Building Your Wish List

I’ve posted before on gearing yourself up, and I have a number of other posts just for paladins on the subject of gear. Like other multi-role hybrid classes, paladins are in an interesting situation in that they gear up for different roles, and the gear offered to them will often fit one of these roles. More specific classes, like mages and rogues, just pick what gear is better, with exceptions.

However, that doesn’t necessarily mean finding loot is easy for anybody. Persistence and prayer will get you the items you need, but you have to know where they come from first. And this can require a little research.

It is my opinion that mages, warlocks, and shadow priests have it easy on this matter. With the exception that priests can’t use swords and the other two can’t use maces, gear for these classes is easy to pick up because, with exceptions of course, they all use the same stuff. Rogues and feral druids, as well as hunters, and also prot warriors also have it decently easy. There also seems to be a good number of elemental shaman drops out there for whatever reason.

If you are one of the other classes/specs, however, it becomes more difficult for you. As I’ve probably mentioned before, Holy Paladin gear in pre-heroic instances falls to two drops. Eight instances, about 3 or 4 bosses each…two drops. Same goes for Ret Paladins, Resto Shaman, and to a lesser extent Arms/Fury warriors. I don’t know for sure myself, but I believe Resto and Balance Druids also have similar issues.

There is armor downranking to consider…I’ve seen plenty of healing paladins, shaman, and druids alike parading their Hallowed Raiment and lots of Balance Druids in cloth as well. But this is of course not necessarily ideal…the armor probably wasn’t designed with you in mind…but you wear it because you’re waiting for something better.

And so, to the point of the post. To best outfit yourself for what you plan to do with your character, some research is needed. You’ll probably need to wear greens in the meantime, but it’s better than gear for some other spec for sure.

How best to do this? The first step I recommend is downloading a mod called AtlasLoot. It can be found at curse-gaming.com in their WoW section (where they also have a ton of other mods for your perusal). In it you can see information on just about every item in the game you can work towards via an instance, and even pvp or crafting. Mostly though, it is a great instance for drops in instances and also has extensive reputation rewards listings.

This is a preliminary step. Admittedly, what it mainly helps with is knowing what you’re going to see before enterring an instance, since it only operates in game. If you’re more serious about upgrading your character, continue reading.

A spreadsheet or some other method of recording helps if you plan on remembering this stuff. If you can carry it around in your noggin, that’s great, but I for one can’t. :) Format a list based on gear slot, possbily factoring in columns for item name, drop location, relevant stats, etc. Alternatively, instead of a spreadsheet, you could use a nifty program called WowEquip to outfit a template of gear you find.

Next, start scouring an item database. Allakhazam and Thottbot have excellent listings and come complete with advanced search capabilities so you can narrow what you’re searching. For example, if you’re a holy paladin, you’re probably most interested in plate gear with +healing. Go into Thottbot’s armor search, and filter it down to level 65-70 plate items, of rare quality, with “Spell healing” on them. You will then have generated for you a list of gear matching your parameters. You can narrow it down from there to show only helms or gloves to make categorization easier.

Last, start recording. Either record into your spreadsheet, or load items into their WowEquip slots. The useful thing about using WowEquip here is that it will show you the totals and calculations of all the stats on your wish list gear, compiling your +healing, calculating your crit chance, or even showing you spell dps in some cases. You can even put gems in gem slots and allow stat-affecting talents to show! And if you don’t see a piece of gear in the WowEquip item list, you can import it from allakhazam or thottbot from the item url on those sites. However, using WowEquip, you won’t be able to make note of drop location, which you may or may not need.

Keep going until you have all your upgrade-needy slots covered, and you’re set to log back on to WoW and hit up your guildies/the lfg channel for some instance runs!

Also, if you’re beyond the realm of 5-mans or heroics, it can help you decide between farming arena points or just waiting for a drop. If you can determine your guild’s progression vs. your team’s point accumulation, you can figure out whether waiting for that epic drop or pvping for those Veteran’s Boots is a better expenditure of your time.