll have either saved for longer or have to wait for longer every time you sit on backup. DKP, EP/GP? None of that matters.

Blizzard has basically instituted a DKP system that is entirely based on attended amount of time in the raid. For some guilds that will be fine. For others that will seriously mess things up.

Fifth, I really hope more than one trophy of the crusader token drops per boss. Otherwise you're looking at 6-7 tier tokens possible per week. Compare to now, where you can get at least 10 tokens per week, and it's clearly a step back.

My biggest complaints about this are simply that it really rewards doing as much raiding as humanly possible, and somewhat punishes not doing so. It also does something that was never done before in raiding: it converts all tier loot into something like the Valanyr/Sulfuras questline, where instead of getting your gear immediately or getting your gear as a trade-in, you instead get your gear at some indeterminate time in the future depending on how many bosses you get in for and how many heroics you run.

Does this make sense? Is it fun? Does it help with progression when your tier tokens won't be obtainable for at least a couple weeks until you've received the token? If you're trying to gear up new people, does this help?

I do like that it gives the flexibility of getting whatever slot you want. The cost seems far too high.

So, suggestions on how to fix this? Let triumph tokens drop as they do now. Let the 232 ilvl stuff be the stuff that you can get from just running heroics. Let the 245 stuff be token-based only, similar to the 258 stuff, and have the tokens drop from both 10 and 25 man. Because like I said before, I don't care about whether or not 10-man loot and 25-man loot is differentiated at the tier level. But that's off the top of my head - I'm sure smarter folks are figuring this out now.

[3.2] Tier rewards, etc.

Two big changes in the last 24 hours to how raiding will work in 3.2. Okay, three, but I'm not talking about the whole raid lockout extension thing.

The first is that there will be no slot-specific tokens for tier gear. This means that instead of dropping the shoulderpads of the hobo vanquisher, or whatever, it'll be 'regalia' - and with regalia you can buy any piece of tier gear at the appropriate level.

The second bit is that only the top level (ilvl 258) gear is purchasable this way; all other gear can be bought via Emblems of Triumph.

I was going to post something about this, but Graylo beat me to it, saying almost precisely what I was going to say and my reaction.

I have a couple of reactions to this. On the positive side the token change is a good idea. It will make the tokens more useful, and few of them will go to off specs or shards soon after the patch.

On the flip side, I have a big problem with the lower to levels of tier sets being purchase able with emblems. First of all whats the incentive to buy the 232 iLevel tier set when the 245 ilevel tier set costs just 50% more? When you get enough Emblems to buy the first level of gear you will have a choice. To I spend all the badges now and wait 3 weeks to upgrade, or do I wait a week and get even better gear?
Obviously we don't complete know how the system will work, but there are a lot of potential problems. If the Tier tokens are to easy to get, the emblem tiers will be almost completely ignored. If the tier tokes are to hard to get then it will take a really long time to build a set. Finally as I said above there is no real incentive to go for the 232 iLevel set.
I think they need to scale it back to a little more like the current system. Have the top level tokes drop off of 25 man raids. Have a lower level token drop off of 10 man raids, and I think it would be a great idea to have the lowest level tier be purchasable with emblems. That way all three levels have some level of desirability.

I really couldn't agree more. I don't understand why having a piece of gear 33% cheaper would make you want it at all if it's 13 levels below what you have. I don't like the pressure that this puts on raiders to make them almost universally have to do 10-man and 25-man content as much as they can early on in order to get more tokens for their tier gear. Will loot drops be like Sarth, where there's a satchel of gemsEmblems instead of a token drop, and people will fight over those?

Mostly, I really don't like the pressure this would put on hardcore raiders to do as much content in one reset (10 and 25) as humanly possible. I don't mind that for basically 3-4 weeks worth of grinding anyone can get tier 9 gear (3 triumph tokens from daily heroics * 7 days), but it really bothers me that the 232 items are essentially pointless and that there's such a huge incentive to run as much content as you possibly can.

