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Gearing up

by Rebella

Jumping straight into high end raiding at level 80 might not be a good idea. First of all you are likely get laughed at trying to get into a raid the day you reach level 80 and have a mix of blue and green quality gear. Secondly you are likely to not have experience anywhere near what would be required for raid healing, but that is for another chapter of these series. Let’s concentrate on gearing up and getting ready first. There are crafted gear, emblem gear and instance drops available which are all fairly easily obtainable and should get you geared quickly. Let’s have a closer look at what is available then. But first let’s make sure our spec and abilities are good to go.

Spec and abilities

If you have been levelling as DPS or tank you want to ensure you have your healing spec sorted right away and abilities trained for max level. Equally, if you have levelled with healing as dual spec you want to ensure you have your max level abilities trained. Lastly, if you have levelled with a healing spec, you may want to change from a soloing spec to a more raid and dungeon oriented spec. For quick access to a reasonable healing builds, I have added my personal choices for each class below and included a selection of glyphs. There are viable variations for each class and you can experiment to find a build that suits you.

Before you venture into healing a dungeon you should ensure you are using max level ranks of your abilities. Back in TBC down ranking had its advantages (particularly mana and proc related), but that time is over. A significant number of people still use lower ranks of abilities unintentionally because they have either not updated their buttons on their button bar or haven’t trained the most recent rank. I have seen people blissfully unaware using low level ranks in ToC raids so it doesn’t hurt to double check.

There are a couple of main reasons why this happens. Firstly, if you have dual spec and go to the trainer and train for the spec you are soloing with and not your healing off spec, then the spec specific abilities will not get trained. Secondly, if you train your healing abilities while in your soloing form, your buttons on the second spec don’t automatically get updated, which is both unfortunate and annoying. This is the main reason people don’t realise that they are using lower level ranks. Double check to ensure your abilities are at their max level and you will certainly find healing dungeons and raids a lot easier. Not to mention you will be saved the embarrassment from when someone points out you are using lower level ranks.

Gearing up with crafted items

First of all you should make notes of what stats to aim for on your gear. As you go along you may find that a different balance of the stats may better suit you for what you normally end up healing. For example, you are likely to benefit from having close to 400 haste at least on any class as quick as possible and then balance other stats afterwards, or you might struggle with your mana and want more mp5 on the gear than you will need later on. If you are unsure of what stats to aim for, have a look at each of the introductory pages; discipline priest, holy priest, restoration druid, restoration shaman and holy paladin.

There is a vast range of items available off different crafters. A necklace and a ring are available from Jewelcrafting and are of item level 200. There are in fact a lot of crafted item level 200 items available. A tailor can make cloaks for healers as well as robe and gloves for priests, leatherworkers can make legs and boots for druids and shamans, a blacksmith can make helm and boots for paladins. These are generally not too expensive to have made, except perhaps the paladin gear because it requires titansteel. It would be a very good idea to look at how much these items cost on the AH before you consider farming mats for them as some make these to level up and therefore sell them cheap as they are not overly popular to have crafted anymore.

Belt and boots are available from Ulduar patterns (item level 226) and these are generally quite good for the mats required to have them made. Then there are chest and wrist items available for each armour type from Trial of the Crusader patterns (item level 245). These items are quite good and I would recommend investing in these if you’d like to gear up quickly with decent items. The ToC crafted items come in an Alliance and a Horde version, although stats are the same they look slightly different, so ensure you get the correct faction (sometimes people are funny and list the wrong type on the ah). Below is a list of what healing items are available from these Ulduar (items with hit are not included) and ToC patterns (it’s the Alliance version I have linked to):

Cloth:

Leather:

Mail:

Plate:

Unlike the cloth items, where there are two options of each type, leather and mail items are typically made to be usable for both dps and healers. Therefore you should keep in mind that not all items will be optimal stats wise, they may however be a fair bit better than what you can easily obtain and would therefore prove a good temporarily upgrade if you can afford it. There are also legs and boots available from ICC patterns, but they are still very expensive to have made so emblems of triumph gear as well as instance drops are worth considering instead. Let’s have a closer look at what is available.

Gearing up with emblems

There are so much gear available it will easily make your head spin. Emblems of Heroism, Valour, Conquest, Triumph and Frost are all currencies you can use to purchase gear. Currently it is the emblems of triumph which is easiest to get a hold of and the gear obtainable with these emblems is quite good. If you use the looking for dungeon tool as you level up you can gather two triumph emblems every day. The 5 man heroic bosses currently all drop an Emblem of Triumph each and once you have completed your daily random dungeon (which awards emblems of frost upon completion, see below) the subsequent heroics you complete using this tool will award 2 additional emblems of triumphs. Due to the amounts of Emblems of Triumphs available you are likely to find it relatively easy to gear up. The different items of gear may not be optimal stats wise, but they are likely to be vastly better than what you obtained while levelling and non-heroic dungeons.  Therefore the gear available from these emblems are what you should look at first.

