Gearing up for raids can be a stressful affair. Expectations aren’t always set realistically, and a new raider is often under a great deal of pressure to come up to speed on everything at once. Worse, if your gear is sub-par, it reflects on your own capabilities more than it probably should, after all, if an extremely well geared character is pulling 1,800 dps, that’s actually fairly poor, but they’ll probably be allowed to slide. On the other hand, a newbie who is managing 900 dps in a mix of questing and normal dungeon gear is doing very well, but often are told they need to “step up”.
One way to get up to speed faster is to start with crafted gear. PvP gear is also an option, and will be the subject of a later article, but for now let’s just look into what crafting can produce.
As of the 1.7 patch, many of the crafted items have been updated, and are now excellent starters for raiding. The highest priority should be the weapon, which comes with a huge amount of spell-power and is thus your largest single upgrade. After that, focus on whichever pieces you can afford.
As far as runes go, I recommend the “clever” as a default. If you don’t need the crit as much, the “cunning” may be a win. Either way, the difference is very small and both will serve you well.
Weapons
Staff: Staff of Torment
Wand: Orichalcum Wand
Armor
Head: Hood of the Flowing Dark
Shoulders: Tormenter’s Shoulderpads
Chest: Tormenter’s Robe*
Hands: Radiant Witchweave Gloves
Waist: Darkcloth Belt
Legs: Darkcloth Leggings
Feet: Darkcloth Slippers
Accessories
Neck: Glowing Tempered Orichalcum Amulet
Fingers: Tormentor’s Band
The Tormenter’s Robe deserves special note. This item is substantially better than the Mark of Ascension-purchased robe, Amunet’s Mezmerising Robe, and since the latter costs quite a few marks, it’s worth skipping it and buying the cheaper pieces for the set bonus if you’re not yet working on greater marks.
Runes
- For weapons (including wand), the Blazing Intelligence Rune for 2-handed, or Runeshard for 1-handed and wand, is the way to go.
- For the head slot, it gets complicated:
- Radiant Sharp Rune is the best if you need focus.
- Otherwise if you have Icewatch notoriety, grab the Icewatch Summoner’s Rune in Iron Pine Peaks.
- Otherwise if you have Iron Claw Trappers notoriety, grab the Iron Claw Wizard’s Emblem in Scarwood.
- Otherwise pick up the crafted Blazing Sagacious Rune (yes, Sagacious, this is the wisdom rune)
- Shoulders and Chest: Blazing Insightful Rune
- Hands: Blazing Unwavering Rune
- The Waist slot is another complex one:
- Arcane Mathosian Rune in Stillmore if you have sufficient Order of Mathos notoriety.
- Otherwise get Arcane Runeguard Emblem in Moonshade with minimal Runeguard (just grind it out on a few zone and daily quests if you didn’t get it while leveling)
If you end up picking up multiple pieces of the Tormentor’s set, you will also gain the set bonuses, which can make up for the lack of higher-end gear, and might even make you want to wait to replace them until you can get the Blighted or Nyx’s set bonuses from their runes.
Having this gear is just the start of becoming raid-ready, but it’s an excellent start!
Harmil also contributes to the AJSGaming blog
