Gear Itemization in HM and BF for Prot. Tanks

[PepeSylvia]

I was just going through the loot tables in Highmaul and Blackrock Foundry, and it seems like there's a lot of situations where we're going to have to basically pick a piece of gear based on which piece has the better least-desirable stat, or the best of a bad situation.

A few pieces have BA + Mastery, or Mastery + Crit, but a ton of the pieces have Mastery + Vers./Haste/MS, or some such combination. Once in BF, it might not be as problematic due to the Tier pieces being available, but it seems like we're going to have to take a lot of pieces with undesirable stats because there simply isn't anything else available at that ilvl.

I still don't really understand why they got rid of reforging. It would be perfect for situations like this, where we could essentially just reforge the haste/MS/vers. into crit/mastery or whatever other stat you would prefer. They got rid of hit/exp. to make it easier to discern between upgrades, and not have to mess around calculating reforging combinations, which is great. But then they go and remove reforging entirely, leaving us to have to take pieces that could be very marginal upgrades because they may provide a secondary stat that we don't really want, while providing something we need (BA, Mastery etc.).

Maybe I'm way off on this, or missing something completely. In fact, it's very likely that's the case. I was just looking through the loot table, and wasn't really finding a ton of pieces that were mouth-wateringly good, statwise.

Anyone else notice this or have any thoughts on the matter?

[Maniox]

I completely agree with your post, but in the end of the expansion we'll see the power of versatility and mastery rise up as they will act as force multipliers considering they both give flat scaling, one with AP and one with damage/damage taken.

[Strafir]

Tier items sharing static secondary stats across all specs is just as insanely stupid as prot and gladiator's sharing set bonuses. It's a complete nightmare for balancing purposes and someone will always get boned.

Every single warrior spec gets super buffed by crit by design, but for some mind blowing reason 2 out of 5 tier pieces don't have crit at all. Arms and Gladiator's resolve already suffer greatly from shitty design and how you basically have two good stats (strength and crit) and then a bunch of shitty ones that don't really make sense or do anything, and to make things worse they sprinkle a little of this and a little of that over the entire tier set so you can't reach amounts you could actually work with like haste breakpoints for example.

I honestly wish that eventually even raid loot will start rolling with the random affix method so we can stop having to deal with the static stat bullshit. I could not care less If I was wearing an item with the name "itemslot of the bear" or "mongoloid warriors greathelm".

[PepeSylvia]

LOL.

I just think they should bring back reforging. I had been operating under the (uninformed)assumption that reforging wasn't going away, and was surprised when it was gone. Especially since they got rid of hit/exp.

I figured removing hit/exp. and leaving reforging would open up the ability to properly min/max secondary stats like crit/mast./haste, but now we're forced to re-run dungeons, and spend mats to "re-roll" and hope for the best.

I'm loving almost everything about WoD so far, but the itemization/looting system has left a lot to be desired.

[Bigbazz]

I have to agree that reforging could use a place in the game, maybe if they allow you to only reforge 3 of your items for example (though that would be annoying)... Just something to ease the pain here, because I've had many occasions so far where due to the wrong stats I'm not using epic items over blues. Pure Ilvl was pretty much king in MOP but that is no longer the case at all in WOD.

[Deleted]

The last sentence is not true at least for warriors.
As a warrior in 5.4 for example you wanted to wear normal garrosh shoulders over any other shoulderpiece in the whole instance @heroic.
Pure Ilvl is always a bad idea as long as stats like crit and bonus armor are so close to strength.

[Bigbazz]

The last sentence is not true at least for warriors.
As a warrior in 5.4 for example you wanted to wear normal garrosh shoulders over any other shoulderpiece in the whole instance @heroic.
Pure Ilvl is always a bad idea as long as stats like crit and bonus armor are so close to strength.

569 Garrosh shoulders vs 582 shoulders (tier?) - Not true at all, you'd take the 582. The Mythic tier had more crit, more mastery and more strength. It had 2 red sockets which was less desirable than the 2 yellow sockets on the Garrosh shoulders but the socket bonus of 2x yellow did not make up for the loss of stats vs the HC tier. On top of that in some gear combinations you could gem exp/crit and simply take the red socket bonus for an even bigger upgrade.

There are cases where pure ilvl was not best but this shoulder example is not one of them. It's different in WOD because of the lack of reforging and gem optimisation, the rare bonus sockets you do get are extremely strong but are not a part of the base item in the same way traditional sockets were.

Regarding stats for a Gladiator Warrior - STR/Bonus Armor are roughly 2x as strong as Crit, which is considerably stronger than other stats. There exists no real situation other than a massive hike in Ilvl that would make it worthwhile taking a non BA item, though non BA items still drop for tanks under the personal loot system.

[Bizerk]

Tier shoulders had expertise/mastery and were terrible....

[Bigbazz]

Tier shoulders had expertise/mastery and were terrible....

Taking away then from the stat changes. Expertise was still the strongest stat under the cap, Mastery was still close to Crit at those gear levels, the shoulders were still superior in a balanced set.

[Judai]

Taking away then from the stat changes. Expertise was still the strongest stat under the cap, Mastery was still close to Crit at those gear levels, the shoulders were still superior in a balanced set.

I feel like he was talking about Tusks of Mannoroth...

[Bigbazz]

I feel like he was talking about Tusks of Mannoroth...

Maybe! But those things didn't really exist and were also very slightly worse than the Tauren ones. That transmog though!