With [Emblem of Triumph] you can buy a full Tier 9 set of gear; helm, shoulders, chest, gloves and legs. This gear is available off the various armour type vendors around Dalaran and on the Tournament Grounds. There are also shoulder and helm items available which are not apart of the tier. Additionally you can purchase rings and trinkets as well as relics for this type of currency. Lastly it is worth noting that Crusader Orbs used in the ToC crafts mentioned above can be purchased from Emblems of Triumph. For a list of all items available from triumph emblems, have a look at WoW Wiki. You may want to check out the different pages for the tier 9 sets aimed for healing too; priest (this set covers both priest specs), druid, shaman and paladin. These are the Tier 9 (item level 232) sets, which are the sets available from emblems only. I have linked to the Alliance versions. Do double check that you have picked the correct tier item and not one for a different spec.

You can downgrade your emblems to a lower type to purchase gear off those vendors as well, if you want to. However, you can only downgrade one step at a time, so Emblem of Triumph can be made into Emblem of Conquest, Emblem of Conquest can be traded in for Emblems of Valour and Emblem of Valour can be exchanged for Emblem of Heroism. All of which offers gear for a lower tier than what they are traded from. Therefore, you are likely to not find much you want from heroism and valour which will give you slightly less to keep track of.

Then there is [Emblem of Frost], the highest level emblem currently available. As of when you reach level 80 the first random dungeon you do with the looking for dungeon tool each day will award Emblem of Frost upon completion. You will also get 5 Emblems of Frost upon completing the weekly raid. Additionally bosses in the ICC raid dungeons drop Emblems of Frost, as does the most recent boss in Vault of Archavon, Toravon, and you get 5 Emblems of Frost for completing the weekly ICC raid quest (located randomly inside ICC). The frost emblem vendors are located inside ICC and in Dalaran next to the other vendors, however you can currently only access the tier 10 vendors from inside ICC. Once again WoW Wiki provides good information about the items available from emblems of frost, as well as the healer tier 10 sets; priest (once again one set for both discipline and holy), druid, shaman and paladin.

Gearing up with dungeon drops

Before you get many frost emblems you are likely to go through a few gear upgrades from dungeons as you go along while gathering Emblems of Triumph in particular. All heroics have epic items drop off the last boss and the looking for dungeon tool should ensure you don’t get dumped into a heroic you may not be geared and ready for. But before you jump into these, have a look at getting into Trial of the Champion on normal mode. All bosses drop epic gear of the same quality as most heroic 5 man end bosses. You can get into Trial of the Champion from level 75 and from at least level 78 there is no reason to keep waiting. As you reach level 80 you may then be better prepared for what awaits you and the gathering of Emblems of Triumph will speed up greatly.

After you have obtained a few better bits of gear you will be able to enter both the normal ICC 5 man dungeons (Forge of Souls, Pit of Saron and Halls of Reflection) and then later also heroic Trial of the Champion which you are likely to find both more challenging and if you are lucky you may get some more gear upgrades. (You can theoretically get into the ICC 5 man dungeons from level 75, but you’re likely to find it very difficult.) You may find these more difficult to heal than the heroic 5 man dungeons you have been getting into so far, but as you get more experience you will find it easier. (I have written a guide on how to heal the ICC 5 man heroic dungeons, but most of the abilities are present in normal mode as well. Have a look here if you are interested.) The gear drops in these instances is likely to be better than what you have been able to access from dungeon drops thus far, and with some luck regarding drops, you may get some good gear upgrades.

Once you have gotten more gear and experience, the heroic ICC 5 man dungeons will be unlocked in the looking for dungeon tool and the bosses in here can drop items of the same quality as gear obtainable from the Emblems of Triumph. Forge of Souls will be available first, followed by Pit of Saron and eventually also Halls of Reflection. Although these can prove quite difficult to heal, the experience from healing them on normal mode helps a lot. There is a lot of gear available and many items not available from the emblems of triumph vendor can be found here, for example weapons. Priests, druids and shamans can get a nice dagger, [Surgeon's Needle], from Forgemaster Garfrost PoS while paladins have to make due with the caster dps weapon, [Seethe], from Devourer of Souls in FoS. For full lists of gear available in the different ICC instances (both normal and heroic) check out the Forge of Souls, Pit of Saron and Halls of Reflection pages on WoW Wiki.

Vault of Archavon can be an easy way to get both tier 9 and tier 10 (both 10 and 25 man versions of the gear). However, you have to be very lucky with the drops. There are few drops off each boss and they can be any leg or glove tier (tier 10 from Toravon, tier 9 from Koralon etc) as well as PvP items. The tiers are spec specific as well so you may well find it easier to grind the emblems to purchase the gear. The bosses in there do drop two triumph emblems each though, except for Toravon who drops two Emblems of Frost so it is worth doing for a try at the tier and getting some emblems.

What’s next?

With the gear available you can start healing Trial of the Crusader on both 10 and 25 man as well start start venturing into Icecrown Citadel and say hello to the first few bosses in there. These instances are likely to offer more temptations gear wise and you may want to research gear upgrades before you go to not end up needing on everything just in case. Make sure that the items you need on are definite upgrades and not just a higher item level as that as useless as a “stat”. However, you may want to make sure you are confident with your healing first and have good rotations, useful addons and a good mana management. These will all be covered later on in the healing series.

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Next up is consumables, professions, glyph changing, gems, enchants and the like.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, April 8th, 2010 at 11:56 and is filed under gear, healing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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