Tier 10 Elemental Shaman Stat Breakdown

Well with the news that has been going around on the WoW news sites and blue's posts looks like we will be raiding Icecrown in the next couple weeks. Based on the recent update about how Blizzard will be staggering the releases of wings in Icecrown Citadel we should have plenty of time to be able to farm Emblems of Frost. The new Dungeon System will feature random instances and try to match players based on gear level. You will receive 2 Emblems of Frost by completing a random Heroic each day. There will also be weekly raid quests now that will award an additional 2 Emblems of Frost. With all of the raiding coming up in the final chapter of Lich King I think now is a good time to break down the stats on our Tier 10 vs. Tier 9 sets.

The first thing to mention is the upgrade ascetically. I mean come on the Tier 10 is awesome looking and it has a pair of shoulder that proc ghost stags. Let's take a look at the set pieces and see stat differences between the two sets. I will be comparing Tier 9 ilvl 232 vs. Tier 10 ilvl 251.

Tier 10 - Frost Witch Regalia

Frost Witch Gloves
Frost Witch Hauberk

Frost Witch Helm
Frost Witch Kilt
Frost Witch Shoulderpads

When you total up the stats on the Tier 10 set it looks like this:

5741 Armor
439 Intellect
439 Stamina
223 Haste Rating
143 Hit Rating
422 Critical Strike Rating
669 Spell Power

When you compare the two armor stats here are the differences:

+355 Armor
+107 Intellect
+107 Stamina

-35 Haste Rating

-69 Hit Rating

+233 Critical Strike Rating
+120 Spell Power

The first thing that sticks out to me is the huge gain in Critical Strike Rating. IS this a stealth buff to Elemental Shamans? Some may say crit is the weakest stat of the bunch with which I would agree since we have the ability to force crits with Flame Shock and Lava Burst. But when I thought about the fact I should crit more often in this set with Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, and Lightning Overload it has to be a buff to our DPS.

The second thing is the loss of Hit Rating which is a good thing in my opinion since most raiding shamans are way over hit capped. The loss of 35 haste rating is a surprise but with the changes to Elemental Mastery I don't think that it matters.

We gain 120 spell power. When you are able to outfit your shaman with ilvl 251 gear or higher you should have no problem hitting 3k spell power unbuffed. After looking at some of the rings, necks, and cloaks coming in Icecrown shamans shouldn't have a problem bringing in some nice dps numbers. There are some pretty decent upgrades in spell power coming on all of the gear.

With a couple of weeks until Icecrown Citadel it time to really scramble to fill in those last few pieces on the gear your wearing to be ready for 3.3 raiding.

3 Responses So far

Aeryssa on Twisting Nether
on December 2, 2009 at 6:24 PM: Hey, my elemental shaman just hit 80 over the Thanksgiving holiday break. Just found your site today--love having so much good information consolidated in one place. Thank you! And keep up the good work.
Russ
on December 4, 2009 at 7:21 PM: Thank you so much for this blog. So many blogs focus on enhancement and resto, so it is nice to read about the spec that is dear to me. I'll be reading through your posts to see if there are any changes I can make. If you happen to get a chance to look at my profile (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Windrunner&n=Empusas) and have any suggestions, please let me know.
Anonymous
on December 10, 2009 at 6:53 PM: Great site, mate. Fantastic info across the board.

Regarding the Tier10 gear, my only concern is the 4 set bonus. I'm going to reserve my judgement until I get my hands on some theorycrafting, but at this stage I'm not confident that it will be a better bonus than the Tier 9 one. I'm curious to see what everyone else thinks about it.

Good points regarding the substantial increase in Crit and reduction in HR. Once again, some theorycrafting will hopefully provide some insight into the possible effectiveness of Crit in Patch 3.3.