Don’t Fret, Lady Jess
“Now…if I could just get rid of these stupid green boots.”
Well, the thing is LJ, they’re not stupid; they’re pretty sweet. Yes, they are a quest reward, thus popular and Green. But color indicates rarity, not power.
What would be an blueish upgrade? Let’s do some research, shall we? Let’s ask ourselves: What boots drop in normal 5-person instances that would be worth pursuing:
How about the Boots of the Outlander? These drop from the first boss in Mana Tombs and are pretty and blue. But are they an upgrade? Not really, especially if you’ve already invested in an agility enchant for your SGBs.
Next, the Sky-Hunter Swift Boots. Much better, yes? First boss in Sethekk Halls coughs up some pretty hunter-gear, right? Well, the SGBs give 16+48=64 RAP and teh SHSBs give 25+26=51 RAP, a noticeable decrease if you choose the blues over your greens. Yes, the blues give more crit, due to the greater agility, and more intellect and MP5, but they also cost you some stamina. An “upgrade” in the truest sense of the word? Not totally, no. This is a side-grade and a trade-off, not an upgrade.
Finally, let’s look at the Outland Striders which drop from the first boss in Arcatraz. Now these have to be an upgrade; look at that attack power and crit rating! Ah shucks, they have no agility at all. The SGBs have more RAP than these, can you believe it? Another stamina-for-intellect swap is all these boots really provide, same as the SHSBs. If you’ve enchanted your SGBs and are saving gold for your flying mount, do you really want to plunk down more payola to enchant a cross-grade piece of gear?
Guess we have to go Heroic-Mode to find an upgrade for our greenies. OK, let’s look:
Heroic Botanica. Get all the way through it, take down Warp Splinter, and you might get some Boots of the Endless Hunt. Finally, an upgrade with each stat, hooray! See! 26+48= 72 RAP, MP5, and a stamina-for-intellect swap… what? Another cross-grade on stamina and intellect? Phooey. Yeah, these are technically an upgrade, but it sure would be nice to run the longest heroic instance and get an epic drop completely better than a greenie quest reward.
Heroic Ramparts! Wow, we love this place. It’s the first Outland instance we ran and were completely impressed with the difference between it and all the Azeroth dungeons. Well, welcome back Kotter, take down the first boss, and hope you get a pair of Wild Stalker Boots. Oh no, they’re blue, but they have no agility. Again, they’re not an upgrade, are they. /sniffle
Wrong-o! They have +Hit Rating, foshizzle! For Karazhan, you’re going to need +Hit against those level 73 bosses. These slippers have got high RAP and a goodly chunk of +Hit. You’ll lose Crit, for certain, but if you’re Missing your shots, it doesn’t matter what your Crit Rating is. Hit the Kara-boss first, worry about Critting later. For a newly-appointed Kara-raiding hunter, the WSBs are a really nice upgrade to those greenies. Get your agility enchant on them and head for Deadwind Pass.
Once you get through Chess and Nightbane in Karazhan, you’ll be watching to see if Ferocious Swift-Kickers and Fiend Slayer Boots drop. As your Hit Rating progresses, you can choose which of these boots to equip. If your Hit Rating is not into triple-digits, wear the FSBs. If your Hit Rating is approaching 142, go ahead and slap on the FSKs.
Boot-progression, Lady Jess. We hope we’ve given you some appreciation for those SGBs you’re holding your nose at and have an idea of where you’re going next to upgrade them. Grats on the Kara run, we look forward to more tales.
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16 Responses to “Don’t Fret, Lady Jess”
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What about the Felboar Hide Shoes from the Cipher of Damnation quests?
Felboar have:
18 Agi
15 Stam
9 Hit rating and
68 Attack Power.
I used these for ages. When I finally got Boots of the Endless Hunt to drop I only equipped/enchanted them because it was embarassing to be in all epics save for my quest blue boots. They were a complete DPS sidegrade. And, since Kara hated me for drops, I never did get my Edgewalker Longboots or Fiend Slayer Boots.
No intellect generally means Not Raiding Gear. No mana = Auto Shot-only. We would not recommend the FHSs for raiding, even with the +Hit Rating. Grab the WSBs ASAP.
No question that a move up in rarity doesn’t always bring a complete upgrade.Or any substantial upgrade at all sometimes.
I’m way behind the curve, but it is amazing that I still haven’t found a true upgrade to this chest armor ( I continue to need that hit)
http://thottbot.com/i31286
Lady Jess might consider playing BGs for awhile and grabbing these
http://thottbot.com/i33878
In this case, some BG reward boots or the LW boots are a huge plus. What are the Lady’s professions?.. If LW, get the hence to the AH and find the Crimson Hawk pattern for a good price. And the BG reward boots, the Vindicators, are better than any of those random drops from 5-mans. Come to the dark side… go pvp…. shiney purplez….
it’s not even really going to the darkside fearstalker, it’s just going in and muddling your way to a few k honor. really.
