Our Tier 8 sets

[Ultima]

I posted this on the EU Priest forums, but not everyone goes there so trying to get a nice amount of people on this and I usually post here anyway
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So there has been a lot of complaints about our tier sets stat wise, be it Holy complaining about the (4) bonus, Disc about the Haste or Shadow about some items being questionable (the healing legs are better than Shadow, 20 stam vs more haste iirc?)

I am primarily a Holy Priest (on raid healing ofcourse) with Disc as my dual, so my discussion is focused on the healing stats. I tend to prefer Crit to Haste as I fail to see the use of haste unless heavily stacked and try to aim for crit instead when I can for gear choices, looking at the Healing set we have 2 Crit pieces and 3 Haste pieces, I suppose I shouldn't say that this is bad for me as Holy as I don't want the (4) bonus that much, but as a Disc I may complain.

I'm looking at the Tier vendor at the moment and the Shadow Gloves really catch my eyes over the Healing gloves and the Helm looks very nice with Haste and Crit (over the spirit which we tend to shy away from more and more).

My Priest tends to stack Intellect for the heavy mana pool and the best return I can get from Replenishment (and crit which give me mana!). Now what I'm trying to get at is that perhaps we should aim for the Holy Helm and Robe for the PoH (2) and get the Shadow Gloves and Shoulders (though if you can get the shoulders, you can probably get the Vezax shoulders which are better anyway.

I think I made a point in this thread or opened some discussion, I got distracted along the way.

[Zeuq]

Personally, I don't have a whole lot of problems with the itemization from a Healing perspective. First of all, yes, 3 pieces have Haste, but at least a little bit of Haste is good; personally, I like having 20% Haste or more when raid buffed, which means I need at least some from gear. If you really feel like you're lacking Crit, there's alteratives for some of the Haste pieces (maybe all, I'm too lazy to check). So, if you're Discipline, you can still get teh 4-Piece bonus, and potentially only have 2 pieces of straight up Haste gear by grabbing alternate Pants, Gloves, or Shoulders. If you're Holy, you probably only really care about the 2-Piece bonus, so you can mix and match pretty much at will. I, however, play Holy with Disc as my off-spec, so I still want the 4-Piece bonus; then again, I tend to like Haste more than other Priests do.

I will give you that the Shadow itemization is pretty poor, the pants, for instance, the biggest difference is 24 Stam instead of 19 SP. Of course, it's that way because one of the sockets is Red (as I've noticed that items tend to be lacking a bit in the stats that they'd "expect" you to socket in those colors). Of course, it sucks since, for Shadow, the 6 Crit socket bonus is not worth it for a Yellow and Blue socket. Then again, most of the other 4 pieces seem fairly reasonable, so I've noticed plenty of Shadow Priests just getting the 4-Piece bonus with the rest of the set and either getting the Healing Pants, or running with another random pair.

So, sure, a little bit of fail on Blizzard's part with some of the itemization, but then again, all of it can be worked around and they did specifically say they don't want the set pieces to all necessarily be a no-brainer best in slot. Blizzard said they want people to weigh itemization and bonuses. So, for instance, the Shadow pants may be worse than the Healing ones or another pair, but if you're going to have a hard time getting the 4-Piece bonus without them because, for instance, you don't expect to get Yogg down anytime soon, it might be a decent choice to have them in the meantime and switch them out later.

[wootels]

I'm looking at the Tier vendor at the moment and the Shadow Gloves really catch my eyes over the Healing gloves and the Helm looks very nice with Haste and Crit (over the spirit which we tend to shy away from more and more).

ewwwww,please don't include me when you say we tend to shy away from spirit!!!!!!

[Nezoia]

I'm using the Tier 8.5 healing legs for Shadow, and the Shadow 8.5 gloves for healing

[Worshaka]

Since when does Tier gear have to be so superior as to be mandatory? Since when do set bonuses have to be so OP to make them mandatory?

Blizzard have made it quite clear that Tier gear is the same ilvl as other epics. The amount of tier slots was reduced from 8 to 5 after classic to offer more choice and customisation. This who premise that Tier gear should be superior and set bonuses should be more than a small bonus is ridiculous.

If there are other items out there that are better itemised than Tier gear than loot those items. Funnily this is an example of the choice and customisation the current gear strategy offers.

From my analysis (playing shadow as main spec) 4 of the 5 set pieces are BiS due to the set bonuses, I don't like agree that the holy legs are good for shadow, the leggings of the wanton spell caster are far superior because they provide an awesome source of hit for next to no dps loss. And i'd argue if you're hit capped elsewhere then you are probably using poor hit gear in other slots.

[llDemonll]

if you want 4 piece just stay away from the legs, the are pretty bad for both specs depending on what gear you have access to.

otherwise our tier set is pretty good. i know that once other people get tier i will be going for shoulders to make my 4 piece. 250 SP is not laughable as disc when it will be up a majority of the time

[Zoulis]

i'm shadow and i'm going for 4set bonus through chest/head/hands/shoulders....
the only problem i had in deciding this was yogg 10man HM shoulders instead of t8.5 shoulders or freya 25man HM legs instead of legs.....
ended up at getting the Freya HM legs , cause with yogg's HM shoulders and t8.5 leggings too much haste is stacked instead of crit.

Cheers

Zoulis

[daenerys]

From a shadow perspective I don't have much problems with the set at all. Helm/chest/gloves/shoulders are all best in slot when you factor in the 2/4 piece bonuses, some best in slot without bonuses. Yes the leggs are a little weak, but it's a 4piece bonus out of 5 pieces so you can easily drop the tier legs for leggings of profound darkness, or leggings of the enslaved Idol, depending on whether you have access to hard mode loot in your guild.

[Pheonixis]

Yes, they look awesome. Why?

No, but really, at least for spriests the items are amongst the best items available pre-hard mode.

[Strykzor]

Ulduar makes my dps go down

All hail Haste.

Shadow 4 set is a joke and 4 set for Holy is a joke.