Dabasa's Gear Guide

• Defense Cap: If you open your character menu (C button by default) you will see pull-down menus you can click to view your stats, you will need to click “Defenses” to view the stats that apply here. If you’re using nothing but PVE gear (Dungeon and raid gear) then the only important stat is “Defense” here but if you have PVP gear or a mixture of both then some of your cap will come from “Resilience” down below. You will need either 540 Defense (Which is 689 Defense Rating which you can view by hovering over your “Defense” stat in the character menu) or 460 Resilience to “Cap” this stat, meaning a boss cannot perform a critical strike on you (which will kill you) while tanking. You can also combine these 2 stats to achieve the cap, we’re working on an easier method to check but for now there’s a spreadsheet that you can copy to your google account to check it here.
• Expertise Cap (Dodge): If you open your character menu (C button by default) you will see pull-down menus you can click to view your stats, you will need to click “Melee” to view the stats that apply here. You will need 26 Expertise (200 Expertise Rating) to reach the cap where the boss cannot dodge you and 56 expertise (431 Expertise Rating) to make them unable to parry you (this is not realistic most likely so just go for 26 expertise at first). Note: Tanks also sometimes have skills which increase expertise and/or glyphs that increase it while using certain skills, take this into account when calculating your cap.
• Hit Cap: If you open your character menu (C button by default) you will see pull-down menus you can click to view your stats, you will need to click “Melee” to view the stats that apply here. You will need 8% Hit (263 Hit Rating) to make all of your melee skills hit the boss, you can also get up to 17% Spell Hit (446 Hit Rating) to have nothing ever miss but this is not needed. Note: Tanks also sometimes have skills which increase your chance to hit, take this into account when calculating your cap.

• Hit Cap: If you open your character menu (C button by default) you will see pull-down menus you can click to view your stats, you will need to click “Melee” to view the stats that apply here. You will need 8% Hit (263 Hit Rating) to make all of your melee skills hit the boss, you can also get up to 17% Spell Hit (446 Hit Rating) to have nothing ever miss but this is not needed. Note: DPS also sometimes have skills which increase your chance to hit, take this into account when calculating your cap.
• Expertise Cap (Dodge): If you open your character menu (C button by default) you will see pull-down menus you can click to view your stats, you will need to click “Melee” to view the stats that apply here. You will need 26 Expertise (200 Expertise Rating) to reach the cap where the boss cannot dodge you and while you can get 56 expertise (431 Expertise Rating) to make them unable to parry you this is not needed as you will be hitting the boss in the back and they cannot parry from behind. Note: DPS also sometimes have skills which increase expertise and/or glyphs that increase it while using certain skills, take this into account when calculating your cap.

• Hit Cap: If you open your character menu (C button by default) you will see pull-down menus you can click to view your stats, you will need to click “Spells” to view the stats that apply here. You will need 17% Spell Hit (446 Hit Rating) to have nothing ever miss. Note: Caster DPS also sometimes have skills which increase your chance to hit, take this into account when calculating your cap.

