The first thing to mention, is that this content is currently being tested. Information might change over the next few days (possibly weeks). We’ll do our best to keep the guides updated with the most recent hotfixes, but for now they seem to be nearly completed, except for the numbers, which need to be tweaked a bit to make them fit the desired difficulty level.

1. High Priest Venoxis.

A fight with a lot of visual and shiny effects. However rather easy to execute properly, unlike other bosses here. As you pull him, poison will begin to draw lines across the room you will be fighting, drawing a random maze shape. Of course, if you stand on the poison you will receive a lot of damage and most likely die in no time.

One of his main abilities is called Whisper of Hesis. A channeled Poison Spit that  should be interrupted to minimize the damage your group takes.

Venoxis will also cast a link in between 2 players. And this link deals damage proportional to the distance between the two of them. The closer the players are, the more damage they will take, and the one way to get rid of this ability is to move far enough so that the link breaks.

Due to the nature of the fight, and because of the maze limiting your positions, your ranged DPS should spread out initially to deal with the poison link as soon as you can.

Once the boss hits 75% health, he will transform into a snake and gain new abilities. First of all, he will often put slime underneath him, so your tank should be ready to move him, so that the melee DPS can continue to attack. He will also cast Breath of Hesis, which is a 2 second cast breath that deals a lot of damage. Your tank should be able to avoid this ability by moving behind the boss as you see the cast begin.

Eventually, he will cast Bloodvenom and go to the top of the platform. He will then cast random poison beams that chase players around the maze. If you have a beam targeting you, do your best to run away without touching the walls of the maze, otherwise you might die. Simply avoid these beams until the boss gets exhausted.

Right after this ability is over, the boss will get stunned in the middle of the room and become exhausted, taking 100% more damage for a few seconds. Make sure you save your big DPS cooldowns for this moment. After that, the fight will repeat itself until you defeat him.

2. Bloodlord Mandokir.

This is a pretty straight forward fight. The main idea of this boss remains unchanged from the original fight. Every time a player dies during this encounter, Bloodlord Mandokir will level up, increasing the damage he deals by 20%. He will begin the fight mounted on his raptor, and every so often he will randomly charge at any group member and cast decapitate, which effectively 1 shots the player. Once you die, a chained ghost will resurrect you, and give you a stacking buff that increases damage and healing you do by 25%, also increasing damage you take by 10%. However, there is a limited number of ghosts on the arena, so you have to kill Mandokir before it is too late.

Bloodlord Mandokir will also command his raptor to charge and destroy one of the ghosts. If you don’t feel comfortable with your DPS to beat him in time, you will have to swap targets and kill the raptor before he does any harm. And be prepared to fight the raptor once again, as he will be resurrected many times throughout the fight.

Finally, Bloodlord Mandokir will also cast Devastating Slam, a 2 sec channeled ability that makes him leap into the air and deal a lot of damage in one particular direction. This spell has a really obvious animation in a frontal cone around the direction the boss faces, and you should move away from it as soon as you can. Also be aware of a life drain that will be casted randomly. This ability drains 50% of the targets current health every 2 seconds, and heals Bloodlord Mandokir for 50% of the damage dealt. However just like Anub’arak on Trial of the Coliseum, this ability has a limit, which is 2500 damage dealt per tick. So you should only heal the affected target slightly, making sure they remain above 2500 health, to minimize the healing requirements, as well as the amount of HP the boss heals.

At 20%, he will go into a frenzy, increasing his damage, and the frequency at which he decapitates people, giving the fight a soft enrage. Make sure you save DPS, tanking and healing cooldowns for this phase.

3. High Priestess Kilnara.

The Panther boss, and perhaps the toughest one on this dungeon. This fight revolves around your ability to keep things under control while pushing your group’s capabilities to the max.

The boss herself is rather simple and does not deal a lot of physical damage. She has a few abilities you can interrupt to minimize damage, and some kind of frontal cone attack that should be avoided. But the main focus of this fight lies within the adds.

All around the room you will see groups of panthers sleeping in packs of 4. Just like the trash before the boss, the panthers randomly leap on targets and leave a very nasty bleed debuff on them. Dealing with 4 panthers at a time can be a nuisance if your group is not geared enough.

