Mists of Pandaria pre-raid Plate Tank gear

So. Um.

My Warcraft life is in such an upheaval that as soon as I settle into a role and set my expectations, I get a, "Well, actually....", and wind up changing my role.

So far, I started Dragon Soul as Protection, swapped to Retribution (1) when we got a second tank in, swapped to Holy (2) when we needed a 3rd reliable healer for Heroic Zon'ozz, swapped back to Retribution (3) until we hit 6/8 heroics, switched up to Tanking (4) again for Heroic Spine, back to Retribution (5) for a couple of months, and now, back to Protection (6) for Mists. I count SIX spec changes in one tier. Holy crap. But this is a really good change, I'm excited about it, and I'm hoping that I'm up to the challenge and that the change sticks. We'll see how it goes in a few weeks but I'm hopeful. Assuming my laptop behaves.

Anyway, because of said change, I wound up making another list, and so here it is. This one is for all the plate tanking gear that you can get pre-raid.

One big difference from the DPS gear list is the lack of Justice gear - not to worry, there is a complete set of BoE tanking gear that you can craft with what look like relatively cheap materials, if you have access to a Blacksmith. There is also an especially good Valor trinket that I plan to pick up pre-raid for sure.

WEAPON AND SHIELD

All the benefits of easily gearing up to 450 iLevel with crafted gear comes back to bite us when we look at weapons and shield. No bones about it, we're kind of screwed.

For the weapon, we're dungeon farming for this one sword that you'll share with every single SMF Warrior and DW Frost DK. Good luck. It's either that, or using the one-hander reward from the Arena of Annihilation Scenario. It's one full tier behind the Dungeon gear. Ugly.

If lady-luck spurns you and you don't mind having a sword with Crit and Mastery, here is the solitary crafted one-handers that you could potentially sub-in out of sheer desperation. Have fun paying a few thousand gold for it, assuming you're on a high population server with some options. Low population servers are likely to see this thing go for tens of thousands for the first few weeks.

The shield situation isn't much better - but at least there is a decent crafted shield that is pretty cheap to make. Otherwise you're left farming for this dungeon drop from Heroic Shado-Pan Monastery.

Basically, make friends with a Blacksmith. Like, really good friends. In case you're wondering, yes, I have a  Blacksmith. And I can be your friend. For a price. A very high price*.

ARMOR

Here is the list for the rest of the armor. I've highlighted the crafted set a bit so it's obvious:

And here it is as an open Google Doc for you to copy and change as you wish, and the broken down lists on WoWHead:

• Justice
• Quest Rewards
• Crafted
• Valor

Okay, I'll hit up Mail, Leather and Cloth next, as soon as I get through some stuff in the next day or two.

* - the price is materials.

Mists of Pandaria pre-raid Retribution DPS gear

As the expansion gets closer, I'm swimming in one of my favorite things to do - running filter after filter on WoWHead to generate interesting lists of gear I might want, and while the Raid gear is the best stuff that I'm drooling over, it'll take me some time to collect it all, and besides, I need other gear just to get started raiding. So I thought I'd make a list of potential stuff I want, where to get it, how to get it, etc.

Show me the shinies!

This list should apply to any Strength using class. It just shows the PvE gear, I didn't include any of the PvP stuff, as, well, I'm not a fan of using PvP gear in PvE, and it's easy to build those lists anyway.

There we go. Good? Good.

Okay, maybe not, here is the full list as an open Google Doc (just copy it to your Google Drive or to a local spreadsheet if you want to modify it), and here are the different lists at WoWHead:

• Justice
• Quests
• Crafted
• Valor

The WoWHead filters aren't complicated enough to let me do complex And/Or query-strings, though I imagine that would probably churn for a while on the server.

I didn't include the Heroic Dungeon gear as that gear will come on its own pace and is subject to RNG, but there is no doubt about this gear - you can get every item here with some effort. I know those crafted chest and hand pieces are calling my name, as are the quest rewards. That's some easy picking right there.

But where are my weapons?

The best I could do was this list.

Unfortunately,  it looks like we're stuck with Heroic dungeons to grind out the weapon - thankfully there are quite a few options. In case one has the absolute worst luck with drops, there is a craftable sword with the same iLevel as the Heroic Dungeon gear and it looks fairly cheap to make, but that depending on how common Spirit of Harmony winds up being (remember it's, ugh, BoP.)

And for Retribution, I'm still not sure what our stat priority is going to be - either Mastery or Haste - but we can split the difference and settle on this kind-of badass looking mace: Mograine's Immaculate Might as being best for us pre-raid.

I'm no brawny plate-wearer (or Dude, Where's My Dress?)!

Just click the lists on WoWHead above, toggle the strength field to Agility, Intellect or Spirit, the armor type to your chosen type, and either remove or filter the Dodge/Parry into something you'd rather avoid (like Spirit, for instance) you can easily build more lists.

Just keep in mind the filters are all on an AND conditional - the OR conditionals are finicky at best, and only useful with two parameters.

Easy! Right? Erm.

Well, what's next?

I'm not going to make any BiS lists or anything till our stat balancing gets finalized, but maybe I'll give that a poke. I've been thinking about actually getting into some serious theorycrafting and building my own Retribution DPS simulator but that involves a lot of development time... but maybe.

It seems like a fun project, and as I'm getting back into C++ again, maybe I could use the project as an excuse to learn the new 2012 IDE...