Posts with tag gear-guide

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

This week brings us to the end of our patch 5.4 raid gear guide as we take on Garrosh and the bosses guarding him. In addition, we'll take a quick look at what the world bosses of this patch have to offer a death knight. The disclaimers from previous weeks still apply, so keep those in mind. Read on for the breakdown.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

The Underhold is the third section of the Siege of Orgrimmar, and will be opening up for Flex raiders this week. With that in mind, today we'll look at the loot that drops for the 3 bosses contained within. As before, the same disclaimers from the last two weeks apply. While "Best in Slot" is all well and good, "Best in Slot" also assumes you are playing at the top of your game, using very specific rotations, talents, and glyphs, and using cooldowns at the proper times, and that the gear you're picking up is mostly heroic or heroic warforged gear. Also, upgrades are upgrades, so if you're wielding Raid Finder gear from Throne of Thunder, even non-optimal flex gear from Siege of Orgrimmar is probably going to be an upgrade. Keep that in mind when grabbing gear as well.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host.

Seven bosses down, six to go. Let's talk about the loot we're going to, well, loot from the Siege of Orgrimmar. As an aside, this is the most I've ever felt like I was actually looting a place.

Malkorok

Winner of the prestigious "Name that I keep sticking extra A's in for no reason" award, and this raid's Hulk impersonator. What does the big M drop? Besides pain. He drops some pain. But also loot. Let's look at it, shall we?

Malkorok's Skullcleaver - solid for either tanking or SMF fury, with hit and critical strike rating and a red socket. It also appears to have a set of tauren horns mounted on the side of it, which is somewhat disturbing.

Vial of Living Corruption - tanking trinket, the stam on it is useful (stam is still a solid tanking option, even if it lacks the appeal of hit or mastery or an avoidance stat) but the cooldown reduction is the real draw here. It actually works on both Last Stand and Shield Wall for protection as well as Recklessness, meaning you can get more crit and thus put out more damage/threat (as well as guaranteeing a Shield Slam critical hit to Enrage you).

Malkorok's Giant Stompers - tank/DPS boots with expertise, mastery, a blue socket and a crit bonus on that socket. I'd definitely use them for tanking over DPS unless expertise is a significant problem for you, there's better DPS options for boots in the raid as a whole.

Malkorok's Tainted Dog Tags - See, this is why it feels like we're really actually looting a place - we're practically rummaging through Malkorok's entire kit of worldly possessions. This necklace is a very solid melee DPS neck for warriors, with critical strike and mastery.

Legplates of Willful Doom - On the one hand, very nicely itemized DPS legs with crit, mastery and three sockets. On the other hand, with legs and gloves dropping not just in this raid but from the Celestials on the Timeless Isle (not the Timless Isle, although I have not seen Tim out there yet) it's likely you'll have your 2 piece by the time you fight Malkorok, and thus, these legs won't be of much use to you.

Blood Rage Bracers - Parry/Expertise tank bracers, solidly itemized. Good for a warrior tank.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

The second tier of Patch 5.4's Siege of Orgrimmar, Gates of Retribution, brings us to the Horde capital itself. There are four bosses to kill and much death knight loot to plunder. The disclaimers from last week's loot guide still apply. While best-in-slot guides are all well and good, keep in mind that what is "best" for you will change based on your skill level, talent choices, and your current gear, and that new gear at a higher item level, even if not optimal, may still be an upgrade over what you had before. With that in mind, let's dig in.

So then, let's get started. I'll probably cover the first six or seven bosses this week and move on to the rest of the raid next - there's a lot of gear in Siege of Orgrimmar. I'm not going to link all the LFR, Flex, Warforged, Heroic and Heroic Warforged items, just the normal mode ones - assume any piece I link scales up and down properly depending on the version of the raid you're running.

With an exciting new raid on the way, one question sure to be on many people's minds is that of gearing. How to make sure that you're ready to step into the Siege of Orgrimmar the moment it drops? Our own Olivia Grace covered that very topic earlier this week with this comprehensive guide, but today Blizzard released their own, as well.

If you want the truncated version, it looks as though the Timeless Isle will offer the most diverse and quickest potential ways to upgrade your gear, however, it could be difficult for fresh level 90s or certain classes to solo there, so keep in mind other options--like intro ilevel 476 PvP gear, reputation gear, Valor gear, and Battlefield Barrens gear (while it still lasts!). The full Blizzard post is available behind the cut, and good luck gearing up for the Siege of Orgrimmar!

WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore is a discipline priest by reputation, but still enjoys melting faces as shadow and bugging her raid to click the Lightwell as holy.

A while back Spiritual Guidance looked at the various upgrade options for priests in patch 5.2. Today we'll be discussing which of those upgrades you want to take, depending on whether you're a discipline or holy (the weighty topic of shadow will be covered next week). Discipline priests in particular saw some big changes with the release of patch 5.2 and will want to adjust their strategy for selecting new gear from here on. Since we're already talking about disc, let's start there.