The trick is to simply pull the panthers in small groups, be it 2 at a time, or 4 at a time, depending on your gear and skill, and deal with them before touching the boss. If you are having problems just pull the panthers a bit slower, give your healer time to catch up, as there is no rush here.

Once the boss reaches 50%, she will shift into her panther form. Any unkilled panther adds will wake up and attack your group at this point, which is why you must make sure all the panthers are dead. The boss will gain a haste debuff, and increase tank damage considerably, as well as leap on your group members leaving a bleed debuff.

Overall, the fight is not too difficult as long as you keep things under control and bring the pace of the fight to an adequate one for your group.

4. Zanzil.

One of the easier fights if you know what you’re doing. Zanzil has only 2 main abilities that remain active during the whole fight.
One of them is an interruptible cast that deals about 40k damage. Do your best to interrupt it as it will greatly minimize the amount of damage going on.
The other ability is a trail of blue fire that goes in one random direction. Simply move the boss away from this, if you’re a DPS or a healer, don’t stand on top of it.

Besides these 2 abilities, Zanzil will randomly cast one out of 3 abilities. Each ability will have 1 color associated, and you will be able to see the color on your raid warnings. Depending on what happens, you will have to drink the cauldrons located within the room, so that you can deal with the mechanics accordingly. Not taking the appropriate cauldron, or taking the wrong one can easily get you killed in no time.
Resurrection Elixir: This is the blue colored ability. It will resurrect a Zanzili Berserker to attack random enemies. Your group will have to drink the blue cauldron, and kill the berserker as soon as they can, before the next ability happens. 1 random group member will be focused by the berserker, and they will have to kite it, as they hit really hard and might even 1 shot non tanks.

Zanzil’s Graveyard Gas: This is the green colored ability. It will flood the room with toxic gas that deals 10% of the player’s health every second, and it can be really hectic to heal if you are not prepared. However if you drink the green cauldron, you will reduce nature damage taken by 90%, so you end up taking only 1% of your max health damage per second, which is really easy to heal. The trick is to react quick!

Zanzil’s Zombie Resurrection Elixir: This is the red colored ability. It will resurrect a group of zombies to attack your group. You will have to drink from the red cauldron to increase your AoE capabilities and be able to deal with the zombies as quickly as possible. However remember that this can also bring a lot of friendly fire in your group. Once the zombies are dead, dispel yourself to minimize the damage on both yourself and the group.

The fight is a repetition of these 3 abilities on any random order, combined with the first 2. Just be ready to drink the appropiate cauldron in time, and you’ll kill this boss in no time.

5. Jin’do the Godbreaker.

This is a 2 phased fight, and the first half is rather simple. His main ability during phase one is a dead zone, which is an anti magic shield type of effect, that reduces magical damage taken by targets in the zone by 90%. Phase one boils to dragging the boss and your group inside and outside of this zone at the appropriate time, as he will randomly cast a buff on himself called Shadows of Hakkar, that will cause him to deal around 130k additional lightning damage to the target and 10 nearby allies on every successful hit. If you are not standing inside the dead zone as this happens, you will most certainly get 1 shotted, so make sure to react quick enough!

Once the Jin’do reaches 50%, phase 2 will begin, and you will be teleported into the spirit realm. In here Jin’do will be behind Hakkar, casting Shadow Spike very often, these are blue fireballs that must be avoided, very much like the ones on the Halfus encounter, done by the proto behemoth. He will also summon a lot of spirits, and these must be picked up by your tanks immediately, and AoE’d down by your group before they get out of control, until the fight ends.

Inside the spirit realm you will see Hakkar trapped by 4 chains, and your goal is to release him in order to kill Jin’do. However the only way to release him is to get assistance from the spirits of the trolls you killed on your way there.

Pull the giant troll spirits and start DPSing them down once again. Your group will have to stack on top of the chains, along with the troll. As the troll’s smash is the only thing that can break the chains. Just remember that once the smash happens, there will be a ground effect that deals additional damage, and increases damage taken by 50%. Take advantage of this to DPS and kill down the chain, but don’t stand on top of it, or you might die!

Continue to pull the troll spirits and kill all 4 chains, as you avoid the shadow spikes, and kill the spirits that keep spawning. Once you manage to release Hakkar, he will kill Jin’do and the encounter will end.

