I was thinking of not getting the chest, because the craftable Merlin's Robe is so good.

The T9 chest is also kind of weak since it's a spirit/haste item. anyone else thinking of what piece not to get?

The head/gloves/legs give a insane amount of hit though, so maybe drop one of them?

Head.
Hit/Spi.
Just. No.

..That is if I don't get bored of the /faceroll in CoLOLiseum and /hiatus.

Easy choice: Chest.

The headpiece is best-in-slot when used for hit rating. And it has a really good +hit gained / +pp lost ratio making it one of the best +hit items to choose.
Shoulders are best-in-slot.
Pants are best-in-slot (with 4pc) for not using +hit, and 2nd best-in-slot if using it for +hit.
Gloves are best-in-slot when used for +hit, 2nd best when used for 4pc and not for +hit.
Chest is 3rd best with 4pc.

The question is then if you can get a better PP combination by ignoring the 4pc and getting +hit items in other slots.

I tested all possible 4 piece T9 combinations (except for missing Shoulders as they're obviously BiS) in SimulationCraft when I was making the Priest_T9.simcraft BiS profiles and I found that the best combination in 258 gear was to use the Holy T9 helm and shoulders, chest, hands and legs for the Shadow T9 pieces.

Here's the DPS summary for each set



The clear winner is p258_0t8_4t9_head which used:


2nd was hands_4 (as you can see I tried a few profiles with some differences but all not using the T9 hands).
It's profile was:


Then tied for 3rd places was another hands one but also a set that only used 2pc T9.
This 2pc T9 set was:


In all 4 of these top sets, the T9 Shadow chest and shoulders get used.
The T9 shadow helm is actually pretty bad compared to the Holy T9 helm.

I mean compare them....The Holy T9 helm has 8 more spirit and 86 crit rating versus 94 hit rating.
At the 258 level of gear, the crit rating scale factor is around 0.78 and spirit is still around 0.22. That means that the Holy T9 helm is 68.84 PP better than the Shadow one vs 94 hit. That's a ratio of 0.732. Which is a horrible ratio.

Did you just forget about the T9 Holy helm?

My assumption on taking the head was that it was used for +hit. I had "fat-fingerd" a number in my spreadsheet and had that ratio at 9.8~. Yeah, my bad. Ignoring the 4pc for a second, the PPHitGained / PPHitLost is closer to 1.25 using the BRGA's numbers. Which is still terrible compared to other options. 9.8 was fairly OK, though.

I'm still thinking the merlin's robe will be useful for the transition to 258 gear.

Cause you're not gonna get all that 258 T9 gear in a week.

u are not gonna get the 8 crusader orbs in a week either if u dont ebay gold or something,

Well, since a crusader orb will cost 15 emblems of triumph in 3.2.2, you actually could get 60 emblems of triumph in a single day if you cleared out normal and heroic ToC in both 10 man and 25 man. So... 8 crusader orbs could be potentially acquired in 8 days.

Thank you for running the simulation-crafty thingy over this (something that's beyond me!)

To sum up you're looking at Shadow Shoulders, Chest, Gloves and Pants to give (25 man normal - Triumphant Velen/Zabra Regalia):

http://www.wowhead.com/?itemset=-142

STAT --------- GLOVES --------- PANTS --------- CHEST -------- SHOULDERS -------- TOTAL
Intellect ------- 77 -------------- 103 ------------ 103 --------------- 77 ---------------- 360
Spirit ----------- 0 ----------------- 0 -------------- 82 --------------- 67 ----------------- 149
Crit ------------ 67 ----------------- 0 -------------- 0 ---------------- 59 ----------------- 126
Haste ----------- 0 ---------------- 74 ------------- 82 ---------------- 0 ----------------- 156
Hit -------------- 59 --------------- 90 ------------- 0 ----------------- 0 ----------------- 149
Spellpower --- 109 -------------- 140 ----------- 140 -------------- 109 ---------------- 498

A total of 149 +hit from those 4 pieces... so you'll need about 120+hit on other gear. I can understand why people want to swap out the chest - something about a spirit/haste robe just doesn't get me excited either.

