Modifying the BIS Resource Rankings

I've been changing some rankings around recently, most notably the trinket selection. Heroic Sliver of Pure Ice is a 1 minute on use trinket which provides technically more mp5 than a heroic Solace, but the passive Solace does require less thinking than Sliver so I've moved Sliver below Solace.

I've also rethought my stance on the older Talisman of Resurgence trinket and realized that it is still the best for my playstyle and philosophy. Remember that all alternatives are listed on the specific slot pages, so anything you think is wrong is up to you. This list is not absolute, and that is important to note. It fails to acknowledge all playstyles, guild ability, and personal preference. It's simply a look into what I, as a high end raiding paladin, prefer as the best items to use.

3.3 General Gearing Guidelines

I don't like telling people what to do, so take this post as you will. This is the general approach to gear in 3.3 that I will be using with the logic behind it. I still don't believe in Flash of Light builds as viable in hard content. Normal mode encounters and everything else you can pretty much roll your face on the keyboard and get things done. I'm not saying you can't gem full on spellpower and be a flash guy, but your longevity is going to take a hit in terms of the raw power heals you can produce for extended periods of time. I don't buy the excuse of "well, the other healers just aren't doing their job" when your raid fails if you go FOL spec. That means YOU aren't doing your job.

The armory has been updated with a lot of the 277 ilvl hardmode loot in the past days. There are a LOT of gearing options for us to the tune of 4 ilvl277 items per slot, all itemized differently. The main site has those options listed on each slot's individual page.

Rant aside, here's what I'm going to do in 3.3:

1. Always stay above 675 haste rating, the soft cap in raids
Haste above the soft cap is not wasted using holy light. Any time you use flash, however, you'll get little use out of additional haste. The more haste, the better. If you sub out haste, just make sure you're at or above the magic number and you're pretty much golden.

2. Keep stacking intellect
The BIS gear in 3.3 can put you around 41,000 unbuffed mana. If you're a HL power user, you're probably going to use it all during ICC hardmode. When choosing an item, when do you drop some intellect? That's personal preference, but if it's around 200 or above mana it takes quite a bit of spellpower/haste/crit to make it worth it to me, on the magnitutde of about 20+ spellpower for an item.

3. Spellpower comes with gear
Don't sweat spellpower. It comes with more gear, though not at the high rate that SP gemmers obtain.

4. Haste/MP5/SP items are king
These are the best itemized pieces. Crit has long since lost its crown of best regenerative stat for us. This means you'll be dabbling into mail quite a bit since Blizzard itemizes shamans that way moreso than us. Don't believe mp5 is that good? Try healing without replenishment, which provides 400mp5 with a 40,000 mana pool. You'll be struggling in normal 10 mans with mana. If you can maintain around 300mp5 with gear you're going to be in a very good place. Once you reach the haste soft cap it's generally ok to start using sp/crit/mp5 pieces.

3.3 Items Live

The site has been switched over to 3.3 items now. It will be continuously updated as new items are released, but the listing is pretty in depth on each of the item pages.

3.3 Next Week!

With 3.3 coming next week, the site will be turning over to 3.3 holy paladin gear. Most of it is already listed if you click on the 3.3 link and the slot pages are much, much more in depth for 3.3. There is still a LOT of items to be discovered in Icecrown though, so updates will be frequent.

If you're visiting on Monday 12/7 you may notice the switchover to patch 3.3 as the main patch. Things will be a little off for a few minutes but that is it.

Icecrown Gear

Icecrown gear has started coming in. You can see the progress before 3.3 by clicking the patch to view on the main website.

Future Updates - Unsure

My guild has abandoned me after Blizzard implemented their lovely faction swap, so I find myself with no raiding guild for the time being. Obviously future loot is a long ways off, so if by then I don't get a guild this site may not get updated.

3.2 Itemization

3.2 has been active for a while and I've played quite a bit of it, so I can give my subjective view of what's going on in terms of holy itemization. Agree with it or not, but I've found that it works at a high level perspective (high level being Yogg+0, Algalon 25, etc).

The best types of items:
1. spellpower / haste / mp5
2. spellpower / haste / crit
3. spellpower / crit / mp5

Once you start really getting Coliseum gear with a ton of haste and reach the magical haste number of 675 (I actually have 672 right now and my FOL says 1 second cast) the number 3 itemized gear becomes better than number 1. At this point your flash of light is 1 second and your global cooldowns are 1 second, therefore flash of light receives no additional bonus from haste. If you've played any 3.2 you'll know that flash of light is used much more often. I even intersperse flash throughout Algalon when I can since a balls out HL spam is not sustainable anymore even with 32k unbuffed mana.

How much mp5 do you need? I try to keep it floating around 150 unbuffed. Any more than that seems unnecessary at this point, but it can only help. I personally prefer to max out my throughput before regen still just because the high level fights still require high throughput. Regen can come from a lot of places including seal/judgement of wisdom now.