Monday (12 Dec) - Tier 13 Loot

Monday (12 Dec) - Tier 13 Loot

Wildshard has never been a grinder for Tier gear, which are theoretically the best gear in the game, slot for slot, plus the addition of set bonuses. Sure, there is plenty of debate when making item by item comparisons, but the bottom line is that the more tier gear the better. Up until 4.3, there were generally two levels of Tier gear, one for normal and a higher level for Heroic. Usually, set bonuses are specific to the set, but lately set bonuses have been allowed for same tier sets at different levels. This is the case with the Tier 13 set, which actually has three levels: an i384 LFR tier, an i397 normal tier, and an awesome i410 level for Heroic.

Wild's resto Tier 13 set is Deep Earth Vestments. It's a five piece set:

Deep Earth Legwraps (Wild has this one, i397 too)
Deep Earth Handwraps
Deep Earth Robes
Deep Earth Mantle
Deep Earth Helm

Blizzard can't seem to settle on how Tier gear is purchased, however, and change the rules with virtually every new tier. That is one excuse Wild uses for not chasing tier gear - it's just too confusing to deal with.

Cata introduced Tier 11/12 gear. I "think" the process with these tiers was that T11 could be purchased with VPs. To get T12 gear, the player had to win a gear token from a raid boss and would then turn in the token and the T11 piece to receive the T12. I do remember buying at least one T11 piece with points, but never won a T12 token.

With 4.3, the Tier 13 pieces can only be acquired by winning gear tokens in raids. The only exception I'm aware of is the T13 pants, which Wild won straight up (no token) from Baradon Hold. BH is a raid so technically all gear still has to be won in a raid.

Well, tokens suck, say Wild, not to put too fine a point on it. Wild can finally farm VPs by raiding without having to suffer through Heroic 5-mans if that's what I want to do. So far Wild has earned 1,000 VPs in two weeks work. Sure, it's only half of what Wild could have earned if he had been around the first week, and had he been farming the three 4.3 dungeons (players can earn a max of 1,000 VPs per week). Still, it's far more points than Wild has ever gotten in a two week period.

BUT - Wild can't buy T13 gear with Valor Points. So, what's the point?

Blizzard says that they have made things better in two ways - token drops in 10 man DS have been increased "slightly" (their word, not mine) so more should drop. The other improvement, says Blizzard, is that all three tiers share the same set bonuses, and we can mix and match the sets and still get the bonuses. Wild can get eight chances at tier gear each week from DS LFR kills, plus whatever the guild manages to take down in ten man.

That sounds pretty good, except for one thing. From what I'm reading, it appears that the set bonuses, at least for druids, pretty much either sucks or, at best, is pretty ho hum. Nobody cares that much whether they have them or not.

So Wild also looked at what VPs can actually buy him. If his luck fails him and tier tokens don't drop, he'll still earn enough VPs to buy other non-Tier gear. Wild wasn't impressed when he took his first look at that gear, but on second look, well ... let's see what could be bought. Note that the VP gear is all i397, one level higher than the i384 Tier gear Wild would get from the LFR.

I'm starting with gear slots that are not included in the tier set:

Neck (1250 VP): Only one neck has haste on it, but it also has hit, useless for both druid healing and moonkin. The only option for Wild is [Threadlinked Chain], with spi/crit. Wild's current i365 neck has both haste and mastery. Not spending money on that for awhile.

Cloak (1250): [Woundlicker Cover] is nicely outfitted and has a socket, which is a nice but not major upgrade to his i378 cloak.

Relic (700): Relics are comparatively cheap, but their stats are smaller than other pieces of gear and so the upgrades are comparably smaller, too. There is actually a very good selection to choose from here to replace Wild's i365 that would be a big gear score jump but only a modest stat increase.

Ring (1250): I wish rings were only 700; Wild is rather desperate for rings (using an i346 for the haste and an i377 pvp for the int), although I'll not likely spend that many VPs for one. There are only four, two with useless +hit, and two others that are just eh. Wild will hope for raid and dungeon loot to upgrade those two spots.

Belt (1650): one choice, [Belt of Universal Curing], but a good one with two sockets. This may be my first VP buy.

Feet (1650): one choice, [Boots of Fungoid Growth] is also pretty nice and a very solid upgrade.

Wrist (1250): The VP wrist choice is BoE gear. Players with extra VPs they don't want to use on themselves can acquire the VP bracers and then legally sell them in game for gold. The going price is about 6500 gold and Wild seriously considered buying them. However, Wild recently won i384 bracers which include a socket and int bonus for +50 extra int that the i397 VP bracers don't have. In sum, Wild likes what he has better than the VP bracers.

Summary - Need 650 VPs to buy the belt. Followed by boots, relic and cloak. That should keep Wild busy for some time.

The next three slots are tier slots which could also be filled with non-tier VP gear. I'm listing them here, but I wont burn VPs on these any time soon in the hope of getting the token first. They are also the most expensive, too.

Hands (1650): [Fungus-Born Gloves] is the only tier slot I would consider buying with VPs - the gloves are clearly superior to Wild's i378 gloves and the price might be worth spending. In fact, the T13 gloves are identical to these with the exception that the VP gloves have a superior red socket vs the T13's blue socket, making the VP gloves better overall.

Head (2200): [Helmet of Perpetual Rebirth] is nice but would be a challenge to replace stats from his current i378 and it provides no extra sockets.

Chest (2200): [Decaying Herbalist Robes] - same issue as Head.

Summary - Work to get the tier tokens and if Wild has 1650 VPs laying around after buying everything else, buy the gloves, too.

Wild is feeling a lot better organized in regard to chasing gear than his normal "just take what drops and buy BoEs from the AH" approach, which still sorta works but keeps Happy very busy making stacks of gold.

Wild has to do his part - get those DS LFRs done each week, and max the VP runs in the three 4.3 Heroics. Wild has yet to set foot in the Heroics, something he had better fix. Wild has no excuses, but he'll whine anyway - Christmas shopping and tree trimming and foster kittens and an inconvenient summons to juror duty is messing with my game time!