Welcome, to the sixth edition of our column here at WoW.TenTonHammer.com called Gear Eye for the WoW Guy. In it, Byron "Messiah" Mudry takes a look at a character that needs some help in the game. He then gives that player a complete gear makeover in an attempt to get them moving on to new content in the game.

Sometimes that advise is slight upgrades, sometimes a full scale redo for those that are completely lost. Tune in each week to learn the tuning tips that will help you stand out from the average player.

Of course there are two big tools that are needed to be able to check out a player and make useful recommendations. The first of those tools is an in depth knowledge of the game, specifically the classes, mechanics, best stats, best gear, enchants, gems, and more. This isn't something that everyone has for the first little while that they play the game or even for the first while after they hit the level cap.

The second major tool is PlayerScore, which luckily is available and usable by anyone and hosted right here on our network. You can search for your own character and see how you stack up by visiting the PlayerScore site.

A Brave Shaman Healer Steps Forward

Last week I put a call out for healers that needed help with gear upgrades. In response to that call a Restoration Shaman stepped forward that needs a little help.

Seradiin has great gear already, but is struggling over how to get better still.

The shaman in question is Seradiin from the Zul'jin server. Better yet he is a Tauren which is one of my favourite races in the game, and listed as the number three race in all of World of Warcraft according to our list: Top 5 WoW Races. Even better, shamans are a great class due to their versatility, hence I selected this one for a gear makeover.

While it may be easy to push for just raid gear upgrades, which really is where he needs to be going, he has not raided in Cataclysm by to looks of it yet. So I’m going to assume a guild collapse from WotLK, or real life not allowing enough time, or some other similar conflict that is limiting playtime. Therefore all recommendations are going to be based on general availability.

You can find Seradiin's PlayerScore information here: Seradiin's PlayerScore, remember however that it will change over time compared to what is listed here. This is due to PlayerScore constantly being updated to reflect any new gear, achievements and anything else that happens as Seradiin plays and upgrades or changes gear.

Before looking at gear though, let’s start by looking at stat priority so that we know what we are looking for and why on gear.

Restoration Stat Priorities

Gearing a restoration shaman is a very complicated procedure. This is because the values of almost all the stats on the priority list can shift around in importance relevant to your gear, build, playstyle and healing target.

Before we go any further let's look at what the basic stat priority is like for a Restoration Shaman:

Restoration Shaman Stat Priority
Intellect > Spirit > Spell Power > Haste to 916 > Mastery = Haste > Crit

Intellect is by far the best possible stat for Restoration Shamans followed closely by spirit and spell power. The other stats follow behind with crit being the worst by quite a bit.

However, while spirit is highly important, once a player gets to a certain point it loses its value greatly. This is because it is mainly there to add mana regeneration, once a healer can get through the fights they participate while still having mana remaining, adding more mana regen becomes a waste of stat points.

Existing Good Item Choices

Overall Seradiin is probably the best setup character I have had a chance to look at since starting this column, and that made for some hard work finding improvements and offering suggestions here. He already has some of the best gear you can get pre-raid in the following slots: head, neck, back hands, waist, lets, rings, and 1 of his trinkets. In short, awesome gear!

In addition none of the other slots are filled with obviously bad choices. In fact many could be considered best pre-raid since the upgrades come from valor points and high end crafting.

A key example of Seradiin’s solid understanding of stats is the fact that he still has blue shoulders equipped. The Burden of Lost Humanity Shoulders are exceptionally good despite being only blue. There are some other items that could be changed to as side-grades if he needs stat changes, but they don’t really gain anything other than stat swaps.

For example he could equip the Spiritbinder Spaulders from ZG instead but they would cause a loss of spirit and mastery to gain intellect and haste. It’s only really an upgrade if looking for faster heals and already OK with mana regen. It may be an upgrade to look for at some point if other gear upgrades end up dropping him below his haste point of 916.