Overall the second phase can get very chaotic. Just keep things under control, and take your time. Make sure the spirits are killed in time, and deal with the big trolls breaking the chains when you are ready for it, not before.

The whole instance has a really unique design, and some really interesting mechanics. Overall it will be an adequate challenge to the majority of the population, and it contains some really attractive gear to help you focus with raid progression.

Just to finish with this guide, we did not cover the Cache of Madness, which is the 4 optional & random bosses that can be spawned if you have a minimum of 450 archaeology skill. However these did not seem to pose a difficult challenge compared to the others. We will post a new guide about these soon!

As we set up positioning I am constantly spamming my PoH to make sure my group is always in range of me so that none of them dies from that lovely little debuff of low health (creative name there blizzard). With the increased effectiveness of CoH I am able to cover two groups with ease, allowing more heals to be focused towards the tanks. Until the last phase I spend my entire time in my AoE heal stance to get the bonus effectiveness of it, the lower CD on CoH, along with the benefit to renew which I always place on all 3 tanks during the fight.

So I use healbot (OMG what a baddie :P) and make a customized debuff called “low health”, this way when any raid member is in the “oh sh*t might die zone” their raid frame turns pitch black for me, and only once they are healed up to above 10k do they go back to normal on my screen, it helps me track it a little better rather than number watching. Generally I use binding heals on single targets to gain Serendipity for when 3 or more in a group get the debuff so I gain the hasted Prayer of Healing. Binding heal is one of the best spells in the game for this fight as a priest, for one it guarantees that I am always in the safe zone, for two it gains Serendipity as I already mentioned, and lastly it is a fast cast. Often there is the situation where 2 in one group have the debuff and 3 in my other group have it, this is where priest OPness comes into play. I ALWAYS have at least one stack of serendipity up at all times so i do a power PoH on one group and CoH the other, BAM everyone is safe. Mastery plays a huge part in this fight due to the fact that if someone I just healed gets the debuff again, they have my mastery and my glyph of PoH ticking on them right away, sometimes making my life easier not having to direct heal them again.

Prayer of Mending on this fight is a bit tricky, sometimes it is great and bouncing between all 3 tanks repeatedly and other times it’s being useless and sitting on a random player. So during the “spread out” phase it isn’t my number one priority to keep on cd. If you don’t know the fight it looks deceiving for the healing department but truth be told there is a lot of down time for regen, which is great :). I have adopted the role of guardian spirit on the main tank  for Feuds 1 and 3. In theory this sounds great but blizzard can’t be relied on to make the encounters timers span apart perfectly so sometimes it is a little touch and go but for the most part it works out great.

For the Feud I place my Sanctuary circle, start running and apply GS/renew as I make my way to the group up point. I discovered the addon Recount hated this fight so I always have it disabled or else I am in a lag fest for when we group up. Once there I use CoH, one binding heal followed by PoH, rinse and repeat on all the groups. I am so proud of my guild members because I have an alert set up to tell me who clicked my lightwell and during that phase it is constantly going off! Directly after the first shut down I use my trinket to return ~6k mana to bump me back up a little bit. I also use shadow fiend fairly early to ensure I can use it twice, usually the 2nd time is during Mortality.
Our raid leader has it set up for when all the players with healing cds (tranquility, divine hymn, etc) should use them, I am not going to lie, when it is my turn and the group appears to be doing fine on heals I save Divine Hymn for the time right before we hit mortality. This is all dependent on if we fell behind on healing during the shutdowns. I don’t recommend doing this for fear your raid leader will have your head, mine likes me I think so when he reads this I won’t be in too much trouble :P.

Alright so we just transitioned into mortality. Here is our disc priest’s time to shine. Due to the high mana cost of the shields he throws out we have a rotation of Hymn of Hope set up so he can continuously spam. For this specific encounter I always glyph smite so that I can think I am helping a little bit. To be honest I have no idea how much my dps contributes during this phase due to the fact its around 2k but it makes me feel better and useful so I just don’t care. I usually pick a spot near the wall so that I can life grip one of Chimaeron’s targets away from him to buy us some time and then proceed to dot/smite/chastise until he is dead or I am dead. Depending how the disc priests mana looks I may or may not bubble myself to let him focus on others.
If you are a priest struggling to do this fight or just hate it, hopefully after reading this you may think of it differently on how well designed it is for a holy priest!

