Are the T10 set bonuses worth it?

[Aggathon]

So I've been looking over gear for like the last 5 hours, deciding how best to efficiently use my frost emblems for maximum HP/Armor/etc. gains the fastest, and comparing things that drop, and how to pick up T10 (that's a LOT of emblems, btw, heh, especially since only 146 are possible between now and the next wing).

Anyways... I noticed something... T10.264 sucks!

Here would be my following gear choices vs. T10:

Helm(this one is actually fairly good though, not a huge difference, in fact I'll probably get this)

Broken Skull Helm Vs. Sanctified Ymirjar Lord's Greathelm
With Skull Helm the gains/losses are:
Same Armor
-39 str
Same stam/socket color with bonus
+31 defense
+23 dodge
-77 Parry
+74 hit

Shoulders(another decent one but still not as good)
Boneguard Commander's Pauldrons Vs. Sanctified Ymirjar Lord's Pauldrons:
With BCP your gains/losses are:
Same armor
Same Str
+18 stam (this is assuming gemming 2x +30 stam gems)
same defense
same dodge
-8 parry

Here we start to get interesting
Chest -
Cataclysmic Chestguard Vs. Sanctified Ymirjar Lord's Breastplate
If you take Cataclysmic over T10:
+1176 Armor
+18 stam
+23 defense
-77 dodge
+82 expertise
-77 parry

Legs -
Now there are actually several options here, I'll go with Legguards of Lost Hope because they're probably easier to obtain than 8 Primal Saronites at the moment
Leggaurds of Lost Hope Vs. Sanctified Ymirmjar Lord's Leggaurds:
With LoLH your gains/losses are:
Same Armor
Same str
+18 stam
same defense
-82 expertise
+74 hit
same dodge
neither has parry

For further shiggles and gits, lets say you do get the crafted ones made:
Pillars of Might Vs. Sanctified Ymirjar Lord's Legguards:
Gains Losses with PoM:
+1190 armor
+39 str
+18 stam
-92 defense
+77 parry
-82 expertise
+69 dodge

Obviously the loss of defense is big, but you make up for it in parry and dodge and I'm already very high up the defense charts, I can probably take a 90 defense drop easily.

Gloves -
Gauntlets of the Kraken Vs. Sanctified Ymirjar Lord's Handguards:
+658 Armor
+28 str
+18 stam
-17 defense
-72 dodge
+63 parry
-61 hit

No obviously you probably wouldn't roll with all 5 pieces, so lets add up totals. Lets say in your non T10 set you'd use only the T10 helm, Pillars of Might for your legs, and the the other pieces I listed. Then in your T10 set you would keep the Cataclysmic Chest on.

Your Stat difference wearing non-T10 over the T10 is:
Armor:
+3024 Armor (which imo is enough right here to justify not using T10)
+67 Str (though not that anyone cares)
+54 Stam
-77 Defense
-3 Dodge
+132 Parry
-82 Expertise
-61 hit

So basically you lose 77 defense, 3 dodge, and some threat for a gain of over 3,000 armor and 54 stam and also gain 132 parry.

54 stam raid buffed for a warrior is (54*10*1.06*1.1=629.64 HPs)

Lets through in some EH calculations to see what this comes out as. Lets say that these 3 pieces of gear are the only differences from my current setup for simplicit's sake. Right now I have about 53k HPs fully buffed and about 32k Armor.

That EHP number comes out to:
172170.79

Add in 3k armor and 630 Hps:
184963.77

Subtract:
=12792.98 EHP lost by taking T10.

Now OBVIOUSLY this is not an exact number, the armor values would be a bit higher, things change and frankly I've done enough spreadsheeting and number crunching for 1 day and I don't have anything like RAWR at work and can't download anything here.

But that EHP number is just a rough estimate about how much of a deficit we're talking about. The number will actually probably be higher since there will be more stam than my current gear regardless of which items I were to go with. The more stam you have the more effective armor is.

So basically it comes down to weighing set bonuses and a few threat stats over EHP (the avoidance difference will probably be close the negligible) and the damage absorbed by another 3,000 armor.

Is it worth it? Is it even worth it for 2PC? I'd probably go helm/shoulders if I went with 2PC.

