By now we all have a good idea of some of the fantastic badge gear that will be available in 2.4. Along with the fantastic stats on these pieces is a frightening price tag. (I won’t argue that they are over priced, this is truly great gear and worth every badge IMO.) For a casual player, though, that’s an awful lot of badges. 150 badges can take a LONG LONG time if you only have a few hours or so a week to play. The good thing is, that just like the 5000g riding skill, with time it is doable for anyone.
With that in mind, though, you better spend those badges wisely if you can’t farm 50+ per week like some more hardcore players. So, what should you spend them on? Well, I won’t pretend to know all the classes, but I thought I’d take a look at a few and suggest what I would personally spend my badges on first. Yes, I understand a lot of decisions will be based on players’ individual gear situations, so take these with a grain of salt.
Resto Druid
First, the class with which I am most familiar. Right now I am pretty well decked out in Kara and badge gear, and there are a few directions I could go. Should I invest in [Shroud of Nature's Harmony]? Well, I’m currently wearing the [Windhawk Hauberk] and this chest piece is a bit of an underwhelming upgrade over it. Sure, I could care less about the spell crit on the Windhawk, but the overall bump I would get stat-wise makes it tough for me to make the plunge. The [Grovewalker's Leggings], though, are looking real nice compared to my [Earthsoul Leggings]. They afford me a bigger stat jump, and will certainly push my +heal after gemming and spellthread as well. One last item that is intriguing is the [Gavel of Naaru Blessings]. Right now I have [Shard of the Virtuous], and this is a big bump in +heal and stamina, at the cost of a little MP5. I also HATE how the shard looks. If pressed, right now I think I’ll shoot for the Gavel over the leggings, at least to start. (If I weren’t a LW, and didn’t have the Windhawk, I think I’d go with the chest first.)
Feral Kitty Druid
This is a little tougher. Feral druids fill multiple roles, so a lot of it depends on which role you concentrate on. I think it’s almost a slam dunk for Kitty druids with [Staff of the Forest Lord]. Wow, what a DPS staff. It’s superior to [Terestian's Stranglestaff] and makes a perfect complement to [Earthwarden] for those times when you have to tank. There are also a number of nice armor upgrades to look at. [Tunic of the Dark Hour] and [Trousers of the Scryers' Retainer] are both very nice upgrades for most casual cats, unless of course you’re sporting T6, in which case you probably AREN’T a casual cat! I would personally probably start with the leggings, as they have 2 gem slots and a nice slot bonus. I couldn’t fault you for either choice. So what would I go with first? I would probably start with the staff, as I nearly always take care of weapon upgrades first.
Feral Bear Druid
For Bear druids, it’s tougher. [Handwraps of the Aggressor]? [Embrace of Everlasting Prowess]? I don’t know, I’m not the most experienced in this area, but neither seems like a huge upgrade to T5 or even T4 stuff, if you factor in set bonuses and gem slots. What kind of effect will haste have on a bear tank? I’m not real sure. Then there’s [Tameless Breeches]. The problem with these, and with many feral druid pieces, is a lack of hit rating. +Hit is very important to a bear tank.
There’s got to be something here. Ahhh, there it is. [Ring of the Stalwart Protector]. NOW a lot of Bears are drooling! Real nice combo of dodge, armor and stamina. Even better than [Violet Signet of the Great Protector], and makes an awesome 1-2 punch if you put the two together. I’d probably go with the ring first, as it seems most obvious to me. I’m a little unsure about the armor pieces.
Boomkins
Ok, I’ve never played the spec, I know very little. I’ll see if I can at least give you some stuff to look at. From what I can tell, there are two definite upgrades in the mix. [Fused Nethergon Band] and [Barbed Gloves of the Sage]. Both will help out a boomkin looking for some extra spell hit for bosses and such. The ring in particular seems like a very nice upgrade all around from presently available rings. The gloves might be more of a sidegrade with [Studious Wraps]. If you’re not yet hit capped, though, these gloves might be a nice upgrade. After all, what difference does crit rate make if you can’t hit? [Crystalwind Leggings] looks to be a nice pair of pants for the Boomkin in you. Good slot bonus, nice stats, all around a good looking pair of pants. There is also a new chest piece that seems to be built with the Boomkin in mind, but it seems they dropped the ball. [Embrace of Starlight] isn’t much of an upgrade over the presently available [Blessed Elunite Coverings]. There’s also a good chance you already have the latter.