Helmet: Tsanga’s Helm Bastion of Twilight Trash Drop
Weapon: Malevolence Halfus Wyrmbreaker
Shoulders: Poison Protocol Spaulders Omnitron Defense Mechanism
Hands: Double Attack Handguards*** Chimaeron
Chest: Sark of the Unwatched Atramedes
Relic: Relic of Golganneth Valor Points
Belt: Wind Stalker belt of the Windstorm Conclave of the Winds
Legs: Stormrider’s Legguards Valor Points
Wrist: Parasitic Bands Magmaw
Feet: Storm Rider’s Boots Halfys Wyrmbreaker
Cape: Cloak of Biting Chill Maloriak
Rings: Mistral Circle of the Windstorm Conclave of the Winds
Lightning Conductor Band Omnitron Defense Mechanism
Trinkets: Symbiotic Worm Magmaw
Vial of Stolen Memories/a> Valiona and Theralion
Neck: Necklace of Strife Valiona and Theralion

Note: For random enchants, windstorm is your best combination (crit & mastery).

The first thing you need to consider when making gear choices is your own professions. Are you an engineer? a leatherworker? a blacksmith? a jewelcrafter? Can you afford to buy the materials to get the crafted gear? The second thing is to prioritize reputation gains. Several factions offer specific epic items and a wide variety of enchants. You should focus on the ones that give you the stuff you need, for this blog post I will focus on tanking gear and enchants.

This list does not reflect a perfect BiS selection. This expansion blizzard is offering a lot of choices within the initial gear. All of these have the same main stats (agility and stamina), and the only thing that changes in between choices is the combat ratings, which should be your main focus. As a tank you will want to focus on mastery and critical strike rating above other status. Hit and Expertise is not as important as it used to be, and haste is simply the worse secondary stat you could find on gear.

When reforging your gear, you should focus on dodge > mastery > critical strike rating => expertise > hit rating > haste.
Expertise actually provides more critical strike rating than crit itself does (but only at low expertise levels). However if your expertise is nearing the dodge soft cap, then crit will become more valuable. Regardless, the difference in between the two is really small.

Keep in mind that with stamina normalization, and the increased benefit from agility for bears, DPS gear is most of the times our best choice for tanking, simply because agility provides us with more threat, dodge and critical strike rating, much better than dodge itself and a minor stamina gain. This is not true for every single slot however, some cases a tanking piece might be slightly better.

***Epic item

Helmet:
Agile Bio-Optic Killshades*** Engineering only.
Helm of Numberless Shadows Heroic Stonecore.
Mask of Vines Justice Points.

Weapon:
Elementium Poleaxe Crafted Blacksmithing.
Seliza’s Spear Heroic Lost City of the Tol’vir.
Darkling Staff Heroic Stonecore.
Spear of Trailing Shadows Exalted with Baradin’s Warden.

Shoulders:
Embrace of the Night Justice Points.
Caridean Epaulettes Heroic Throne of the Tides.
Thieving Spaulders Heroic Shadowfang Keep.

Hands:
Stormbolt Gloves*** Exalted with the Wildhammer Clan.
Gloves of Haze Heroic Vortex Pinnacle.
Sticky Fingers Justice Points.

Chest:
Assassin’s Chestplate*** Crafted Leatherworking (Hit Rating).
ADefias Brotherhood Vest Heroic Deadmines.
Tunic of Sinking Envy Justice Points.
Vest of Misshapen Hides Heroic Grim Batol.

Relic:
Relic of Arathor Heroic Shadowfang Keep.
Sandshift Relic Heroic Blackrock Caverns.
Silver Inlaid Leaf Inscription Crafted.

Belt:
Belt of Nefarious Whispers*** Crafted Leatherworking (Hit Rating).
Quicksand Belt Revered with Ramkahen.
Red Beam Cord Heroic Halls of Origination.
Sash of Musing Justice Poiots.

Legs:
Leggings of the Burrowing Mole Justice Points.
Beauty’s Chew Toy Heroic Blackrock Caverns.

Wrist:
Double Dealing Bracers Heroic Shadowfang Keep.
Poison Fang Bracers Heroic Halls of Origination.