• Mana Regen: MP5 or Mana Every 5 Seconds and/or Spirit for some classes (See list below)…If you open your character menu (C button by default) you will see pull-down menus you can click to view your stats, you will need to click “Spells” to view the stats that apply here and look at Mana Regen. Healer classes should increase their mana regen first by equipping armor and/or trinkets/necks/rings with MP5/Spirit until they are comfortable healing the longest fights they participate in. Generally your best bet is to go with more regen than you need including trinkets then try to collect throughput trinkets (as listed in the list below under Spellpower) to swap to for shorter fights or fights where you need more output or when your regen is buffed by fight mechanics (Such as Beta/Gamma Halls of Lightning or Valithria Dreamwalker when entering the portals).
  Class list regen stat priority:
  Paladins: Regen gained by MP5 only, Spirit will not provide any in-combat benefit, however, they do gain natural regen through a larger mana pool (Using Divine Plea and Arcane Torrent) which is why Paladins generally stack nothing but Intellect (which increases your mana pool, Spellpower, Crit, and regen) and occasionally Haste if their heals aren’t quick enough to hit before people start dying. Vendor trinkets best for mana regen and general play for this spec are Meteorite Crystal and Talisman of Resurgence for Sidereal Essences and Emblems of Triumph respectively (for some stacked up 25 man fights the ilvl 187 Soul Preserver from Regular (Not Heroic!) Culling of Stratholme is the best mana regen trinket available as well) and the ilvl 200 relic Libram of Renewal is the best one you can get for the entire expansion unless you’re running easy 5 mans where Flash of Light is your primary heal (or you’re just starting and can’t afford the other yet) in which case the ilvl 238 libram Furious Gladiator’s Libram of Justice is good as well.
  Priests: Regen gained by Spirit primarily although trinkets and weapons which provide MP5 are acceptable as well. Trinkets from the vendors mentioned above in Dalaran such as Solace of the Fallen and Show of Faith for Defiler’s Scourgestones and Sidereal Essences respectively are your best bet for mana regen.
  Druids: Regen gained by Spirit primarily although trinkets and weapons which provide MP5 are acceptable as well. Trinkets from the vendors mentioned above in Dalaran such as Solace of the Fallen and Show of Faith for Defiler’s Scourgestones and Sidereal Essences respectively are your best bet for mana regen.
  Shaman: Regen gained by MP5 only, Spirit will not provide any in-combat benefit to a restoration shaman and should be avoided on gear, weapons, trinkets, etc. A larger mana pool will also benefit the regen of a shaman but nowhere near as much as a Paladin so they tend to stack Spellpower and use mana regen trinkets and gear with MP5 to increase their regen. Trinkets from the vendors mentioned above in Dalaran such as Solace of the Fallen and Show of Faith for Defiler’s Scourgestones and Sidereal Essences respectively are your best bet for mana regen.
• Throughput: Spellpower, Haste, Crit, Intellect, On-Use Effects, and Procs (Programmed Randomly Occurring Chances) are the main ways healers increase their overall healing output. Which of these are most important vary by class and spec but generally this is far less important than maintaining your mana since most healers even in low ilvl gear end up overhealing (Healing someone when their HP is already at 100%) to some degree…most of the time you’re increasing your throughput to allow you to use less powerful spells to heal someone which consumes less mana so really the goal of these stats are also to increase your available mana just like the stats above. Which ones you use depend on a few things, your class/spec, your gear level, and your access to gear. The classes primarily stack the following to raise their throughput:
  Paladins: Intellect exclusively, if a piece has more then it’s probably better, even at a lower item level…a 245 trinket that has Intellect on it is better than a 264 Spellpower or MP5 trinket since Intellect gives you throughput AND mana regen. If you have 2 pieces that are close in level but one has a socket then it’s likely better because you can put an Intellect gem in it. See the mana regen section above for recommended trinkets.
  Priests: Spellpower is the primary stat to stack, it increases the amount healed by each spell and trinkets that increase your Spellpower and regen mana together tend to be the best for you as listed above.
  Druids: While Spellpower is the primary stat to stack, you should also try to hit the Haste tiers listed in this article, the haste lowers your time between casts increases the amount healed by each spell and trinkets that increase your Spellpower and regen mana together tend to be the best for you as listed above.
  Shaman: Spellpower is the primary stat to stack, it increases the amount healed by each spell and trinkets that increase your Spellpower and regen mana together tend to be the best for you as listed above.

This will make up the bulk of your initial gear and it can be purchased for only Honor Points, you can only source ilvl 238 PVP gear for honor from 1 vendor out in Area 52 in the Outlands but she sells weapons, shields, offhands, full gear sets, and relics at this ilvl so you can boost up to 210 using this vendor alone. DO NOT BUY THE ITEMS AT THE BEGINNING OF HER INVENTORY!!! Scroll to the end and buy the higher item level items at the same price. If you need an addon that shows item levels on tooltips then TacoTip displays this and gearscore all in one addon. To get honor fast you will want to pick up all 5 weekly quests in Wintergrasp (Every week), run Wintergrasp to complete the quests, then turn them in and trade in all of your Stone Keeper’s Shards for Honor Tokens (at this vendor) at 30 SKS for 2,000 honor. Beyond this you can run Wintergrasp again for 5-8k each time, farm Stone Keeper’s Shards in dungeons, or run battlegrounds.

These items are sold (by this vendor) in Orgrimmar and are expensive, the only things you should really buy here are the Hit Trinket, the Belts, and the Boots since you cannot buy those in Area 52.

These items are sold (by this vendor) in Orgrimmar and are VERY expensive, the only things you should really buy here are the Cloaks, Rings, Necks, and (Only for tanks) the Trinket. These should be the last items you buy for honor since they’re so expensive.

While there are some good deals to be had (Such as the ilvl 225 tank cloak) here they should really only be considered if you have an excess of gold or only need 1-2 ilvls to get into Gammas as you can waste gold VERY fast here.

This is most people’s first place they go for gear but it is by far the least efficient of these methods. The gear is typically ilvl 200 at most (Except for a few new dungeons) and takes forever to grind. While the methods above will get you to 5000+ GS in under a week this method can take months so it should only really be done to grind out emblems if you really need to. The exception to this is running the Heroic versions of Trial of the Champion, Forge of Souls, Pit of Saron, and Halls of Reflection as mentioned above. These not only give better gear but the last 3 also count for your daily Gamma run.