(WoW) Decisions, Decisions
The great part about the emblem system is it gives you options. The bad part? It gives you options...
I finished last night's couple runs (dang, we should really push through CoS sometime) with 57 Emblems of Conquest and 32 Emblems of Triumph. With EoC's, 58 is a "magic" number. That's the cost for a head or chest token for the tier 8(.5) armor. For anyone who doesn't raid Ulduar, that's upgrade material there.
Now, if I focus on my most-used spec, Protection, I'd pick up my Conqueror's Aegis Faceguard. This is an upgrade over my Helm of the Crestfallen Challenger, though it sacrifices some parry and hit for everything else (stamina, strength, dodge, block, and a little armor and defense). It would also give the 2-piece set bonus, as I already have the chestpiece, which is a 10% increase in seal damge. That wouldn't be a huge output increase, but more damage is always better.
But...
I recently switched my secondary spec to Holy. For that, it'd be a bigger bump to go from my Ornamented Plate Regalia to a Conqueror's Aegis Tunic. That's a clear increase across the board - Int, Sta, mp5, armor, crit, and spell power. The DPS version would also be an increase compared to the gear I have for Retribution, but as I don't have that spec set actively, I think I can rule it out as a choice for the moment.
So... on that front, I'm weighing a marginal increase in my primary spec versus a major increase in my secondary. If I don't do any healing, there's no benefit from boosting the Holy gear. On the other hand, my Protection gear is already pretty solid in general. I don't feel I need to "gear-up" that set in order to do anything we do. In fact, everything I have for Protection would probably be considered "solid" until some point in Ulduar. I'll probably pick up the Tunic, but this is the sort of thing I think about in the game.
And the Emblems of Triumph? Well, that's a big question, too. There are a lot of options here (because the gear is higher-level), and the emblems come a good deal slower (2 each day that a variable heroic dungeon quest is run, plus another 2 for killing a theoretically-PUGable raid boss I've never laid eyes on myself, for 4 each day at the most, usually more like 6 per week in a practical sense).
Librams are paladin utility devices, usually augmenting or reducing the cost of some ability. Upgrades are had to come by. For 25 EoT's, you can get what is arguably the best for one of the paladin specs. The Protection libram amounts to about a 4% increase in dodge, which is pretty awesome, and I probably would have snatched it up immediately if I hadn't started gearing up a Holy set. The Holy libram is good, a triggered spell power boost, but it doesn't strike me as quite so "necessary" to the build.
The trinkets are good, but don't seem worth 50 EoT's to me (perhaps because I don't have that much). Rings are 35, there's one useful to each spec, and they are probably the best rings attainable in the game for me right now. That's definitely tempting, though. Then there's the tier 9 armor pieces. Tier 9 has three levels of gear (.25, .5. .75? I dunno...), and the first level is available just for EoT's. The higher levels take EoT's and raid drops, or just armor tokens from the highest level of raid - I can rule both out at present.
Tier 9(lowest) shoulders and hands are 30 EoT's, while the head, chest, and legs are 50 each. Simply-put, any of it would be an upgrade for any spec I might use at this point. But it's taken me this long since patch 3.2 in order to accumulate 30 emblems, so I'm not getting to the "meh" 2-piece set bonuses soon, much less the "cool" 4-piece bonuses. Emblems of Triumph are so precious, that I'm afraid to spend them "wrong" in any way. I want stuff that I won't upgrade from soon (which is most of the options), and the best bang for my buck. That, however, makes it harder to decide whether to improve my primary-but-already-good gear set or my needing-it-but-less-used set.
To make things even more confusing, there are a few non-tier armor pieces available, too. At 45 EoT's for shoulders and 75 for headpieces, you can get pieces that are on-par with the second level of tier 9, but they last set bonuses. Considered in a vacuum, these are the best armor pieces available to me. I find the stats of the Shoulderplates of Enduring Order very appealing, especially as my Protection shoulders are starting to feel a little "old." Then again, I keep hoping for the Regal Aurous Shoulderplates in heroic ToC, which would give me an upgrade for that slot from what I've been using for quite some time now.
So... for the moment, I think I'm hanging onto my Emblems of Triumph to see how things go. If we start pushing into more challenging content, I'll have at least one viable upgrade waiting for me in whatever role I'm in.
