Saturday, Part 2 (29 Jan) - JB Refuses Gear Upgrades. Say What?

Saturday, Part 2 (29 Jan) - JB Refuses Gear Upgrades. Say What?

JB was signed up for another Twilight run on Saturday and the listed wait time was over ten minutes. JB had already done her fishing and cooking dailies (something to do while waiting in the queue). She drifted over to the Auction House and puttered about, looking for gear to buy she knew she wouldn't find. I'd recently finished researching an excellent discussion of pre-raid gear for enhancement shaman, and JB's head was full of all the possibilities. Surprisingly, one of those possibilities turned up on the AH. I'd never heard of this gear before reading that discussion, and had never seen in on the AH. Yet, there it was - [Arrowsinger Legguards]. The leg gear was an upgrade from JB's current i333 to Arrowsinger's i359. The AH cost was 3,000 gold, but that was only a third of the price usually asked for it. Happy doesn't allow JB to spend that kind of money on gear. JB didn't listen, buying it on the spot with her own gold earned from farming and selling flowers. Happy didn't like it, but it was already done. It's a lovely piece, with +hit and +mastery and two sockets to fill with precious gems. JB loved it, and joked that now that she'd finally got such a great upgrade and spent all that money the i378 legs would drop in Twilight.

The joke was on JB. The i378 [Legguards of the Legion] DID drop on JB's next Twilight run. JB loves to see her overall gear score climb, and swapping an i359 for an i378 would certainly do that. However, where the Arrowsinger pants had highly desired +hit and +mastery stats, the Legion pants had a shaman's least wanted stats - crit and haste. Despite the increase in JB's primary stat, agility, the secondary stats were so bad that JB finally had to admit that she was better off keeping the i359 Arrowsinger pants.

JB ran another Twilight heroic later in the day, and got another gear reward, this time from a quest. It was an i378 ring [Alumni's Ring]. JB had an i346 and an i359 ring, so obviously the i346 would go away. Nope. JB had the same issues with the i359 ring as she had with those pants - the secondary stats were not as good as those on the i346 ring. So, again, JB chose to replace the higher ilevel ring with Alumni's.

Finally, to wrap up JB's gear news, JB earned enough justice points from her dungoneering to buy a second T12 piece. JB could have bought the i378 T12 legs, but JB wasn't ready to give up her Arrowsinger on the same day she got it. Plus, there was a better option. JB's chest was i359, with one good and one bad secondary stat. The i378 T12 chest piece [Erupting Volcanic Cuirass] has all the right stats. With both the chest and gloves, JB now gets the two piece set bonus for the T12 set. When it was all in place, JB's new gear score was i357. The minimum ilevel to get into a Dragon Soul raid is i365. JB still has a good ways to go.

One last thing about gear. JB hates her headpiece. It's only i318, with no easy way to get a better one. Two shaman worthy i378 helms drop in Twilight, and eventually JB will get one of them. However, she did consider - just for this one slot - using a pvp helm. The i377 pvp helm runs about 1,000 gold, and of course has a lot more +agi than the beat up i318. The bad news, though, is that the secondary stats on the pvp helm (resilience and haste) are terrible. JB would lose both +hit and +mastery making that swap. JB decided against it.

Ok, just one MORE thing about gear. The Tier 12 set is called Volcanic Battlegear. It has five pieces, three of which can be purchased with JPs. Two pieces, shoulder and head, can only be acquired by getting a token drop - in the Firelands raid. The minimum ilevel to get into FL is i359. So - think about this - JB "could" get into FL - like, right now. The only problem is that I have no clue how to deal with bosses in FL as a melee, and question whether FL raids want newbies in their PUG raids. However, JB might get an invite to the weekly guild FL raids on Fri/Sat nights. Now there's an idea.

The best news out of all of this was JB's performance in the two Twilight runs she went on, before she got the new chest and ring pieces. The Shock and Awe addon was a great help, and JB felt as comfortable as she's ever been slugging it out toe-to-toe with the bad guys.

Recall that JB was doing around 10-11k dps when she started doing dungeons, and was ranking dead last in dps in the groups she was in.

In JB's first run with all the changes noted above, she blasted her way to 2nd place in dps. This was a dps enhanced dungeon so the numbers are very high anyway, but JB was really interested in how well she placed and what percentage of damage she did.

Overall:
#1: dk, 43.2 dps, 31.0% of damage
#2: JB, 35.5 dps, 25.4%
#3: priest, 34.8k dps, 24.9%
#4: tank, 22.3k dps, 16.0%

Here are specifics on the last two bosses:

Mannoroth Fight:
#1: dk, 97.6 dps, 35.2%
#2: JB, 70.9 dps, 25.6%
#3: priest, 63.2k dps, 22.8%
#4: tank, 34.2k dps, 12.4%

Queen Azshara Fight:
#1: JB, 13.8k dps, 33.1% (FIRST!)
#2: tank, 10.6k dps, 25.4%
#3: priest, 9.0k dps, 21.6%
#4: dk, 8.3k dps, 19.9%

Hang in there, Part 3 is on it's way.