Arthas is finally available in Icecrown Citadel, and with him comes a nice little loot list. While I was a bit disappointed that he only seem to drop weapons, it does sort of make sense. We are more or less covered on every other item slot already.
I would never dream of posting any sort of spoilers (Dumbledore dies!), the loot list got me thinking about my previous BIS list and how each weapon combination compares to each other, and on normal versus heroic difficulty. As it turns out, my initial sloppy guess that going from normal to heroic was just a straight upgrade, was invalid.
In my comparasson, I didn’t bother to include Abracadaver because it’s generally not a very good moonkin weapon. I also completely disregarded Nibelung, because it’s pretty difficult to calculate on. Including loot from Arthas, we have the following viable weapon choices.
Archus, Greatstaff of Antonidas
Frozen Bonespike
Halion, Staff of Forgotten Love
Tel’Thas, Dagger of the Blood King
and the Royal Scepter of Terenas II.
What’s that, you say? A healer mace? What is this lunacy?! Well, as it turns out, its not actually a bad weapon, even if some of the item stats are wasted on mp5. You may remember Guiding Star from Ulduar, which was quite a good weapon in its time.
I went ahead and made a Google Spreadsheet, in my search to find out how these items actually compare against each other. Boy was I in for a suprise! You can see the spreadsheet here, and follow along: Click this link!
I went ahead and added up all the spell power, crit, haste and spirit across the items, and then calculated their value due to the weights set by Elitist Jerks. These are approximate values, ofcourse, but they should still give a fair overview of how the items compare against each other.
If you manage to kill Arthas on normal, and have full access to every piece of loot in the instance, Archus, Greatstaff of Antonidas seems to be the best weapon you can go for. Closely followed by that is the Frozen Bonespike with a Shadow Silk Spindle. While there isn’t a massive difference between Archus and the FB/SSS, Frozen Bonespike is much easier to go for in terms of availability. If you can kill Arthas, then you can kill the bosses dropping Frozen Bonespike and Shadow Silk Spindle.
But the tables are turned when we finally kill Arthas on heroic. Archus heroic seems to be a little bit under budget. It doesn’t increase its stats more than 10,58% and it retains it’s two sockets. This means that the Frozen Bonespike and Shadow Silk Spindle surpasses it in value if both are heroic. But beating both Frozen Bonespike and Archus is the wild card of today: The Royal Scepter of Terenas II!
Royal Scepter of Terenas II has the biggest increase from normal to heroic. This mace, along with a Shadow Silk Spindle, will net you nothing less than 1012 spell power alone, provided you have access to the heroic versions. The stats from this combo are increased by a massive 18,55%, and even though it has some unwanted mp5, it comes out in a massive lead above anything else.
These items may, ofcourse, be changed in the future. Archus seems to need some love, and The Royal Scepter of Terenas II seems to be a tad over budget. But if you are wondering what kind of upgrades you should dream about when you go to bed, here is the rundown:
From normal Icecrown Citadel 25, your best in slot will either be Archus or FB/SSS, with a small lead for Archus. If you are tough enough to get down Arthas on heroic 25 man, and then survive a rigorous attack from your healers, the Royal Scepter and Shadow Silk Spindle wins by a massive lead, but before you get this, you will probably pick up a Frozen Bonespike before.
UPDATE! There seems to be some debate on Archus’ stats on 25 man heroic. Sigrie reports it to have three sockets, while Wowhead sais it has two. I have changed the spreadsheet to reflect three sockets, which brings it slightly over FB/SSS.
These seem to be your options if you really want to min/max your stats. On a positive note, the Royal Scepter of Terenas II looks really, really neat. Tel’Thas looks excactly like Frozen Bonespike, and while Archus has a special look as well, the 10 man staff from Arthas looks excactly like Nibelung.
Looks are important, aight?
PS. On a sidenote, it seems that Nibelung got a stealth nerf. It no longer seems to proc off starfall, which is too bad, but not a terrible loss. I still saw it proc plenty of times off regular attacks, but I do feel overall that I would be a bit more confident with a solid weapon compared to Nibelungs current.. defects.
PPS. Don’t you just love upgrades? I am always completely on the boss when we do Lady Deathwhisper, and despite a mind control, I’d say I did quite well for a stand-and-nuke fight. Ofcourse, the buff to Earth and Moon probably isn’t solely responsible for this, but it’s still the right kind of nice.
Tags: BIS, Icecrown Citadel
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The Frozen Throne (10 player)
Fall of the Lich King (10 player)
5 Coins of Ancestry
Hi Quieth,
Nice damage and a nice run-down of the weapons. I haven’t specced balance since I was levelling, but I do get tempted when I read your blog.
Belated congratulations on making moderator on mmo-champion as well.
Unglar
UPDATE! There seems to be some debate on Archus’ stats on 25 man heroic. Sigrie reports it to have three sockets, while Wowhead sais it has two. I have changed the spreadsheet to reflect three sockets, which brings it slightly over FB/SSS.
Are you sure Nibelung got a nerf so it doesn’t proc off starfall?
I need to try this on a dummy(ies).
In any event, the weapon got buffed today so they will proc twice as often in any event.
Do you have a source for that? I did see GC say that there were a few unintentional changes, but I don’t recall seeing him specifically saying it got buffed.