I finished last night's couple runs (dang, we should really push through CoS sometime) with 57 Emblems of Conquest and 32 Emblems of Triumph. With EoC's, 58 is a "magic" number. That's the cost for a head or chest token for the tier 8(.5) armor. For anyone who doesn't raid Ulduar, that's upgrade material there.
Now, if I focus on my most-used spec, Protection, I'd pick up my Conqueror's Aegis Faceguard. This is an upgrade over my Helm of the Crestfallen Challenger, though it sacrifices some parry and hit for everything else (stamina, strength, dodge, block, and a little armor and defense). It would also give the 2-piece set bonus, as I already have the chestpiece, which is a 10% increase in seal damge. That wouldn't be a huge output increase, but more damage is always better.
But...
I recently switched my secondary spec to Holy. For that, it'd be a bigger bump to go from my Ornamented Plate Regalia to a Conqueror's Aegis Tunic. That's a clear increase across the board - Int, Sta, mp5, armor, crit, and spell power. The DPS version would also be an increase compared to the gear I have for Retribution, but as I don't have that spec set actively, I think I can rule it out as a choice for the moment.
So... on that front, I'm weighing a marginal increase in my primary spec versus a major increase in my secondary. If I don't do any healing, there's no benefit from boosting the Holy gear. On the other hand, my Protection gear is already pretty solid in general. I don't feel I need to "gear-up" that set in order to do anything we do. In fact, everything I have for Protection would probably be considered "solid" until some point in Ulduar. I'll probably pick up the Tunic, but this is the sort of thing I think about in the game.
And the Emblems of Triumph? Well, that's a big question, too. There are a lot of options here (because the gear is higher-level), and the emblems come a good deal slower (2 each day that a variable heroic dungeon quest is run, plus another 2 for killing a theoretically-PUGable raid boss I've never laid eyes on myself, for 4 each day at the most, usually more like 6 per week in a practical sense).
Librams are paladin utility devices, usually augmenting or reducing the cost of some ability. Upgrades are had to come by. For 25 EoT's, you can get what is arguably the best for one of the paladin specs. The Protection libram amounts to about a 4% increase in dodge, which is pretty awesome, and I probably would have snatched it up immediately if I hadn't started gearing up a Holy set. The Holy libram is good, a triggered spell power boost, but it doesn't strike me as quite so "necessary" to the build.
The trinkets are good, but don't seem worth 50 EoT's to me (perhaps because I don't have that much). Rings are 35, there's one useful to each spec, and they are probably the best rings attainable in the game for me right now. That's definitely tempting, though. Then there's the tier 9 armor pieces. Tier 9 has three levels of gear (.25, .5. .75? I dunno...), and the first level is available just for EoT's. The higher levels take EoT's and raid drops, or just armor tokens from the highest level of raid - I can rule both out at present.
Tier 9(lowest) shoulders and hands are 30 EoT's, while the head, chest, and legs are 50 each. Simply-put, any of it would be an upgrade for any spec I might use at this point. But it's taken me this long since patch 3.2 in order to accumulate 30 emblems, so I'm not getting to the "meh" 2-piece set bonuses soon, much less the "cool" 4-piece bonuses. Emblems of Triumph are so precious, that I'm afraid to spend them "wrong" in any way. I want stuff that I won't upgrade from soon (which is most of the options), and the best bang for my buck. That, however, makes it harder to decide whether to improve my primary-but-already-good gear set or my needing-it-but-less-used set.
To make things even more confusing, there are a few non-tier armor pieces available, too. At 45 EoT's for shoulders and 75 for headpieces, you can get pieces that are on-par with the second level of tier 9, but they last set bonuses. Considered in a vacuum, these are the best armor pieces available to me. I find the stats of the Shoulderplates of Enduring Order very appealing, especially as my Protection shoulders are starting to feel a little "old." Then again, I keep hoping for the Regal Aurous Shoulderplates in heroic ToC, which would give me an upgrade for that slot from what I've been using for quite some time now.
So... for the moment, I think I'm hanging onto my Emblems of Triumph to see how things go. If we start pushing into more challenging content, I'll have at least one viable upgrade waiting for me in whatever role I'm in.
Comments
Post a Comment