Getting Raid Ready at 85
So now you’ve got some respectable gear and you want to deck it out, huh?
GEMMING
Strength in every socket, using Bold and Perfect Bold Carnelians, and Bold Inferno Rubies.
With the raised Haste soft cap (3978 rating to get our CS/DS cooldowns to 3.0 seconds, by my calculations), it’s going to be quite difficult to get a stable rotation by stacking Haste. Also, according to the stat weights I highlighted in a previous post, Strength is worth WAY more than any other stat besides weapon DPS and weapon speed, so we’re back to stacking our old friend.
For our meta… well, it’s tough. The obvious choice stat-wise is Chaotic Shadowspirit Diamond, but the current implementation requires more blue gems in our equipped gear than red, which would just kill our DPS. I’ve heard that the original intention was to have more people gemming for Hit, which is a blue gem, thus activating the meta, but that’s not the case on the live servers. Until they sort this out, whether it be by reverting the requirements to the “at least 2 blue gems” like its Wrath counterpart or some other way, I’d steer clear of this meta.
A good alternative would be the Destructive Shadowspirit Diamond; same bonus to crit, easy gem requirements, and maybe an Eye for an Eye-like DPS increase from the spell reflect (doubtful, but we can hope).
ENCHANTING
In most slots, I’ll give the BiS enchant first, followed by the cheaper version.
Head: Arcanum of the Dragonmaw
Shoulders: Greater Inscription of Jagged Stone / Lesser Inscription of Jagged Stone
Chest: Peerless Stats / Powerful Stats
Cloak: Greater Critical Strike / Critical Strike
Wrist: Greater Critical Strike / Critical Strike (Greater Expertise/Precision if below caps)
Hands: Mighty Strength / Exceptional Strength
Waist: Ebonsteel Belt Buckle
Legs: Dragonscale Leg Armor / Scorched Leg Armor
Feet: Precision / Haste if above hit cap
Weapon: Landslide / Avalanche
PROFESSIONS
Alchemy: Adds 80 Strength to the 300 you get from our flask alone, as well as doubles its duration.
Blacksmithing: Two extra sockets (bracers and gloves) in which you can add two +40 Strength gems, resulting in 80 additional Strength.
Enchanting: Enchant both rings with Strength, resulting in an additional 80 Strength.
Engineering: Harder to quantify, you gain access to Reinforced Bio-Optic Killshades for a raid-level helm, Tazik Shocker to gloves, and movement helpers like Nitro Boosts and Flexweave Underlay. Considered fairly weak in terms of a raiding profession.
Inscription: Lionsmane Inscription to shoulders, an 80 Strength upgrade from the exalted Therazane inscription.
Jewelcrafting: Allows three JC gems, Bold Chimera’s Eyes, to replace normal +40 Strength gems, resulting in an 81 Strength increase.
Leatherworking: Draconic Embossment – Strength, which gives an additional 130 Strength in place of 65 Crit.
Tailoring: Swordguard Embroidery (Rank 2) provides a chance at 1000 AP for 15 seconds.
Mining, Herbalism, and Skinning are not generally considered raiding professions. However, of the three bonuses (Toughness, Lifeblood, and Master of Anatomy), Skinning edges out the rest thanks to stat weights (Crit > Haste >>> Stam).
CONSUMABLES
Flask: Flask of Titanic Strength – Finally, a flask that scales with Kings!
Food: Beer-Basted Crocolisk / Seafood Magnifique Feast – The two should be equivalent, so if your raid is throwing down feasts, save your own food and chow down with your friends.
Potion: Golemblood Potion – I’m terrible with potions, but I intend to stock up on these and perhaps macro them into my Avenging Wrath. If you don’t use it with wings, you should really use it with Bloodlust/Heroism/Time Warp.
