Nov 09
15
Patch 3.3 and Icecrown Citadel items
So, I haven’t been able to make a blog in a few days. I’ve been busy with all sorts of things. Important things. I really just didn’t have time to sit down and write a proper blog with all the things I had to do. Alright, I have been busy playing Modern Warfare 2…
MMO-champion released a lot of items from 3.3 and I thought it would be a fine time to take a look at what the next patch has to offer us. We have a new idol, a pretty tier 10 armor set, and a bunch of items from the new Emblem of Frost. There are a lot of mixed oppinions on the new items, and I’d like to try and dwelve into them a bit more.
Tier 10 stats and bonuses
At first glance, the stats on Tier 10 are quite nice. If we go from ilevel 245 to lowest ilevel (251) of the Lasherweave Regalia, which is what you will initially buy from emblems of frost, we are stood to gain over 200 crit rating, but only 66 haste. This is going from 5 pieces to 5 pieces, ofcourse.
This is great because we are losing a lot of crit on our starfire when we finally let go of 2pt8, and we don’t really want that much more haste. If we only gain about 66 haste, we can probably work around it. I am not yet sure if we go for full crit gear by this point and are able to stay at 400 haste, or if we will start stacking haste to benefit starfire – because we have no other choice.
The tier 10 bonuses however, are not very exciting. I did some quick napkin math on the way home the other day, and bearing in mind that my math skills are equal to a fourth grader, I am not very impressed. I did these calculations from my current gear, and even assuming that I had 2pt8. I used a combat log from a Decontructor Hard mode kill on 25 man, because that fight is generally the one I prefer for any damage calculations and comparasons.
See the attached image. If my calculations are even remotely correct, we are looking at a 3,75% damage increase from 2 pieces, and a 2,9% damage increase from 4 pieces. Keep in mind that we will have more crit on our wraths due to gear, and that we will probably do faster starfires aswell because we can’t avoid the haste, so the bonuses might work differently on live, but at the moment they feel quite weak compared to what other classes are getting, or even our previous bonuses: 2pt8 and 2pt9 in particular.
At least there is no spirit on our tier items, and the hit is practically the same!
Idol of the Lunar Eclipse
Our new tier 10 idol is interesting. This generated a lot of grief right off the start, but I don’t feel that it is justified. Right off the bat, the increase we got from our Idol of Lunar Fury was a huge jump from our +spellpower to starfire idol. All our other idols, for wrath and the insect swarm, are quite lackluster, and the starfire idol only benefits one spell. Going from spellpower to a HUGE crit bonus is very nice. So if our next tier isn’t as big, I am not very fussed.
Secondly, I think people are underestimating just what kind of potential the new idol has. The Idol of Lunar Fury has a chance to proc, and even though its quite high, it is not up all the time. Even in the best of circumstances, it will fall off once in a while. In the Deconstructor combat log I linked above, I had an uptime of 90%. This means that we only really get 90% out of the idol. That turns 200 crit rating into 180. The Idol of the Lunar Eclipse will stack up really fast, and it will refresh itself on every single tick of either insect swarm or moonfire. I think its safe to assume, then, that it will have a near 100% uptime, and the times it falls off, would make Lunar Fury fall off anyways.
So if we go from 180 crit rating (with a 90% uptime) to 220 crit rating (with a 100% uptime), then that is a 22% increase in damage. These are very soft numbers, and I believe our uptime on other fights are lower than 90%, so the new idol is a very nice increase for us.
Emblem of Frost items
It seems that every armor class gets a chest, gloves and a waist. The leather chest has only haste on it (aswell as spirits), and I am not too keen on that. The cloth version, however, has haste and crit, so we have some interesting options for balancing out our stats. The trinket offered to casters is very disappointing. I dont think we will ever need to look for 152 hit, but there is bound to be some interesting items in Icecrown anyways.
Unfortunately we have not yet heard any news from Blizzard regarding Nature’s Grace, other than Ghostcrawlers blue post ages ago. How these bonuses and the lack of changes will affect us is still unkown, but I will remain moderately sceptical for the time being.
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