Be Prepared for WotLK: Badges of Justice

Continuing the series 'Be Prepared for Wrath of the Lich King', this time on Badges of Justice you have lying around.

In Wrath of the Lich King, there will be new "badges": Emblem of Heroism, similar to Badges of Justice, but for level 80. Badges of Justice will continue dropping in level 70 heroics and raids, but you can only use them to level 70 items.

If you have plenty of Badges lying around, you might want to make use of them now - or actually not lying around anymore, as they are in your Character windows Currency tab, but anyway.

More and less you have two options:

1) Use Badges of Justice to optimize your gear for leveling, that starts after a week from now, by buying items that will help you do more damage, and thus, level more quickly.

* use lootrank.com to evaluate which items you could possibly buy. You don't have to do theorycrafting yourself, as you can take advantage of the templates dwarfpriest has gracefully submitted to lootrank.com for all of us.

2) Use Badges of Justice to buy uncut Epic Gems, 15 badges a shot. You can use the gems yourself to help the early leveling, or you can sell'em as they're not bind in anyway to you:

* Cut the gems yourself, or find Jewelcrafter to cut them for you, and socket the gems to your current gear to boost damage.

* Sell the gems! Prices are going down fast, but you still might fetch several hundreds of gold if you're quick. Check the Auction House for the prices, and decide if it's better to sell the raw gems or the cut ones.

I'm going for a combination of these, I'll be buying couple of items I can use, which will even out my shadowpriest gear in different slots, and the rest of the badges I'll be putting on gems, which I will sell. If it happens that I can't sell'em during this week for reasonably good price, I'll get'em cut for +Spellpower & possibly +Hit gems and use them then.

One more tip: It's only a week to go until expansion is live, so make a use of it and empty your bags and bank from unneeded trash and sell'em at Auction House. After doing that you might want to empty your quest log (by doing the quests preferrably, not just abandoning them) to have a fresh start with the quests from the expansion.

If you're in a guild, or even responsible for the guild bank, you might have a lot of work to do when emptying the guild bank and selling the items, but it pays off with more room in bank for the new mats and items, and of course, some much needed gold for the guild.

That's all for now. See you in Northrend.

Baby Steps to Better Gear

I have wrote about gear quite a bit in the past, don't know why, but probably because that's one of the forces that drive me in WoW (getting better).

In case you've missed the earlier pieces, you might want to check out the older posts:
Evaluating Gear Upgrades
Forum Watch: Crafting or raiding for gear?
Leveling a Priest as Shadow, but Gearing to be Healer at Level 70
Healing Priest Badge Gear
Blog Watch: Pants of 100 Badges

I'm currently stocking Badges of Justice for 2.4 to get all the goodies from there. I think I'll go for some current BoJ rewards before the patch thou, like Light-Blessed Bonds and Essence of the Martyr.

Which brings me to the first problem; Trinkets. For some reason I just love Bangle of Endless Blessings, it seems to proc often enough for me to never run out of mana. And I can't seem to let go of my last blue. And when spirit gets even better in 2.4 (with better regen with good int), I just might stick with Bangle for good :)

The second problem is that every upgrade seems so small nowadays, I get like +10 healing, and maybe +3mp5 out of the new gear. I'm taking baby steps with gear upgrades and still I'm very happy with it :) WoW is so odd sometimes. I have Robes of Heavenly Purpose sitting in the bank, as I can't let go of Primal Mooncloth Set yet (I don't have belt and/or shoulders to go with the RoHP). Well maybe I figure it out, Belt of the Long Road maybe (as I have Pauldrons of the Solace-Giver from Curator already).

Lootzor ranking I'm using now (All non-PvP healing gear)

Leveling a Priest as Shadow, but Gearing to be Healer at Level 70

So you level your priest as shadow (you should, it's just way faster), but you want to heal when you hit 70. What to do? How to get gear?

Leveling a Priest as Shadow, but Gearing to be Healer at Level 70

Tailoring is not needed, but the tailored sets are soo good that it's recommended.
The sets are better than T4, maybe even T5 in some uses.

Primal Mooncloth Set
Whitemend Wisdom Set

Here's what I would suggest (what I did):

Plan your gear ahead. Use the resources, for example:
Kaliban's WoW-Loot List (Priest)
Best Casual PvE Healing Gear by A Dwarf Priest

1) At around lvl65 (or whenever you hit Nagrand), start taking healing gear as quest rewards over the dps gear.

2) And start going to outland instances as healer (you can very well as shadow) and pick up gear there. Or if you go in instance as dps, ask if you can roll for healer gear if such would show up.

3) Work on the reputation for certain factions to get healer gear from rewards (Like Watcher's Cowl from Cenarion Expedition, Lower City Prayerbook, etc.)

4) And if you like, level tailoring, and work on the PMC set while doing the above

This way I had couple of pieces of PMC done when I hit 70 and I had healer gear from normal instances and some quest rewards. When I finished last piece of PMC, I respecced holy, and started doing heroics for even more healer gear.

