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

[daishan]

Valo will be converted to JP come 5.2.
I'm still trying to delay upgrading as much as possible so I can upgrade the pieces that I'm least likely to upgrade early on in 5.2

Edit http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/blog/7189123

Also probably not worth saving any greater charms as the 5.2 raid will use Mogu runes for extra rolls.

[Nooska]

I've stopped turning in for greater charms and am at 0 with Nooska, I think I'll do 3 more with Morosin if I get my act together, so I have a greater chance of having the ilvl for the new LFR as soon as it hits (as I'm sadly not raiding anymore).
The dailies could be a good "waste of time" even with rep capped for more lesser charms if needed, as they will be the ones being turned in for mogu runes next patch.

[econ21]

I've stopped turning in for greater charms ...

That's a good idea, thanks! (Why didn't I think of that?!) For my main, I'll spend any valor on upgrading my best gear and try to have zero on conversion (JP capped now due to trading in honor).

I agree getting to ilevel 480 should be a priority for alts. I actually find LFR 5.0 fine now, but it could be awful (queues, player ability and behaviour) when all the geared people move on to LFR 5.2.

[Snkmad]

Hi there,

http://us.battle.net/wow/pt/character/n ... ier/simple
(please don't consider glyphs and talents, I'm changing them a little bit)

I've been following Ask Mr. Robot with the PVE: Avoidance Build.

I started raiding this week at MSV normal, but got stuck on Feng the Accursed. Partially because of dps not being able to react fast enough.
But partially because I was taking some huge spikes from Draw Flame stacks on boss.

What can I do to improve my build? Exchange stam into avoidance? Or go for hit/exp cap and then mastery?

Any hint will be welcome since I've a lot to learn...

Ty.

[econ21]

Opinions on this may vary, but I think for Elegon's dragonbreath, you should not get rid of your stamina gems. Stamina is the best stat for coping with that kind of burst damage.

Generally, I would recommend you go for one of the Ask Mr Robot "control" gearing strategies. Avoidance will minimise your total melee damage, but it leaves you most exposed to burst damage and does nothing against magic damage like dragon breath. If I can translate your armory, you have very little hit and expertise - those are the top priority stats of a control build (I would not sacrifice stamina for them on Elegon though). You want 7.5% hit and as much expertise as you can get, eventually stopping at 15%. Thereafter you could go for haste or mastery; haste is probably a bit better in general.

Getting more hit/expertise will give you more holy power, allowing you more shotr's and wogs, and specifically reducing the likelihood of bad luck leaving you without holy power for a nasty burst. This should help you a bit with Elegon but might not be the key thing. More important might be your healers and to some extent, you using some CDs if necessary.

In the final burst phase, you should be chaining CDs. If you use SoI and glyph of battle healer, you will be a big help to your healers, who will be stretched. Before that, I guess not glyphing divine protection might help with some breaths. (I like glyph of holy wrath to stun the sparks.)

I died a couple of times on Elegon last night - I think it was largely because I was slow to react to the other tank's taunts and ended up eating a breath when I should have been going to reset my stacks.

[Jadhzia]

I've been following Ask Mr. Robot with the PVE: Avoidance Build.

I started raiding this week at MSV normal, but got stuck on Feng the Accursed. Partially because of dps not being able to react fast enough.
But partially because I was taking some huge spikes from Draw Flame stacks on boss.

What can I do to improve my build? Exchange stam into avoidance? Or go for hit/exp cap and then mastery?

Several things...

First, your survivability is closely linked to your Hit and Expertise caps. You're severely gimping yourself without them, as the previous poster explained. Be careful, tanking doesn't work as in previous expansions.

Once you have your 7,5% Hit cap and 15% Expertise cap, you can choose to go for Avoidance, Mastery or Haste. As Theck explained on the forum, all three give acceptable results, with Avoidance giving the best total damage reduction (not very useful) and Haste the best smoothing effect (this is subject to change in patch 5.2) as well as a dps and healing boost.

As for the Feng encounter: do you take spike damage when the boss is drawing the flames to him or when he spits them out?

If it's really during the first half of the phase, it isn't a gear problem. Simply make sure everyone is going to an isolated place to drop their flames. For example, in my raid the stairs at the entrance are forbidden to everyone except to drop a flame. This way, when the flames crawl back to the boss, they don't touch anyone (=no damage).

On the second half of Draw flame, the damage is magical, so your tools are:

- Yes, stacking Stamina will give your a bigger buffer to survive and give healers time to react. Avoidance is useless here.

- Thanks to Hit and Expertise caps, you generate enough Holy power to stack Bastion of glory to 5, so you can heal yourself with a big World of glory. So make sure you have those 5 stacks before Draw flames, heal yourself, and build new stacks as quickly as possible (Haste helps a lot here).