As with any character there is always room to improve though and that’s what I aim to do here, offer improvement options. Before doing that however, I want to change up from my normal order and talk about item modifications.

Item Modifications

Normally I would talk about gear upgrades first, however, since Seradiin has such a good set of gear already I want to look at how to optimize what he has first. This is because I can see a few ways to improve on item modification and since it will carry over to any gear upgrades looked at later. So let's get it out of the way first.

Overall the enchants on the gear are all very good.

However, it would be best to save up maelstrom crystals and get Power Torrent as it is a bit better than Heart Song for his weapon. If Seradiin is unlucky on winning disenchant rolls in heroics to get a pile of them, it’s not a big enough upgrade to justify the expense. It will be for sure once a better weapon is found though. The same follows for the chest enchant. +20 to all stats is better than the 40 spirit currently on it, however I would save up crystals rather than buying it.

For the hand enchant, while haste is a better stat than mastery to the break point, it’s probably better to get +65 mastery instead as it is an extra 15 stat points which makes up for slightly lower value of mastery.

Looking at gems, and again pretty damn good. The only suggestions I have is since with current gear he is over the break point for haste, I would move some orange int/haste gems over to int/mastery. Even if you drop below by doing this you can reforge back to the 916 value easily and keep the points in the gems.

Ok, on to reforging, and here Seradiin has a great grasp on how he should be reforging. For anyone not sure how to reforge for a Resto Shaman it is like this:

Restoration Shaman Reforge Priority
Spirit > Haste to 916 > Mastery = Haste > Crit

You can find out all about reforging by reading: Reforge This. Make sure you bookmark page 3 that clearly shows the reforge priority for each class - Class / Spec Priorities for Reforging.

The one additional note to the above is that even though Spirit is the best stat for mana regen and overall healing, there is a point where you will not need any more and it is better to move to other stats.

Seradiin seems to understand this and has started moving away from reforges to spirit. Only he will know if that is the right point for him. For many raiders the point they wanted to reach in tier 11 was around 2500 spirit. So running heroics the 2000 spirit that Seradiin has seems about right.

There are some suggestions I would make on current gear though, such as: Lost Bag of Whammies reforge crit to mastery or haste, and on the helm reforge crit to mastery or haste. This is all pretty minor though, as some crit is of use and most is reforged away on other items.

Restoration Shaman Gear Upgrades

Since so much of Seradiin’s gear is already so good, replacements are going to be hard to find outside of raiding. This means that the upgrades will come in the way of crafted items that he can either learn himself or buy from the auction house, from rewards from the Firelands vendors that are unlocked after many days (weeks) of questing, from Heroic Instances (all from Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman), or from the valor and justice points earned from running Heroic Instances.

The Fireland dailies will unlock reward items to get after weeks of running them, so all players should start running them as soon as possible. In Seradiin’s case this will help get him to a pattern that he needs for an upgrade, and help earn some gold along the way to buy the other crafted items.

As for upgrades from heroics, valor, and justice points, Seradiin should make sure to run random ZA and ZG instances to max points each week. This will earn points and chances at upgrades dropping.

Due to the limited number of upgrade options for Seradiin I am going to handle this discussion a little different than normal. This section is going to be broken up into two sections, one talking about crafted and Fireland daily items and the other talking about heroic and point item upgrades.

Restoration Shaman Gear Upgrades from Crafting or Related to the Fireland Dailies

One of the biggest upgrades that Seradiin can get is to his weapon. Weapons are now one of the very few sources of spell power for casters. Seradiin’s current weapon, the Amani Scepter of Rites, is a really good weapon already and not one easily replaced. However, an upgrade definitely worth seeking is the new crafted Lightforged Elementium Hammer as soon as you can afford it from a blacksmith. It costs a lot and will for a while but the upgrade is worth it. Spell power is a huge stat and since it is not available many other places, any upgrade is key.

