naxx-gearing-guide

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  • Shifting Perspectives: Gearing your Cat Druid at 80, part 2

    by 
    Dan O'Halloran
    Dan O'Halloran
    03.24.2009

    (Almost) every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week, the second half of the Cat Druids gear guide to get you closer to Wrath raiding.Sorry for the wait on the second half. Better late than never, eh? /cricketsAhem, moving on.In part one, I covered Head, Neck, Shoulder, Back, Chest, Wrists and Weapon slots choices for gear available to pre-Wrath raiding level 80 Cat Druids. I also explained my methods, listed a recommended build and went over gems. Go read it on the initial post if you're interested. Otherwise, let's get this show on the road.

  • Shifting Perspectives: Gearing your Cat Druid at 80 part 1

    by 
    Dan O'Halloran
    Dan O'Halloran
    02.24.2009

    Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week, we help Cat Druids get one step closer to Wrath raiding.When should you, the face shredding Cat Druid, put behind 5-mans and bring your feral prowess to 10-man raiding? The short answer is when you can clock 1600 DPS more or less (you are using Recount, yes?). Grab items with Hit and Expertise, but know that you'll get more of that once you start raiding. If you really want to know the math behind those stats, Big Bear Butt Blogger's analysis is quite...thorough.That leads to the question of how do you get DPS that high. Other than having a 0/55/16 build and learning how to maximize your DPS through keeping a number of cat abilities up as much as possible, it's going to come through better gear. And that's what this week's Shifting Perspectives is all about. If you are looking for the math behind each stat, I highly recommend Karthis' article at Resto4Life on what to look for in Cat gear. For the purposes of this column, I'll be providing a number of options for each slot so you can mix and match to get what you want. Regular Shifting Perspectives columnist Allison Robert has been working working with a "best in slot" format broken down by playstyle for the Moonkin, Resto and Bear Tank gearing for Naxx guides. I'll be doing the same.This installment covers Head, Neck, Shoulder, Back, Chest, Wrists, Weapon slots. The other slots will be covered next week.

  • Encrypted Text: Guide to Rogue gear for new raiders

    by 
    Chase Christian
    Chase Christian
    01.28.2009

    Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the Rogue class. This week, we'll discuss gearing options for a Rogue who wants to break into the raiding scene.Last week, we looked at what stats are important for a PvE Rogue, and how those stats interact with each other and why they're important. To summarize, hit and expertise ratings are very important until you reach a few key milestones, after which the pure damage options like Agility and Attack Power become more attractive.The key is to be over 99 hit rating (the Yellow Hit Cap - YHC) but under 315 hit rating (the Poison Hit Cap - PHC) and to never be over 214 expertise rating (the Expertise Cap - EC)? If you look in the right places, reaching these numbers becomes fairly simple. Bind on Equip Leatherworking goods, Heroic drops, and reputation rewards will form the core of your gear as a newly 80 Rogue. Let's explore where to find the right type of gear to prepare you for that Naxxramas raid next weekend. Much of this information can be found at Shadow Panther, however I have collected the pieces that specifically sport Hit or Expertise that can be acquired in 5 man Dungeons or below. Remember that the PHC and EC are "caps" and not necessarily goals, and that you shouldn't sacrifice other stats to reach these goals unless you have used a spreadsheet to determine which is the better piece of equipment.

  • Lichborne: Death Knight DPS gear for Naxxramas

    by 
    Daniel Whitcomb
    Daniel Whitcomb
    01.25.2009

    Welcome to Lichborne, the weekly class column for Warcraft's newest class, the Death Knight.Ok, I know I've been focusing on tank quite a lot lately, but I'm here to say that I swear I haven't forgotten about the DPS. To prove it to you, this week's edition of Lichborne is all about gearing up to hit 10-man Naxxramas as a DPS. For the most part, your gearing choices as a DPSer are going to be more or less the same no matter what your spec. For the most part, I'm going to be following the statistical information I outlined in the Death Knight statistics primer, which means the gear I pick out will follow this basic rule for stat choice: Hit rating to the 8% cap > strength/attack power > critical strike rating > expertise > everything else.

  • Scattered Shots: A PvE gem and enchant guide for Hunters

    by 
    Daniel Whitcomb
    Daniel Whitcomb
    01.22.2009

    Welcome to this week's edition of Scattered Shots, which is dedicated to shiny things and dust.So by now you've seen our normal dungeon gear guide, our heroic dungeon gear guide, our reputation gear guide, and our holiday gift guide. Between all of them, you should be able to put together a nice solid set of gear that should let you tackle 10-man Naxxramas pretty easily. But grabbing the gear is the easy part. To go the extra mile, you need to grab those gems and enchantments. Let's look at some of the best gems and enchantments you can take along to secure your place in the DPS charts in Naxxramas.

  • Shifting Perspectives: Gearing your Balance Druid at 80

    by 
    Allison Robert
    Allison Robert
    01.20.2009

    Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week we start to wonder where the hell all the +hit from "Burning Crusade" went.Greetings, fellow Druids, and welcome to another installment on Wrath gear at 80, and this week it's the boomkins' turn. Next week I'm going to tackle Bear gear at 80; Dan O'Halloran will take care of our Cat colleagues. As a number of people have observed, it's tougher to get +hit-capped pre-raid in leather as opposed to cloth, so you're going to find an awful lot of cloth on the list. I realize this represents a new and exciting development in the history of moonkin itemization. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. That's French for "We're screwed."Supplementary reading: Elitist Jerks' threads on Balance trinkets, Moonkin DPS spreadsheet, general issues, and Balance talents and specs. Gray Matter on necessary stats at 80 and raiding moonkin gear. As a note here concerning the recent news on Improved Faerie Fire (in a nutshell, you'll get the 3% crit no matter whose FF is up on a target, even a feral's), Gray Matter on why the talent's worth taking, and Macbook on the raid circumstances in which it might not be. As with our previous entry on pre-raid Restoration gear at 80, these guides assume that you do not presently have access to either 10-man or 25-man raids.

  • Lichborne: Gearing up to tank Naxxramas

    by 
    Daniel Whitcomb
    Daniel Whitcomb
    01.18.2009

    Welcome to Lichborne, The weekly Death Knight column, where your host is recruiting only the most pro critters for his raiding team. So by now, I'm sure many of you Death Knights have managed to follow our last tanking gear guide and have put together a pretty decent tank set that's gotten them through a few heroics, but now it's time for the next step: Getting ready to tank Naxxramas. You'll find that while a lot of your gear is probably "good enough," you'll still want to look for a few important upgrades to kick you up another notch so you can be at your best coming into Naxxramas to tank. Let's look at a few heroic upgrades that you can grab to be the best tank you can be heading into 10 man Naxxramas content.Before we start, there's two things you should remember: One, I'm pretty much following the logic I laid down in the Death Knight statistics primer a few weeks back, so if you want to know why I picked a certain item, the answer is probably there, and two, whatever you do, remember to hit 540 defense skill. You'll need that to survive against the bosses.