Spirit and upgrading lock gear in WotLK

[nysalor]

I was looking through the green and blue caster armor in Wowhead's Wrath of the Lich King search engine when I realized that I won't be upgrading most of my gear (Frozen Shadoweave + Spellstrike w/other crafted items) until around 75. But I have a total of 152 spirit! How is this going to affect leveling if I can't take advantage of the effects of spirit on Life Tap and Fel Armor? Should I downgrade my gear when I hit Northrend so I have more spirit? I don't know. Any thoughts from the beta gang?

[Norber]

Check out some of the mid 70's gear.

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Note that this will equate to about 600 additional spirit in the mid 70's assuming spirit is on all caster cloth gear**. and it looks like most will. currently i have 152 so 752 * .30 = which makes fel armor worth about 225 spell damage. Thats mid 70's gear mind you. actually its pretty nice. and ther combining Priest, Mage and lock gear in Wrath of the Lich King. with a new spell power rating. so lets say an item has 52 spell power.

**A warlock / mage will get +52 spelldamage as 1 pt of spell power will = 1 pt Spell damage. where as a priest in the same item will get 104 healing due to priests getting a modifier of 1pt spell power = 2pts of + healing. thus making it so you can respec with out huge gear penalty. there not trying to screw us. this is actually really nice. need an SP. no need to bring that alt. so and so go respec.

** due to there being no healing or spell damage any more in Wrath of the Lich King

[hoho]

Originally Posted by Norber

need an SP. no need to bring that alt. so and so go respec.

While generally true SP will surely at least gem its gear differently. mp5 is useless for us, all we care about is haste and spelldamge. In coming expansion a bit of spirit and crit. Having mp5 on stuff likely means it has a bit less other stats.

Of course if one doesn't need maximum-performance then healer can probably do adequate dps as needed

[teknofyl]

Yes it looks like the move is to allow respeccing more painlessly and to increase the flexibility of gear wrt classes.

I would imagine that gemming and inscription would be another cost assumed t be associated with respeccing - or if they were nice, the way that you adapt it to a class.

[Nohero]

Basically, Blizz changed the tool-tip "+damage and healing" to "+spellpower." If I'm reading the update correctly, they are saying that healers won't be getting stuff like "+100 healing and +33 damage." So basically, healers get less +healing, but their spells have a much higher modifier. So +33 spellpower may be equal to like +90 healing.

That means cloth healers will have to compete with cloth dps for gear. Mega suckage

"o Spellpower:
+ All items and effects which grant bonuses to spell damage and spell healing are being consolidated into a single stat, Spellpower. This stat will appear with the same values found on items which grant “increased spell damage and healing” such as on typical Mage and Warlock itemization.
+ For classes which do not heal, they should see no change in the character sheet other than new tooltip wording.
+ Healing characters will see their bonus healing numbers on the character sheet decrease, however, all healing spells have been modified to receive more benefit from spellpower than they received from bonus healing, with a net effect of no change to the amount healed by their spells. Some talents have had to be rebalanced to accommodate this change, but the amount healed will remain roughly the same. In addition, some talents will provide only healing spell power."

Edit: On the plus side, healers will now have much more solo-ability and will only need one set of gear.

[hoho]

Originally Posted by Nohero

That means cloth healers will have to compete with cloth dps for gear

Every time I see yet another healing item that nobody wants any more I wish Wrath of the Lich King would already be here. How many healing wands have you seen in SWP or healing rings in ZA third chest?

[Norber]

another + is that it doubles our gear pool. think of all the priest loot you have seen drop. its ours to roll on now. + mage gear and our gear. same pie, just sliced differently.

[Bodhisage]

Only thing I'm worried about is that a lot of guilds gear up tanks/heals first. It's going to be tough getting any upgrades at the start of content because you have to first compete w/ cloth wearing healers, then with all the cloth deeps.

[hoho]

Then it means that healers get geared up faster than they usually were and as most fights are not dps races it should make progressing faster overall.

[Ethellion]

Originally Posted by Bodhisage

Only thing I'm worried about is that a lot of guilds gear up tanks/heals first. It's going to be tough getting any upgrades at the start of content because you have to first compete w/ cloth wearing healers, then with all the cloth deeps.

Because of this I'm tempted to pick up taloring so I have some high level gear W/O waiting for it to drop 6 times.

At the start of Wrath of the Lich King all casters will be rolling on cloth even pallies and shamans becuse they don't need the armour when DPSing. However, I think blizz will make more cloth drops so we wont be left out. Or give some insane stam that is screaming warlock. (and make it purple)