After a long break (quit after Cataclysm), one of the things I have noticed when I started playing again is that the stats on my gear change depending on the talent specialization that I choose.
For instance, on my druid when playing Feral ‘Agility’ is enabled, but when I change to Balance ‘Agility’ is replaced by ‘Intellect’ on the same gear piece. This seems to work for all of my gear, apart from my weapon.
Does this mean that having different gearsets when playing different specs is no longer needed on one character, apart from the weapon?
Please note, I am kind of looking for an answer that would fit the vast majority of the players on WoW. As in, I want to be competitive but my goal is not to be in the top 5% or something.
Weapons and trinkets would be the main 2 you would end up changing on your character for different specs. That being said, your secondary stats (Haste/Crit/Vers/Mastery) might still cause you to want different items in other slots.
Exactly. You will probably swap weapon and trinkets between specs. Probably, but not always, depending on the spec. Some weapons and trinkets may not have both Strength and Intellect, or Agility and Intellect, but some of them will.
The rest of your armour you can mostly keep between specs, but ofc if one of your specs wants a lot of Haste while another wants a lot of Mastery, you may decide to keep two pieces and swap between to be competitive.
You need not bother with this before max level though. The difference secondary stats like Haste and Mast make before max level will not be enough to bother with.
So having different gearsets is, in general, no longer needed in most cases (though different weapons and tinkets might be needed in some cases) but the more you care about optimisation, the more you will keep for secondary stats.
Icy Veins
will give you an overview of the usual secondary stat priority when you hit 60, and then there are more resources like Raidbots.com and Pawn addon if you want to get super-optimised beyond that.
Since I am a person that changes his main (spec and class wise) every single day, this is somewhat bad news… was hoping one armor set would be sufficient to cover one class completely.
Just one more question, I understand that secondary stats (haste/crit/vers/mastery) may vary across specs like Caster DPS, Melee DPS, Healing or Tanking… but what about classes that only have one role?
For instance a warlock. Would an optimized (i.e. best-in-slot) Destruction Warlock look the same (gear/stat wise) as an Affliction Warlock?
Really depends on what you want out of your character but the super short answer would be no, a BIS Destro set would not be a BIS Affliction set. That’s an entire section of the game boiled down into a single statement so of course there will be exceptions.
The community is great at pulling together lots of information and doing the heavy lifting to help lay out what those sets might look like so make sure you check out the fansites, like the ones linked above, for more reading.
