Gearing up the shams for 80

[Elix]

I've hit lvl76 on my 4x shaman team, looking for advice on gearing them in craftables/dungeon gear so I can go into Heroics soon as I ding 80. It will be to run with my protadin which is raid geared.

Sorry if this is the wrong forum - i wasnt sure

TIA!

[Powerwar]

I entered heroics with lvl 65 green gear on my shamans and has not much trouble. They are not very gear dependant.

Just make sure you have a dedicated healer shaman at the beginning spamming LHW on the tank if needed.

After you gear them a bit with reputation rewards and drops, you can safely move the healer to DPS.

[BobGnarly]

While not specifically a level 80 gear thread, this thread ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=16963') has some suggestions. You can cull a pretty good set out it.

Beyond that, use the wowhead filters and for each slot, look for gear that surpasses what you have. BTW, don't be afraid to go down to leather or even cloth if you need to. Spellpower/crit/int/etc are much more important to us than armor.

[Siaea]

What BobGnarly said about leather or cloth. The Ebon Hold faction has a nice mail spell piece and a nice cloth spell belt. Get the Revenant's chest and boots. Titansteel mace and Zom's Crackling Bulwark can be gotten from the AH, probably pretty cheaply now. Totem you can get the lavaburst one pretty easily at Venture Bay. If you've got the cash (pretty easy to get by doing dailies x4 or x5) you can get 4x Chain of Latent Energies. Also, the titanium spellshock ring and/or necklace if you can't find the Chain of Latent Energies. Mantle of the Eternal Sentinel is a nice BOE leather shoulder from heroic Obsidian Sanctum. That's pretty much how I geared mine, just lots of dailies and buy epics to start. Armory Seiae on Bonechewer to give you an idea.

[Diwa]

As long as your Tank is geared enough to handle heroics (535-540 def rating/ 8% Avoidance) and your Healer has enough Spell power to sustain your Tank then you don't need to waste your gold in craftables since your DPS will get better gears from heroic mobs and heroic emblems. I have a lot of craftables sitting in my bank waiting to be D/E after I max my Enchanting. Some Heroic/Raid based DPS spent too much time and gold gearing up because of Recount.

[heffner]

#1 upgrade IMO is the Titansteel Guardian.

After that, I bought:

Hat of Wintry Doom
Chain of Latent Energies
Dark Runic Mantle
Revenant's BP
Revenant's Boots
Windripper Leggings
Ebonweave Gloves
Titanium Spellshock Ring

The rest are quest rewards/drops/rep rewards etc..

I haven't purchased an offhand as the quest reward item I am using (Bulwark of Redemption) isn't that bad. Zom's cackling bulwark is around almost 2k gold on my server and the Emblem of Heroism offhand is better stat-wise (it's not a shield though).

Much of the gear I bought is with future raiding in mind. If you focus on maximizing for heroics the gear in some slots will definitely differ due to the lower spell hit requirements. Although it may seem to be a waste to some people to buy gear, many purchasable items are best in slot until Naxx [and even beyond].

I used Lootrank to help me plan my gear upgrades. The stat weights are from an Elitist Jerks simulation. The weighting for spell hit is rather high so I assume you can adjust that as necessary.

http://www.lootrank.com/wr.asp?Cla=64&Max=25&mh=0.92&mcr=0.64&spd=1.38&mhit=2.36&Int=0.22&Ver=6&i1=0&i2=0&i3=0&i4=0&i7=0&i9=0&k1=0&k2=0&k3=0&k4=0&k5=0&k6=0

The stat weights were taken from:

http://code.google.com/p/simulationcraft/wiki/SampleOutput

[Elix]

Wow! a heartfelt thanks for all the replies, plenty for me to go from out of those replies.

Cheers :D