What do you think tankspot community? There's always the option of picking up both sets and using them as required, but the problem is that T10 ends up being a LOT of emblems and tokens that could go to main spec first. Is it worth not bothering with other pieces and rushing to 4PC ASAP or should I wait until Emblems are pentiful and offspec rolls freely?


------ The next part is theorycrafting done by Kojiyama, thank you very much for the added help! ------

A better analysis using full gear sets. I put together a total "optimal survival" (ish) set using early (first 2 wings max) known 25-N, 10-N, crafted, and badge items--as well as TotC items barring Anub-25H.

I subbed out the 5 slots based on what was discussed previously. (however, take the results with a grain of salt because the results will obviously vary depending on fights, parameters, damage, etc.)

T10 264 Set
Health: 52718
Guaranteed Reduction: 76.80%
Avoidance: 50.41% (+Block 68.01%)
Total Mitigation: 91.44%
Attacker Speed: 2.50s
Damage Taken: 2999.5 DPS
Damage Taken per Normal Hit: 16248
Total Threat/sec: 9146.2
Burst Time: 26.12

Full Offset
Health: 53278
Guaranteed Reduction: 77.98%
Avoidance: 47.71% (+Block 65.63%)
Total Mitigation: 91.44%
Damage Taken: 2998.9 DPS
Damage Taken per Normal Hit: 15420
Total Threat/sec: 8889.0
Burst Time: 26.53

T10 Helm/Shoulders + Offset Chest/Gloves/Legs
Health: 53008
Guaranteed Reduction: 77.98%
Avoidance: 48.11% (+Block 65.71%)
Total Mitigation: 91.50%
Damage Taken: 2975.6 DPS
Damage Taken per Normal Hit: 15424
Total Threat/sec: 9087.0
Burst Time: 26.79

T10 Helm/Chest + Offset Gloves/Shoulders/Legs
Health: 53138
Guaranteed Reduction: 77.52%
Avoidance: 49.43% (+Block 66.79%)
Total Mitigation: 91.55%
Damage Taken: 2959.1 DPS
Damage Taken per Normal Hit: 15746
Total Threat/sec: 8746.6
Burst Time: 27.57

...so, you can draw your own conclusions, really. Helm is the strongest piece compared to known options, so I'd always get that first. Additionally, until you are in a position to get the 4 264 tokens (which will probably take some time, realistically), the other off-set pieces (Waist, Gloves, Cloak) simply are a much better use of badges than the 3rd and 4th T10 pieces, regardless of your plan. Unless you are going to somehow prio tokens to Warriors (which I wouldn't recommend in this case) it will be a while before this is an issue at all.

To illustrate this, let's consider a case where you bought the Helm, Shoulders, Chest and Gloves and used the Pillars of Might (because the Legs can be crafted, they wouldn't cost badges, in theory!) yet you only had 1 25-man token.

264 Helm + 251 Chest/Gloves/Shoulders + Pillars of Might
Health: 51948
Guaranteed Reduction: 77.14%
Avoidance: 48.96% (+Block 66.20%)
Total Mitigation: 91.29%
Damage Taken: 3050.1 DPS
Damage Taken per Normal Hit: 16008
Total Threat/sec: 8753.4
Burst Time: 23.91

...as you can see, this set is not very great. You will be taking 600 more damage per swing, have 1.4k less health, have 10-15% worse burst time survival, and poor TPS compared to a full offset or a T10 264 Helm + Offset gear approach. This also requires spending 60 additional badges to get the shoulders instead of a 'free' off-set drop, which means you would also have to initially skip the Cloak or Waist, which are considerable upgrades over other available slots.

To me, this is a poor approach for progression raiding.

