Good God, So Many Gems!

Gems can be overwhelming if you simply look for a Jewelcrafting link. Like many other things, you need to know your needs and how to reach them. As a fresh 80 being met with new gear with sockets, gems are a necessity that will visibly improve your DPS, tanking or healing. Each class has certain needs, but not necessarily every need should be gemmed. Before this article will make much sense to you, I advise you first do a bit of research on your class’ needs: great places for that can be found on the Links sidebar.

The first thing you need to know is this: Meta gems are VERY important. If you have a helm with a meta socket, you will have a meta gem. Each meta gem has certain requirements that need to be met. They can include things such as more red gems than blue gems, certain amounts of specific colored gems, and one of each color. These requirements MUST be met in order to “activate” the meta gem, gaining the stat bonuses it grants. As such, one of your primary goals through gemming is to activate the meta gem.

Beyond this, there are magical things called “socket bonuses” for matching colored gems with sockets of the same color. These are often very small bonuses, and on a normal basis, should be ignored.

One brief note: When choosing your gems in your research, choose one of each color – Blue, Red, and Yellow. If a blue gem is not ideal for your class, then choose a green or purple gem that is better suited – but ensure that one of your gems fits a blue socket.

The Jigsaw Puzzle

This way of looking at gems is of my own invention, and it is one I am fairly proud of. Basically, you have a designated number of gem sockets (don’t forget to add an Eternal Belt Buckle to your belt!). You need to assign a gem to every socket, and you need to meet your Meta gem requirements. First, lay out the gems that will complete your meta gem. In the examples to follow, I will be using a Blood Death Knight as a model. The Death Knight has 10 gem slots spread out through his gear (not including the Meta gem slot)

• Meta: Chaotic Skyflare Diamond
• Soverign Twilight Opal x2

Now you have met your meta gem requirements. Sometimes it will take 3 gems. Mr. Guinea Pig DK now has 8 slots left available, so we fill these 8 slots (not socketing yet) with the best gem for his class: Strength.

• Bold Scarlet Ruby x8

So we now have our ten gems. Now here is where the puzzle comes into play: We have our pieces (the gems) and we have the completed image (the gear with sockets). The only thing left to do is put the gems in the right places. We start by placing the two purple gems (to satisfy the meta) in the gear. We do this by searching for a blue socket. By socketing these two in blue sockets, we gain socket bonuses. However, we are not sacrificing the benefit of a pure Strength gem because we require these gems to satisfy the meta. With those two socketed, we now fill out the rest of the gear with the red strength gems.

That is the basic method: Find out what gems you need to satisfy your meta gem, and socket those according to color. Sometimes it will be more complicated than the above example: if you are under the hit cap, you need to gem for Hit Rating in order to reach it. For more information on the hit cap, read my post on Stats and Ratings.

Thank you for reading this edition of Gear Check!

- Xicon

Sure, it's shiny, but what does it all mean?

Wrath of the Lich King, in all its splendor, has served to make gear significantly more complicated with the abundance of combat ratings and the different ways statistics affect certain classes. Here to bring some order to the chaos is the intelligent casual, Xicon.

Welcome to the first of my posts about gearing your fresh 80. The early weeks of this blog will be littered with posts similar to these, but eventually they will level out and become relevant to current Azeroth. But for now, I give you these.

Gear can look overwhelming when you first see it. That shiny new Tier 8.5 epic piece you saw when you went to the Dalaran blacksmith? The model looks cool, but what’s with all these numbers? And this (0/5)? [/] Blue Socket? What is all this crap? For the answers, look no further than this post. Well, further past the break, but you get the point.

The first thing you need to understand about gear is item level. Every item in the game has an item level, usually referred to as iLevel. This number (now visible in-game through an interface option) determines quite a lot about the item. The higher the iLevel, the better it is (usually).

iLevel can also give an indicator of where items drop. Superior (blue) items of iLevel 200 drop from Heroic Dungeon bosses, while Epic (purple) items of iLevel 200 drop from either 10-man raids (Obsidian Sanctum and Naxxramas) as well as the final boss of a Heroic Dungeon. Items of iLevel 213 (all of them are Epic) drop from 25-man raids (Naxx and OS) and 10-man Eye of Eternity. As the raids get more difficult, the item levels get higher.

Tied directly into this concept is the idea of an item “budget”. This is not shown to players and is determined by its quality (Superior, Epic, Legendary) and its iLevel. The item budget determines what stats can be placed on the item and in what quantities. Think of it as a currency, and each point of <stat> costs a certain amount. This keeps items of similar level balanced.

