Gear Check/Advice Thread (All Specific Advice Requests Here)

[Rhiannon]

Regal elvens are pretty much never the right choice. Use puissant if you can't get block cap from reforging alone, or if you feel the socket bonus is worth the loss of potential stamina. Use Deepholm Iolites otherwise.

Personally I wouldn't trade 38 stamina for 25 mastery and 10 avoidance rating unless I absolutely needed that mastery to reach block cap and it was the most efficient stamina->mastery conversion towards that end.

[Cowmmunion]

I've been mostly just slotting in pure stamina Iolites. I've got 4 Puissants and 2 Defender's Shadow Spinels to pick up some socket bonuses, but I'm actually slightly schizophrenic with where I get socket bonuses. If I need just another 25 mastery to CTC cap, I might slot in a Peridot, where the next week I'll put in a solid stamina gem and give up a slightly better socket bonus. I'm not getting a 10 dodge, 20 parry, or a 30 parry socket bonus (all given up for pure stamina Iolites), but elsewhere I'm getting a +10 strength socket bonus, because at the time I socketed that Peridot, I needed the 25 mastery from it to hit 102.41 CTC raidbuffed.

I'm with Rhiannon on this, and Stamina stacking as much as possible at the moment. I'm also attempting to remain soft capped on expertise and getting my hit up when possible through reforging, as every little bit helps. We got our Ultrax kill last night (on our 8th pull on H ultrax) with 2 tanks and our rogue still standing - everything you can squeeze out matters.

[Commonmind]

Great advice, all around. I am a bit OCD about socketing correctly and haven't considered wasting bonuses for stam in quite some time (like some of my other gearing choices, this has been mostly subjective and, I admit, probably not the most effective tactic moving into heroics -- fact is, I should've been reading these forums more frequently).

Iolites are readily available and not too pricey on my server, so I'll stack up whenever possible (throwing a few Puissants in where I am still being picky about socket bonuses) and reforge (I also need to work on my hit/exp as well -- far too many SotR misses than I am comfortable with).

Thanks again!

[Taeron]

Normal Souldrinker or Heroic Hand of Morchok?

Going into early heroic boss attempts on 10man with a stable CTC while using Souldrinker, but I'm unsure if the proc on the Souldrinker is worthy of keeping it around, given the opportunity for a bit more avoidance/damage/stamina using Hand of Morchok.

Thank you for your input.

[Fivelives]

Simple question, and probably been answered before - but I don't have time to go through 358 pages to check.

Is it worth trading 17.5k health for 9% CTC, bringing me up to 95%? I don't have the gear available to hit 102.4 no matter how I try and configure it, and I haven't raided pretty much at all this expansion, so I'm limited to jp/vp and heroic drops as far as gear goes.

[Skye1013]

Normal Souldrinker or Heroic Hand of Morchok?

Going into early heroic boss attempts on 10man with a stable CTC while using Souldrinker, but I'm unsure if the proc on the Souldrinker is worthy of keeping it around, given the opportunity for a bit more avoidance/damage/stamina using Hand of Morchok.

Thank you for your input.

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=32283&start=60

Whole thread dedicated to that discussion. I believe it was determined normal SD beats H HoM, but I'll let you read (link should be to the final page, which I believe is what will answer your question.)

[econ21]

Is it worth trading 17.5k health for 9% CTC, bringing me up to 95%? I don't have the gear available to hit 102.4 no matter how I try and configure it, and I haven't raided pretty much at all this expansion, so I'm limited to jp/vp and heroic drops as far as gear goes.

I doubt it. If you could reach 102.4%, you might go for broke. But while gearing up, I think it is usually best to adopt a "balanced" approach: generally speaking go with the highest ilevel gear you can get and gem for socket bonuses. That way you won't be making extreme trades between stamina and mastery and you'll be in good shape for when you finally can reach 102.4%.

In 5 mans, extra stamina or CTC are not that vital: if anything, at the margin, I would emphasise dps (squeeze in a bit of hit and expertise gear).

In DS, being CTC capped is not the "be all and end all" that it might be. There is quite a lot of heavy magic and other unblockable damage, so having a decent health pool is good.

How would you trade 17.5k for 9% CTC? If it is by trinkets, you can try both and see how they feel (I always seem to gravitate to one mastery, one stamina trinket). If it is by gemming, I would go mastery heavy but still pick up slot bonuses as per Digren's guide.

[Fivelives]

It'd be through gemming. I'm already reforged to keep parry/dodge roughly even with as much mastery as I can stack in there. I'm not all that worried about my DPS, it's pretty decent as is, even mostly skipping dps stats (13-15k overall in heroics, 10-12k on most bosses).

I'm using dual stamina trinkets, but that's mostly because I can't seem to find a mastery trinket that I can get. I've still got blues to replace (head and belt), so those take priority at the jp/vp vendors for now. If I had a reliable healer every time I was farming 5mans, I'd probably not quibble about the fairly huge stamina drop, but with the quality of most healers I've come across, the extra padding of that stamina makes me feel a bit more comfortable too.

