Comments on: Thoughts while studying Bear gear

By: thehamster

thehamster — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 16:53:41 +0000

BigBearButt, you definitely have the right idea but I think you’re going about it backward. Instead of saving up conquest badges for other stuff, I’d consider going for the idol of the corruptor and saving your triumph badges for other stuff (like that ridiculously good trinket). The Idol of the corruptor is close enough to the Idol of mutilation (at least from a bear standpoint) that the idol of mutilation should really be the last thing a bear gets with his Emblems of Triumph.

By: Caelean

Caelean — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 18:17:57 +0000

You know, the heirloom health and mana recovery trinkets might be really handy. :-)

I’ve got exactly 40 Emblems of Heroism, and I’m trying to figure out what to buy. The heirloom chest is looking pretty sweet.

(Oh, and the honor chest is basically the same stats as the Titan-forged, but probably only requires 3-4 wins in WG with the weekly quests. On our server, the alliance wins about 80% of the time on offense, so 4 15-minute battles can get you any item for honor points.)

By: bigbearbutt

bigbearbutt — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 18:01:12 +0000

Actually, what I did was get neither so far.

I found the Heirloom vendor next to the old Emblems of Heroism quartermaster (thanks to Falromord), and saw that every single Heirloom Bind to Account chest armor can be purchased for 40 Emblems of Heroism.

I traded in Emblems of Conquest and Emblems of Valor to join my 24 Emblems of Heroism, and bought the Cloth Armor Heirloom item. I’ve already got the shoulders and two handed staff heirloom items on my level 23 Mage alt… along with the +30 Spellpower enchant on the staff.

NOW I am finally done with Heirloom items entirely, and will begin saving for some Idols and Conquest gear. And I gots four Emblems of Triumph! sigh, so pretty.

By: Suxxy

Suxxy — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 15:03:57 +0000

Yup, I went with the Idol of Corruption. I haven’t studied the form guide too much, but looked around after having done 1 day of Heroics, had over 20 Emblems of Conquest and 2 Emblems of Triumph. Like many posters here, I looked at that and went “yup, it’s so worth it (to me)”. I set up NeedToKnow and went to test the proc rate on single target 82 leets; giant skeletons in Icecrown, great for threat testing btw (sorry Goo, just too good to keep secret). Kept my old, old idol, as I had 2 hours to trade the new model back in (win/win).
Mangle, FFF, Lacerate, Lacerate, Mangle (Proc), rinse/repeat. It was proc’ing, Mongoose was proc’ing, shield was proc’ing; you beauty.
Change to cat, mangle spam, Proc, Proc, Proc.
Happy feral.
When dps’ing I have changed my priority list to mangle until it proc’s and then use my normal attacks. Subjectively my dps has increased (yet to test this objectively).

By: Kelarr

Kelarr — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 05:39:41 +0000

I highly recommend the Conquest badge belt, which I believe was 2nd best in slot being the crafted belt before 3.2 came out. With the hit and expertise on it, I’m now hit capped and have an expertise of 41 after respeccing to put the 2nd point in Primal Precision. Also, every bear should be farming the normal version of the new Trial of the Champion 5man for The Black Heart. I don’t know how many times I’ve run AN and have only seen Essence drop once and got out-rolled by my guildmate.

By: Elathan

Elathan — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 00:13:36 +0000

Thanks for the breakdown of the new gear available to us fuzzy butt meat shields BBB. I haven’t had the time here lately to look into them all for myself (Job kind of takes priority at the moment lol) I literally almost did some back flips seeing the upgrade for the idol of terror is now purchaseable with emblems (well at least my heart did a few mock somersaults and my druid soul did a chicken dance) Since my guild has recently retired from the raiding scene, and I no longer have the time to devote to PUGing alot on the game, I am going to go with the Curropter idol for now till I can get more emblems for the other new shineys. It is going to be heavenly to be able to open my character window and not have to utter a silent death wish at the Devs after seeing that BoJ idol still sitting there all cozy in its slot, tormenting me. Ok, enough ranting. RAWR!