Feet:
Crafty’s Gaiters Heroic Lost City of the Tol’vir.
VanCleef’s Boots Heroic Deadmines.
Boots of the Predator Heroic Shadowfang Keep.

Cape:
Wrap of the Great Turtle*** Guardians of Hyjal Exalted.
Softwind Cape Revered with Earthen Ring.
Twitching ShadowsHeroic Blackrock Caverbs
Kaleki Cloak Heroic Lost City of the Tol’vir.
Cape of the Brotherhood Heroic Deadmines.

Rings:
Signet of the Elder Council*** Exalted with the Earthen Ring.
Elementium Destroyer Crafted by Jewelcrafters.
Skullcracker Ring Heroic Blackrock Caverns.
Terrath’s Signet of Balance Revered with Therazane.

Trinkets:
Lifebound Alchemist Stone*** Alchemist Only.
Mirror of Broken Images*** Exalted with Baradin’s Warden.
Unsolvable Riddle*** Exalted with Baradin’s Warden.
Figurine – Earthen Guardian Jewelcrafting Only.
Left eye of Rahj Heroic Halls of Origination.
Heart of Thunder Heroic Vortex Pinnacle.
Porcelain Crab Heroic Throne of the Tides .
Leaden Despair Heroic Stonecore.

Neck:
Mouth of the Earth Heroic Halls of Origination.
Acorn of the Daughter Tree Revered with Guardians of Hyjal.
Entwined Elementium Choker Crafted by Jewelcrafters.
Amulet of Dull Dreaming Justice Points.
Pendant of the Lightless Grotto Heroic Stonecore.

1.  Glubtok

Glubtok consists of 2 phases. During phase one, he will randomly cast fists of fire or fists of frost. Both of these abilities will make him do extra fire or frost damage on its current target. Which can be deadly combined with his blink, which he will do very often. Whenever he blinks he will instantly drop all threat on the current target, so your tank will need to taunt him right away to ensure the fists don’t hit anybody else on the raid. This will continue to happen until you reach 50%, and he will begin casting Arcane Power, floating on the middle of the room. At the same time he will create a moving lava wall that will slowly rotate clockwise. Your group will need to be in constant motion to avoid getting hit by the fire. Besides the fire, he will cast avalanche and its fire equivalent, you will be able to see the animation on the floor, so make sure to stay away from those marks, as they hit for a considerable amount of damage. On top of that, several elemental adds will spawn non stop, at an increased rate until the boss dies, so you will need to balance in between boss and adds DPS.

2. Helix Gearbreaker.

Helix will be on top of a Lumbering Oaf, which you will need to defeat as well. As the fight starts, several goblins on top of the room will begin to throw bombs on random locations, these will explode after a few seconds, so make sure you stay away from them. The Lumbering Oaf will also randomly grab a member and smash them across the wall, make sure your group members stay away from the middle rail, otherwise they will get smashed as well. Once you kill the Lumbering Oaf, Helix Gearbreaker will jump on random raid members and hit them with melee attacks. At this point your group needs to focus him down, while avoiding the bombs that will continue to spawn. Helix will put also attack a bomb on somebody’s chest. That person will need to run away from the group, to prevent the explosion from hitting more than one player at a time, as the damage can very easily get out of control.

3. Foe Reaper 5000

To beat this fight you will need one of your DPSers to take control of the Experimental Reaper machine, that can be found on the entrance of the room. This vehicle has 3 abilities, the first one deals melee damage and generates steam power, needed for the other 2 abilities. The second is a 3 second stun, and the third one is a knock back. You will need all these 3 abilities to deal with the molten slags that spawn throughout the fight, so that they never reach your group.  Foe Reaper 5000 itself is very similar to Lord Marrowgar. You should pull him up the ramp, so that the molten slags have a long distance to your group. He will cleave, so stay away from his front. He also does Overdrive very often, which will make him spin out of control, dealing melee damage to anyone near his range until it’s over.

Finally, Foe Reaper 5000 will randomly target a group member and cast Harvest, which is a 4 second cast. If you are the one targeted, you should move away from your current location, as the boss will then proceed to charge towards that position, and deal enough damage to anybody on that direction, enough to kill even a geared tank.  Once the boss reaches 20%, his safety restrictions will be turned off, and he will deal 100% more melee damage, which applies to all of his attacks. At this point it turns into a DPS race, so make sure you save all your big cooldowns to burn him down as quickly as you can.

