Reforging brought a whole new change to the way that we can look at gear. Wasted stats can be optimized slightly for better performance, meaning that a piece you might normally ignore, can be made passable. This is important to remember when we start heading into raids, especially for DKP type guilds, where you can help stretch your purchasing power a little farther.
Here's some examples.
I've been unlucky on the weapon drops (unusual for me - I know), so I'm still sporting the Blade of the Burning Sun from Rajh in H-HOO. This sword sports 129 INT, 93 Crit, 76 Haste, and 1729SP. Since the SP and INT are the same for all the weapons here, I'm going to just focus on the reforgable stats. Now what I'd really like to get my hands on is the Scepter of Power - which sports 86 Spirit and 86 Haste.
What I've done though, is simply reforged my Blade. By swapping out some Crit, I've got a weapon sporting 37 Spi, 56 Crit, and 76 Haste. While I'd love to get that extra 50 Spirit, I've at least got something functional. I'm not quite ready to drop the money on an epic enchant for it (I also really like the SPI from Heartsong), but it's certainly better than nothing.
To Epic or to Sell
This leads me to my next issue though - Maldo's Sword Cane, or the Twilight's Hammer. There's also a caster sword from Al'Akir, but without knowing the stats, it's hard to weigh in on it. Now, the sword is BoE, and neither of these items have Spirit. Personally I like swords, just because there's four others in our raid that can use maces. By reforging though, I can make the Hammer workable, though it's not as nice as the drop from Nef. With Nef being so far away on our kill order, I imagine that as soon as that Cane drops, I'll spend the 5k to buy it from the guild bank - even though I know it would sell for a lot more.
Making the most of it
I guess my point here is a lot of times you can get an item that isn't quite BiS, and turn it into something passable, just by reforging it a bit. Something to keep in mind though, is weather or not the item might be best for someone else. By passing on an upgrade you might reforge, you can often prevent two people from having sub-par items, just because you wanted an upgrade. This is the primary reason I'll pass on Cho'Gall's hammer. It's not perfectly itemized, and it would certainly do better in the hands of our shaman, druids, or spriest.
Of course if you can snag something on the cheap, there's no reason not to.
With reforging, it seems like BiS gets fuzzy. I love BiS lists, don't get me wrong, but I feel going forward it will be more important to keep focused on the big picture and reforge to round out our lowest/weakest stats than it is to pick up the perfect mix. The only thing I've actively avoided so far is mastery. Anything else I can make work.
ReplyDeleteThe high-competition pieces (rings/necks/capes/trinkets) I'll still exercise caution on because we share those with lots of casters, but odds are there aren't too many other plate healers in your raid, so why not?