The Spirit Realm

Before Time, I laid out my gear selection to maximize focus effects and bagged clickies.. Since then, I've sort of floated through GoD and the miscellaneous raids/groups pre-Anguish/Vishy/Ya'lir/DoD blah blah....

So like a good shaman, I thought I'd take a step back knowing my guild finally broke into Anguish, farming Tacvi, hitting DoNs, and possibly lower raids in DoD.. and well, make a roadmap of gear selection for the next 6 months..

I now have sympathy for those before me and all those to come... Yeah, yeah I knew about it but didn't hit me until I started making choices.... Grr.. effects being split into Detrimental and Beneficial... and then matching up gear to minimize gaps and dependency upon tribs... *and* then seeing that from Expansion to Expansion, the freaking focus switches pieces to the point that it's a small headache....

*Mourns the passing of Bracer of Inferno and Earring of Influxed Gravity*

/nod - that's why it's so hard to give up the Bloodlink; even on level 70 spells, it is the equivilent of Preservation of the Ikaav AND Anuek, and is even better on lower level spells.

So we're bidding against all the other classes for focus effects to get beneficial haste, preservation, duration and range; detrimental haste, preservation, duration and range; healing, magic, poison (and disease and cold) impact improvement, and dot crits. That's 12 to 14 focus effects. Conservation of Xegony, Druzzil's Range and Quickening of Druzzil are really valuable focus effects, even (especially) nowadays.

I've decided to take the approach of taking any upgrade I can with a useful focus if it goes for three days' dkp or less, and only going higher for a top-notch item - like Vish shield.

Rit's gloves suck, same as the shoes. 0 mods just doesn't pass muster. If you want to upgrade healing focus before Dragon Health, and object to Bazu Stones, then just get Ring of the Serpent from Tacvi. It comes with solidly respectable 3%'s on Spell & Dot shielding. On hands loot from MPG Mastery of Specialization raid, or if you can't get those (since those are the best), then from Council of the Nine in Depths.

Oh, I'm also not a fan of Accursed Earhoop of Pain. When you're looting on that level, Avoidance becomes capped with pretty mild attention paid to it, leaving that ear with no mods, too. Though you don't want to replace your ring atm (understandable) compare Earhoop to Ring of Deterrance. Both over 300hp/mana, with 20 avoid, some regen, and Bene pres, but the ring has 5 more AC and 5% spellsheild just basically tacked on.

The Shroud of the Surging Storm is a much better option. It's pretty much the only shm back slot with any focus at that level, so it doesn't have competition

There are a great many gear options and combinations that are workable for the foci I want in the slots I need to upgrade. The items I listed are just one of many paths that will get me to where I want to go. The flexibility is nice but somewhat hard to keep track of! Thank the gods for storyline mods, lol. Ritualchanter gloves might suck to some, but they're going to adorn my grubby little hands one of these days. Even with the modless items I am eyeing, the gear I am wanting will more than max my avoidance, DOT shielding and stun resist. Spell shield will be 2% from max. That suits me well enough.

http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=20898 is the correct link, or was as of 2 days ago. It is now broken. I had noticed at the time that I could not find (via search) the Ton Po pouch nor the associated shurikens. I had recently made a list of certain items from Time for planning purposes, so I am positive the link was working earlier this week.