This post is going to be the first in a short series on how to choose upgrades for your character. Hopefully, it will be helpful to players of all classes. Your class may change, but the basics are consistent.

Let’s talk briefly about upgrading.

The goal of gear upgrading is to increase the effectiveness of your character in your chosen role.

Therefore, the first step is to define what your focus is. You decide this yourself as soon as you start putting points into a Talent Tree. You are making a choice as to what aspect of your character you are going to focus on.

As an example, if I am leveling my Priest character, choosing to put my Talent points into Holy will yield vastly different results than in Shadow. One shows a focus on my part to improve my ability to Heal, the other shows a focus on my ability to inflict ranged DPS. And different gear stats are important, depending on what Talent tree, what focus, I am going to concentrate on.

Because of the way World of Warcraft gear itemization works, your choice of Talent Specialization, your ‘Spec’, will determine what stats you want on your gear. You will want to choose gear that maximizes the stats or abilities that directly affect your Spec, without having points ‘wasted’ on items that do not help you. 

Gear itemization and Item Level are the phrases we use when we are talking about the ‘point value’ of equipment, and how those points are distributed among ability modifiers.

The fact is, each point of Armor value, each point of Agility, Stamina, Intellect, and Spell Damage or Hit Rating comes from a set amount of potential points that can be distributed on a piece of equipment. How many points are available to ’spend’ are based on;

• Item Level of the gear
• Rarity
• Minimum level needed to equip it

Also, it has been determined that the amount of points spent on pure ability bonuses {Stamina, Agility, Intellect, Strength, and Spirit} are more beneficial when split up amongst more than one stat.

An example of what I mean in regards to split up stat points; the Splintering Greatstaff. It is Item Level 117, equippable at level 69, and is Green rarity. It comes with it’s points distributed in one of five configurations;

• …of Stamina (+82 Stamina)
• …of Strength (+55 Strength)
• …of the Bear (+55 Stamina, +36 Strength)
• …of the Beast (+28 Strength, +28 Agility, +43 Stamina)
• …of the Tiger (+36 Agility, +36 Strength)

You can see that, if it has only +Strength, it is +55. But if the points are spread among two stats, such as Agility and Strength, then Strength is lowered by 19, but you get +36 Agility. You get more bang for your buck on items with the points distributed amongst more abilities.

You can also see that Stamina is considered less valuable, points-wise, than Strength or Agility, so you get more of it. My math says that 1 point of Strength or Agility is being treated, roughly, as being equal to 1.5 points of Stamina.  

Note: the Item Level of a piece of gear is not the same as what level you need to reach to be able to equip it. You can find the Item Level listed in most database sites such as Wowhead.

Let’s compare some close examples. Each is Rare (Blue), Item Level 115, equippable at 70, and a Drop instead of a quest reward.

Dreamer’s Dragonstaff 

Greatstaff of the Leviathon

Draenic Wildstaff

You can see that each one is base 63 DPS, and has the same amount of points spent in Attack Power for shifted forms. When comparing them to the Green rarity Splintering Greatstaff above, they are actually 2 Item Levels lower, but because of their increased Rarity, they have more points to spend on higher base DPS and Attack Power in shifted forms.

The differences between each lie in where the rest of the points are spent. The Dreamers Dragonstaff has straight +Strength, +Agility and +Stamina. The Draenic Wildstaff sacrifices Strength to boost Agility and add + Hit Rating. The Greatstaff of the Leviathan eliminates Agility entirely to add Armor (which is multiplied in Dire Bear form, of course).

Initial impressions to me say that, instead of the random splitting of point distribution found in the different varieties of Splintered Greatstaff, these have intelligent design behind them. Each one makes you choose from what you want the most, but none give you everything you might want.

You have to make a personal judgment; Do I want to use it for tanking or DPS? Is the armor buff worth losing the Agility for Dodge? Is an increased Strength more important to my build than Hit Rating?

You have to be able to make an informed decision, based entirely on your Talent Spec and what abilties are most important for you. If you don’t know what Strength, Agility, or Hit Rating do exactly, you aren’t likely to choose exactly what’s right for you.