4. Admiral Ripsnarl

After Foe Reaper 5000, you will encounter Admiral Ripsnarl. He will have a buff called Thirst for Blood, which will increase his attack speed by 10% every time he deals a successful attack, stacking up to 20 times. So as the fight progresses, he will deal a lot more damage. Randomly he will cast Go for the Throat, an instant cast in which he will grab a random group member, stun them and deal melee damage on to them, this is unavoidable. He also has a swipe, that hits his main target, as well as 2 other nearby group members, so you should do your best to spread out. A few seconds into the fight, he will summon fog that will cover the entire room. Vapors will emerge from the fog periodically, and they don’t have a lot of health, however if you leave them alone, the fog will empower them, and increase their size, HP and damage. They also have a cone of frost attack, so you should try your best to stay away from them.

The vapors will continue to spawn for the entire duration, and their spawn rate will increase as the fight goes on, so be ready to kill them as quick as you can, before their damage goes out of control. Once he reaches 10% he will summon about 5 vapors at once, and just like many other bosses, you should save your major DPS cooldowns for this point, to ensure that he dies before your group does.

5. “Captain” Cookie.

Cookie will jump on his stew and start to randomly throw food at your group members. As you may notice, there is good food, and bad food. If you stand anywhere close to the bad food, you will take a considerable amount of damage, so you should avoid it. Also, if you eat the bad food, you will throw it out, and take even more damage over time. The good food has a golden glow attached to it, and whenever you eat it, you will gain increased movement, attack, and casting speed, and you can continue to eat more good food and stack the buff even more. Cookie has significantly more HP than other bosses, and you will need to stack your haste as much as possible to defeat him before the poisonous food covers all the floor. Once you defeat Cookie, you will encounter the final boss; Vanessa Van Cleef, which is perhaps one of the most epic 5 man bosses ever created, which we will cover on our next guide, so stay tuned!

6. Other tips.

Deadmines is not an easy instance to do. Perhaps not as hard as Blackrock Caverns, but it can still be somewhat challenging, specially on lower gear levels. Make sure you have reliable humanoid crowd control, as some of the trash packs can be tricky to do properly without.

What separates the “hard core” gamer from the more casual one is not necessarily the amount of time devoted to playing the game, but rather the willingness to tolerate failure and try again.

On the face of it, this phrase is just a re-tooling of the “if at first you don’t succeed” motto but if we take a closer look we can see that there’s a lot more going on in here when we apply it to an MMO. Specifically, when talking about an MMO you need to be able to tolerate the failures of others as well as your own. Everyone is going to individually make mistakes or fail but when you add another 9 or 24 people into the mix it changes everything. Most notably, our relative perception of failure.

Suddenly, everyone is failing so much more than you are. In fact, I’d venture to say that in a 25man raid, “other players” are failing 24 times more often than you. And that’s where the real gamers prevail, the gamers who know that the more people you add to the mix, the more often failure will show it’s ugly head.

Raids are going to wipe – a lot – and a good portion of the time it’s going to have nothing to do with you and there’s nothing that you specifically could have done. It’s out of your hands. How you choose to deal with your own failures and more importantly the failures of others will define you as a gamer and as a person.

That is what you will discover as you read along!

While I personally try to aim for plate upgrades, there are items that are deemed as BiS (best in slot) which are both leather AND mail for Fury. These include:

Bracers of Dark Determination
Belt of Deathly Dominion
Icewalker Treads
Sabatons of Ruthless Judgment

The items above have plate counterparts which would be widely considered as the “actual” BiS, but for Arms, these are absolute BiS:

Bracers of the Untold Massacre
Legguards of the Lurking Threat

They are BOTH mail! What’s the deal here?!

Armor does not matter

In the grand scheme of things, your armor won’t make a bit of difference in your performance. Yes, perhaps you will have more success off-tanking something in an emergency situation, and you’ll probably have a few more points of AP from Armored to the Teeth compared to a leather or mail piece, but if you are talking about your best dps performance, armor really doesn’t matter. Leather and mail also tend to have way less stamina on them compared to plate pieces.

