Do work, son.
I’m in the middle of an assigment for my Romanticism class that is actually drastically more difficult then I ever imagined, so I’ll keep this brief- the stats for shaman t10 are up on mmo-champion! They are available here.
Looking it over, a few things come to mind:
They’re itemized pretty nicely. There’s some haste on a few pieces, crit on every piece, and loads of that beloved attack power and agility on all of them. They also include some hit, but not -too- much- 116 combined. This is significantly less than we need, but at a point in the expansion where every class in the game is complaining that they have hit coming out of their ears (seperate links), we can be fairly certain we can make up the extra hit with offspec gear. (It might even give us a reason to use the emblem of triumph trinkets! Wutwut.)
That all said, something distressing about it is the fact that there is absolutely no expertise on any piece. We need a fair chunk of it (~100 for us qt green goblin wannabees, 140 for everyone who has yet to make the leap to change 
). Unfortunately for us, we share mail with hunters who get absolutely nothing from expertise, which means offset pieces generally don’t have expertise. (They do have gobs of armor pen, though. >.<) We’ve historically gotten quite a bit of expertise from our tier, and not having that might be of concern. However, all this really means is certain offset pieces like the Seal of Many Mouths will most likely become BiS. (Or, we might use a single leather piece, such as Ikfirus’s Sack of Wonder- this piece alone would bring me just shy of expertise cap with axes/fist weapons, which are very vogue weapons in ICC.)
Something that I really enjoy about this set is it’s gem slots. Exactly two slots matches the two blue gems we need for our meta, both with fairly attractive set bonuses- a +12 ap bonus on legs, and a +8 on shoulders. While it’s possible we may see offset pieces with higher socket bonuses than +8, the shoulder bonus stat weight is petty characteristic of gemmable rings/bracers/neckpieces, and these are all pieces that will be designed with other classes in mind too, which means possible armor penetration/hit rating/etc. bonuses. Beyond that, we have FOUR red sockets, including one on a helm with a +16 attack power bonus- a veryveryvery nice addition. There’s one yellow socket on the chest, but the +12 apbonus means that as long as your haste/crit have an ep higher than .8, a 20AP/10 haste or crit gem will be a dps increase. (Also, if ICC hard-modes are anything like ToC, we’ll likely not use the chest as BiS, provided they itemize heroic chest pieces with an extra gem slot again.)
Finally, the shoulders have a nice equip effect. “Periodically calls forth the spirits of the Shoveltusk to bolster the bearer’s spirits in battle.” Most likely, this is simply a reference to the Shoveltusk ghosts the emenate from the shoulders, but it’s still cool to see on the shoulders.
Quick note: I used the 251 gear here because it was simplest. The 25 gear is very similar, just with higher numbers.
(As a total asides from this post, the designer of the EnhSim addon asked me today to become a part of the EnhSim development team. This makes me fucking ecstatic, and yea. I can’t wait!)
Since when do you need 2 blues for meta activation? The REarthsiegeD only needs one of each colour. The REarthstormD (TBC) required two of each colour.
Standard practice should be REarthsiegeD and Nightmare Tear in your helm as the Nightmare Tear on its own takes care of activating the RED.
The standard practice has actually become Chaotic Skyflare Diamond, as of late. It’s the +21 crit/3% increased crit damage one, and it requires two blue gems and nothing else.
However, it’s really such a minimal dps difference that it’s not worth really worrying about. Either meta works.
I use either depending on what colour gem slots, right now I have 1 yellow slot but if I get an upgrade that will disappear so the earthsiege may be worse than the skyflare as there’s an abundance of blue slots on available gear.
I doubt that hit rating will be an issue, I’ve got nearly 500 right now and I’ve swapped out similarly good pieces with hit for ones without. If a bit is needed there are enchants and gems that can bolster it a bit in the end.
The lack of expertise is troubling, guess I’ll have the ToGC10 expertise trinket probably through most of T10 content unless I want to gem and enchant for it i suppose. Similar to where I was in T7 before the talent change.
But it’s not as disappointing as the utter abundance of armor pen on a lot of the physical dps gear from leather to plate. It affects paladins nearly as much as enhancement shamans so there’s solace in that. It makes me feel like I’m missing something, this is T10 gear, they right out and said that later tiers were supposed to be itemized better so there’s solid upgrades. I know it’s the meat and potatoes of some classes and specs but in the pieces that don’t have armor pen seem to have a lot of hit instead, like we’re trading one suboptimal stat for another.
Good point Elam.
However, at the rate i’m changing gear at the moment I think i’ll stick with my RED + Nightmare tear as a setup that is self activating.
As you said, the difference is minimal, and it saves me the stress of working out my regemming all the time
Congrats on your invitation to the EnhSim team!
Glad to have you aboard on the dev team! Time at work and holiday commitments have left me little time for extra coding at home so tons of thanks for stepping up to help contribute! LMK if you have any questions
Hehe, thanks all.