Let’s build on our previous examples by looking at another Druid staff that is also Item Level 115, equippable at level 70 and a drop. The only difference? It is an Epic Purple instead of a Blue.

Terestian’s Stranglestaff 

As you can see, even though it is the same Item Level as the other staves, the Purple has a higher base DPS, much higher Attack Power increase in shifted forms, and when we compare it to it’s closest match, the Draenic Wildstaff, it has higher bonuses in every stat.

The lesson here? There are two of them.

First, Rarity has a direct impact on the potential amount of points that can be distributed amongst the abilties of an item. Even if they are the same Item Level, a Green has a higher potential than a White, a Blue higher than a Green, and a Purple higher than the rest.

Second, there are only so many points that can be potentially distributed amongst the item stats. If the item has points in a stat you do not need to achieve your character goals, than those points are wasted. You are advised to search for a piece of gear that most closely matches your real in game needs.

Knowing this, you can see where I’m going to go with this series. You need to know exactly what stats do for your Spec, so you can choose wisely. We’ll talk about that more next time.

Also, If you are at the level cap, and you intend to change your Spec when your goals change, then your gear needs to change too. Most Druids are already familiar with the concept. If you’re Feral, and you both cat DPS and tank Bear seriously, then you need one set of gear that optimizes your melee DPS damage output, and one set of gear that maximizes your Survivability and Damage Mitigation.

Likewise, if you like to respec to Balance, Resto, or a hybrid for PvP, and you are serious about it, you should build a set of gear that boosts your new spec.

I’m curious; how many raiding Feral Druids carry with them not only a full set of Bear Tank and Cat DPS gear, but also a set of Resto gear in their bags for fights where they might be expected to offheal/spotheal?

This video is not safe for work, especially with the sound on.

(Edit: Cassie forced me to bold that. She said she didn’t want me responsible for you getting fired.)

Actually, nothing in the visual image is unsuitable. If you are wearing headphones at home, your little tykes shall see nothing ofensive on your screen.

 But the audio… ahh, that blessed, blessed audio.

 Oh, yeah, this is offtopic, btw. I’m posting this here cause I CAN.

My blog, my rules.

Scattered thoughts;

I have been loving playing my Shadow Priest, got to level 56 last night, and I spent a few minutes making a list of level 70 Shadow Priest gear to be getting mats for.

I’m a Tailor, so of course I’ll be making the Frozen Shadow Weave set. I’ve already been making my cloth every time my transmute is up.

• Frozen Shadoweave Shoulders
• Frozen Shadoweave Robe
• Frozen Shadoweave Boots

But I also have a good friend, Nawat, whom I’ve mentioned before on da blog, who will make me the two pieces of Spellstrike gear once I get him the mats.

• Spellstrike Hood
• Spellstrike Pants

Now, that’s all awesome, no question. But there are also a few other items I can get crafted or make myself.

• Bracers of Havok
• Girdle of Ruination

I think I can make the Bracers already, no worries. The Girdle, however, I’ll have to find someone that can craft for me.

But wait, I’m a Jewelcrafter. What can I make? Besides the BOP trinkets, anyway. How about…

• Chain of the Twilight Owl
• Khorium Band of Shadows

And as a JC, I need to keep an eye out for three gem cutting patterns…

• Runed Living Ruby
• Veiled Noble Topaz
• Glowing Nightseye

Of course, the only reason for patterns other than +9 Spell Damage is for hitting Meta Gem requirements. lolzers.

So thats cool, but what about stuff that I could look for at the Auction House?

Well, I’m looking at…

• Illidari Cloak of Shadow Wrath (+47 Shadow damage, rare ass cloak, good luck. But keeping an eye out for any cloak of Shadow Wrath is solid thinking.)
• Charlottes Ivy
• Lola’s Eve
• Darkmoon Card: Crusade
• Eternium Runed Blade (blacksmithing crafted, world drop recipe and two Primal Nethers… fat chance, but you never know.)

