When to break the Enhancement 4 piece Tier 7 set bonus

Last night Kam won the Tier 8 gloves, the Valorous Worldbreaker Grips. These are a reasonable upgrade over the Tier 7 gloves, however if I equipped them, I would break my 4 piece Tier 7 bonus. I was interested to find out what effect this would have, so I set out to discover when I should break my set bonus.

To do this I used ShockAndAwe to export 4 configurations to Enhsim

• 4 piece T7 (Gloves, Chest, Legs, Shoulders) What I already have.
  
• 3 piece T7 and 1 piece T8 (Gloves) The Tier 8 gloves I won.
  
• 2 piece T7 (Chest, Shoulders) and 2 piece T8 (Gloves, Legs) Legs from Hodir which we can kill.
  
• 4 piece T8 (Gloves, Legs, Helm, Chest) Helm and Chest from Emblems of Conquest which will likely be my next upgrades.

I then ran the 4 simulations, for 6 minutes with all 4 totems, a flask of endless rage, replenishment and various buffs I can guarantee in the raid (mostly MotW). The rotation was my standard priority-based one - Storm Strike first, Earth Shock, Lava Lash, then ES if SS is still on the target else SS, with Lightning Bolt taking top priority as soon as Maelstrom Weapon 5 is ready. The DPS figures were:

4 piece T7 3222
2 piece T7 (1 piece T8) 3194
2 piece T7 2 piece T8 3283
4 piece T8 3481

So as I suspected, loosing the 4 piece tier 7 set bonus for just 1 bit of tier 8 is a bad thing. However dropping to 2 piece tier 7 and 2 piece tier 8 results in an overall DPS increase. Getting 4 pieces of tier 8 is just... wow a pretty amazing increase (I double-checked the figures, I could hardly believe it).

In summary I'll be keeping my 4 piece tier 7 set bonus until I can get 2 bits of tier 8. Roll on 3.2!

Heroic Flame Leviathan normal mode is easy mode

Is Flame Leviathan the new Upper Blackrock Spire? Recently the Elder Brethren got bored, a raid was cancelled so six crazyintrepid people decided to try Flame Leviathan. On Heroic 25 man mode.

Their strategy was simple: use 3 demolishers with 3 passengers. Before the fight, shoot down loads of pyrite. At the start of the fight use 2 of those passengers in 2 more demolishers and unload 10 pyrite onto FL, then swap to the passenger seat and then into their chosen demolisher to passenger for the rest. The driver keeps pyrite stacks up to 10 while the passenger shoots down and grabs pyrite, using speed boost when followed.

Apparently these brave individuals actually succeeded too, leading to FL becoming the new place to kick back and relax, much like UBRS was back in the day. Any class balance whatsoever goes, which makes arranging a run a matter of getting a number of bodies.

Last night a mass attack on FL in 25 man Ulduar went down, anyone was welcome, alts or mains. We got 12 people, so grabbed 5 demolishers and a siege engine, putting the high iLevel-geared mains as drivers. We shot down lots of pyrite before engaging, then proceeded to roll in and just kept stacks of pyrite rolling on FL. Before we knew it, he was dead and Kam receives the Heroic: Shutout achievement. The guild also received our first Fragment of Val'anyr which was very exciting for the healers, plus a useful Runed Orb and some epics people could use.

I suspect in future if there is no raid on, a mixture of alts and mains will be heading to Ulduar 25 to try their hand at demolishing Flame Leviathan, grabbing a Runed Orb and some easy epics. It is also a whole load of fun!

Picture stolen from courtesy of Salash, Aszune EU.