Challenge mode BiS frost gear

[Dnusha]

Someone please explain me why mastery>crit in challenge modes. Doesn't new frost mastery is just a single target thingy.

[Libretto]

Mastery is not really > crit anymore for CMs. We started going for serious solid server first times, and in our last Gate clear (6:43, US 8th) spam stacking int -> haste -> crit -> mastery gave much better results. Mastery is fine for boss damage, but not for trash damage where you get little benefit.

[Deleted]

the build I'm using for CM's goes int > haste > crit > mastery.

the intgain really ramps up those frost-bomb shatters like bamm, haste goes without saying, but the main thing is crit > mastery due to the fact that the dmg loss if your frost bomb don't crit is quite a massive difference that can be felt on the end-time of your dungeon.

off the top of my head, my CM set bis-list is something like:

engi-head, double cog and meta self-explanatory.
terra-cotta caster neck, hit haste red-socket.
chronomancer shoulders, crit haste, double red socket.
legendary cloak, 3 stats and red socket.
mantid vizier's robe, 2 red sockets 1 yellow and crit haste.
megaera bracers, pref. with haste, only bracers in this exp with socket for us.
chronomancer gloves, double red socket, crit haste.
belt of the nightsky, triple red sockets, hit nad haste.
Lei-shen legs of cardinality thingy, 3 red sockets, crit hit, 3 sockets outweigh the lack of haste.
falling blossom treads, again 2 red sockets outweigh the hit mastery stats on it.
ra-den ring, hit haste and 1 socket even if its blue, even with a 60 int socket bonus.
dinomancer ring from SoO, haste mastery and red socket.
alch trinket - this trinket is pretty much worth 2 other trinkets in there, due to the nature of it not getting scaled down, plus I dislike RPPM trinkets working with haste in there, so a lot more proccs in this.
DMF Trinket, same thing, very good compared to the ilvl of it, as such the scaling don't hit it as hard.

weap: The dagger from animus, could use wand off of horridon due to crit haste, but I've prio'd this due to the red socket while still giving haste. very important though that you do use a ToT one-handed weapon so you can have 2 sockets on MH and a socket from OH aswell as that ench too.

OH: Optimally I'd use the Lei-shen off-hand, due to crit haste red socket, garrosh OH could work, haste mastery red socket, or the juggernaut one with crit haste 1 yellow socket, either works really, lei-shens being bis.

this amounts to around 20 red sockets with int, and it makes your frost bomb mega rape, along with adding some serious firepower to your icelances and frostfire proccs.

tried this in Proving grounds too, dunno if it beats the other sets due to the fact that you have a lot more uses of the secondary stats in there, however it did get me to wave 58 which is alright I suppose.

[mengele]

How much would you suffer for using the BoA staff? It has no natural haste (crit/mastery) and you don't get the offhand enchant, but it does have two sockets. Just curious in case of bad luck trying to obtain the older pieces. Also, how would BBoY and Shado-Pan trinket do? I didn't hold on to my original DMF trinket and I'm not an alchemist. Would i be better off using BBoY/Cosmos?

Thanks in advance; I needed something besides raiding to hold my WoW interests for now so I thought I would start getting into CMs.

[Libretto]

The BoA staff is no better than a ToT staff (which can have 2 sockets) and the ToT Horridon staff is better itemized, so if you have a choice between them use the ToT staff. Use the blizzard item restoration service to restore DE'd or vendored ToT gear.

LotC cannot proc in CMs with frost bomb so is useless, as is Breath of the Hydra. Trinkets in descending order go something like:

Alchemy trinket
DMF trinket
BBoY / Woosh
DA trinket
Toxic Totem
Shieldwall trinket
Sha of fear trinket
ToT rep trinket
Shado-pan trinket
blue dungeon trinkets
everything else

[mengele]

Oh yeah, I totally forgot about the trinkets procing from periodic effects. Thanks for the list; looks like I might use Sha of Fear trinket for the static int and I just bought another DMF.

I forgot about the eye of the black prince working on pre-SoO weapons as well. So you could end up with 3 sockets in your mh/oh combo, correct?

[Omniblast]

I forgot about the eye of the black prince working on pre-SoO weapons as well. So you could end up with 3 sockets in your mh/oh combo, correct?

Very correct!

[Volcanicstrad37]

Are people stacking more int in sockets or haste?

[re1gn1te]

From my understanding in CM you want hit > haste > crit > mastery. So allot of the "bis" on the list would be wrong.... as in gloves for example tier 16 gloves are haste / crit with 2 red sockets + int bonus.

[Woop Woop]

Are people stacking more int in sockets or haste?

Int all the way, grab as much as you can get for those huge bomb shatters

[Deleted]

How about the Sha touched weapons. Is the 500 int gem working or not? Coz none is mentioning it and I think it is because it is not working.

P.S. I saw that they are not working only the extra prismatic slot on T14 and T15 weapons. Thanks

Is there a calculator where I can equip and choose gear and see where it drops from since I D/E most of my old gear

[Coldvibes]

Ney, 500 stat gems do not work for CMs.

[mengele]

I think I have most of my CM set ready, but I wanted to post it here to see if anyone has any suggestions to better it. Professions are enchanting and tailoring.