Okay, but what about stuff from PvP? That stuff is great, right? So what do I want? Well, how about something before I hit 60…

• Tome of Shadow Force (Alterac Valley rep reward, 4760 honor and 25 AV marks)

Okay, but surely I’ll get something while leveling…

• Grips of the Void - Shadowmoon Valley quest chain

Yep, that’s a whole bunch of stuff to be looking for and farming for while on my big daddy main. But at least when I hit 70, I’ll be able to step right into a nice new fresh set of clothes, knowutImean?

And once I’m at 70, the fun can begin as I start running Heroics for gear and Badge rewards…

Yep, the future is sure looking shady.

 Okay, so I made a list of what I’m looking for as I level my Shadow Priest. A ’shopping list’, for what to do with my main’s extra cash.

Does anyone have any knowledge of a similar shopping list somewhere for a Combat Swords Rogue? Cassieann is a stones throw from hitting 68, and I’ll be damned if I can find a list similar to this of what to look for in farmable, craftable, non BOP goodies. Not top of tier stuff, just good solid 68-70 non-Karazhan gear.

Anybody?

I meant to mention this last weekend, but what the heck. It was a busy time.

There is a website that I’ve seen mentioned around, that I WISH I could remember where I heard of it first to give credit. Damn it.

The website is Be Imba.

What they do is let you plug in your character info, much like the WoW Reputation Calculator, and then it checks your current Armory gear and build and provides analysis on your gear.

It highlights what it believes are incorrectly gemmed or enchanted items, and provides links to look for upgrades.

Also, it ranks your build and tells you where they think you are ready to raid.

My current results are here for Windshadow. At the time of my posting this, it has my raiding tank gear, but since I usually log out in cat gear from farming, it might not work tomorrow.

It’s still being finished, I understand some talent builds haven’t been completed yet, but it’s still pretty useful. I know that I ran it Saturday, and it reminded me I forgot to get my catform Chest piece enchanted. Nice catch!

The last week, we had our ups and downs in the guild, but I think we ended on a strong note.

We have some great new people, and I’ll get to that soon.

We are also still having a little bit of adjustment period going on.

Let me ’splain.

(Digression: How many other people grew up with I Love Lucy being one of the only choices on the TV, in black and white, as a kid? I can still remember Ricky Ricardo pronouncing explain as ’splain’, and hearing the laugh track that tells me I’m supposed to think it’s funny. Our generation sucked for TV. When I think of the shows you get to grow up with now, I want to destroy all cable and satellite broadcasting, melt your VCR tapes and DVDs, and force you to watch Gilligan’s Island and I Love Lucy for a month straight to make you understand my generations’ bitterness better. Oh, and another word for nostalgia? CRAP. Damn you. Damn you all. And get off my lawn!)

Okay, so at the start of the game week, we took a look at the sign-ups on the guild website for Karazhan, and Gerolan and I started inviting people. We got our ten, and in we went. We were timely, and we were going to go straight in and clear everything up to and including Curator.

The group was a mix of seasoned regulars and new guild members, with two of the folks entirely new to Karazhan.

Begin soapbox:

A word of advice, folks. If someone says they haven’t been to Karazhan before… don’t assume they are going to either suck, or be undergeared. I’ve said it before, and I reserve the right to say it again… there are many ways of getting gear upgrades, and raiding is not the only one. And having ten or more friends to play with does not mean you are a good player any more than having 4 friends or less makes you a bad player.

That’s a point I think that gets lost, a lot, in talking about the game.

Just because someone is in a largely populated guild that always has enough people online for 10 man, or even 25 or 40 man raids, does not mean that every person in that guild is a good player.

I have seen, oh so many times, someone ask “Is that [insert class here] a good player?” and see the reply be something along the lines of “He was in OOB and raided The Eye, so he’s really good.”

Oh, bullshit. I have seen from personal experience that folks with end game raid experience can suck, and then some. Sure, their gear may be great. But great gear will carry an idiot only so far, and no farther. Even worse, because they were in a guild that raided the Eye or higher, they often have a massive chip on their shoulder and talk down to others in less progressed guilds. Yeah, if you are so awesome, why not go solo the Eye? If you can’t then shut the hell up and acknowledge the part teamwork played in your progression. Asshat.