- You can alternate between stopping Draw flame with the nullification crystal and some personal cooldowns like unglyphed Divine Protection.

- If you're the main tank on this fight, you probably have a fire dot on you when Draw flame occurs. The Hand of purity talent works wonders to remove some pressure from your healers.

- Cast Light's Hammer on the raid when the boss starts spitting the flames out. If you aren't the main tank, wait enough to have high Vengeance (so the Hammer heals for more).

To answer your last question: more Avoidance won't help you, Parry and Dodge are disappointing stats for paladins in 5.1 on all fights. On the Feng encounter, Mastery won't do much better, since the damage that troubles you is magical. So you should probably go for Stamina and/or Haste. A similar setup will also be appropriate for the next boss, Elegon.

[Thels]

I finally managed to get the Tier Shoulders from Lei Shi. Together with gloves and legs from the world boss, that brings me at 3 496 tier pieces.

I was using Giantfoot Headguard from Galleon up to now, but I have White Tiger Faceguard as well. Would the 4 set bonus be considered worth it to downgrade? I don't feel so sure, since whenever I have SotR up, I'm nowhere close to dying anyhow, so I don't really think 10% more reduction will help much.

[econ21]

I started raiding this week at MSV normal, but got stuck on Feng the Accursed. Partially because of dps not being able to react fast enough. But partially because I was taking some huge spikes from Draw Flame stacks on boss.

Oops, for some reason, I read Feng as Elegon in my reply, sorry! Regardless, like Elegon, I think don't Feng is a fight where avoidance is that useful but meeting your hit/exp caps would be wise as you'd have more power for shotrs. Stamina gems and trinkets are fine as a cushion against the spikes.

On Feng tactics, timing the nullification barrier was trickiest thing for me as a tank (my co-tank handled the other crystal). If you are standing close to the boss, using the barrier will wipe his Draw Flame stacks. The key thing was to have it available on the last Draw Flame before he transitions into phase 3 to stop the initial damage in that phase being scarey. But that requires some thought, as you can only use it every other Draw Flame and might not be able to gauge how many Draw Flames there will be in phase 2. For example, when we started, we had 4 Draw Flames (so I would skip, barrier, skip, barrier them) - now we are down to 2 (skip, barrier). But I get caught out if dps is a little slack and we have 3 Draw Flames.

Remember to tank swap on 2 stacks of your debuff, use your CDs when things get hairy and it should not be that bad.

[Tandors]

Hey I just got back into WoW a few weeks ago after barely playing during Cata and I just want to make sure that I am doing the right thing with my gear and such. My guild is pretty much getting started again. We can clear MSV10 but its pretty rough for us and have only gotten 4/6 in HoF10. I know to go with Hit/Exp and then haste but I was wondering how much haste should I go for? My co-tank says screw all stam stuff and just gem all hit/exp and haste but then others are telling me to balance it out. Can someone take a look at my character and give some feedback? Thanks.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/a ... ina/simple

[Jadhzia]

We can clear MSV10 but its pretty rough for us and have only gotten 4/6 in HoF10. I know to go with Hit/Exp and then haste but I was wondering how much haste should I go for? My co-tank says screw all stam stuff and just gem all hit/exp and haste but then others are telling me to balance it out. Can someone take a look at my character and give some feedback? Thanks.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/a ... ina/simple

In 10-man normal mode, I'd say that it's up to you. Theck advocates Stamina, while others go full Haste (above 8k). Me, I aim for a middle-ground, thanks to green Stamina / Haste gems, since we seem to often come close to the enrage timer. So my 5k Haste helps quite a bit with dps (and healing).

I had a quick look at your character. Try to get at least one Stamina trinket (the Valor one for example) and get the boots from the Sha of anger (quest item, drops automatically the first time). And take the mastery/haste boots, not the dodge/parry ones.

[Thels]

Basically, the question is:

- Do you die a lot while the healers are still up? If Yes, gear for more stamina.

- Do you cause a lot of scary moments for the healers? If Yes, gear for more stamina.

- Does your raid squad hit Berserk timers a lot? If Yes, gear for more haste.

- Does your raid squad have problems killing stuff in time (sparks @ elegon, constructs @ amber shaper, etc...)? If Yes, gear for more haste.

[Klaudandus]

Need help, I am about to cap (3000 VP) on both my toons (see sig)

I need to spend my vp, just dont know on what...

[Nooska]

You could just save em for 5.2 - or use them to upgrade and recap before 5.2.

[Fenrìr]

You could just save em for 5.2 - or use them to upgrade and recap before 5.2.

Only problem is Klaud's about to cap, lol.



I would personally say your cloak or chest, Klaud.

[Sagara]

Cloack then I'd wager. Chest is going to be a high-priority target to replace as we get more and more secondary stats.