How to roll on Spirit gear - a discussion

[Chamomile]

And as in the other thread, assuming you're spec'd to it, boomkin will want spirit since it translates 1 to 1 into hit. And if you're not spec'd into it, you probably should change your boomkin spec.

Note that my boomkin knowledge is limited to scanning the thread at EJ, so that thread could be a huge lie that I'm buying into. Probably not though.

[Daewen]

I've been levelling my worgen as boomkin (thunderwolf!), but even at just lv 45, this is true. There's a 2pt talent for making spirit into hit, 50% and 100%. Even at low levels it's been worth it to throw spirit enchants on gear to get more hit.

[Texaporte]

This is purely a theory post. tl;dr version: the new model is awesome for the gear designers.

Think about it this way. In Icecrown, we had the following split for gear design - the stars designate that there were specs that could be both DPS and tank:

Int plate: 1 spec
Defense plate: 5* specs
Str DPS plate: 6* specs
Agi mail: 4 specs
Int/MP5 mail: 1 spec
Int/hit mail: 1 spec
MP5 leather: 1 spec
Int/crit leather: 1 spec
Agi leather: 4* specs
Mp5 cloth: 2 specs
Spellpower cloth: 9 specs
Hit cloth: 7 specs

That is a LOT of overspecialized gear. Now we have this:

Int plate: 1 spec
Dodge/parry plate: 3 specs
Crit/haste plate: 5 specs
Int/spirit mail: 2 specs
Agi mail: 4 specs
Int/spirit leather: 2 specs
Agi leather: 4 specs
Spirit cloth: 3 specs
Int/hit cloth: 6 specs

Isn't that so much easier? You don't have to design a piece of boomkin leather that will be shunned by 96.7% of characters (note that holy plate is still a sad panda in this, but really there was no other way to work that one out without making unholy DKs REALLY weird). Sure, you "fight" the other spec for that gear now, but on the other hand, you also have double the gear available compared to what you used to have!

[tethealla]

It's worse than being shunned by 96.7% of the people. Those 3.3% of the people will quickly get the gear and then the gear will continue to drop and be shunned by 100% of the guild. This way might originally look like a cop out, so the devs have to do less work... but it really is better for the game in the long run.

Poor Holy pallys. At least it's a really really popular spec/off spec. Not like the 1 piece of bear gear that dropped from BT (I don't recall exactly what it was... had defense and huge armor). It was shunned by all except for the 1 bear tank in the guild... quickly obtained by the bear tank and it continued to drop for the rest of the xpac.

Thanks for the break-down Dom.

[Fiddletwix]

Been a while since I visited these boards and wanted to continue the discussion of spirit gear specifically for cloth spirit gear. Gear that would go to priests, mages and warlocks.

Sticking with just evaluating 359 gear, here's the breakdown(raid drops include zone drops and boss drops)

No Spirit, No Hit - 6 Raid Drops and 2 World Drops.

Spirit Gear - 10 Raid Drops and 2 World Drops

Hit Gear - 0 World Drops, 3 Raid Drops


I'd like to suggest that for cloth items, spirit items are rolled on by priests(shadow and healers) and non-spirit rolled on by mages and warlocks.

Again, this is just for cloth. For items slots shared with leather and mail such as cloaks, weapons, off hands, etc, we should stick to what we currently have

[Camyu]

Spirit Gear - 10 Raid Drops and 2 World Drops

Hey cousin, guess what... I was on my holy/disc priest yesterday and I saw one of these 2 World Drops in my SFK random. A mage rolled need on it, and beat my roll.... *sad face*

[Fiddletwix]

Mages suck! Sorry about that cuz!

[Texaporte]

Len's suggestion is reasonable. I am willing to go with it.