Is tailoring necessary for clothies?
by Elizabeth Wachowski 
Mar 21st 2007 at 2:56PM
The forums of the famous Horde raiding guild Elitist Jerks are home to possibly the most intelligent, respectful and creative WoW micro-community out there. (Amusingly, their Alliance counterparts, Death and Taxes, have one of the most vicious and mind-numbing forums out there. Coincidence?) They're deep into theorycrafting and gear questions, so it should come as no surprise that they've created one of the most intriguing threads about caster itemization I've ever seen.
Basically, according to Mearis, the BOP crafted tailoring sets -- Primal Mooncloth, Frozen Shadoweave, and Spellfire -- are actually superior for raid DPS and healing to Tier 4 and 5. For example, here is the Tier 5 priest damage gear, compared to the Frozen Shadoweave Vest. The Frozen Shadoweave offers significantly more pure shadow damage, and the spirit and crit on the Tier 5 isn't that great for shadow priests. A warlock I talked to also rated Frozen Shadoweave above lock T4, and checking out the gear in general, the crafted sets seem to feature nearly double the damage increase (for a certain class of spells) of the tier gear.
Mearis says this has two negative effects. First off, it makes tailoring nearly mandatory to stay competitive in early end-game DPS, and by having early access to seriously powerful gear, it allows mages, locks and priests to do much more damage than comparative physical DPS classes -- and leads to more nerf cries from rogues and warriors.
I talked to a warlock in the top raiding guild on my server who has the full Frozen Shadoweave set. He said that he considered the tailored items "amazing" and that they probably did contribute to cloth-wearers dominating the damage charts early on. However, he added that he noticed rogues and warriors catching up to mages and locks in damage as they began getting more pieces of their Tier 4 and arena gears, while the clothies weren't replacing their BOP crafted sets yet. And since tailoring was pretty much a money pit before TBC, he didn't mind that it was now suddenly powerful for raiding.
"I'm not ready to jump on the bandwagon and say that the crafted is overpowered because it is expensive to make and may be replaced as early as 4-piece Tier 4," he said. "And I'm happy to see tailoring be a worthwhile prof while it lasts." Plus, the caster pieces don't have a ton of stamina, which is important on certain boss fights. A shadow priest in my guild with Frozen Shadoweave and Battlecast added, "They're not overpowered -- the T4-T5 sets are just weak."
Personally, I like the idea of crafted sets that are equal to raid sets, and think the tailoring clothes and the blacksmithing items are a step forward for the game. Now if only leatherworkers and engineers could get nice things ...
Filed under: Tailoring, Items, Analysis / Opinion, Raiding, The Burning Crusade
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Gitr Mar 21st 2007 3:02PM
I think it's pretty essential for those who do not raid or get into groups regularly. Farming and some patience to get some gold for other mats is all you need for some pretty decent armor.
Quoi Mar 22nd 2007 4:35PM
Two things that SUCK about the tailored gear though, IMO (at least the specialist sets):
1. They look like absolute crap.
2. If you wish to respec your talents, (especially for mages) you're hosed.
Shawn Handyside Mar 21st 2007 5:38PM
This is an interesting article as I'm considering dropping engineering for tailoring. Seems like some awesome end game craftable armor would be more usable then, uh... the nothing I get from engineering. >_>
Dabura Mar 21st 2007 4:55PM
Yes I think it is because the tailoring sets, ie the battlecrest one is kinda needed in gruul's for the first boss.
cb Mar 22nd 2007 1:48PM
That's the point though. Should tailoring be essential for cloth wearers? Was that the idea behind trade skills?
Halicante Mar 21st 2007 4:24PM
I think it's really bogus that people can get a set equivalant to tier 5 in a week or two of work...As alchemy/herbalism with many rare recipes and the need to farm for many of the guild flasks, i can't drop my profession and it will take me much longer than just a week to get my tier 5. They should make the crafting pieces much harder to make if they are going to make them so very good, imo.
moink Mar 21st 2007 4:40PM
I dropped herbalism for tailoring. As a shadow priest, the frozen tailoring set was just too good not too. Guess it'll be a while before my husband or I get our epic flying mounts.
Blah blah blah Mar 21st 2007 4:49PM
I was thinking about dropping herbalism and picking up tailoring to make the bop mooncloth set, then dropping and re-aquiring herbalism, but i see it says, Requires: Moonlocth Tailoring.