By: Copey

Copey — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 19:04:41 +0000

Rock on dude. To each his own. Personally, I’ve felt so offended for….a really long time that a badge of Justice item was my best in slot. The Ulduar upgrade for bear tanking was out of my reach, and when it got changed over to 19 badges…I wept with joy.

Or something like that.

I was excited. Rolling with both procs (if that’s possible) would be pretty sweet on the triumph one for sure though. It’s nice that there are some buyable options for us after having that slot be the same item for everybody for so long.

By: Astemus

Astemus — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 18:20:43 +0000

I was thinking about waiting to get the mutilation idol, but MAN there are so many cool items to buy with triumph badges. And also, I use the gearscore addon, and that stupid terror idol was just killing my score. Personally, I plan on spending my first triumph badges on the Clutch of Fortification, whenever i manage to get enough badges that is.

Overall, it was a great patch. I was saving wintergrasp marks and picked up the pants (AMAZING for bears), the bracers (pretty solid upgrade if you’re not in ulduar), and then the pvp ring (just to fill out my pvp set). It was a good night. I was going to totally buy the Deadly helm, but I forgot I have to wait till the next arena season :(

Oh, and there are some nice upgrades from the new 5-man, but when I was looking at them, I realized that the slots they are for I already have decent items there. But there are still 2 items I am looking forward to getting… the ring from heroic and the trinket from normal.
Astemus´s last blog ..Guess what’s left…

By: bigbearbutt

bigbearbutt — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 17:49:43 +0000

Copey is absolutely right, Lupius, the change to resilience is only supposed to apply to damage caused by other players, and is supposed to have no affect on NPC caused damage.

I did research it at the time, found a blue post verifying that was the intent, and moved on. I have NOT verified that is is working that way live, I simply had too much fun playing last night. I’m sure someone has checked, and I’ll look into it later. But yes, it was stated that the resilience change would only affect player-caused damage, and should leave Bear itemization against PvE content unchanged as far as resilience is concerned.

And Runycat has an outstanding point, that the Agility buffage of Corruption is awesome and makes it a close run race between the two.

The simple fact is, when I apply the math to my own playstyle, I feel it is worth it to me to get the Triumph Idol, because first, of all the options it’s the one I like best from Triumph Emblems, and second, because I want to experiment with fast shifting while tanking and trash clearing and messing around, to see if I can get both buffs up when I play. It’s a fun personal challenge.

As always, I remind folks that, although other folks may take the stance of telling you what you should do, I prefer to assume you are all knowledgeable and intelligent, are perfectly capable of making up your own minds, and thus I simply show you some options I’m thinking of and let you decide for yourself what sounds fun or most effective for you.

As I said above, “before you spend 19 Emblems of Conquest right out of the gate, think about whether you are willing to wait”… think about whether you are willing to wait before trading in your Idol of Terror, think about what you want to buy most, think about the options… and go with your own choice, not mine.

Last night one of our guildies bought the Idol of Corruption, and all I could think was, “Rock on.” I didn’t think “Oh, you fool! You should have waited!” Because I know damn well Sux knows how to play, and he clearly looked at the choices and went with the one that kicked ass for him.

Me, I know that I could easily buy the Idol of Corruption first and not worry about it, because it just doesn’t take that long to get Emblems from Heroics. I’ve got the 500 Emblem achievement on Windshadow, and that doesn’t count the massive quantities of Emblems I got from Windstar. But I also know I have a personal desire for a pretty hat. So I shall go out and get myself a pretty hat. :)

By: Copey

Copey — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 17:34:49 +0000

I do believe that resilience only applies to damage inflicted by other players now. Though, I don’t recall where I read that. So it’s a non-factor when looking at pvp items for pve tanking.