Thursday, November 26, 2009

Moonkin Icecrown Itemization

Ever since we saw the moonkin t10 stats, I've been following MMO with interest to see what's been data-mined.  It finally seemed like this is the tier for solid moonkin gear - even the emblem gear includes two SP/haste/crit leather items, a nicely itemized belt and decent gloves.

As more and more items have been found, however, I've been getting more and more uneasy.  The items I was expecting just weren't showing up - there's only one moonkin leather item so far, and it's 10-man.  Everything else leather has spirit, without exception.

Now this post is obviously a bit premature, because the loot lists we have (I'm going off of mmo-champion.com) is of course incomplete.  And there's always the "data-mined info is data-mined" maxim, and there is some truth to that.  But I find it worrysome that there are zero 25-man leather items for moonkins found so far, in the final tier of the expansion.  And by the time we have complete loot lists, it will be (practically) too late to raise these concerns.

This was true in ToC/ToGC as well - we generally ended up with leather boots/belt, and they had spirit.  But that's not a significant issue because the cloth gear was identical or worse - there was no SP/haste/crit cloth belt or boots, for example.  And we had the Anub legs, which are very nice but also are only one slot of gear.  However, Icecrown cloth doesn't suffer from the same drought moonkins are - it looks like there will be nicely itemized pieces available for almost every cloth slot, and both below pieces are so far almost certainly BIS for moonkin:
http://db.mmo-champion.com/i/50062/plague-scientists-boots/
http://db.mmo-champion.com/i/49978/crushing-coldwraith-belt/

I guess the current loot just leaves me with questions and concerns, especially if you consider this interview and the following excerpt:
Greg: The nice thing about Icecrown Citadel from an itemization perspective is that we have lots of bosses. That's something of a relief coming from the Crusaders' Coliseum, where we had only five bosses. For Icecrown, we can afford to have multiple options for a particular slot -- say a healing leather bracer or a melee trinket -- and even itemize some of the more unusual pieces.
So my issue becomes - how did we get a moonkin-specific leather item in ToC (5 bosses) but miss out in Icecrown with 12?  Why is it ok to have multiple healing leather bracers but nothing for a moonkin - especially if you consider that many resto druids would be able to use a "moonkin" bracer and put it to good use?

So, what do we do?
It seems to me that the best solution is simple and pretty straight-forward.  There's a lot of leather spirit gear on the Icecrown tables, and a lot of it has crit but no haste.  For resto druids with their new haste cap, this makes it feel rather subpar especially with how poor crit is for Trees right now.

It seems that some of this gear (and it doesn't have to be a lot - 2-3 pieces, tops) could easily be turned into moonkin leather and solve two issues at once.  Resto druids can afford to use some items without spirit - if anything it will make their mana use more interesting - and those items would help them toward their haste cap.  And this would give moonkins leather alternatives, instead of forcing us to go for cloth.

2 comments:

  1. The Emblem belt looks on par with the cloth belt you referenced seeing as how we should all be easily at the haste soft cap by the time we're in some t10 gear.

    Though that really only applies until we get into the 25H versions of the loot where I'll concede we'll start to get jealous of the clothies.

    Honestly though, I can't see them not offering a 25H haste/crit option for bracers/belt/boots... but I guess we'll have to wait and see.

    Wearing 264 gear (or 277 spirit gear) instead of 277, until we can get the cloth coutnerparts in those 3 slots, wont be the end of the world either way but it is kind of a nuisance.

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  2. I saw this when I first looked over the Icecrown loot tables on MMO-champ - since no one else had commented on it, though, I was optimistic that I'd just missed something. I'm not sure if I'm reassured by the fact that I was right or sad that Blizz really hasn't itemized for us! My guild does give priority to clothies on cloth items, but somehow it hasn't been a serious issue for me to get the cloth I'm interested in for TOC-10 and 25.

    I'm really glad they got all the tier sorted out properly - I'd love to see them follow through and itemise some of the 25 leather for us as well!

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