“No intellect generally means Not Raiding Gear. No mana = Auto Shot-only. We would not recommend the FHSs for raiding, even with the +Hit Rating. Grab the WSBs ASAP.”
Well, taking only rogue loot may get you in trouble with mana issues, but it’s all about balance.
I recently started raiding with a guild doing BT/MH and I pretty much skipped T5 content. I did Hyjal and half of BT in my Felboar Hide Shoes before I got an upgrade. I’ve never had a problem managing my mana with the use of mana pots and AotV if absolutely needed. (Raid support helps, but even with my old raid group who had no raid support for mana I never had a problem.)
I use Cheeky’s to plan my gear and I’m not going to, say, pass up a Cursed Vision in favor of my T6 because Cursed Vision doesn’t have Int on it.
I agree with BRK on that Int comment, but its also what your play style it, rotation and gem/raid buffs… so on and so on…
I just checked out the new BM Hunter page at MAXdps dot com and it worked ok, some minor bugs, but it shows you some decent pieces of what you could upgrade to for your settings you plug in. What i found just crazy was a hunter saying in the forum how he raids in a lot of high end leather, but when you look at all the high end leather it most of it has ZERO +int due to it being for something that uses a thing called ENERGY… oh yeah… Rouges/cat form Drooods!! Yes, i do agree, some leathers can out perform your Mail gear and boost your DPS, but if you have mostly leather and no +INT, you are doing just as much DPS as someone with Mail/+int gear, because you end up on Auto shot and OOM, while i just spam away and keep my steady paced DPS.
(way off subject):
BRK, did you end up with that new 24″ iMac yet? i am getting one in a few weeks… with the 4gig ram upgrade of course!
/bow
Ok, I feel much better bout the green boots. Thank you:) Being I’m not a leatherworker, I must depend on droppy goodness. And will try yet again to get that first heroic ramps boss (he’s a bit stubborn) to hand over the booties. For now, it’s AV weekend..might grab some honor just in case he still hates me:) I could get them with badges, but we are saving those for the camo pants…we have rogue pants atm and our cat is hissing about his lesser armor.
These http://www.wowhead.com/?item=30273#reward-from are absolutely superb as well. It is crazy about the greens.
These two green boots and Core of Ar’kelos and you have some pretty nifty gear, yet it is green. I still have my Core running MH and SSC.
To be honest, I had the same issue. I eventually found myself at 118 hit rating (as a Draenei that’s “close enough” for the meantime), got the s3 boots and slapped Dexterity on em. I couldn’t be happier with the results, and I still have a couple slots that could be easily upgraded to more hit rating via Kara/badges.
Just something to think about.
….and we have fiend slayer boots as of 5 mintes ago:)
hunter gear is stupid. pardon the overabundance of exclamation points to follow.
my new main is a hunter (insert blizzard-related grumbling here) and i’m looking for upgrades on atlasloot. i look… and i look.. and there are barely any clear upgrades in 70 instances, or even in heroics!
compared to my green quest rewards, blue mail pieces actually LOWER my RAP and/or crit and/or hit in favor of int/mp5, and
leather pieces lower my int and mp5 to unacceptably low levels!
worst of all, i go to karazhan in my quest gear, thinking i’ll be carried by sympathetic guildies, and what do i find? i’m out-dpsing our T5-quality rogues!
what’s a mage-turned-hunter to do? hunter gear makes no sense!
The number of times I’ve seen Warp Splinter fall over only to NOT get Boots of the Endless Hunt as almost as crazy as the number of times the same thing happened before I got my Beast Lord Cuirass (I’m still wearing the standard issue PvP boots). Eventually I got the cuirass from the heroic Warp Splinter anyway, and at least two pieces of the Beast Lord set is totally worth having. Four pieces (together with the mail top from normal MgT) just looks super-pretty. Especially the pants.
[...] have boots. We accepted that our SGB’s (stupid green boots) were not as bad as we thought. I was all Zen with the SBG’s as a matter [...]
Fearstalker mentioned the easiest to get and very good Vindicator’s Chain Boots. I use Vindicators boots and bracers. Don’t be afraid of pvp. Especially Alterac Valley.
I still use my vindicators bracers in place of bands of the cellestial archer in some situations. The three vindicators pieces are truly a bargin.
Pvp is a guaranteed drop. Not like trying to get Sonic Spear or legacy from a drop. How many times must I kill Murmur? The count is at 11 so far. Forget it, my hit rating is high enough. I’ll find something else to replace Terokk’s Quill with.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Mok%27Nathal&n=Viggtarsky
I agree with Papaoomowmow…
The Vindicator’s Chain Sabatons are a realy good choise.