These meters prove that the rest of your DPS is bad. Your mages, shadow priests and hunters couldn’t pull 9k+?
My mages and hunters were on adds. Admittedly, the rogues did terrible this time. Our WOL for that fight is here: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/46460kll7m55g81s/sum/damageDone/?s=4032&e=4306. You’ll notice that the Shadow Priest who was on the boss did nearly as much as your own shadow priest, but that the fight is generally longer. Im thinking, perhaps we should just stick more DPS on the boss, and let fewer care about the adds. That might shorten the fight duration considerably.
Here’s your WOL for Deathwhisper this week: http://worldoflogs.com/reports/aw3pywupwlpn6pbe/sum/damageDone/?s=1505&e=1716
I really dont mean to sound rude, but you seem to be very quick to point fingers without checking if it might be the same in your own guild.
You have just four people pulling more than 9k DPS. Your mages or hunters didn’t pull 9k either. Your mages do between 6-7,5k DPS. So, by your own argument, does that mean that your guild suck as well?
Ofcourse not! There are so many factors to take into account. Simply because a class is capable of reaching a theoretical max, it doesn’t mean it will happen.
The argument is completely invalid for reasons i have mentioned a gazillion times before: Fight time, tactics, composition, raid assignments etc.
You shouldn’t beat yourself, your guild, or my guild up over this. Whats important is if A) You clear encounters, and B) How people compare against each other.
I don’t mean to insult. I’m going to state facts here.
We had 14 dps break 7k. You had 7.
It is about killing bosses, and Escapism hasn’t. You’re ranked 1500+ in the world for all tiers where we are top 200. I’m not trying to brag, but you aren’t seeing the quality players and raid that those in my position are. You killed Algalon in mostly ICC and ToGC gear. That’s like a Sunwell guild going back and killing Kaelthas. Not a big achievement.
You may ask why I’m bashing your guild and you. I’m not. I think you’re a well played moonkin. The problem I have is that you are in a high profile position between a successful blog and your position on mmo, and you constatnly claim moonkin are fine. Blizzard only fixes things once there is enough public outcry. Your don’t worry attitude is hurting those of us experiencing cutting edge content, and sadly your guild isn’t there, you can’t understand our dps issues with the class.
Still, out of some 20-30.000 guilds who has made *decent* progress in ICC, top 1500 isn’t excactly in the lower end. There are only some 1600 guilds that has ever cleared Anub heroic, less than 10% of the guilds who are capable of gearing up in ICC.
Am i fine with the current position of moonkins? Sure. Would i like a buff? Naturally. Would i accept if we don’t get that? Absolutely. I see that, as we progress, there is a certain gap because of our scaling, which could change my stance to “acceptable”. Blizzard has taken steps to minimize that, however, by giving us a little buff.
But lets say that when everybody is in BIS gear, the high damage dealers could be doing 12k DPS, and moonkins could be doing 10k. I would be perfectly fine with that damage difference, or at least, it wouldn’t bother me much – it wouldn’t make people stop bringing moonkins to raids. I would still consider it comparable, even with a 2k DPS difference at that point.
I realise that me being an active person may have an impact on other players views on our class. They can either decide if they disagree with me, or if they are as fine with the situation as I am. I dont think we will ever be in a position where any raid guild brings only mages and rogues, because “they do the highest damage”. I think we do well enough to make us viable, but i obviously wouldn’t discount a buff.
I had a look at some logs from another moonkin in a guild that is world #350ish at the moment. Said moonkin wasn’t on top of the meters, but he was comfortable with the core of the DPS group. The DPS differences isn’t massive at this area, and im perfectly fine if that is the result we end up with.
It really boils down to where our tolerance is. I think that too many people look at top damage lists, or even get a biased oppinion when viewing other peoples logs, and decide that “if they cant do that, then their class suck”. I think my tolerance level is fairly large. If i did 9k DPS in your raid group, and there were 5 people over me, i wouldn’t really mind – id still be comparable to the majority of the raid group.
Great post and great comments on weapons, you are clearly a good boomkin.
I’d like to comment on the dps metre, you didn’t state in the original post that you’d been on the boss the whole time and who wasn’t, so people are probably really impressed that you did so much dps, assuming you participated as much in the overall fight as other dps.
About boomkins needing a buff… Sure we might not be the strongest damage dealers, but we do bring way more buffs than most other classes: 5%spellcrit, 3%spellhaste, 3%spellhit, Earth&Moon and GotW (plus maybe some more I can’t think of atm). I do think Blizzard justifies our bad dps by giving us all this. If you have a boomkin, you don’t need Ele shammy’s Oath, don’t need Ret Pala’s Swift Retribution, don’t need Spriest’s Misery and don’t need Lock’s Curse of the Elements. Get a boomkin and replace all those with more Mages will be more dps increase for the overall group. xD
You’re right, Bestur. That was a complete slip of the mind. Stupid brain..
There is a post on mmo-champion about future change in LK weapons. The one we are interested in is Royal Scepter of Terenas II change: haste instead of mp5. Great change imo )
Yeah, i saw that. Assuming its a straight mp5 to haste, it will put the Royal Scepter even more ahead of anything else for us. Also, i wont have to hear the healers complain over me taking it