Mists of Pandaria Balance Pre-Raid Gear List


Welcome to the Mists of Pandaria Level 90 Pre-Raid Gear List for Balance Druids!

This list is intended to inform Moonkin on what leather caster gear is available from quests, factions, BoE items, crafted items, Justice and Valor points, both normal and heroic (H) dungeons and "Raid Finder" (RF) raids. It is designed to help at each stage of the gearing-up process.  It contains more items than most other lists around but I feel it helps to have all the information available to make comparisons easier.

If you're looking for Restoration gear you might prefer to check out my Pre-Raid Gear for Resto Druids.

I recommend using an in-game comparison addon like RatingBuster to help you make quick decisions on upgrades as you level, as well as using gear lists such as this one to plan your gear upgrades.

Scores

To give a general idea on which items might be better than others, each item has been assigned a score based on a weighting for each stat. Intellect is still our most important stat, followed by Crit Rating.

Balance Druids need 5100 Hit Rating to reach the 15% Hit cap necessary for raids. We can get this from either Hit Rating or Spirit on gear. For this rating, I've assumed that you are hit capped, and given hit and spirit a 0.8 weighting. Ideally, Spirit items are more desirable as they also provide a mana regeneration benefit. Items with Hit rating or Spirit are marked with an asterisk in the list.

I've given haste a high priority assuming that you are trying to reach the haste cap (see below).

The formula used was:
Score = int (+ spellpower for weapons) + gem value + haste + crit rating + hit rating*0.8 + spirit*0.8 + mastery*0.8

Don't forget you can always reforge items to make stats more desirable, so the scores have a certain amount of buffering around them.

A Note on Haste
Directly from icy-veins.com:
"After reaching 10 ticks (up from 7) with  Moonfire and  Sunfire, the value of Haste Rating decreases below that of Critical Strike Rating. This happens when your haste reaches 35.731%. Considering that Balance Druids always benefit from the +5% spell haste raid buff (thanks to  Moonkin Form), and from  Nature's Grace (+15% spell haste) for most of the fight, they need 5,273 Haste Rating to reach that value."

Gems

Unlike previous expansions, socket bonuses in Mists gear is usually desirable. For that reason I've added in the following values for types of gem to fill socket bonus requirements. You may choose to use Brilliant only for more damage throughput - that's up to you.

A note on items included in the list

Armor items for reputation vendors are now purchased with Valor or Justice points. Valor Points are available from daily random heroics and raids. Tier 14 Eternal Blossom sets will not be available with Valor Points but will be purchased with tokens which will drop in raids. I have included the Resto Tier 14 items as you may have these items for your alternate spec.

I've included items from the new World Bosses, at least until it becomes more clear how difficult they will be for casual raiders. If it's too hard to down them without an organised group I may remove these items. Does anyone have any info from the beta about them? WowPedia has a bit of information about Chief Salyis and his warband.

Items marked as only Bind on Equip (BoE) are usually random drops anywhere in the level 85+ zones, sometimes raids. It's usually faster to purchase them from the Auction House than it is to farm them!

Items marked as "Rare drop" drop from Rare creatures in the 85+ zones. An addon such as SilverDragon may help in locating them.

In some cases, the heroic Level 85 items feature quite highly in the scoring - I've included some of them. In each case the item has been gemmed with level 90 gems.

Items with question marks do not have source information populated in WowHead or WowDB yet. I'll try to update them soon.

Most item data was compiled from WowHead, some from WowDB. Raid and dungeon info is from Wowpedia.org. Stat weighting info was from icy-veins.com.

Updates:
7 December 2012 - Changed a few rep items from Revered to Honored. Also added new items from Patch 5.1 from Operation: Shieldwall and Dominance Offensive.
12 March 2013 - Added items from patch 5.2 - Throne of Thunder RF items, professions, Oondasta (world boss), Shado-Pan Assault, Sunreaver Onslaught and Kirin Tor Offensive items. Updated scores based on altered weighting system - new precedence to haste, less to spirit/hit.

Head


Neck


Shoulders


Back


Chest

Wrists


Hands


Waist


Legs


Feet


Rings


Off-hand


Weapons

For comparison, one-handed weapons have had the score for the Inscribed Red Fan (1245) (Inscription BoE, check the AH) added, plus 165 for the enchant [Enchant Off-hand: Major Intellect].


Trinkets

No scoring for trinkets, just a list with attributes.

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