Gear farming is the end game for many World of Warcraft players. Blizzard has made the journey to level cap more interesting and enjoyable, but most of us hang around for the raid encounters and the loot they bring. There’s that notion of challenge as well, but I digress.
Before we get in to which specific items are easy to obtain, let’s gloss over the statistics on gear that are important to healing priests. We all know that stamina, intellect, spirit, mastery, haste and critical chance are important, but not all stats are created equal. The specifics are a matter of specs (stamina isn’t listed since all gear contains it fairly evenly).
Discipline: Intellect > Spirit > Mastery = Critical = Haste
Holy: Spirit > Intellect > Mastery = Haste = Critical
Rule of thumb: If it’s a cloth item and it is lacking Spirit, it’s for DPS spellcasters. Trinkets and rings would be the only exceptions.
During our journey to level cap there’s a few things priests can do to ease the farming pains later on. Obviously, there’s little gear we can get during the early stages of the push that will be useful later. What we can do is focus our questing on the factions that hand out the best priest-based healing gear.
Click the Read More button for the full list of armor and weapons that will put you over the avg ilevel barrier (329) to enter heroics.
Cataclysm brings each faction six reputation grinds. Grab their respective tabard as you meet each faction quartermaster:
- Baradin’s Wardens (Alliance): Shimmering Morningstar (Revered), Mandala of Stirring Patterns (Exalted)
- Dragonmaw Clan (Horde): Nothing
- Guardians of Hyjal: Cloak of the Dryads (Honored), Arcanum of Hyjal (Revered), Cord of Raven Queen (Exalted)
- Hellscream’s Reach (Horde): Shimmering Morningstar (Revered), Mandala of Stirring Patterns (Exalted)
- Ramkahen: Ammunae’s Blessing (Honored)
- The Earthen Ring: Pendant of Elemental Balance (Honored)
- Therazane: Lesser Inscription of Charged Lodestone (Honored), Greater Inscription of Charged Lodestone (Exalted)
- Wildhammer Clan (Alliance): Nothing
Now the hard part, farming normal dungeons for the rest of the gear you’ll need to break past ilevel 329 and enter heroic dungeons. Not all dungeons are created equal. Only dungeons that offer highish ilevel gear (316+) are listed. Best of luck on getting what you need!
- Stonecore: High Priestess’ Signet (Quest/Finger), Dolomite Adorned Gloves (Hands), Prophet’s Scepter (Off-hand), Tear of Blood (Trinket), Tendrils of Burrowing Dark (Trinket)
- Vortex Pinnacle: Caliph’s Band (Quest/Finger), Ring of Frozen Rain (Finger), Leggings of Iridescent Clouds (Legs), Amulet of Tender Breath (Neck), Rainsong (Trinket)
- Halls of Origination: Solar Wind Cloak (Back), Anraphet’s Regalia (Chest), Hekatic Slippers (Feet), Band of Life Energy (Finger), Kibble (Finger), Scepter of Power (Main Hand), Blood of Isiset (Trinket), Soul Releaser (Two Hand)
- Lost City of the Tol’vir: Veneficial Band (Finger), Evelyn’s Belt (Waist), Oasis Bracers (Wrist)
- Grim Batol: Azureborne Cloak (Back), Gale of Shadows (Trinket), Wand of Untainted Power (Wand), Crimsonborne Bracers (Wrist)
Check out this post to locate all of the dungeon entrances.
It may suck attempting to farm all that gear and constantly losing drops to greedy mages or warlocks. Thankfully, there’s a good chance that you’ve collected enough Justice Points on your way to level 85 to score at least one piece of guaranteed gear from the “badge” vendor (Alliance/Horde). I suggest saving the points to the end to fill in any possible hole(s), like an off-hand. Here’s what is in store for cloth healers:
- Neck: Celadon Pendant (1,250)
- Waist: Belt of the Falling Rain (1,650)
- Head: Gloves of Purification (1,650)
- Chest: Musk Rose Robes (2,200)
- Shoulder: Summer Song Shoulderwraps (1,650)
- Off-hand: Apple-Bent Bough (950)
Dungeons, Justice rewards and factions may not fill in all of your slots, but the various blues you pickup from questing during the end-game zones should be more than enough to raise your average above the requirement. Be sure to finish those long quest chains, they reward the best gear.
now i know absolutely nothing about gearing for a squishy. but i do know about that gearing up for a plate isnt as easy as everyone might think. most of the quest gear is for either Hunters, Rogues, or Shaman. Especialy when your trying to lvl as Prot. As it stands i quest as Retribution( in all tank gear besides my weapon and relic). Now the prot gear does help my survivability some, but my Damage output is nurfed substantially. Making the grind to 85 a slow crawl.
@Vayder
I believe Mordil is working on something that should lend a tissue, I mean hand.
I’ll be writing an article for Retribution Paladins and DPS Plate classes in general.
I do agree with what you just said though, it took me like 2-3 days to get the iLvL necessary to queue for Heroics with my pally. On the other hand, I started running heroics with my Disc Priest the same day I hit 85.
Yeah i was able to do heroics the moment i hit 85 on my Boomkin and my Hunter. and well i only have a few more bars of exp on my pally until i hit 85, but my average ilvl is only 300, so im going to have gather up some gear.
For either spec, I would have to argue that haste would take the cake over mastery, leaving crit at the bottom.
@Barugaara:
I would disagree with you there.
For Holy, Mastery is way better than Haste/Crit. You’re supposed to stack Mastery once you’re done with Int/Spirit.
For Discipline, it is recommended to have a balance between the 3 stats, but I prefer Haste/Crit over Mastery. Discipline’s Mastery is pretty silly right now, mainly because our shields are extremely weak.
For holy, Mastery becomes the best secondary stat only after you have reached 12.5% haste.
For disc, until shields hit their soft cap on absorbs, a quick heal (around 1.9 usually) will be preferred. Penance also benefits from haste through tick counts. This may be a bit more debatable depending on playstyle.
The 12.5% is mostly required for a Raid environment, I was talking about heroic dungeons.
The main reason why Disc is not considered as a good raiding spec right now is because it really depends on gear. Back in 3.3.3, Discipline Priests were extremely good because they had an extremely high critical chance, which means Divine Aegis and Inspiration kept proccing.
Now that we all have a low Crit Chance by default, the only way to use all of our talents is by somehow increasing our Crit via raid/group composition and/or gems. I still consider Mastery as a pretty lousy Discipline stat and Haste as a good complement.
I think the stat layout between Disc and Holy is pretty good. What I imagine itzkoopa is getting at is that those last three stats are pretty much of equal importance. Not entirely equal, but no huge advantage one way or the other. If there’s any beef, it’s that Mastery isn’t hugely important for Disc, in my experience.