Cloth VS Leather (Boomkin)

[Peanus]

Ahoy

My druid dinged 80, and I am going to get most the craftable and buyable gear available for him so I can get going quickly. He is a boomkin, and I will be raiding with it.

But there's a tiny dilemma I counter. I will link a few items, and I would love to hear which ones is prefered over the other and why (short explanation).

Bracers:

Cloth: http://www.wowhead.com/item=47586
Or
Leather: http://www.wowhead.com/item=47584


Leggs:

Cloth:http://www.wowhead.com/item=49891
or
Leather: http://www.wowhead.com/item=49898


Feet:

Cloth: http://www.wowhead.com/item=49890
or
Leather: http://www.wowhead.com/item=49894

[Deleted]

take those with best stats and lowest prize.
in the name of god and all clothies dont roll for cloth in raids.

[Peanus]

take those with best stats and lowest prize.
in the name of god and all clothies dont roll for cloth in raids.

Sounds a bit cheezy, but money is not a problem. I just want the right gear, with proper stats, to make the best dps or the best foundation for upcoming uppgrades.

[Gestopft]

Sounds a bit cheezy, but money is not a problem. I just want the right gear, with proper stats, to make the best dps or the best foundation for upcoming uppgrades.

Take the items with the best stats. Until Cata, there is no good reason not to use a cloth item with better stats.

[emni]

As others have said, go for whichever item gives you better stats, forget if it's cloth or leather. Remember that getting your hit to cap is the most important thing when it comes to DPS. Crit and haste are also generally more valuable than spirit.

[Garnik]

In all 3 cases, get the cloth item. All the leather items have Spirit... and Spirit barely give us anything, it doesn't even give us Mana regen anymore, since most (if not all) Moonkins don't use Intensity anymore.

[Soranis]

so you wanna start raiding with your new boomkin but you dont seem to know that 100 spirit sucks vs 108haste from the legs???

cloth and leather are the same but leather etc give more armour it the only fucking difference!

[Rightclick]

except for the guy that said don't roll on cloth, i agree with all of the above.

point per point on what you asked:

Bracers: get Bejeweled. They're crafted, so no cloth wearer can argue, the crit+haste is very good, and there is no wrists without spirit appart from +hit ones from all ICC. So get these and keep them untill you can use the +hit on the icc ones.

Legs: Deffinetly the Woven Death. crafted and crit+haste at the same time. but a lot of money.

Feet: hit is better than spirit, if you need it, so get deathfrost, but then you might have to move some gear around to not go over the cap too much.

An armory link would have been good for a better understanding of where you're at

[tilgare]

Your other alternative for boots would be Sandals of Consecration (since you linked one without hit, I thought perhaps you don't need the hit.)

Haste or crit are ALWAYS > than spirit. If that means you're wearing cloth, so be it. Clothies complain about other casters taking their gear, but the fact is, we often don't have ANY better options. It sucks, but it is what it is.

[taurendeathknight]

take those with best stats and lowest prize.
in the name of god and all clothies dont roll for cloth in raids.

That's ridicolous, cloth is our BiS items, in the name of decent DPS roll for cloth.

The only time leather is worth wearing is when it's 277, spirit is absoutely horrid for Moonkin's and that's all that leather has, so we use cloth.

Out of those three craftable, all the cloth items were the best choice. Haste + Crit Combo > Spirit. =D

Our best item stats are: Stamina Intellect : Spell Power, Crit, Haste.
i.e. http://www.wowarmory.com/item-info.xml?i=51149

[Deleted]

Don't take cloth anymore, mastery will be introduced very soon and it's based on gear spec. so if you're supposed to use leather and you're wearing cloth you wont gain as much of a benefit although things can change :P So you can get what you want atm I guess. But meh I wouldn't advise using cloth like all the others have stated.

[Thalur]

Sure, if you want to gear according to the next expansion (which will come out in November) then only take leather. However, once Cataclysm is out you will soon be DE'ing all of your current gear anyway.

So better gear for the next half year to come and take the BiS CLOTH items. They are simply better than leather.