I think that 3.2 is something of an experimental playground for Blizzard. There are a lot of changes to the fundamental raiding paradigms (week resets, gear availability, armor design, trash vs. bosses, 10 vs. 25, BoP trading) that I can't help but think Blizzard's throwing a lot of stuff against the wall and seeing what sticks.

And just so it's clear - there's absolutely no reason to get the lowest tier gear at this price level. None. It is always going to be better to get the higher tier whenever you can, even if it takes you another week of heroics. There are no bonuses for cats or bears that are so essential you must have them now now nao.

[3.2]Thoughts on the new emblem system

Copey asked this a couple days ago:

I think the biggest deal in the current patch notes is that they stepping away from the different tiers of emblems that are offered, and making emblems of conquest drop from heroics and T7 10 man raids. This will be a huge boon to people that don’t or can’t run Uld 25 man because they can now purchase iLvL 226 gear and never step into Uld 25.

It’s like back in BC where you could get Black Temple level gear just by farming Kara for 22 badges a week. What are your thoughts on this?

Lots of other bloggers have chimed in here and there. I wasn't going to bother because it didn't seem that big of a deal, but what the heck.

First off, the basics: everything that did drop valor or heroism will now drop conquest. Daily normal and heroic runs will drop triumph emblems. The 10 and 25-man versions of the new raid will also drop triumph. The new 5-man dungeon will also reward triumph badges.

That's the new rules.

What this means, practically, is that anyone will be able to get ilvl 226 gear fairly quickly. It also means things like older WotLK content will be valuable to run, in a similar way to how Kara was before.

It means that 10-man Naxx and 25-man Naxx will drop the exact same badges if you care, so the only real advantage to running 25-man is to get a couple pieces of loot and do 25 people at the same time instead of 10.

Heroics will be fairly valuable, but more importantly the dailies will be very valuable and sought out after; 2-3 triumph emblems a day is (at current tier prices) a piece of tier 9 (or equivalent) gear in a month, assuming you do no other raiding.

For the record: this is a good thing.

I have never had a problem with folks getting geared up at a faster pace as an expansion goes along. Point of fact I think it's pretty stupid to think otherwise. Why should anyone care how fast someone else gears up? Why should that matter? If you're worried about achievements, it still doesn't mean that they'll have cleared the places you have. Giving a bunch of people 226 or 239 gear doesn't mean they'll be able to faceroll Sarth3D, much less much of Ulduar. And even if they do clear it later - how does that reduce your accomplishment?

The notion that other people can somehow reduce what you did by doing it thanks to easier times or easier loot seems...weird to me.

Furthermore, gearing people up faster is crucial to the success of the game. You can't have people go through long slogs to get to the point where you're at as an expansion moves on; otherwise, you'll never be able to get new players in. They'll see this progression path of months and months and simply say fuck it. Or you'll try and recruit but they'll never be able to participate in progression with you, or at least not for significant amounts of time.

Furthermore, heroics had to be buffed. Heroic content was being utilized at an all-time low, and one of the reasons was simply that raiders had absolutely no need to run heroics. Not even laughable, quick ones. They didn't need emblems. They didn't need drops. They didn't need anything; it was just a waste of their time. This is a great boost to the heroic system, and that's good; as I've said in the past, heroics are where you meet future guildies, it's where you try out new specs, it's where you learn to raid. It's important for this to be a vibrant part of the world, and the only way to do that is to actually reward it.

So almost entirely I think it's a good idea.

Where do I think they went wrong? Well, I don't like that both 10 and 25-man drop the same thing. Why? Because I think (at least early on) this can put too much pressure on raiders to have to raid both if they can. In the same way that Kara being a heroism pinata last expansion was somewhat annoying, I think that this could be problematic. I'm not sure what I'd do here; I'd probably have some kind of quest or reward system that had a 1-week lockout and rewarded badges on the first boss killed of a certain name, but didn't after. That way no matter what flavor you choose you'd get the badges, but you couldn't double up on them. You could still run the 10 for loot or whatever, but it wouldn't be as needed.

But really, that's about all I feel is a flaw. If nothing else, raiders know that they completed things months before other people. That alone is achievement enough.