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Here is some more analysis of the badge gear acquisitions as posted by mistersix

Over at Vene's blog I ran the following numbers:

Assuming you’re upgrading from EH gemmed and chanted versions of ilevel 245 options in the following slots: belt (bloodied scars), cape (eredar), gloves (t9), chest (towering monstrosity) then the following is a list of items with the most EH bang for your emblem buck (using the calculator at tanking tips):

Verdigris Chain Belt: 51 Sta, 752 Armor 60 emblems +533 EH 8.88 per emblem
Sentinel’s Winter Cloak: 40 Sta, 571 Armor 50 emblems +414 EH 8.28
Gauntlets of the Kraken: 36 Sta, 763 Armor 60 emblems +377 EH 6.28 per emblem
Cataclysmic Chestguard: 45 Sta, 1344 Armor 95 emblems +486 EH 5.11 per emblem
Ymirjar Lord’s Pauldrons @ 264: 30 Sta, 126 Armor 60 emblems + 1 token +302 EH 5.03 per emblem
Ymirjar Lord’s Greathelm @ 264: 39 Sta, 136 Armor 95 emblems +1 token +393 EH 4.12 per emblem

Pillars of Might: 93 Sta, 620 Armor crafted +965 EH 5.24 per emblem
Boots of Kingly Upheaval: 51 Sta, 115 Armor crafted +514 EH 4.46 per emblem

[Tzobee]

In truth I do like the 2PC bonus just because... its more damage! But frankly threat does not seem to be a huge issue right now. We have a couple of affliction warlocks that can approach me on Saurfang at 8k TPS but they have the tools to bump back down when needed.

More EH seems like a better deal to me right now, then again I have only done the first four guys so far.

[drae]

Interesting work Agg, I'll have to take a closer look when not at the office In the past I also have generally leaned towards off-tier pieces, if I agree with your conclusions that trend would continue.

Would the damage absorb from the 4pc off set the eh disparity maybe?

I agree that armor is the biggest reason I would go with this approach.

[Aggathon]

Interesting work Agg, I'll have to take a closer look when not at the office In the past I also have generally leaned towards off-tier pieces, if I agree with your conclusions that trend would continue.

Would the damage absorb from the 4pc off set the eh disparity maybe?

I agree that armor is the biggest reason I would go with this approach.

Ya, I guess that's the overall question, is a 12kish absorb every minute worth 3k armor and 630HPs. And I'm not sure I know the answer. I'd have no problem going for both and seeing what happens, but b/c it's not easy as pie to get tons of frost emblems atm, 2 pc would be alright, small loss in stats if you go with shoulders, but going for 4 pc wouldn't even be good until you had all 4 pieces. You'd basically have 189 rotting emblems until you got to 190 with 2 tokens. That's a lot of time and a lot of other gear you could get. And, if you pick up gloves and belt for only 120 emblems instead of 155, you actually get better stats.

[Akolon]

Don´t forget the possibility of getting T10 parts from the new VoA boss, once the new season starts. So if you like to rely on this, yo can basically "save" some badges für nonset pieces, and still aim for 4T10.

I know that it will take a while until the new season starts, but it won´t take less to collect all thoses emblems

[Kojiyama]

Well, here's some numbers for you...

Presuming all the rest of my gear is as it is now, with the hit values currently know for ICC and with Chill of the Throne, etc.

With all 5 off-set pieces, I have the following results:
Health: 51678
Guaranteed Reduction: 76.56%
Avoidance: 47.49% (+Block 64.61%)
Total Mitigation: 90.75%
Damage Taken: 3236.5 DPS
Total Threat/sec: 9009.3

With all 5 set pieces, I have:
Health: 51188
Guaranteed Reduction: 75.21%
Avoidance: 50.20% (+Block 67.60%)
Total Mitigation: 90.74%
Damage Taken: 3242.5 DPS
Total Threat/sec: 9271.2

...so, dunno. It's certainly not better, IMO. Health is lower, damage taken is higher. Set bonus offsets that to an extent, so it's arguably worthwhile but it's not exactly compelling considering you are taking 4 tokens from other classes where their set gear/bonus are hugely beneficial.

For optimal survival, one probably wants to get the T10 helm and chest, and offset on the other pieces. However, as the gain is minimal you are just as well with the badge chest. The helm is really the only compelling 264 piece.

The other issue is that while the 277 pieces look nice right now, that is most likely because we haven't seen the other options.

For instance, the datamined heroic offset gloves (The World of Warcraft Armory) basically wipe the floor with the set piece. Also, the heroic offset chest from Rotface (The World of Warcraft Armory) has nearly the same survival value (and a lot more health) compared to the T10 277 chest with the addition of 69 Hit rating as a bonus.

[Muffin Man]

This is a bit of a relief to hear. More emblems for other things now lol.

Also even though you have a higher chance of seeing a token drop, you have much less competition for the offset pieces (even more so if you tank with a bear).