With that said, we can now divide the two types of things you will see on items: stats and ratings. Stats (also known as Attributes) are the “white text” on the item – +52 Stamina and +54 Intellect on Val’anyr. These stats are the bread and butter of your character. Each stat does different things for each class. To find out what each stat does for your class (at baseline: certain talents can add special functionality to these stats), simply mouse over it on your Character Sheet. It will provide several lines of information:

• The stat and how much your character has
• The way it affects your character, each one on separate lines

Most commonly, the stats increase your ratings as well as your health (Stamina) and mana (Intellect). Stamina is a unique stat in that it serves only to increase the health of your character, and this remains constant for all 10 classes.

Ratings are the other side of the of the coin. Ratings are the “green text” on the item, always prefaced by the “Equip:” designation. There are a variety of ratings, which I will list below. Unlike attributes, ratings always perform the exact same function despite your class.

• Attack Power – Increases your physical damage.*
• Spell Power – Increases your spell damage.
• Critical Strike Rating – Increase your critical strike chance (expressed as a percentage).
• Hit Rating – Increase your chance to hit the target. (see below)
• Armor Penetration Rating – Allows your attacks to ignore a certain percentage of the target’s armor.
• Spell Penetration Rating – Allows your attacks to ignore a certain percentage of the target’s spell resistance.
• Haste Rating – Increases the speed at which your character attacks (melee) and casts.
• Defense Rating – Increases your Defense skill.

*Attack power, in the case of Paladins and Death Knights, also applies to offensive spells such as Howling Blast and Exorcism.

Now, while certain ratings will be better for some classes than other ratings, two ratings that are always beneficial are critical strike and hit. (Note: Hit is NOT required for healers. Heals don’t miss.) Hit is the MOST important rating once you hit 80. Your first goal in selecting to gear is to reach a number called “the hit cap”. This number (which varies from class to class) is the number at which it becomes impossible to miss a level 83 creature (boss mobs are always considered 3 levels above your character). For certain classes, such as Rogues, this number is so incredibly high that they have to gear for a “soft hit cap” for it to be feasible. A soft cap is just as effective as a hard cap.

Maintaining and reaching the hit cap will be covered in a later post (with helpful links to guide you per class). Once you have reached it, you can search for ratings that help your class more directly (most gear has a critical strike component already). A helpful list is below.

• Melee DPS – Armor Penetration Rating, Attack Power
• Casting DPS – Spell Power, Haste Rating
• Healers – Haste Rating, Spell Power
• Tanks – Defense Rating*

*For Tanks, the “Defense cap” is far more important than the hit cap – it is the point at which they cannot be critically hit by boss mobs. Again, more information on that in a coming article.

…is Xicon. Actually, that is one of my three names. Nazgûl (Blood Elf Death Knight), Eorlingas (Blood Elf Paladin), and Xicon (Undead Warlock). But to you kind readers I am Xicon.

Now I’m sure the first thing you notice when you look at my Armory pages is my fairly weak gear quality. I’m very clearly a casual player. Now those two words seem to set off alarms in the heads of most players these days. They are too often associated with “poor” and “scrub”. For fairly obvious reasons, naturally – casual players don’t normally take the time to read forums such as Elitist Jerks to maximize their damage, tanking or healing efficiency. In fact, many of them could hardly make a case for one stat over the other or explain their gear choices. A new day is dawning, however. And that day is the day when casuals will finally understand what things mean, how all these numbers affect that number under “Recount – DPS for Overall Data” or how this talent makes that boss attack you and only you.

That day is not today, however. Until then, I’m here to fill the void.

I play on the Runetotem (US) server on the Horde side. My first 80 (and as you can see, best geared) is my Death Knight. He was shortly followed by my paladin, and after faction transfers, warlock. I’ve played WoW since classic, and have always been thorough in reading high level material. I played my warlock for three years, and during the Burning Crusade was able to reach Tier 5 raiding (pre-nerf, though it means little) with my limited playtime. When Wrath launched, I forsook my Warlock to join the Horde with my Death Knight. I never looked back to the Alliance.

Once I hit 80 on my Death Knight, I coasted for a bit and did relatively little raiding. I operated under the BC-era delusion that raiding was very difficult and needed considerable amounts of Heroic and crafted gear to participate in. Of course, this was and remains to be false. When I was called in to a raid (against my wishes, I may add) it turned out I was putting out excellent numbers, barely under the top two damage dealers. Thus began my quest to reach the top of the meter.

Two 80′s later, I am still in the guild I started the Horde in. We’re a small casual guild who constantly receives new 80′s, and as such we have not quite progressed into Ulduar. But I don’t care. I’m casual, my fun comes from the game itself, not outdoing everyone else (see: 5100 Achievement Points). I still read Elitist Jerks on a daily basis, I am constantly consulted within my guild for gemming and gearing (for classes I don’t even play to boot) and am in a very good position for my playstyle.

So why the blog? Well, most of the blogs out there are from the hardcore perspective. I read “in my guild’s ToC 25 last night” more than I read anything else it seems. This blog, I hope, will serve as a beacon of light for casuals looking for information in an easy to understand format. I hope I can accomplish this feat.