PSN: Best in Slot BS

There are many posts about getting BiS, or Best in Slot. For Raiders the meaning of BiS is blindingly obvious, and frankly that is good – that is what you would expect.

The reason I think this topic needs a blog post is that I see a lot of material about people becoming ignorant of what their gearing options are. A lot. Poor forum posts, misplaced gearing, poor selection of item combination, melee characters with no Hit Rating at all, etc.

Its nutty out there at the moment, and in particular I’ve seen a player using a BiS item (until the 4.2 patch), but having a set of final combat stats that is borderline useless. This guy did almost trivial amount of damage in a run, and had some really nice items. This post is for that guy.

So what does it mean? In simple terms these are the items that are the optimal choice in some manner for the spec and class. Grab them, they’re good.

Why is following BiS only flawed?

• Some resources will give a BiS list, as a full gear set; meaning the BiS items when used in combination, to reach the thresholds.
• Some resources will give the raw individual item score based upon stat weightings ignoring the set it is used with (a true BiS).
• Some will just list a full gear set without thinking about how they combine.

PSN: You can gear a character to be highly competitive without having BiS items. And you should ignore a BiS recommendation if you don’t also understand why and how the BiS recommendation is being made.

Why? Your character is optimal when certain thresholds (which are different for every class/spec) are reached, and then stat ratios are maintained based upon their weighting. Hit Rating is very common, Expertise is common too.

Understanding the why those thresholds need to be reached, what a stat priority means, and what the difference is between a BiS item in balanced terms vs another item is critical to performing well.

How do I know? Because I used to make the same mistake.

How do you fix it? Research your class, stat weightings, combat stat thresholds, BiS. Start with Elitist Jerks, and work your way around the web.

Consider this a public service announcement.

Happy killing – TyphoonAndrew

How to define Tradechat?

A brief definition of Tradechat:

Like watching a Lord of the Flies movie if it was rebooted by the creator of the Human Centipede teamed up with Uwe Bol, and then sent to William Burroughs to fix the continuity.

Trade chat today was dreadfully rude, and I think we’ll see new levels of disgusting and vile in the lead up to Cata release, then an unholy mess in the first few weeks. Trolls will return like everyone else, and the feeding frenzy of shuddering verbal grime will come with them.

Like a train wreck, sometimes you just have to look…even just to be reassured that there are a huge amount of sick people out there, who are thankfully at home indoors (and probably in the basement).