Well, there you go druids. Hopefully that gives you a starting point for evaluating how you want to blow your cache of badges once the new stuff is available. I feel bad for Blizzard in their attempts to itemize for druids. We must be tough to please, since we can do so many different things!
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Mmmm. Badge loot.
This is a bit out of your usual element, Ryan, but it’s a good post. Quirky, informative, full of personality. Well done.
[ For Losse's bear set, I would go for the chestpiece and the gloves over the rings. Good rings are fairly easy to to get, but upgrading from Heavy Clefthoof Vest as a bear who doesn't raid anything over Kara is difficult, and, therefore, the chest will be much appreciated. For gloves, sure, the T4 stuff is nice, but in all the many times that I've raided Kara, I have yet to coax Curator to drop them... except for once, and I was on my mage then. ]
Leafshine’s Lucky Loot List (pre-patch 2.4 edition)
The end game really is all about incremental gear improvements, isn’t it? For us small, tight guilds who are never going to get much beyond the 10 mans, our pool of potential gear is even smaller, with a huge focus
Absolutely, this is totally subjective. If I were still Feral, there’s a good chance I’d want that BP first too!
As a BT/Hyjal (5/5,8/9) raider, I’m ashamed to say I still wear the Earthsoul Leggings. Mainly because I pick up offset gear so competition for T4/5 and now T6 badges has me at 2nd last on the DKP list. I sometimes think I should have become a leatherworker instead of an alchemist/enchanter, but back when 60 was king, Leatherworking wasn’t.
Anyway, I know I’m going straight for the Leggings as soon as the armourer gets her kit together, (63% last night), and then I’ll probably keep doing Kara runs to get enough badges for another item or two. Wearing [Don Rodrigo's Poncho] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=30899) the Shroud is only a minor upgrade, but I’ll still get it. With a +22 Healing gem the shroud is at 140 healing > 118 from the Poncho, and the only loss is 4 spirit and 5 stam, but you also gain 9 Int which helps offset the spirit loss.
For Rings, I’m surprised you didn’t mention [Aveena's Touch] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=34890) which is a very very nice ring for anyone without access to the Bands of Eternity or the Blessed Band of Karabor. Its got a good spread of Stam, Healing and Mana regen, comparable if not better than the healer Violet Signet.
Thanks for this post, I have 172 badges saved up and I have been debating on what upgrades I want to get when the smith is complete. I have a feral druid that is dps first, tank second. I couldn’t help but notice while looking at the choices for upgrades on legs and chest that the tanking set is only very slightly less damage than the pure damage set.
If I have 400 badges I may go with both sets, but im a casual player so Im thinking of using the tank set, the Embrace of Everlasting Prowess and Tameless Breeches gemmed dps for both tanking and dps. I would be upgrading Forestwalkers Kilt and Shadowprowlers Chestguard for my dps set and Clefthoof for my tank pieces.
Overall I stand to gain lots of armor with a small sta loss for tanking and quite a nice upgrade for dps which is my preferred role. My simple math shows with strength and agi I get 129ap from Embrace of the Everlasting Prowess vs 146 ap from the Tameless Breeches. With a similar result for the legs. Thoughts?
Ralin–
That sounds like a good plan to me. If I were still feral spec, I would also look to maximize the pieces I spent my badges on for flexibility. One of the great things about the feral spec is how you can shift from Tank to DPS with a simple gear switch, and it’s even better if you can do it without switching all that much gear.
Your arguments all sound, well, sound to me. It doesn’t always have to be about Min/Maxing!
Ok, I got the pants and chest as I described above. I gemmed and enchanged them to balance out my dps and tanking abilities. Overall I lost 6ap(yes, only six), 2 hit rating(still over 135) and 0.18% crit for my dps makeup while gaining a ton of armor and health in cat which is mildly useful, specially for the shift and tank to finish a fight situations. My change for my tank makeup was a loss of 7 defense (still over 415), 1,800 health gain and 2k armor gain. So basically I become much better tank with more survivability while dpsing with a minimul dps loss. When I get the badges I will get te new dps gear and min max…. maybe after I get the staff, it will be a larger increase I think. Thanks for this info again.