Anyways, just as there are poor players in high end raiding guilds, likewise, there are plenty of folks I know that never get to do group activities, or if they do, it’s very infrequently. And yet, when I do see them in a group environment, I get blown away by how on top of their game they are.

My friend Melpo is one such player. He has a ton of personal responsibilites, his work and his family life pretty much preclude him from ever coming online earlier than 10:30 at night, even on weekends. And he has a vicious early start time for getting the kids ready for school.

But on those times when there are still lots of folks in the guild on late at night, and I’ve been able to get into a heroic 5 man with him, it’s always the same. He plays a Rogue, and he kicks ass; he manuevers and saps and stunlocks and generally plays havoc with our targets, and he puts out ungodly DPS without ever pulling too much aggro, and his gear is damn good, without being able to go on Kara runs.

He wanted gear upgrades, he knew he wouldn’t be going into Kara anytime in the future, so he went and found one way Rogues can get great stuff solo… he ran Battlegrounds until he could get his Season 1 Arena swords. He knows he won’t be getting rolls on void crystals off Kara D/E, so he does his dailies, makes his Alchemy transmutes, and is saving for his dual mongoose enchants. In fact, he may have them by now.

When we chat, he has smart advice to give Cassie on setting up macros for pickpocketing on the Sap, and positioning for distraction prior to Sapping, and generally has spent a great deal of time thinking about, analyzing and playing his character. And he never gets to raid. It’s a damn crime, is what it is.

Soapbox temporarily off.

Sorry for the mini-rant, but it is pertinent to todays’ discussion.

We had ten people for Karazhan last Tuesday, and two of them had never been in Karazhan before, and a third, as far as I know, had only ever gone on our raids on his shadow priest, not his bear tank. So I would have a new bear tank as my off tank.

Others in the run may remember things differently, but during Tuesday’s run, we kicked everythings’ butt really good, and had no wipes that I can remember. The only times we had some excitement was a few times where I body pulled on the walk to Attumen, and some problems with our bear off-tank acting like who was tanking a mob was a  competition instead of a team effort. You know, the whole “Are you taunting them off me? WTF?” kind of thing. There was one really cool moment, when as we approached the corridor leading to Maiden, someone pulled the 4 Elites near the last AOE group. Usually that would mean wipe, but the team pulled through awesome. Whatever, it went okay, and we blasted through Kara until we reached Curator.

At Curator, we ran into a problem where one set of Arcane Anomoly and Worms were bugged, they were stuck in a wall in Curators’ room. We cleared everything else, but had problems with the last set Evading.

We decided to take on Curator anyway, and about 3/4 of the way through, he bugged, focused on the off tank to the exclusion of everything else, even though it showed me at the top of the Threat list by 200,000 points, and then after the off tank died, came after me… and healed himself to full. We wiped in disgust to reset, and came in and wiped again just getting that damn trash mob dead despite the Evade. But our last fight on Curator went off without a hitch. All in all, a good if undistinguished run.

Begin discussion of the problems the rest of the week.

Our group, the one full of people that signed up, went off as planned. But there were other people in the guild that wanted to get their own Kara run going also. So they worked on it for a while, and eventually got enough people together to get in and get going. And although they skipped a few things, they did get through to Curator and cleared him also.

And for the rest of the week, we were screwed.

First, our bear off tank had an issue the very next day, where he violated our Guild Charter, and passed the bounds of decency by being unbelievably rude and crude to a guildie. Just, way, way over the line. It was not the first time he’d done that kind of thing, but this time was just amazingly bad. So the officers, including myself, decided it was time to boot him. And we acted on it immediately.

This left our group without a second tank. That’s cool, no big deal, right?

Well, it wouldn’t have been that big a deal except that, with a second group forged, almost everyone in the guild that is active was saved to one of the two teams. And each night for the rest of the week, we could only get 7 people on. And every night I got to field the questions of “Are we going to Kara tonight?”