This is a huge upgrade due to the stats that it does upgrade. This upgrade gains 17 intellect, 8 spirit, 11 mastery, and most importantly 218 spell power! Gaining over 200 of any of your key stats is a bigger upgrade than you are going to find in almost any other piece of gear.

Looking at the other part of Seradiin’s weapon combination, his offhand. Call me a bit old fashioned, but if you can hold a shield in your off hand I believe you should. The equipped Lost Bag of Whammies has good stats and is an OK off hand, but suffers a lot due to not having an armor value. Personally I would equip an equal stat shield instead or even better yet get the blacksmith crafted item the Elementium Stormshield. The shield is relatively inexpensive to craft and goes for less that 3,000 gold on many servers.

To me gaining almost 12,000 armor is a big deal, even if ideally as a healer Seradiin should never get hit. In addition to the armor the shield upgrade also gains 30 intellect (once gemmed), 14 spirit, and trades 127 crit which is the worst Resto stat for 112 haste which is a far superior stat.

While Seradiin’s boots are great for mana regen due to a large amount of spirit, at some point it may be wise to trade them for the new Fiery Treads that are available once you finish enough 4.2 Fireland dailies to earn access to them. The stats on them will allow bigger heals at the cost of mana regen, but once you have enough elsewhere they will become a valid upgrade option.

Another upgrade that is possible but expensive will be to Seradiin’s tier 11 gloves. While these are tier gloves and have very good stats, the set bonus for 2 pieces is generally considered weak, therefore they can be exchanged. While expensive to craft the new leatherworker crafted gloves are a solid upgrade option once he has completed enough Fireland dailies to gain access to them. Luckily he is a leatherworker and can make them himself rather than pay auction house prices for them.

While he will lose the set bonus, he gains 49 intellect, 32 spirit, 38 haste, and a better socket colour. The new socket is red allowing a 20 gain of intellect over a hybrid gem. That’s almost 140 additional stat points, all in key stats.

One of the equipped trinkets, Core of Ripeness is one of the best you can get. However Tear of Blood is not in the top few that you could get outside of raids. I would therefore suggest saving up and getting Darkmoon Card: Tsunami. Sure it’s expensive but it is a very significant increase as it provides both Intellect and a stacking spirit buff.

While initially the spirit proc from Tear of Blood looks much better than from the Tsunami card you have to look at the math behind them to see the real picture. Tear of Blood is a proc-based trinket and therefore uses a fairly standard 45 second internal cooldown, it also only procs off of critical heals and only about 30-40% of the time. This means that even under ideal conditions it will only be up 15 seconds every 60 seconds or 25%. This means on average 420 spirit over time.

However, remember that is ideal, meaning that every time the internal cooldown ends you have a healing spell landing as a crit that also procs the ability. I think that you can probably see that this isn’t going to happen and the real uptime is probably going to be much lower, something around the 15-18% rate is much more realistic. This would grant a more realistic 300ish spirit over time.

The Tsunami card, however, is a stacking buff and can therefore be kept up forever, at a constant rate of 400 spirit.

The constant stream of spirit and therefore mana regen is a much better proposition, especially since mana regen is tied to intellect and this item gains 36 more Intellect as well.

Restoration Shaman Gear Upgrades from Instances and Justice/Valor Points

For Seradiin’s wrist slot I believe that the best choice is using the valor points you gain running instances to get the Bracers of Misting Ash soon. They are a much higher item level and one of the best you can get in the game. They are also the best you can get short of raiding. This is due to the fact that they have significantly more intellect, and have spirit in a big way. The spirit will allow more mana regen and since it is here, if you are high on it, you can redo some of the reforging on other pieces to other stats instead of to spirit.

This upgrade gains 47 intellect, 154 spirit, and 148 mastery, while giving up 125 haste and 111 crit. The haste loss is essentially a swap with an increase to mastery which is an equal stat. Crit changes to spirit which is a far better stat, and in bigger numbers too!