[Deleted]

In all 3 cases, get the cloth item. All the leather items have Spirit... and Spirit barely give us anything, it doesn't even give us Mana regen anymore, since most (if not all) Moonkins don't use Intensity anymore.

Thats not excactly true. If an item has 100 spirit, that turns out to be 30 spell power in moonkin form, or another 60 DPS just from that. Spirit is not useless, but it is less desirable than crit and haste. Spirit, point for point, is pretty shabby, but when an item has spirit, it usually has it in the quantities we see with stamina and intellect.

I support clothie prio on cloth. Thats right, I am totally fine with mages, priests and warlocks getting a chance at cloth before me. That is because of two factors:

- I can get an almost as good upgrade from leather. Sure, it doesn't have haste and it has spirit instead, but the actual difference is small enough.
- We are two moonkins and one (1) resto druid in our raiding team, so there is very little competition for leather gear. I am perfectly fine with taking the leather boots first, and then swapping to cloth when the clothies are saturated.

Allow me to illustrate my point:

My current stat values are as follows:

Spell power: 2,04 DPS per point
Crit rating: 1,2 DPS
Haste: 1,36 DPS
Spirit: 0,69 DPS

Plague Scientist's Boots has the following stats and total DPS: (just going to disregard gems at the moment)

74 crit = 88,8 DPS
90 haste = 122,4 DPS
140 SP = 285,6 DPS
Total = 496,8 DPS

The Boots of Unnatural Growth, our leather option, has the following stats and total DPS:

74 spirit = 51,06 DPS
90 crit = 108 DPS
140 SP = 285,6 DPS
Total = 444,66

The difference between the cloth BIS boots, and our leather spirit boots, is then around 52,14 DPS.

Worst case scenario, lets say we work on DKP alone. We shard the Boots of Unnatural Growth, because "I don't want it", and when Plague Scientist's Boots drops, I snatch them up. Sure, I got my BIS boots, but we could actually have upgraded two pairs of boots instead of one. Because of this, I am perfectly fine with using my leather stuff until the casters are covered, and then ill snatch up the boots. But im not really too concerned about spending DKP/PR/Whateversystemyouuse for a 50 DPS upgrade when I can spend it on other items for the time being

[elbouli]

yay, someone else who finally gets it,

its not just about you, its about what is best for your raid, without those other 24 people you aren't going far

[Deleted]

There's still not much point in getting cloth so close to the expansion if the talents and masteries are updated before cata goes live like every expansion they have been then cloth wont be useful to you as you aint wearing the correct gear !

[Deleted]

First off, I don't think we will see Cataclysm until after Blizzcon, and I don't think we will see patch 4.0 earlier than 1 month before the launch of Cataclysm. So we are probably going to have use for the gear for a while.

Even so, I doub it would have any effect on us currently. Lets say the talents came out right this instant. I would get the new Balance of Power, which gives 1 hit per 1 spirit. Im at 400+ spirit. Zing, no problem. Sure, i'd be over hit cap, but then I'd just get rid of a few hit items :P

[Deleted]

Yeh true , I mean alpha is now so that's what another 6ish months before live ? Looking at september-ish for a cataclsym launch (going on previous expansion time-frames) so yeah nevermind what I said :P Altho it is something to keep in mind supposedly you wont gain masteries if you're wearing gear that isn't desiganted to your class maybe I picked up on that part incorreclty but I know it's applicable to warriors who wear leather and hunters etc...

[Tyralis]

You're a druid... take the damn leather. Let the cloth stuff for the real casters. ( Mages )

[emni]

There's still not much point in getting cloth so close to the expansion if the talents and masteries are updated before cata goes live like every expansion they have been then cloth wont be useful to you as you aint wearing the correct gear !

Considering we have no idea how big of a jump lvl80+ greens and blues will be from the current epics, I think it's highly presumptuous to start gearing for the expansion now. Not to forget that we don't even now how much we actually loose by not using our highest armor group; it might be so little that having very high iLevel cloth makes up for the loss.

Bottom line, there's still one more raid ahead of us, so if the OP wants to raid now and get as much out of his class as possible, he should gear for what's best at the moment, not 6 months from now.

[Deleted]

yeh I loose track of time a bit playing alpha and stuff kinda screws with my internal systems :P