Wednesday 10 March 2010

But what if I got *two* ICC 10 items?

Having claimed I'd not drop my 4 piece Tier 9 bonus for anything less than 2 piece Tier 10, last night I found myself the recipient of both Pauldrons of Lost Hope and Handgrips of Frost and Sleet. These are gloves and shoulders, so could take the cheapest Tier 9 (and 10) slots. Equipping them would mean loosing the 4 piece Tier 9 bonus, but getting some better items. I also grabbed Shawl of Nerubian Silk which handily has +56 expertise, compensating for the loss of 52 expertise from the Tier 9 gloves.

Dumping the 4pcT9 bonus
I turned to Rawr and Enhsim to find out what the impact of the switch would be, using the usual profiles.

Current gear: 4728 dps
Equipping the new gear, gemming for AP and Haste: 4818 dps

This is a DPS increase of 90 DPS which is quite significant. It seems that the 4 piece Tier 9 bonus can be overpowered by some lucky ICC 10 drops after all.

Which T10 now?
This does place me in a sticky situation, because now all the Tier 10 items which upgrade item level 232 gear are the "expensive" ones which cost 95 Frost apiece (Helm & Legs). If I were to hold off until I could grab 2 piece Tier 10 before dropping 2 piece Tier 9 that would be 190 Frost I would need to collect (or some lucky VoA action).

I worked out the impact of just getting one piece and equipping it, to see if I could sneakily grab some Tier 10 early.

Frost Witch's Faceguard with +20 Exp gem (same as current) = 4817 dps
Frost Witch's War Kilt with same expertise gem = 4828 dps

So getting the Tier 10 legs and dropping the 2 piece Tier 9 set bonus works out ok, with a 10 DPS increase, but getting the helm gives no increase at all. Given 10 dps is quite small, it seems prudent to wait and see what VoA might cough up and save all 190 Frost to spend on 2 bits of Tier 10 at once.

This is hardly a surprising result, although somewhat depressing as 190 is a large number. At my rate of around 20 a week it will be two or three months before I can get some Tier 10. At least I got some upgrades, for which I am quite happy.

4 comments:

Skraps said...

Ugh, I haven't even been into ICC since before the second wing opened. I am on a bit of a hiatus from raiding, or even playing at all lately. Here is to hoping one day my real life will stop interfering with my play time.

Zach said...

Grats on the cloak! I'm at 8 weeks and counting waiting for it to drop. If I wasn't a jeweler I have no idea how I'd make up the missing expertise once I traded in my T9 gloves!

Race said...

I just got my 4 pc T10 last week. I saved until I had190 to get the legs and chest. The set bonuses are so good its hard to lose them. Now i just need 90 more for the belt and totem. /sigh

Hugeroxx said...

Thanks for the heads up about not dumping tier 4pc bonus! I just picked up Hauberk of a Thousand Cuts last week and I am trying to decide which t10 piece to pick up next (I am thinking shoulders or legs).

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