There are several possible upgrades for Seradiin's chest piece, although really the one he has is pretty solid as well. There is the tier 11 Tunic of the Raging Elements if he wants bigger heals or the Breastplate of Serenity from Zul’Gurub if he is looking for more spirit and therefore more mana regeneration. Personally I would take the spirit, but that’s just me. Either item is more of a side-grade than a pure upgrade, however I would take either of them instead of the equipped Twilight Scale Chestguard.

A really simple but great upgrade is to replace his currently equipped relic the Book of Dark Prophecies with the 700 valor point relic, the Singed Plume of Aviana. This is a big upgrade since it is an item not easily replaced. However, if he doesn’t want spent the points just yet, he can get something almost as good in the Relic of Elune’s Light once he finishes enough Fireland dailies from Patch 4.2 to finish the Filling the Moonwell quest.

While stat wise this may be one of the smaller upgrades, the point cost is low and it is hard to find any good items for this slot. He would gain 33 Intellect, 30 spirit and trade crit for haste which is a much better stat.

Lastly, I am not really sure on the Mantle of Desire cloak. Sure it is a level 365 item, and yes it has some great stats, however, if Seradiin ever does push into raid content, I believe a better item would be the Heavenly Breeze cloak that costs 1250 justice points.

It is a lower item level, and has less intellect, but it does have 127 spirit. Therefore I would try to grab it eventually as a swap to piece for long boss fights. It’s not 100% required, but would be nice to have

Overall Review of Seradiin

As I stated right at the beginning, Seradiin never really stated where he wants to go from here. Therefore I checked out his achievements and recent activity in game. Seeing that he raided in WotLK but not so far in Cataclysm I have to assume that he has either become more casual or does not have a raid spot in a guild. With that in mind all of the upgrades are based on being able to find them in the auction house, heroics, or rewards.

This made the whole review and gear upgrade process for Seradiin quite a challenge as he is already geared extremely well for a non-raider. It was a great challenge though and was extremely interesting to look at.

Seradiin is the kind of player you hope to run into when you sign up for random instances. He knows his class, knows his gear, and knows his stats. I wish everyone was like this.

So the upgrades had to be perfect and make sense given his current play style. I therefore pointed out gear that would keep a generalist healing build happy with big heals and relatively good mana regeneration.

Keep in mind, however, that Restoration Shaman are a tricky beast to get right. There are multiple build styles, multiple healing styles, multiple stat preferences, and even worst these all adjust depending on the content and role you are playing in. Therefore in some cases tons of spirit is the way to go (long raid encounters) and other times haste, mastery, and intellect is the way to go (short bursty fights).

All that to say the following are my choices given my playstyle, Seradiin may need to adjust them to his.

The Messiah’s Final Word and How to Request your Makeover

Seradiin was one of the most enjoyable characters so far to look at, since finding upgrades that fit his level of knowledge and his play pattern was a challenge. It was a lot of fun though, and something I hope that all you readers can challenge me to repeat in the near future.

Response has been outstanding so far for this column and while I have a few characters in the queue that I can look at, I am always looking for more! Especially those that I can make fun of (while still offering some real help), so if you have a character that you want reviewed, or know of one that badly needs help but is just too lost to even know they need it, feel free to send me a link to their PlayerScore page. One lucky player will be selected for a gear makeover in this column each week.

Request: What I would really like is more different character classes than those that I have looked at already. No one has submitted any rogues, mages, priests, death knights, or druids at all yet. Come on players I know you're out there, get your name in!

To submit a character for a review make sure you look up the character's PlayerScore and send me a link to that character. Also if you want to provide any basic information on your goals, how far advanced you want to plan for, how much time you invest in the game, or just a bit about your self, please include it all in a comment below or a note to the Messiah.

Thanks for actually making it to the bottom of this edition of Gear Eye for the WoW Guy everyone, hope you enjoyed.

Reforge This | Zul'Gurub Guide ] | Zul'Aman Guide | Patch 4.2 Portal
PlayerScore