Gear Help for Higher-End Raiding

[Kanamori Hitatomi]

Hi all . . . heh

I'm interested in seeing some of your higher end peps ideas on what I should be focusing on for raid drops. When I joined my guild in around December, I was geared in most Elemental gear with a few MPG drops. Currenly, my guild farms Anguish (-OMM), farms Vish/Yar'Lir (rest of DoN is downgrades for almost everyone), killing named in PoR as we find them (about 50% of the guild is flagged for ToB now), as for DoD, we still haven't quite finished Vule and Queen for DPoB access. Overall, I've been spending less time on during off hours due to college work load (gotta love organic chemistry), so most of my upgrades are going to be comming from raids I fear for now (GO GO SPRING BREAK).

#1 focus - finish my damned Epic 2.0. I've got the orb, I just need to pull some peps into fighting with me thus, I need to get on more, perhaps next week/this weekend.

I'd like to think that my top 3 gear upgrade ideas so far are decent, tell me what you think:
1. Anguish Gloves (until I get friggin lucky on Vish, he's dropped like 2 healing focus items since we've been farming him (prior to me joining LC)) --> . This allows me to also replace my arms with a Tacvi drop that I have banked atm (, and would allow me to remove the ImpDodge 3 aug I have on atm.)
2. Range -->
3. Back -->

I believe those address my weakest items minus augs, rings (one's gonna be DoN quest one, just wayyyyyy down on the list) and earrings. I just haven't been on enough Anguish aug raids (they're going down in frequency due to burnout on them, LC's been farming augs for god knows how long now).

As for other weak slots, especially rings/earrings . . . IMHO, I'm not going to see much to upgrade them with atm. We do Tacvi once a month, and those slots are not rot status, and are in fact, fairly heavily bid on. The drops in Anguish are going towards melee members atm for pretty decent prices too. Since I'm relying on raids to improve my gear right now, I can't really afford to blow too much on some items, except the hands item, I need that focus.

As for focuses, yes, mine suck badly. I'm just not too sure what to go for and where some of the upgrades would drop from. I've got some ok focuses, esp. Vindication of the Dragorn on my (which I got somehow on rot status while I was a trial). Any ideas along these lines would be very much appreciated.

Looking at these upgrades, I look to see:
- 661 HP
- 525 Mana
- 211 AC
- 20 Avoidance
- 5 Shielding
- 11% DoT Shielding
- (and heh, I loose 40 attack)

PS. I'm finally #1 on Tribunal for something . . . ATTACK RATING 4TW !!!!!

[Brohg]

Your #1 priority needs to be Spell Haste. A guild in the position of yours is likely farming Circle of Drakes twice a week, loot the neck from there. If they're not, btw, they should be.

After that you need mana preservation. Instead of Hanvar's cloak, loot Yar`Lir's Cloak of the Surging Storm. In exchange for some ac, you get the highest level of bene mana pres and 6% more mods. If you can instead, go for Ring of Deterrance, because it's all sexy & stuff. Don't be surprised if you can't get that one, though. Detri pres is harder to come by, but also less valuable by far from a raiding perspective.

You already have Grandmaster gloves. Ritualchanter's would be a major downgrade, compared to the Bazu Seal of Whatever you could put in there. Healing focus the same as Rit's is even one option for the focus, and you get mods, instead of the raider version of Fine Steel.

The basic thing about raid gear is that it all has hp/mana. That's a baseline. There's no choice you can possibly make on any slot that doesn't have tons of hp & mana. Nothing is good just because of hp & mana. Just being better than your shit slots isn't special. What you need to focus on instead is mods and focus effects. Avoidance, spell shield, dot shield, and stun resists are particularly valuable to casters, but the main thing is foci. Effects that make your spells do more when you cast them, and let you cast more of them.

[Kanamori Hitatomi]

[Ungkor]

[Tordail]

[Kanamori Hitatomi]

[Grendalkhan]

[Samanna]

[Mordien]

I know I'm not a shaman /duck.. but you shouldn't have such good resources on your web site if you don't want nosey druids poking around.

I know you said you don't have time outside of raids, but do Shadowalker Duskspirit 4 (hard) mission and dump that Spell Haste V aug. It's an extremely easy mission if you do it with people who know it, only takes 45 min. I do it all the time for people who are missing spell haste, you can't beat 23% to lvl 67 aug thats so easy to get. 23% is the best det haste you can get anyway at that lvl of raids and most important raid spells you cast are at or below 67 anyway.

http://crucible.samanna.net/viewtopic.php?t=1174