But a spirit/hit hat is even worse - the holy equivalent (Velen's/Zabra's Cowl of Triumph) has a nice chunk of crit on it. Or you could buy the 75xEmblem Helm of Clouded Sight which is almost identical - different socket colours which is probably how I would choose between them. Or based on looks. Do you need the blue socket? Does the Helm of Clouded Sign match the T9 helm models?

I'll probably end up with the Healing T9 Helm just so I have a complete T9 set - I know, it's silly

Got my trophy tonight and now I have no idea what piece to get
From the looks of it healing pants are pretty nice and won't break my 4p t8. Then again perhaps it might be worth getting some random 232 piece and go 2p+2p. Has anyone done the math or shall I do it myself?

I got the shoulders because they are pretty high on the list and I had only tier 8 (not 8.5). Switched back to the shadow-legs for 4p 8.5-bonus. Felt like the best for me.

Really depends on what you have for each slot.

Do the math! Go on, I dare you! (Plus then the rest of us don't have to)

If I'd do any math it would probably be just comparing my exact gear vs whatever is availiable for emblems. At the moment my biggest problem is that I have got pretty nice +hit pieces but no non-hit alternatives for them so getting any of the three T9 +hit ones is pretty bad choise for me.

I'll try to do some math in following days, no idea when though.

So this has been driving me crazy for quite a few days now, especially since I'll be getting my T92set next week and 4set eventually(or atleast I think so, I'm figure I'll skip it if I can manage to get my crit 3% higher w/o the 4set, assuming at least 3% crit on all spells HAS to outweigh 5% crit to 1 spell, granted it averages a fair amount of our dps).... anywho...

I see people posting about the helm, and assuming you are going for the 4set, I really can't see taking the robes over the helm, considering the amount of hit you pick up on the helm and also given the fact that if you skip the T9.5 robes and get merlin's robes, so....
Merlin's Robes(320 pp) + T9.5 DPS Hem w/o 4set(452 pp) = 752 Total PP(Before 4set)
T9.5 DPS Robes w/o 4set(307 pp) + T9.5 Healer Helm(352 pp) = 659 Total PP(Before 4set)
Assuming those are the only switches needed it seems terribly apparent that, if you do need the hit from the helm, that combination nets a greater amount of PP rating compared to using the Holy Helm and using our DPS Tier Robes.

I know I know, PP rating isn't the only thing that matters, but tonight while watching my bf attempt Algalon(Go Go 16%!) I took down a list the top 3 hit items in each slot and their pp rating and hit rating, took the highest PP valued items and did some switching around to net the right amount of hit, while still keeping our 4set and fund that T9 DPS Helm, Gloves, Legs, Shoulder and the 3tree Freya 10man wand netted what seemed to be a higher total PP rating for just those items, also providing the hit cap.
I then went to WoWhead's item comparison tool and started comparing stats... I took the BiS non-hit items(those I could find on WoWhead) added each to each set and came up with....
http://www.wowhead.com/?compare=48087:4 ... 0399:45168
Set 1 is 4set T9.5 with Helm/Gloves/Legs/Shoulders and Set 2 is 4set T9.5 with Chest/Gloves/Legs/Shoulders
Set 1 gains:
13 Sta
45 Crit
13 Haste
6 Hit
2 Sockets
Set 2 gains:
6 Int
80 Spi
10 Armor
6 Spell Power

Seems to me using Set 1 would be more ideal, sure the stats on the helm are a little off but using that piece for your 4set allows you to pick up Merlin's Robe which is amazing stat wise.

Granted there is some room for error as not all BiS items were up on WoWhead, so maybe I did this all for nil, but whatever its 4am and I was bored so if so ohwell.

So I know you are all saying that the helm is awful statwise but when you look at the differences in the sets, as far as what items you have to trade off to get the correct hit rating, the robes are obviously the best choice to drop.

But if you're not going for the 4set then its no big deal, and if you are able to pick up 3% or greater crit from items you replace for your 4set then by all means, disregard this post.

I'll take a closer look at items tomorow morning, so I could be wrong here, but imo I'd rather go with Set 1.

Now punch in what Althor came up with and you'll see his setup has TONS more crit, more spellpower and is overall much better.