Leather and Mail have more stats

This is the primary reason why leather and mail pieces persevere over plate. Blizzard has every intention on wanting plate items to be the best for plate wearing classes, but they have not done 100% good on that vision. The only way that I can accurately explain the differences is by comparing pieces, so lets get to it!

Gloves of the Silver Assassin VS Gloves of Bitter Reprisal

Ignoring the sockets, we see that the leather piece has agility, crit, attack power, and armor penetration. The plate one has strength, crit, and armor penetration. 4 stats vs 3 stats is already leaning towards the leather piece, but lets not forget that 107 strength on the plate gloves equates to 214 static attack power, which is way beyond the leather piece! However, the leather piece has two stats that adds to crit – Agility and Critical Strike Rating. Knowing that for every 62.5 agility a warrior has equates to 1% crit, 97 agility roughly equals to be 1.55% crit, which means you are potentially grabbing 2.88% crit just on a pair of gloves! It looks like a close call – now lets add the sockets. The leather piece wins. Will it ALWAYS win in EVERY situation? That solely depends on your current gear, but unless you are way beyond the crit cap, then they will generally be better.

Sabatons of Ruthless Judgment VS Greaves of the 7th Legion

Once again, we see the 4 stats VS 3 stats happening between these two items. This scenario is a bit different because the mail boots contribute to 4 different stats instead of “double dipping” in crit. Generally, Fury warriors do not need a lot of hit (4% from gear for Alliance and 5% for Horde), so the mail boots may not seem to be such a huge upgrade until you start collecting most of your other BiS pieces, which don’t have hit on them. While the mail boots may not “double dip” in crit, it certainly provides a strong case to be “double dipping” in power. Strength + ArP is an amazing combination on plate, and the mail boots have its own version of it in attack power and ArP while the plate ones do not have that combination. The Sabatons also nearly have as much crit as the plate boots (98 agility ~ 1.56% crit VS 76 crit rating = 1.66%). However, you cannot forget what else the plate boots have: Expertise! Expertise and hit rating are always top priority in reaching the soft cap before taking care of any other stat as Fury, so the real question is whether you need the expertise on the boots or not. If you need it, the plate boots would be better, but if you are talking about overall, raw offensive stats, along with needing the hit, the mail boots are the clear winner.

I can continue to compare items and note all the differences, but I hope I’ve made it clear in the top two examples how leather and mail pieces fiercely compete with plate itemization.

I really have just one major suggestion that would more than likely fix the problem and keep plate wearers away from leather:

Give Strength a crit component

Strength already gives 2 attack power for each point of strength, and Improved Berserker Stance already rewards us for using strength, but that hasn’t proven to be enough to sway warriors from picking up other pieces. The primary reason why leather is picked up is because the amount of crit + agility on the gear usually outweighs the extra attack power you would have gained from picking up strength, especially when armor penetration is on the leather piece. Since strength is the only stat on our gear that makes plate stand out to be on its own, that seems to be the only logical stat to buff. If this is done on plate gear, it does not touch the effectiveness of leather and mail gear for other classes while making strength even more appealing and (hopefully) permanently “the” stat to go for. I would say to make the change through the warrior talents, but since other plate classes occasionally run into the same “problem” we do, it would just make most sense to just make strength give crit. How much crit? However much would be balanced! I would also prefer to make agility less attractive in the process to not make the strength buff seem too overwhelming.

Now, I’m sure Blizzard isn’t on “blue alert” about this problem in itemization because while it’s an annoying fact we have to deal with, it’s not an epidemic. Tier really helps out with this problem and we only see it on a few slots, but it’s there. I’m sure fixing the problem is beyond a simple stat change, but I can certainly dream! :D

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Ladies of Destiny is an end game raiding guild on the Scarlet Crusade server. Our goal with this blog will be to offer our members a platform to write about and discuss class mechanics, theorycraft, guild issues, content and strategy. Given our longevity, stability, and the success we’ve had we hope that the topics we write about will help other guilds and players improve their WoW experience.

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Our members have a lot of ideas on topics to share, but we’re also open to suggestion.  We have many talented outgoing players in LoD and while we typically do a lot of internal theorycrafting and discussion I know that we’re excited to offer tips, tricks, and advice to the outside community as well.

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Cheers,

Matron