[Dibdib]

It'd be through gemming. I'm already reforged to keep parry/dodge roughly even with as much mastery as I can stack in there. I'm not all that worried about my DPS, it's pretty decent as is, even mostly skipping dps stats (13-15k overall in heroics, 10-12k on most bosses).

I'm using dual stamina trinkets, but that's mostly because I can't seem to find a mastery trinket that I can get. I've still got blues to replace (head and belt), so those take priority at the jp/vp vendors for now. If I had a reliable healer every time I was farming 5mans, I'd probably not quibble about the fairly huge stamina drop, but with the quality of most healers I've come across, the extra padding of that stamina makes me feel a bit more comfortable too.

I'm still running a 359 mastery trinket from the Tol Barad dailies, it's 125 commendations. In theory you might possibly get 125 in a week of doing the dailies and winning Tol Barad if you had the time and you were a regular pvp'er; I think mine took me closer to a fortnight. Other than that, there's a fat chunk of mastery on one of the Valor trinkets once you have VPs to spare.

[econ21]

It'd be through gemming.

The ratio sounds plausible, but the magnitude implies you are contemplating a pretty extreme switch for it all to come from gemming. How do you currently gem? Before I got to CTC cap, I followed Digren's guide:

mastery in yellow/prismatic
mastery+stamina in blue
mastery+parry in red

I'm already reforged to keep parry/dodge roughly even with as much mastery as I can stack in there.

Sounds good so long as you are stacking mastery first, trying to equalise parry/dodge second. Reforging to mastery gives massive CTC gains; equalising parry/dodge gives very small gains in my experience and often cannot be done - after maximising mastery - given the gear available to do us.

I'm using dual stamina trinkets, but that's mostly because I can't seem to find a mastery trinket that I can get. I've still got blues to replace (head and belt), so those take priority at the jp/vp vendors for now.

The belt is great; I am weaing the helm too. Are you running LFR? That could give a lot of upgrades (I still haven't won a helm token though).

I second the recommendation for the TB token. That plus a stamina trinket would serve you well until you can spare the VPs for the trinket and even then you might want to use the TB token for some fights, e.g. Zon'ozz.

I am not sure that health is better than CTC in 5 mans if you have a weak healer; I'd be inclined to think the opposite. A bit more stamina might allow the healer to afk for a few seconds longer before waking up and saving you, but if he is not putting out enough output, blocking more could be better as there'd be less damage for him to repair.

[Fivelives]

Gemming's kinda all over the place. I've got mastery/stam gems, mastery/parry, straight mastery, parry/stam, and straight stam.

Pretty sure I haven't even touched TB dailies, and that's a fairly decent grind to exalted for the trinket - if it was just the tokens for it, I wouldn't mind it at all.

[Dibdib]

Gemming's kinda all over the place. I've got mastery/stam gems, mastery/parry, straight mastery, parry/stam, and straight stam.

Pretty sure I haven't even touched TB dailies, and that's a fairly decent grind to exalted for the trinket - if it was just the tokens for it, I wouldn't mind it at all.

From what I remember, just doing the dailies 125 times was enough to get me pretty close to Exalted (if not all the way there).

[Azgaryth]

Hi folks,

Been busy reading here and on Wowhead. I am leveling a Protection Paladin just for the fun of it. I have to play very casual due to work and family, so I may get to play my pally once a week at best. Just looking for some basic advice on leveling and running a dungeon or two as a tank.

I have picked up a few things that should hopefully make my tanking a bit easier in the future. Thank the gods for intarwebz!

Azgaryth started life as a Human on a different server. Trying to consolidate my characters, I changed factions and servers. I had made it to level 44 before the switch. I have always wanted to be a Tauren Paladin, just seemed right. I started a Blood Elf at one point, but stopped at level 25. The "new" starting zone back in TBC was pretty good. I liked it, but just couldn't stick with a BE so I rolled the Human. Now I finally have a chance to make my Paladin what I always wanted.

Azgaryth -Tauren Paladin

[Skye1013]

Gemming's kinda all over the place. I've got mastery/stam gems, mastery/parry, straight mastery, parry/stam, and straight stam.

Pretty sure I haven't even touched TB dailies, and that's a fairly decent grind to exalted for the trinket - if it was just the tokens for it, I wouldn't mind it at all.

From what I remember, just doing the dailies 125 times was enough to get me pretty close to Exalted (if not all the way there).

Doing 125 dailies (total) or doing the dailies 125 times (as in... 125 days worth?) Because that's a difference of 100 or so days.

[Dibdib]

Gemming's kinda all over the place. I've got mastery/stam gems, mastery/parry, straight mastery, parry/stam, and straight stam.

Pretty sure I haven't even touched TB dailies, and that's a fairly decent grind to exalted for the trinket - if it was just the tokens for it, I wouldn't mind it at all.

From what I remember, just doing the dailies 125 times was enough to get me pretty close to Exalted (if not all the way there).

Doing 125 dailies (total) or doing the dailies 125 times (as in... 125 days worth?) Because that's a difference of 100 or so days.

Oh, crappy wording. Doing a total of 125 dailies to get enough tokens for the trinket.