Head: T16 red socket w/ 180 int bonus and burning meta
Neck: ToT Trash Neck red socket w/ 60 hit bonus
Shoulders: T16 2 red sockets w/ 120 int bonus
Back: Legendary red socket w/ 60 int bonus
Chest: Ra-Den 3 red sockets w/ 180 int bonus
Bracers: Megaera (Mastery) yellow socket w/ 60 int bonus
Gloves: T16 2 red sockets w/ 120 int bonus
Belt: Night Sky 3 red sockets w/ 120 int bonus
Pants: Lei Shen 3 red sockets w/ 180 int bonus
Boots: Falling Blossom 2 red sockets w/ 120 mastery bonus
Ring1: Iron Qon 1 blue socket w/ 60 haste bonus
Ring2 Thok 1 red socket w/ 60 haste bonus
Trinket1: RoY
Trinket2:Sha of Fear static int w/ haste proc
MH: Animus 2 red sockets w/ 60 int bonus
OH: Lei Shen 1 red socket w/ 60 int bonus

I have not reforged any of this yet, but was thinking of swapping in BBoY in place of the Sha of Fear trinket if hit is low. Possibly even Wushoo if it is really low. I am still trying to get a better set of Megaera bracers while the rest of my group is still gearing up. For IQ ring would you gem int/hit for the bonus or just straight int? Lastly, I also have the Horridon wand. Which would you say is the better mainhand?

[Libretto]

Use BBoY instead of sha of fear trinket. BBoY is so much better.

MH depends on how much hit you're getting from gear. If you have to reforge into hit, use horridon wand and gem for the socket bonus on it. I don't gem for the bonus on the Iron Qon ring because it's haste, not int.

Try get a durumu or ra-den cloak.

Your set is fine and optimizing it further isn't going to gain you more than a few hundred DPS, so unless you're aiming for competitive US times or whatever you're good to go.

[mengele]

That's good news about the cloak. I really didn't want to have to regem and reforge my cloak every time or have to buy a new one. Thanks for the advice.

[zandiy]

In Challenge modes u go Haste>Crit>Mastery, not Haste>Mastery>Crit + try to avoid sockets with hit, u want that as stat on gear most of the time.(Sockets doesnt scale down and neither does hit so putting in socket will lose you intellect, unless the socket bonus is good ofc)

Use following gems. Intellect - Intellect+Haste - Intellect+Hit


BIS list is kinda like this
Engineer head
Trashdrop neck from ToT
Tier 16 shoulders
Durumu cloak or Legendary cloak
Ra-den chest (hit+haste)
Megaera bracers(haste, hit, expertise)
Dark Animus dagger or Horridon Wand
Thok off-Hand
DMC
Alchemist trinket(If no alchemist i would say BBoY)
Thok Ring
Ra-den Ring
Fallen Protectors or Iron Qon boots
Lei Shen legs 3red sockets
Crafted belt with 3 sockets
T16 gloves 2red sockets
Please correct me if im wrong

The higher ilvl on a piece of gear means more Hit which means less downscaling

[Libretto]

There isn't one "definitive CM perfect bis" because of hit. Item upgrades / different ilevels of the same item which has hit on it result in different pieces of gear being "optimal" depending where your hit is coming from or being reforged into/out of. Thok offhand is bis for some setups, for others lei shen offhand is better. Durumu cloak vs Ra-den cloak is debatable as well, though I prefer durumu. But if you use the Ra-den chest instead of Paragons chest, you have more hit so need to drop hit elsewhere such as from your offhand.

From what I have been able to gather, when zoning into a CM there is a specific amount of secondary stat points / item budget you are allowed to have on your gear, including hit. CMs will then reduce your secondary stats to this specific value. Hit up to 5100 is not reduced. I'm not 100% sure what this specific value is, but the secondary stat value is somewhere between 10.1K and 10.6K total.

Zoning in with my arcane raid gear, I have 10150 (without PBoI) secondary stats on the gear not counting sockets / bonuses. In my CM gear I have 10516.

So if, for example, your gear has 0 hit on it whatsoever and you zone in, you will have 10.1K of secondary stats. If your gear has 5100 hit, your other secondary stats will be reduced across all of your gear to compensate, resulting in 5100 hit and 5000 other stats to get 10.1K.

What happens is you will have this value of stats when zoning in, but then sockets on top. More sockets give more stats, so having 10 more sockets beyond what you would have in timeless isle or heroic dungeon gear means 1600 int or 3200 secondary stats beyond this "limit", which is obviously huge.

The scaling tech being implemented to squish gear in WoD appears to be capable of squishing gems, so if you have perfectly itemized gear with MoP gems right now, the same gear will continue to be the BiS during WoD. With WoD gear no longer having as many sockets and the inability to socket primary stats, most of it will be useless in CMs unless the tertiary stats like cleave / multistrike / whatever scale in a broken manner for CMs, but I suspect these stats simply won't work for sub-100s the way mastery on gear doesn't work for sub-80s.

[Skul]

So... does +hit scale down or no?

I have seen posts imply it does, and other stating it doesn't.

I do not have the gear to go in and find out. And if +hit never scales down... going with a SoO +hit item would be a huge benefit over any other +hit items.

[Huevos]

So... does +hit scale down or no?

I have seen posts imply it does, and other stating it doesn't.

I do not have the gear to go in and find out. And if +hit never scales down... going with a SoO +hit item would be a huge benefit over any other +hit items.

Hit will not scale down, but to make up for this the extra hit that you gain (the difference between what you have and what it would be if it did scale down) seems to be taken out of your other secondaries. Watch what happens if you put on a Wush trinket inside a CM, it'll drop your haste/crit/mastery.

There seems to be a global secondary stat budget, and if you have 5100 hit, instead of maybe the 2100 that it would scale down to if it did scale, then it appears that your global stat budget becomes 3000 lower.

Disclaimer: This is just my theory, I haven't done any real math to prove this, but it seems to me to be the way it works at a relatively basic level. I'm not sure how sockets might play into this. Obviously stat budgets are smaller with more gem sockets, so I would also guess the global stat budget would change dynamically as you add/subtract sockets.

[Skul]

Ah, thats a good theory on it. Makes sense to ensure that +hit end game gear would not be required for stat budgets.