Gearing in WoD

I've been trying to piece together a comparison of which gear is best and if an item is a true upgrade or not, Like in the past when people have done gearing up gear lists and I was trying to put together my own, but I'm not sure if I'm right in my reasoning.

Basically, what I've figured out is that ilvl > anything else (unless the secondary stats are super bad for you i.e. multistrike even then it would take a really low amount of points to devalue the bonus str and sta) and since sta and str seem to always be the same, the difference in equivlant ilvl gear seems pretty marginal at best.

Am I totally wrong ?

You should check Theck's thread for more details, all the juicy stuff is within the last couple of pages, so you have no need to read it all from end to end.

If I remember correctly the TL;DL version is: ilvl > anything, then if you have a choice you should go for bonus armor and mastery, followed by anything else.

The last stat weighting suggested that Bonus Armor was awesome enough that items with it may trump ilvl in some cases.

Keep in mind practically every piece also has stamina, strength and armor that scale by ilvl, all three of which are quite viable to us. It might be different for trinkets, both other than that (and tiny ilvl differences), I'd pick up whichever item has the highest ilvl.

What about sockets? There's a reasonable chunk of extra stats on it. At the moment I'm dealing with two pairs of the same heroic boots, but one random-rolled Warforged, the other random-rolled a socket.

Warforged (i.e. +6 iLvls):
+3 armor (not bonus armor, normal armor)
+7 strength
+10 stamina
+5 critical strike
+4 mastery

Socket:
+35/50 mastery

I suspect the cutoff *might* be dependent on what other stats the boots have. My gut feeling is that the socket has the edge if I was to put a Greater (+50) gem into it, but the +35 is a tougher call.

I had a similar question.

I had a 630 pair of gloves with crit and mastery and speed
and a 636 pair of gloves with haste and multistrike

I ended up wearing the higher ilvl, but I'm not really sure if its much of an improvement. 10 stamina and strength and losing out on a bunch of mastery for multistrike.

I wish the gem slots added a few ilevels, it would make it easier to make comparisons at a glance. Like a heroic with a socket is 631 and a warforged with socket is 637.

The whole tertiary stat thing seems suspect as well. You have no control over the stat, you can't gem or enchant for it and it comes in such small amounts as to be pretty useless. So the question is, why include it? I mean, I know the answer, blizzard wants to release those sweet endorphins when you get a bonus stat, but I feel like they are just eye candy more than relevant bonuses.

Speed isn't really that important as a tertiary stat as it's just movement speed, however Haste and Multistrike are the least desirable stats for prot, so the increase in sta+str is unlikely to balance out the loss of secondary stats.

The way I've worked it out, your DPS would increase, your tankablitiy fractionally decreases, but in both cases it's fairly marginal.


As far as sockets are concerned, I think they will edge out warforged for me but it would depend on secondaries alot.

See, now I'm confused.


According to my theory http://www.wowhead.com/item=113841&bonus=0 is worse than this http://www.wowhead.com/item=115799&bonus=280:525 ?

If it's the 655 Family Locket versus the 640 Pendant of the Noble then the 655 would be better due to pure item level and still having pretty decent stats. Once the Pendant becomes a 655 it will be better because Bonus Armor is king.