I hit the jackpot with Skereye during the Greenskin Chapter 8 Public Quest today. I rolled highest for a golden bag and receiving my first WAR epic, a pair of boots: "Squigkickas of the Driven".

I kid you not, I ran the same PQ again to maximize my Influence and once again I won the roll on a golden bag. The epic was the same pair of boots of course, so I chose the next item in the bag, some blue shoulders: "Vilein Shouldateef".

Add to these the other blue items I obtained last night and today and suddenly my Squig Herder is covered in pretty damn good gear.

Some days, you just get lucky.

I'm loving the itemization of Warhammer, especially the visual appearance of the gear. They've hit some sort of sweet spot between reasonably realistic and clever, with the comedy still there right hanging from dangly bits and whatnot.

Check out this crab leg bow, it's of course nonsensical, but somehow it works and I love it:

I love the Trophies, which are basically classic battle fetishes that hang on your armour for good luck. Mythic was brilliant to implement these, the extra detail is awesome. Apparently my Squig Herder collects spoons rather than the usual fangs, knives, fingers and eyeballs:

Check out these beautiful crow-wing shoulders on Strix (Michelle's Zealot). You can't entirely see it from one screenshot, but they've included the underlying bone structure in a layer under the feathers, the modelling is fantastic.

To compare, I loathe the gaudy oversized shoulders in WoW. They eventually fit in with their overall sets, but I always felt so absurd wearing them. Blizzard has great art direction overall, but I was often disappointed in the gear.

Around the mid 30's or so, I started getting the feel for my Guardian's new gear. It was all consistent and authentic-looking chainmail, but I was worried about looking a little too shiny. I was definitely getting too much of a Arthurian 'Knight in shining armour' vibe.

Then I looted this hauberk variation that made it all fit together for me. The difference? It's stained and splattered with blood.

You could assume it's rust if you like, but I know it's blood. ;)

Update: I've posted a followup to this article.

Every once in awhile someone asks if I'd like to go back and do Zul'Gurub or Blackwing Lair just for fun. Yes I would, if it was fun. I'd love to go and redo old raids for a bit of nostalgia and to blast through it because it's easy now, right?

?? ("skull") Bosses

It is easy for people in raiding gear. Unfortunately, Blizzard's ?? Boss mechanic gets in the way if players are slightly lower level or undergeared. The problem is in the Hit system, which normally I love, with current content it creates a good separation between PvP, Raiding, Heroic and normal gear.

A ?? Boss is effectively 3 levels above the max player in attendance. At level 60-63, Hit calculations didn't scale very far, but now with 70-73 you need a lot of Hit gear (see this Hit chart). If you're not max level, or you're not "properly" geared in Hit rating for a level 73 Boss, then you're just along for the ride or the trash mobs (unless you're a healer of course), you're going to get a very large amount of resists / misses on the boss.

An Example:

One of my guildmates, Xandar (a Paladin) recently just switched to a tanking spec. He's been doing well with in normal 5-man instances so far, but he has 0 spell hit rating and only 51 melee hit rating, so he's going to have significant troubles holding aggro on a level 73 boss. That's all fine and well with current content, just give him time to collect gear for heroics and maybe raiding. But why should he be so limited on old content?

Soooooo.. and this is typically how it goes. People DO run the older instances, they bring along a mixed group of raiders and non-raiders alike. Maybe they have a good time. Some of the undergeared folks don't mind gettiing "run" through an instance whether or not their own attacks are as useful. But I've heard the frustrations from others when they encounter an old boss with resist, resist, resist, miss, miss, miss: it's more insulting than anything else the game can throw at them. They feel like failures at content that's old and supposedly easy.

Old content is broken

Onyxia, Ragnaros, Nefarian, Hakkar, C'Thun, Kel'Thuzad: These old bosses could be a great opportunity for casual players to catch raiding content that they were never able to do previously. But old bosses should be level 70, so they aren't completely trivial yet playable by all. They shouldn't be 73, which brings the Hit rating system into play.

I understand that Blizzard tried to use the ?? Boss mechanic to keep a bit of challenge, but it's so gear focussed that it just creates the widest imbalance between players. Raiding content is for geared raiders, even if it's old content. =(

Resistance gear entered my mind again for TBC after a humbling encounter with Steam Surgers in Heroic Steamvault. Some frost resist for those mobs would certainly come in handy.

I thought of Void Spheres: the +4 resist all socket gems. But would those cut it? Realistically, if I duplicated my gear, I could fill 15 to 19 sockets in total. That's only 60 to 76 resistance overall, which is still "poor" in the character pane, but it's sure nice to have one set for all schools of magic rather than multiples overflowing my bags. Plus, it'd be pretty awesome DPS for resistance gear. I could augment with rings, necklaces and offhands for a possible total of 169 resistance.

169 is a far cry from the max of ~370 resistance (see WoWWiki), but the max is based on level 73 mobs ala "??" raid bosses. For Heroics, where bosses are level 72, it may be more realistic.

Theorycraft can only go so far and real-world (or at least game-world, lol) results are more fun to obtain. =)

Without investing in expensive Void Spheres yet (35g each on my server's AH), I collected a set "of Shadow Protection" greens at cheap prices. I kept the resistance modest from my goal and tested with 151 Shadow Resist total. The mobs for my test were Wrath Corruptors @ Forge Camp Wrath in Blade's Edge (near Ogri'la). They spawn randomly between levels 70 to 72 and spam Shadow Bolts.

My results? After being hit with 200 Shadow Bolts, I resisted 36% (38% if full resists are accounted for) of the overall damage via partial resists. Much better damage mitigation than I thought it would be.

I'm going to start collecting a duplicate set of socket gear and fill them with Void Spheres. Once I've obtained my dream resistance set, I'll post results from actual Heroic runs.

Update: This post is probably outdated by now, although it's still a good indicator I recommend searching for current information. I won't be updating this since I'm no longer actively playing WoW.

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My guildmates and I have been discussing lately how often the To Hit stats are overlooked and how much they do impact gameplay. We've especially noticed that tanks lacking a decent amount of To Hit are much more likely to lose aggro in the high end instances. DPS classes also improve damage significantly by having appropriate hit gear.

Hit gear is especially important if you plan on doing Heroics or Raid instances where mob levels are typically higher.

Here's the simple table for a level 70 player, outlining the stats you should aim for:

Ranged (as in Hunter) is the same as Melee for these calculations. Melee counts as 2H or 1H + Shield. I don't have much info handy for offhand / dual-wielding situations where To Hit needed is much higher, but those are often greatly dependant upon talent spec. I've seen the dual-wielding penalty speculated as high as 25%.

Weapon Skill should be taken into account if you have any items, racials or talents. The calculations for Weapon Skill are more complex, but we can estimate approx. 2% hit per 5 skill. Some examples:

Earthwarden: Feral Combat Skill Rating 24 = actual "Feral" Weapon Skill 6 = ~2.1% To Hit.
Dwarf Racial: Gun Weapon Skill 5 = ~2% To Hit.
Human Racials: Sword / Mace Weapon Skill 5 = ~2% To Hit.

I can't take credit for these numbers, they're repeated in multiple places. Some sources: Combat Ratings @ WoWWiki, Spell Hit Rating @ Thottbot, Melee To Hit @ Thottbot and Zeisha's Hit Rating Guide @ Blizzard's forums.