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Ask a Beta Tester: Spell power, phasing, and more
The image above has almost nothing to do with the content of today's Ask a Beta Tester, but I found it funny so you get to deal with it. We'll jump right into things with Turfing's question... I have a priest alt getting close to 70. Planning on doing healing come Wrath. With the conversion to spell power should I be picking up healing gear or damage gear right now? How is, for instance, Spell fire stacking up against Primal Mooncloth? Is spellfire actually able to heal better right now in the beta? How about damage?I strongly recommend hopping over to Wowhead's Wrath site and doing some research on how the numbers turn out. In most cases, DPS gear has better DPS stats (hit, crit) and Healing gear has better Healing stats. The spell power numbers are just much, much closer. In your particular example, the Primal Mooncloth Robe has more spell power than the Spellfire Robe, but it has mp5 and the Spellfire has crit. A DPS spec/class would rather have the crit.A few weeks ago I covered the effects of the spell power change in Hybrid Theory, with some raw numbers to look at. You can read that over if you'd like, but I mostly just suggest hitting up wotlk.wowhead.com for specific items.For more answers to your questions, read on!
Insider Trader: In stitches over BoP tailoring
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.If you're a clothie, you've probably already figured out that you are going to need to take up tailoring at some point, if you're really serious about your gear. In fact, many players would argue that tailoring is mandatory for the serious cloth caster. There's no denying that the BoP tailored sets – Frozen Shadoweave, Primal Mooncloth and Spellfire – are some of the best items you can get ... And of course, since they are BoP, you must be a tailor who is specialized in that cloth type in order to use them. Despite knowing all of this, I persisted in taking up herbalism and alchemy on my new shadowpriest recently, figuring I could always drop one or the other and powerlevel tailoring later ... Only it's later already, and I know I need to start the inevitable process of slogging through my four-day cooldowns if I want to get my Frozen Shadoweave any time soon. (Actually, I'm trying to decide whether or not to rely on PvP gear for DPS and make the Primal Mooncloth set for my healing moments, or if I should go right for the Frozen Shadoweave – but that's a topic for a different column ... or the comments section!)So if you, too, foresee a BoP tailored set in your future but aren't yet a skilled tailor, join me after the break for a tour through the top 1-300 guides and more tips for the final stretch from 300 to 375.
A case for patience on the PTRs
You'll forgive me for trying to inject a little reason into a nerf debate (an impossible task, probably), but that's what I'm about to try and do anyway.Yesterday, mages, warlocks, and shadow priests were up in arms about the changes on the test realm to the tailoring epic outfits. Blizzard was experimenting with adding ability stats to the armor while nerfing spell damage, and tailors went ballistic over the changes. And so, within a matter of hours, Eyonix announced on the forums that the changes had already been reverted and would not go to the live servers.Now, yesterday I said the nerfs weren't that big a deal, and since then, I've seen some good points that say they were-- lots of people spent lots of time and gold getting just these recipes together (some even leveled tailoring for just these pieces), and it definitely presents a problem to make serious changes to gear that people have already sacrificed a lot for.On the other hand, there were good reasons behind the changes as well. As even a few tailors have said, these crafted pieces matched up to the Tier 4 and 5 pieces, and I see problems with basically requiring clothies to be tailors to be competitive in the endgame. Many warlocks cried the most about the changes, but because +spell damage doesn't translate directly to most of their DOT spells, in many cases, they would actually be the least affected (Update: In hindsight, I shouldn't have judged how affected anyone was by this change. But that's not the point of this article-- read on.)But my point now isn't to argue whether these sets should have been changed or not. What I want to point out now is that being outraged on the forums and yelling at Blizzard about something that's happening on the test realms will actually impede the developers' abilities to make good changes on the live ones.
PTR Notes: Angry tailors vs. Blizzard
Sorry, clothie tailors -- today's not your lucky day. As Mike noted early, word from the PTR is that two of the BOP tailoring sets -- Frozen Shadoweave and Spellfire -- have been significantly nerfed, at least according to their users. As a set, Spellfire gains 29 int but loses 34 damage and 5 spell crit rating, while Frozen Shadoweave loses 34 damage and gets 24 int. The stats on the Primal Mooncloth set seem to be unchanged. As expected, tailors are not happy about this. While it was widely acknowledged that some of the crafted sets were superior to Tiers 4 and 5, and were a big reason why mages, warlocks and shadow priests were out-DPSing melee, many tailors thought buffing the raid sets instead was the solution. Selected comments from the threads include "gg blizzard i hate you all", "this is a pathetic attempt by blizz to fix their raid game", and "This patch makes me want to kill a cat. Lots of cats. Kittens, even." However, a few casters are okay with the changes, mostly because they calculate it as a minor loss of DPS in exchange for int. I'm not a clothie or a tailor, so I really don't have an informed reaction to this. What do you think? Is this a needed change, or is it a bait and switch for tailors who put a lot of money into their profession? Update: Looks like angry tailors win.
2.1 PTR changes to PvP gems, Mongoose
Curse has the news that the 2.1 PTR has been updated, and the biggest change is that Spellfire and Frozen Shadoweave cloth armor has been tweaked a bit. Basically, they've nerfed the spell damage, but they gave a nice buff to the stats on each piece (you can see a piece of each above, and MMO-Champion has deets on all the changes). Doesn't seen like too bad a nerf to me, but I don't play a mage that can actually make this stuff-- if you're unhappy, feel free to register your rage in the comments below.PvP epic gems have had their honor costs reduced, so if you're saving up points for an Inscribed Ornate Topaz, you'll be happy to hear that it now only costs 10k honor points (and the disappointment of only one of your children when you're too busy PvPing to go play catch with them in this Spring weather).And finally, the Mongoose enchant (which adds a chance-on-hit agility and attack speed buff) has had its look changed. Video of the new, really strange, spiky look after the jump. The old one was apparently too glowsticky. RAVE ON!Update: Apparently word from Eyonix on the forums is that the changes will be reverted before 2.1 goes live (thanks, Greg!)
Is tailoring necessary for clothies?
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 ...
