Post by drazzl on Dec 6, 2014 18:09:02 GMT
New rule this expansion, your item level isn't important. What does matter are your stats.
There's an immense amount of variance in gear currently because of all the secondary stats floating around - mastery, crit, haste, multistrike, bonus armor and versatility. I'm not counting Spirit because if you're a healer, you want all of it you can get and far less gear uses it. So, consider that there's gear for just about every combination of those stats (not all of it relevant since tank gear won't use certain stats), so there's 20 variations. Compared to last expansion when multistrike and versatility didn't exist, we had Hit, Expertise, Dodge and Parry - about as many variations, but all of those extra stats were useful. That means there's more ways to gear your character wrong without reforging and excessive gemming and enchanting to compensate. YAY!
We can take that a step further by looking at the random gear upgrade system. As you level your gear can become blue or purple, but at max level those gear drops can become warforged, have a gem socket or have a tertiary stat (Movement Speed, Leech, Avoidance and Indestructible). Currently, the gem sockets are the best possible upgrade with warforged being so-so and tertiary stats being worthless.
If this sounds confusing and a headache, you're not alone. While these ideas sounded great on paper, in practice it is not so amazing.
Item Level is going to determine the difference in your primary stats, but with items of the same level, secondary stats are what define you. Remember, secondary stats are pretty valuable these days, as they were in MoP. For some classes, these can equal more or the same as their primary stat. This means that a higher item level, if it's not a big jump, could be a loss in performance since you could be gaining a small amount of primary stat and losing a lot of secondary stats you need.
Every class has 1 secondary stat that defines it and drives it. You'll know what it is because you have a passive that gives you 5% more of it. Your goal is to ensure that every piece of gear you have has that stat on it and your trinkets should be proccing it as well. Gear is much easier to come by (easily double the drop rates we've seen in the past and we can craft tons of stuff), but you'll still be farming the same as before to get the gear with the stats you need.
It's also a good idea to identify what other stats are desirable and not desirable. You can find this out easily by looking at the class guides on icy-veins.com and look at the stat priorities page. Given the high variance of stats, you should consider the 2nd and 3rd entries for your secondary stats to be fair game. If you want a more in-depth look at what works and doesn't, you can look up your character on AskMrRobot.com, select the optimize feature from the green arrow drop down menu, and you will see an edit weights button above your gear. This will show you the relative strength of your stats and gives you a clearer idea of what is ok and what should be avoided. You can use the gear select feature here as well to have it compare 2 pieces of gear and see which is better - it has features built in to account for random upgrades.
In closing, don't assume higher item level equals better. Unless it is a 20 item level upgrade or better, look to see what the change is to your secondary stats and if it's giving you stuff you want.
There's an immense amount of variance in gear currently because of all the secondary stats floating around - mastery, crit, haste, multistrike, bonus armor and versatility. I'm not counting Spirit because if you're a healer, you want all of it you can get and far less gear uses it. So, consider that there's gear for just about every combination of those stats (not all of it relevant since tank gear won't use certain stats), so there's 20 variations. Compared to last expansion when multistrike and versatility didn't exist, we had Hit, Expertise, Dodge and Parry - about as many variations, but all of those extra stats were useful. That means there's more ways to gear your character wrong without reforging and excessive gemming and enchanting to compensate. YAY!
We can take that a step further by looking at the random gear upgrade system. As you level your gear can become blue or purple, but at max level those gear drops can become warforged, have a gem socket or have a tertiary stat (Movement Speed, Leech, Avoidance and Indestructible). Currently, the gem sockets are the best possible upgrade with warforged being so-so and tertiary stats being worthless.
If this sounds confusing and a headache, you're not alone. While these ideas sounded great on paper, in practice it is not so amazing.
Item Level is going to determine the difference in your primary stats, but with items of the same level, secondary stats are what define you. Remember, secondary stats are pretty valuable these days, as they were in MoP. For some classes, these can equal more or the same as their primary stat. This means that a higher item level, if it's not a big jump, could be a loss in performance since you could be gaining a small amount of primary stat and losing a lot of secondary stats you need.
Every class has 1 secondary stat that defines it and drives it. You'll know what it is because you have a passive that gives you 5% more of it. Your goal is to ensure that every piece of gear you have has that stat on it and your trinkets should be proccing it as well. Gear is much easier to come by (easily double the drop rates we've seen in the past and we can craft tons of stuff), but you'll still be farming the same as before to get the gear with the stats you need.
It's also a good idea to identify what other stats are desirable and not desirable. You can find this out easily by looking at the class guides on icy-veins.com and look at the stat priorities page. Given the high variance of stats, you should consider the 2nd and 3rd entries for your secondary stats to be fair game. If you want a more in-depth look at what works and doesn't, you can look up your character on AskMrRobot.com, select the optimize feature from the green arrow drop down menu, and you will see an edit weights button above your gear. This will show you the relative strength of your stats and gives you a clearer idea of what is ok and what should be avoided. You can use the gear select feature here as well to have it compare 2 pieces of gear and see which is better - it has features built in to account for random upgrades.
In closing, don't assume higher item level equals better. Unless it is a 20 item level upgrade or better, look to see what the change is to your secondary stats and if it's giving you stuff you want.