This used to be a handy trick (i.e. powerleveling tailoring, making Truefaith Vestments, dropping for Herbalism...)
guess it doesn't work any more oh well, t4 it is..
Jim Mar 21st 2007 6:25PM
I think it's really bogus that people can get a set equivalant to tier 5 in a week or two of work
So would I. Of course, that isn't the case. With the cooldown for specialty cloth, you're looking at two full months to accumulate the cloth (unless you trade for it -- and good luck if you're a Shadowcloth specialist). And then the couple of dozen primal waters. All told, you're looking at about 2000 gp worth of materials in addition to the cooldowns. And then you have weak +INT, +STA and +CRIT, which you need to make up for with expensive gems.
And you have to get your Tailoring up to 375 for the vest. That'll cost you another 1000 gp in materials, easily.
So: 3000 gold and two months, plus gem costs. Doesn't sound so easy now, does it?
Oh, and here's the kicker: there's no way to switch from one cloth specialization to another without starting again at 0 Tailoring skill. And if you switch out from (say) Spellcloth to Primal Mooncloth, you can no longer wear the Spellfire set you've crafted.
Easy? Not on your life.
Halicante Mar 21st 2007 7:02PM
Most of the tailors in my guild had all the mats they needed by the time they hit 70 or soon after. Our server had a giant cloth swapping and crafting thread going on the forums and having it all crafted very soon after hitting 70 was not uncommon...and in the case of most of the tailors in my guild, most had their sets done between one and two weeks of hitting 70. And it's not like people actually buy the primals...the motes drop like candy in the elemental plateau. I farmed 10 primal waters in an hour last night - and this is on a high pop pvp server. It would be even faster if I didn't have to deal with ganking rogues backstabbing me in the middle of my multimob pulls. Cloth in the outlands is easier to farm than runecloth ever was. When I farm black temple mobs, I usually end up with easily 10 stacks of netherweave an hour.
So yeah...compared to killing raid bosses for months and months for pieces that aren't as good, I'd call that pretty darn easy.
Kazia Mar 21st 2007 9:36PM
All this says to me is that Blizzard doesn't design it's tier sets correctly. If an end game crafted is preferable over a tier 4, thats fine (they should be on par anyways so it can be player preference), but over a tier 5? Something is wrong with the tier 5.
Elizabeth already pointed out such in the uselessness of spirit to a Shadow Priest in a raid settings, yet Blizzard continue to allocate these stats to sets.
To my mind at least, set pieces should be focused on what aspec of the class they are enhancing, non-set pieces should give that cross-spec/different play style flexibility.
Neth Mar 21st 2007 10:31PM
@8: You did not farm 10 primals in one hour. That is 100 motes in 60 minutes or 1.5 or so per minute. I think not. Your server is quite lucky if it had a cloth swap. I wish my server did that. Right now I have the shoulders and the boots and am still 10 pieces away from my vest.
Ryan Mar 22nd 2007 8:26AM
@2 Considering the set takes about 20+ pieces of 4-day cooldown per 2 cloth, I think a week is a little optimistic.
Necrolich Mar 22nd 2007 8:57AM
I'm a 70 destruction warlock and had 375 Herbalism/Alch for a while and its just not worth it. I came to the realization that alchemy doesnt make any more money that selling the herbs straight out, and by keeping herbalism i can just bug guildies to make me the potions i need, so i dropped alchemy and started tailoring. About 1500g and 2 weeks later i'm sitting at 365 Tailoring, and have 2 pieces of my Spellfire set. The dmg and crit upgrades are fantastic!! I have always fought for top dps in raids, but since the 2 pieces, i have noticed it being much easier to obtain that covited #1 spot (granted i had a scorch mage in the group for boss fights). All in all, the pieces are a HUGE upgrade and in many cases better than their T4/T5 counterparts.
Renasar Mar 22nd 2007 10:00AM
As a priest with the Primal Mooncloth set, I don't see that I'll be replacing it anytime soon.. While the Tier 4 4-piece set bonus is nice to get a faster greater heal, I don't use flash heal all that much anymore for any fight where the speed would make a big difference. Besides, the additional 5% regen from Primal Mooncloth is amazing.
Erilar Mar 23rd 2007 9:15AM
It would be interesting to see a similar comparison for LW and BS gear as well. I just hit 70 myself, and haven't had time to crunch the numbers.
Personally, I very much welcome crafted gear that's viable.