For the 10 man raider, I've noticed that some of the offset pieces are incredibly similar to the tier pieces.

Check out this comparison:
Item Comparison Tool - World of Warcraft

Or the chest:
Ymirjar Lord's Breastplate - Item - World of Warcraft versus Ghoul Commander's Cuirass - Items - Sigrie

And this was just from a quick scan of the first wing.

As a 10 man guild I'm willing to bet that the heroic offset pieces will be easier to get than tokens as well, at least if ToGC/10 is any indication then they'll only drop off wing ending bosses?

So at this point the question about set bonus becomes very pertinent doesn't it? I'd have to think about it more, but I think I'll stick with offset pieces for the time being.

[Raij]

The 4 piece bonus seems really good to me. 20% Damage absorbed every minute, while that may make healing a little more spikey, that looks pretty damned useful, especially on a fight where magic would make attacks unavoidable.

EDIT: As I did not do a hell of alot of PTR testing, is it all physical damage still?

[Aggathon]

The 4 piece bonus seems really good to me. 20% Damage absorbed every minute, while that may make healing a little more spikey, that looks pretty damned useful, especially on a fight where magic would make attacks unavoidable.

EDIT: As I did not do a hell of alot of PTR testing, is it all physical damage still?

The thing is you have to account for not only the stat losses on T10 vs. the offset pieces, but also the loss of emblem gear you can get.

Currently you can get 41 badges the first week, and 35 per week after that until the next wing when the amount will increase to 47 per week.
This means that total emblem amounts (assuming you get every single emblem possible) are:
Week1: 41
Week2: 76
Week3: 111
Week4: 146
Week5: 193
Week6: 240
Week7: 287

I'll end there b/c we don't know when the other wings are coming out, but you get the drift. Gloves/Shoulders are 60 each, Helm/Legs are 95 each. That is 310 emblems. It will take you almost until february (depending on when the other wings are released) to get enough emblems for the T10, all the while until you get the 4 set you are picking up non optimal gear and have no badges to spend on the other really amazing frost emblem pieces like the cloak (50 embles) the chest (95 emblems) and the belt (60 emblems). You're losing stats hand over fist by going for T10 imo.

The more and more I think about it I'm going to pick up belt, chest, cloak in that order before I even think about picking up any teir pieces.

[Raij]

Difference being for me is we are a hardmode 10 man progression guild, so I am not sure whether getting the tier10 will benefit me more than the offset pieces that drop, or if I should just go for the badge items first (Trinket, offsets that don't drop from 10 man etc).

Any suggestions on an order? Item drops are sketchy at best still =\

[Aggathon]

/agree Raij, if you don't have access to the tokens (which idk how that works in 10 man or if you can even get them in 10 man until hardmodes/arthas) then the T10 is even WORSE like... bad...

[Aggathon]

Thinking about it more, how much do you really need the bloodrage cooldown. If there's a fight that it's going to be awesome for then by all means I'll get it towards the end, but lets say that in full 264 gear you have probably close to 60k health buffed... maybe... (probably not that high though). If you have 60k health then you can absorb 12k damage every minute. Now while that's nice, that's just 1 heal. Are we going to be using so many cooldowns that enraged regen, shield wall, last stand, shield block, and our trinkets are all going to be down and we really need that 12k absorb? If we pop 258 Jug's vit and last stand lets say we get to 90k HPs. That's an 18k absorb... but we're sitting at 90k HPs! Is something really going to hit us for 108k damage?

The more I'm mulling over this the more I feel like the 4 set is nice, but not a necessity.

I'm more than willing to hear out counter arguments for this. Spiritus, you're the resident strat guy in these parts, do you know if there's a fight where this will be exceptionally useful above all other things based on fight mechanics?

[Raij]

Yah, 10 man guilds kind of get boned in the department of getting tokens (we won't get them until hardmodes). Thats how it worked in ToC at any rate, and the way the new gear works, you need to buy the stuff with badges first anyways as you use the first tier to buy the next etc etc. So, yeh, probably gonna get the trinket first and go from there I suppose.