Having two teams just really screwed the week. Instead of knowing what night to come back to finish, and being able to grab someone if one person wasn’t able to make it, everyone had to come back every night in the hopes that we’d be able to go, but the guild just doesn’t have enough active players to keep two full teams, with alternates, going. A fact that most of us knew full well from prior attempts, but whatever.

Anyway, things came to a head Saturday night, when the questions about Kara were surfacing, and one of the guys in the other Kara team was telling people that my team wasn’t gonna be able to go because we didn’t have enough people, but their team was going in to finish, so hop on alts and join them. I offered my help to their team on my Hunter, and then did a quick look at the guild roster, and thought, “Wait a fucking minute… we have enough to get going. What the hell is he talking about?”

I compared notes with Gerolan, and as close as we could figure, we had 7 people ready and able to go into Karazhan… two of those being the guys that were in for the first time. Well, maybe we couldn’t do any bosses, but could we get to the Chess event? And make damn sure that the guy we booted couldn’t ninja the event? Let’s give it a try.

We started with 7 people, on the trash after Curator. We had;

• Windshadow (me) - Tanking Feral Druid
• Gerolan - Healing Paladin
• Kellas - Healing Priest
• Caladorn - Healing Paladin
• Solarae - Mage
• Malkil - Mage (and first time in Kara)
• Jimboton - Survival hunter (and first time in Kara)

We went in, and I’ll be perfectly honest with you. It was one of the smoothest Kara runs on trash I’ve ever seen. We went in, we took it nice and easy, one pull at a time, not slow and not rushed. We cleared one pull at a time with no issues or even confusion that I saw all the way to the first big chamber with all the Magical Horrors and Mana Warps. 

Now, we were just looking over the chamber, deciding how best to control the pulls, since you get one Magical Horror and two Mana Warps per pull, and three Mana Warps on the middle pull, when Occulus logged into game.

I bullied him unmercifully to get on his Warlock and come help us. After that, Kara was a bullies’ lunch, and we were hungry. And just like a pack of outcasts looking at a bully, we ganged up on it, beat the hell out if it, and stole it’s lunch.

What, didn’t you guys do that in High School? 

Anyway, with our team bolstered by Doc Occ, we were just too overpowered for the trash. Eight man team in Karazhan? Pffft. Too easy. lol.

We cleared the trash, we moved on in, and not only did we have no wipes on the way to the Chess event, but we only had one death… Occulus. Poor guy.

It was just smooth, baby. Mark, pull, tank, trap/shackle/banish, heals, next. Like clockwork. Extremely good individual playing on everyone’s part.

We got to Chess, we explained the battle, and boom! We won. Kinda hard to build that one up.

I did have fun playing the Caster in Chess for the first time. AOE and direct blasts in Chess are fun!

After we finished Chess, we looked around, and decided to at least give Shade of Aran a shot. If we could take him down, we wouldn’t have to clear the trash on Monday when we came in to finish it. Were we feeling cocky? Yeah, a bit. Especially since we were running low on DPS.

We managed to get a ninth person into the team, a Mage named Darrez, so now we really were close to having a full group.

Sadly, we did not succeed in taking down Shade. And we only got one shot at it before Occulus had to go back to studying for an exam and writing an essay paper.

On that one shot, with new people and short one, and only me for melee DPS, we got Shade down to 12% health.

It was pretty obvious we weren’t going to get ‘er done on the first whack, though. We never did get his health under his mana, his health stayed 10% - 12% above his mana the whole fight. Well, with three powerful healers, and short one person, it was pretty clear where the team was lacking, and even without DPS, I think we came amazingly close. If we’d had Rynadur, our resident Rogue who was gone all weekend, it would’ve been doable even with our original eight and him, I think.

I am very proud of everyone that went on that run. We could have sat back, and said “We don’t have ten, so we can’t go”.

Instead, we said “We have seven people here, we can see how far we get. Let’s go for it.”

And the moral of the story, for me, is don’t be scared to take people into a freaking raid just because it’s their ‘first time there’. Everyone has a first time everywhere, and that has no bearing on their skill at playing their character.

It just means that raid leaders need to step up and do a solid job of explaining what to expect on the next pull.

Grats guys, you all rock!