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Posts with tag Leather

The Care and Feeding of Warriors: To Gear A Fury


The Care and Feeding of Warriors takes a look at gear and the fury warrior this week. Matthew Rossi has been playing with fury on his tauren this week, when not forgetting to re-equip his shield on Kael'thas while playing his human. Sure, the Phaseshift Bulwark is nice, but if you leave the instance it goes away, which I really should have paid attention to. On the up side, it's hilarious to go down in two seconds to a trash mob because you forgot which button is your shield macro. Well, hilarious now. With distance. At the time it was less hilarious and more smashing my face into the keyboard.

Before we get rolling, you should take a look at this thread from the Elitist Jerks forums that gathers up a lot of information on warrior DPS specs and what to look for when gearing. One of the things to keep in mind is that it's not as straightforward as just piling on the stats that help you do damage... much like tanking, where you first stack defense until you reach the target (in the case of tanking you want 490 defense) when assembling fury gear you prioritize hit until you reach 9% chance to hit, and then start stacking crit, attack power and armor penetration.

So what's the hit cap? Well, in general a fury warrior with full precision should look to accumulate hit gear until roughly 96 hit rating, which should put you at about 9% actual bonus hit. Up until 9%, it's generally accepted that hit provides the greatest boost to your damage both from the damage that you actually do with your white hits and from the rage you generate by them, as well as reducing the chance of special attacks like Bloodthirst (not Bloodlust, you can tell I play my shammy too much) and Whirlwind to be missed, which is not only annoying but amazingly does not seem to hurt monsters. Not even their feelings.

Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: To Gear A Fury

Leather on a Shaman and cloth on a Druid

Obstruce brings up a topic that seems obvious to some people but can drive others crazy: healers wearing less sturdy gear than they can just for the stats. I won't lie -- I've got a few pieces of leather on my restoration Shaman for the stats, but in general, I don't think it's a bad thing that healers and casters sometimes wear cloth for the stats, given of course 1) that they're not taking it from someone else who needs it, and 2) that there's not a better piece of normal gear for them to be wearing (it's an upgrade).

Obstruce's aunt disagrees, especially with Shamans and Druids -- if for some reason they pull aggro, wearing leather or cloth will only make things harder on the group. Which is true -- if I'm wearing leather (or even cloth) on my Shaman, I'm not going to have near as much armor as I would wearing the mail I'm supposed to wear. But in a group where all members are doing what they should be, I should never get hit anyway. If a healer's getting hit, it's a good 80% of the time not their fault -- it's the tank's or DPS' fault for not keeping aggro where it belongs.

So no, I don't see any problem with a Druid or Shammy (or even a Paladin, though there's a lot of nice healing plate out there anyway) wearing less than they're meant to. Warriors are definitely not in the same situation -- while yes, some of that Hunter mail may have lots of Agility on it, and that will help out your crit percentage, you get so much more bonus from Strength and Armor that it's just not worth it. Casters can steal Mage and Priest gear (as long as they're not actually stealing it from actual Mages and Priests) if it's an upgrade, but Warriors almost never have a reason to slum it up in mail.

Insider Trader: Leatherworking, the final stretch

Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.

If you have ever rolled a druid, rogue, shaman or hunter, it is quite likely that you ended up choosing leatherworking as one of your professions. Because it can be a valuable source of gear for the leather and mail-wearers, it is a common choice. If this is the case, you are going to want to hit 375 skill in order to make your end-game epics.

If however, you chose leatherworking as a companion to skinning in order to make money, you will only need to reach about 325. Once there, you will be able to convert any type of skin into its available higher form in order to maximize your profits.

Still, leatherworking, like any profession, can be an extremely costly skill to cap. This week, Insider Trader will be taking an in-depth look at some of the best ways to reach 375 from 300. Hop through the break for tips and analysis.

Continue reading Insider Trader: Leatherworking, the final stretch

Skinning Tauren for leather

We've definitely had this conversation before, but Bhou on the EU forums brings it up yet again: why don't we treat the various races like they, y'know, are those various races? He asks why we can't skin Taurens for leather, but that brings up all the other race issues in Azeroth. Why aren't Undead immune to fear? Why aren't Gnomes tameable? Oh wait, that last one might not be right (though it would be funny).

But besides the game balance problems, the fact is that the racial abilities are about as well-represented as they're going to get (and in fact, if there are any changes in the future, they'll probably be towards conformity rather than radically away from it). You can't skin Tauren because, guess what, they're humanoids. Undead can't be immune because guess what, they're humanoids, too, and while a weakness to holy spells might make the game interesting, it won't help towards balance.

The Warcraft world is a mean one, but would the Alliance really go so far as to skin fallen Taurens on the battlefield anyway? For game balance or for lore reasons, it just doesn't make sense.

Phat Loot Phriday: Helmets of Second Sight


Today's Phat Loot isn't just one helmet-- it's actually your choice of six available from a neat questline in Outlands. So stick with me here. Things may get a little complicated.

Name: (Overlord's, Shamanistic, Druidic, Stealther's, Evoker's, Stalker's) Helmet of Second Sight
Type: Rare (Cloth, Leather, Mail, Plate) Head
Armor: Varies
Abilities:
  • They all have different abilities, of course, according to their title. You can see a list of all the available helmets here (the Scintillating Headdress is not one of the quest rewards, actually). Altogether, if you run this quest, you'll get a pretty nice pre-Epic helmet out of it.
  • Also: All the helmets "allow the bearer to see into the ghost world while in Shadowmoon Valley." It's a lore thing, stick with me.
  • And if you haven't noticed yet, all the helmets are reskins of the Tier 2 helmets (and in some cases, Tier 1-- see Warrior Helm above) that originally dropped from Onyxia and Molten Core. So if you never got to get your Dragonstalker's Helm or your Helmet of Ten Storms, here's your chance to get a lookalike. With better stats, if you ask me.
How to Get It: You've got to do the Teron Gorefiend quest chain in Shadowmoon Valley. It's quite fun, will net you a lot of XP (if you're not 70 yet), a little bit of gold, and your choice of these helmets.

For Alliance, it starts with a quest called "Ghost in the Machine" from Zoram the Judicator (geez, what did his mom have against him?) at Wildhammer Stronghold. Horde go to Chief Apothecary Hildagard in Shadowmoon Village for a quest called "A Haunted History." That chain will take you through about seven quests, most of which are soloable (one of them asks for two players, and one of them requires a full 5man group to do). At the end of the quest chain, you'll meet up with the man himself (and make a "mistake" that really wasn't your problem in the first place.

As for Gorefiend himself, I don't want to spoil anything, but you'll meet up with him later in the Black Temple (I'm not sure if you actually need the helmet to face him, as the questgiver hints, but you might want to keep it anyway). Meanwhile, you'll get a spiffy helmet that will get you ready to start up the level 70 instances at endgame. Grats!

Getting Rid of It: They all sell for different values, from about 2g for the cloth helmet, up to 4g for the plate version. Disenchanting any of them will hook you up with a Large Prismatic Shard.


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