Want spirit cloth gear from Firelands? Bad news ...
by Michael Sacco 
Jul 5th 2011 at 8:00PM
Well, Blizzard heard your cries and has responded! It's not good news, though.
Cloth gear had the spirit burnt off in FL
Stat balance on gear should be looked at via much more than just boss loot tables. We consider reputation gear, tailor gear, Valor gear and the tier sets when examining what's available to you. If you wish, you can have Spirit on every slot but your belt (which can still be reforged). The priest tier set has Spirit on all 5 slots.
Having said that, the mindset that only cloth with spirit is priest healer gear (and cloth with no spirit is never priest healer gear) is a mindset to be resisted. If that is allowed to set in, then all the fun of looking at a potential new piece of gear and deciding for yourself whether it is an upgrade for you is removed entirely.
Along those lines, something to keep in mind is that there is more to improving the healing you do in cloth than simply stacking spirit. As you increase spell power, haste, and crit, and your tank increases health, armor and avoidance, boss damage negates less of your mana in the first place.
Having said that, the mindset that only cloth with spirit is priest healer gear (and cloth with no spirit is never priest healer gear) is a mindset to be resisted. If that is allowed to set in, then all the fun of looking at a potential new piece of gear and deciding for yourself whether it is an upgrade for you is removed entirely.
Along those lines, something to keep in mind is that there is more to improving the healing you do in cloth than simply stacking spirit. As you increase spell power, haste, and crit, and your tank increases health, armor and avoidance, boss damage negates less of your mana in the first place.
So, no, there isn't any cloth gear hiding. No bugs. No oversights. It was a calculated decision to force priests to reexamine their gearing strategies. Blizzard is right in that a gearing strategy of "stack this one stat forever" is pretty dangerous (hello, armor penetration), of course, but having only select items with spirit on them actually reduces your gearing options, since you can't switch a tier piece out for another non-tier item that doesn't exist.
Wait, I have an idea! Just let priests wear spell plate. That solves everyone's problems.
The news is already rolling out for the upcoming WoW Patch 4.2! Preview the new Firelands raid, marvel at the new legendary staff, and get the inside scoop on new quest hubs -- plus new tier 12 armor!
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
Iirdan Jul 5th 2011 8:07PM
"That solves everybody's problems!"
But it will create the problem of the sullen Paladin when they can't build a full healing offset out of "would be sharded otherwise" drops! Oh noes!
Angus Jul 5th 2011 8:21PM
That excuse went away week 5 and they were getting sharded anyway...
Seriously, we have not seen the tanking belt drop EVER, but we could have equipped every warrior and DK with an Int Off set by now. EVERY Paladin has 3-4 pieces of healing gear from the drops.
Fletcher Jul 6th 2011 1:56AM
Given that the first paladins were clerics (IE clothies) who started wearing plate, this is kinda supported by lore.
But really I just want my spriest to wear plate and become an unkillable face-melting juggernaut.
Aurilia Jul 6th 2011 7:39AM
I don't want no complaints from the Paladins. There are plenty of spirit drops for leather, mail, and plate - likely since caster versions of those are useful for both healing and dps specs. This being a smallish raid tier with only 7 bosses, I'd assume that part of the decision came from a smaller overall loot table, and by not having spirit on the pieces the cloth gear is useful to warlocks and mages as well, and not just priests.
As Druids are the only leather casters, Shamans the only mail, and Paladins the only plate, this was less of a concern for those armor types.
ayanamilily Jul 5th 2011 8:08PM
All I can say that even taking reforging into account, at least my gearing choices are straight forward (collect VP until my eyes bleed).
rekon13 Jul 5th 2011 8:10PM
"To make you look at other gearing options, we've decided to remove other gearing options."
Sleutel Jul 5th 2011 8:34PM
This seems to be a chronic problem with Blizzard. "Stat X is excellent for you in a way we didn't anticipate? Well, shit! Instead of looking at why this imbalance occurred and correcting it, weeeeeeeeee'llllllll juuuuuuuuuust remove your option to use it entirely."
Any spec is going to have BiS gear. Removing +Spirit options isn't going to change the fact that people are going to be checking their upgrades versus a spreadsheet; the items on the spreadsheet will just be different, and potentially not as optimal.
theRaptor Jul 5th 2011 8:51PM
It is more like they didn't have the development time to properly itemise and so cut stuff that the least people care about (eg in early Wrath +crit cloth was rare as hens teeth and the Shadow Priests raged).
Narshe Jul 5th 2011 9:11PM
"Yo priests, we herd you like less gearing choices, so we put less gear in your raid so you can't regen while you regen."
Amaxe Jul 6th 2011 1:41AM
"To make you look at other gearing options, we've decided to remove other gearing options."
...kind of reminds me of another famous quote... how did it go?
"We had to destroy the village to liberate it."
Snuzzle Jul 6th 2011 2:19AM
And this is after they just got through saying at the beginning of the expansion that spirit is a healer stat and all healers should want spirit.
Jack Mynock Jul 6th 2011 7:38AM
@theRaptor
Not enough developement time? Did you really just say that about the raid that was supposed to come out months ago, after 5 mans got scrapped and whole other smallish raid dropped? How long do you think it takes to knock mastery, crit, or haste off a couple of pieces and stick some spirit on it?
Circus Jul 5th 2011 8:14PM
Let priests have my healing gear? When the Firelands freeze over and Raggy is replaced by Ahune, then maybe.
Iirdan Jul 5th 2011 8:53PM
Shhh! That's the Heroic mode twist! Icelands!
Tushar Bharadia Jul 6th 2011 4:58AM
Bring me back some frozen pizzas, will you?
Sleutel Jul 6th 2011 8:34AM
@Iirdan:
Spoiler alert: The final boss is Bjork.
Brett Jul 5th 2011 8:18PM
I'm struggling with the idea that the process of "looking at a potential new piece of gear and deciding for yourself whether it is an upgrade for you" has EVER involved such a significant degree of fun that we should be overly concerned if that fun "is removed entirely."
MichaelBerean Jul 6th 2011 4:24PM
As someone who raided holy paladin for 2.0-3.3 I have to say I would LOVE it if blizzard just let all healers wear plate. It's fun to roll against other healers that you know will save your butt on that next fight if they're the ones who are all geared up. It sucks to disenchant spirit gear all the time because you don't have someone that specializes in that particular armor type with you.
scotlandap1 Jul 5th 2011 8:38PM
Well, at least we got a response.
I for one am tired of hearing people--now including Blizzard--say that reforging, gemming, etc. is the solution if we want more spirit.
I have an idea. Let's strip tanking plate of its dodge/parry, to be replaced by say, mastery, crit, expertise, hit, or what have you, so there can be more of a universal plate set of gear, and tell tanks to gem or reforge to dodge, parry, or whatever they need to survive the encounter!
I believe that idea would go over swimmingly, correct?
theRaptor Jul 5th 2011 8:49PM
I would have no problem with it as I don't have a single piece of gear with dodge/parry on it and have tanked nearly every T11 encounter (feral druids ftw!).
TBH Blizz could easily fix this issue by not dropping +spirit cloth and just making reforging give more +spirit in the conversion to make up for it.
Priests win, mages and warlocks cry salty salty tears of rage.