Forum Watch: Crafting or raiding for gear?

I'm checking up on forums from time to time, here's some I picked up today.

Welcome to the first edition of Zemalf's Forum Watch :)

crafting or raiding for gear? for healing (WoW EU Priest Forums)

My answer (posted at thread as well):

I have 6 tailored epics (PMC Set, Whitemend Set, Boots of the Long Road) + 1 blue (White Remedy Cape) not yet replaced.

This is what I pretty much had before Kara, or shortly after starting it. With these I'm pretty much overgeared for most of Kara, but there's still upgrades and items for different slots there.

I've complemented my gear with drops from heroics and badges of justice items. And I continue to do so.

So, at least if you have gold, the fastest way to gear-up is tailoring. You can almost gear yourself all the way with tailoring, which makes you ready for heroics, which you can do to gear up more, all without raiding.

I don't see raiding as a method to gear up, gear comes as a added bonus, which enables you to raid more efficiently or in more difficult raids. And as I can speed/ease this process by crafting, I did.

Continued, Other professions

Of course, there are other crafting professions than Tailoring, but there's not much in them for Priests. Engineering has Goggles with +Healing, but those are more +dmg oriented and they're not actually very good either (unlike Mail/Plate goggles).

Enchanting is great compelement to Tailoring, even just for the +Healing Ring Enchant that you can only do them yourself on your own rings.

Evaluating Gear Upgrades

It's very useful to plan out your next gear upgrades, and different loot lists help, but you can do it yourself too with several available loot / gear evaluators.

A Dwarf Priest was kind enough to notify me that she found out about gear/loot evaluator which counts spell haste too: Loot Rank

Here's link for Loot Rank PvE Search up to T5.

Lootzor.com shows heroic badges cost right the report page, so don't abandon it either.

Dwarf Priestress' "Best Casual PvE List" was also updated with Voodoo Shaker (which was not showing in lootzor.com - but shows in Loot Rank!)

Now if only someone would enlighten me if some of these evaluators notices set bonuses too :)

Healing Priest Badge Gear

Gearing through badges of justice is great way to upgrade and get ready for raiding (and heroics are fun, at least for me)

While patch 2.4 might bring some new goodness in badge rewards, here's where we (healing priest) are now...

I Posted this on EU WoW Priest Forums and decided to add it here as well:
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=2843524572&postId=28432089831&sid=1#5

I don't know about you, but I want to use badges on gear that last for as long as possible
e.g. items that are not immediately replaced, or if they are replaced, it's lucky/rare drop from hard boss

Of course, one has to consider what to replace with badge reward and what not.

Here's a list of heroic badge healing priest rewards.
The number being how high the item ranks compared to other low raid items
(Karazhan, Gruul’s, Mag’s Lair, Zul’Aman)

Wrist:
1 Wristguards of Tranquil Thought 35 Heroic Badges

Hand:
1 Light-Blessed Bonds 60 Heroic Badges

Legs:
1 Achromic Trousers of the Naaru 75 Heroic Badges

Off-Hand:
! Voodoo Shaker 35 Heroic Badges
2 Tears of Heaven 25 Heroic Badges

Wand:
2 Carved Witch Doctor’s Stick 25 Heroic Badges

Trinkets:
1 Essence of the Martyr 41 Heroic Badges
14 Icon of the Silver Crescent 41 Heroic Badges

Back:
3 Kharmaa’s Shroud of Hope 60 Heroic Badges
5 Bishop’s Cloak 25 Heroic Badges

Neck:
5 Necklace of Eternal Hope 25 Heroic Badges

Head:
6 Cowl of Naaru Blessings 50 Heroic Badges

Finger:
6 Band of Halos 25 Heroic Badges

Items ranked using a formula (stats weights: .15 stam / .2 int / .35 spirit / 1 mp5 / .03 spell crit / .25 heal / .1 spell haste). Bonuses, unique effects, and trinkets are all rated on a conversion system to the aforementioned stats, and then ranked.


List shamelessly ripped from A Dwarf Priest: http://dwarfpriest.com/2007/09/30/best-casual-pve-healing-gear/trackback/

Additional Gear Ranking Resource (for your own ranking for example): http://www.lootzor.com/

Tailoring - Is There Profit?

Insider Trader at WoW Insider covered Tailoring today.

This got me thinking, again, is there profit in Tailoring? Or is it just for gearing your cloth caster (in which, it *is* that great)?

I only picked Tailoring for gearing, and I'm still wearing my Primal Mooncloth and Whitemend Sets, in addition to the Boots of the Long Road which recipe I ripped cheaply from AH. With just Tailoring I outgeared Kara in the respective slots before I even went it. So that's a no brainer.

Profit I make with Tailoring, comes of making occasional Whitemend Hood or other recipe requiring Primal Nether. I guess making Bags would give some gold, but I never got into it.

Have you made pouch-breaking profits of Tailoring? Please share your knowledge :)