Most of you probably know the basics. When gearing, don't take intellect downgrades and be sure to mostly select gear with spirit on it for mana regeneration. How much spirit do you want? There's no hard, set number to aim for; the goal is to find an amount that allows you to get through most encounters without running out of mana too early. This will be different for everyone so just go with what feels comfortable, remembering that you can always supplement a shortage of spirit with consumables (food and flasks) for fights that are more stressful on your mana pool than most others. (Rememeber that it's not necessary to gear for that one tough fight, and then be running surplus mana the rest of the time.)

With that said, let's look at what has really changed: secondary stats.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host.

This has been something of a wild month for me. I started it playing a tauren warrior, and I'm ending it as a worgen. I've spent the month raiding Throne of Thunder and thinking about warrior gear I need to pick up as we progress through the place. The weird thing about gear is, it's really just a means to an end. You get gear to get better to progress through harder content, that's pretty much all there is to the gearing cycle. Each new patch, each new raid opens up new angles for progression, but it's really always heading towards that brass ring of "Beat X boss, get Y gear to beat Z boss." Until the expansion ends, anyway.

As one of the largest raids we've seen in a while, Throne of Thunder has a lot of gear. We covered six bosses last time, taking us to the mid point of the raid. Now we get to look at the remaining bosses. The Halls of Flesh Shaping and Pinnacle of Storms await. As before, I'm just going to list the 522 gear that drops in normal 10/25 - thunderforged variants are 6 ilevels higher, and thus are usually the best option in normal raids.

WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore is a discipline priest by reputation, but still enjoys melting faces as shadow and bugging her raid to click the Lightwell as holy.

Priests have a tremendous amount of gear choices available to them in patch 5.2. There are several valor point options tied to the Shado-Pan Assault faction. Epics can also be obtained in a new, single player scenario, Troves of the Thunder King. And, well, obviously upgrades can be found in the latest raid instance, Throne of Thunder. To get started, let's take a look at the new tailoring gear priests can pick up.

In patch 5.2, tailors have a chance to learn ilvl 522 cloth armor patterns from their daily cloth cooldown. The new crafted gear is BoE, so if you're not a tailor you may be able to purchase it from the auction house or commission it from a guildmate. These items require Imperial Silk and Haunting Spirits, though, so expect them to be costly.

Head

• Falling Blossom Cowl (hit/mastery) 6 Imperial Silk and 8 Haunting spirit
• Falling Blossom Hood (spirit/mastery) 6 Imperial Silk and 8 Haunting spirit

Feet

• Falling Blossom Treads (hit/mastery) 4 Imperial Silk and 6 Haunting spirit
• Falling Blossom Sandals (spirt/haste) 4 Imperial Silk and 6 Haunting spirit

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

We continue our loot preview this week by delving into the Forgotten Depths and Halls of Flesh-Shaping in the Throne of Thunder. The same disclaimers apply as did last week. Since this is based on PTR information, drops can change. In addition, this preview focuses on normal gear, so your gearing priorities may change if you get Thunderforged gear or heroic gear.

With that in mind, lets dig in and see what the next six bosses of Patch 5.2's Throne of Thunder raid have to offer.

Heart of Fear, which will open up this week, is the next step up from Mogu'shan Vaults. As a result, the ilevels are a bit higher and the gear just a bit more desirable. We'll be checking out the loot on a boss by boss basis, in order to give you a better idea about which bosses to spend your Elder Charms of Good Fortune on. As with last week, our analysis will be based primarily on normal gear drops. If you are raiding LFR or heroic tiers, your gear choices may vary a bit based on item levels.

It's actually more important than ever to know what loot drops from what bosses in raids in Mists. This is because, if you've been collecting Elder Charms of Good Fortune, you'll have the option when a boss dies to spend one for a chance at extra loot. Knowing what loot is available means you can be better informed when you spend coins. With that in mind, let's take a quick look at the bosses of Mogu'shan Vaults and figure out if their loot is worth spending charms on.

This analysis is made on the basis of the normal 25-man raid drops. If you are running raid finder, many valor point choices may pull ahead because of superior item level. On the other hand, you do have a highly limited number of valor points due to the 1000 per week cap, so in some cases you may want to "settle" for the raid drop so you can use your valor points to buy something else. In addition, DPS will want to maintain 7.5% hit and 7.5% expertise at the raid level. This can usually be accomplished via reforging, but there may be times you take an "inferior" piece of gear to hit one of those caps.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

We've covered pre-raid gear and tank gear in patch 4.2, so there's only one real direction left to go. DPSers get their day in the sun this week. Unfortunately, strength DPS itemization is sort of crappy in a few areas this tier (more on that later), but there's still some pretty decent stuff you can pull out. Let's take a look.

So you've dinged level 85 on your death knight. Now what? Patch 4.2 bought a lot of new things for level 85s of almost any PVE playstyle to do, so you have options to choose from. This week, we'll take a look at some of the best things you can do to get yourself geared up and ready to hit the next level of PVE play once you hit level 85.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

As far as raid content goes, Firelands does feel a little short, in theory, with only seven bosses. That said, there's still enough gear to make it just difficult enough to figure out exactly what to wear. This week, we'll check out the various ilevel 378 tank gear you can pull out of Firelands, then figure out exactly how it all fits together and what pieces you should be aiming for.