[Bihn]

Currently you can get 41 badges the first week, and 35 per week after that until the next wing when the amount will increase to 47 per week.
This means that total emblem amounts (assuming you get every single emblem possible) are:
Week1: 41
Week2: 76
Week3: 111
Week4: 146

Sorry to be off-topic, but: The next wing is being released on January 5th. 3 more bosses, so 12 more badges a week at that point.

[Aggathon]

Sorry to be off-topic, but: The next wing is being released on January 5th. 3 more bosses, so 12 more badges a week at that point.

Yes, which is 35+12=47, obtainable starting week 5, which is what I said.

[Bodasafa]

For me I looked at it like this, I have a 226 trinket, a 232 weapon, and a 232 shield. The trinket would be my biggest upgrade so thats settled, get the key with my first 60.

Ill grab offset pieces for the time being, cause you can't even attempt heroic anything till you kill the Lich King on normal (right?). By then ill re-evaluate the tier and figure out what direction I want to go. But historically I have found 2pc to be as far as I need to go with tier, off set items just seem to be to good to pass. Been the same since kara IMO.

[Aggathon]

idk, T6 and T8 were both really good sets to have the 4 pc (although it seems like T4-7 all the helms sucked). 20% reduced magic damage was pretty nice on several fights such as Steelbreaker, Hodir, sort of thorim, mimiron, kind of algalon (but to a much lesser extent), was decent on XT, Ignis, and Razorscale too, but not necessarily necessary.

[Kojiyama]

Unless there is some specific mechanic of a fight with one "uber big hit" every minute, I don't feel like it's a super-duper good set bonus realistically.

The problem is that it's a one-off. It will be almost certainly absorbed in one hit in almost every case. For normal use it's akin to saying "I dodge one attack every minute" (maybe!) which isn't super-great.

I will try modeling the average benefit of this in Rawr this evening (used to its maximum every 60 seconds) just to see where it comes out as specifically. However, it's just going to end up being 10k health every 60s, which is 166 Damage/sec reduction.

So, in the above case if you used it every cooldown the T10 set would go from 3242.5 DTPS to 3076.5 DTPS vs. 3236.5 DTPS of the off-set stuff. However, you would still be getting hit with higher burst damage the rest of the time with ~1.5% less guaranteed reduction.

The other problem is that if you 'save' the cooldown for if you drop low on health, the DTPS reduction will go down quite a bit. (I also feel that it causes problems where you may not use Bloodrage when you need the rage anymore due to starvation because you are "saving" the cooldown for mitigation purposes... that could be awkward.)

It's a tough one to factor, honestly. I still think the off-set pieces are better initially due to their lower cost and increased damage reduction and EH bias prior to putting together the 4-set.

The way I look at it is by the time I have all my off-set pieces and helm sorted out, tokens will start becoming a bit more obtainable without me feeling like I'm needlessly stealing them from other classes--then I will look at putting together the 4-set bonus for situations where it would be good.

I do wish the T10 set was more compelling so it didn't rely so heavily on the set bonus to even be competitive.

[Aggathon]

Well said Kojiyama. I look forward to your calculations. This was the kind of response and discussion I was really hoping for.

Just 1 question, currently you say that the offset pieces give 3236.5 DTPS and the set without the cooldown is 3242.5 DTPS? It's only a 6 DTPS difference?

[Torebore]

Personally, I will most likely be going for the 4 piece bonus, with the emblem chest being the offset piece until heroic modes. The 4pc bonus is really great imo, I know the stats may be better on the offset pieces, but keep in mind, having the 4 pc gives you CONTROL. It's another nice CD that I can use when I need it. Sure more armor, more avoidance, whatever, is great, but a CD that I can use to help my raid last a couple extra seconds when we are 2 or 3% on _______ will help I'm sure.
Also worth adding is that you could pop the key trinket at the same time and add another 3k to that shield.

I don't buy into the 2 pc argument for this tier of gear. The 2 pc is nice, but not at all nessecary, it's just more threat, which is not a problem if you are rotating properly. I would say either go for the 4 pc, or just go all off set and go for the bonus armor.

With that said, right now, my plan is to go for the skeleton key trinket first, then the emblem chest. We don't know what all the gear is yet, so I'm sure my mind will change.
Don't forget that we need 26 expertise, and there are only 3 items with expertise, and you will need them all to get to that 26, unless you want to gem or enchant for expertise.