Enchanting Your New Gear: Budget & Best

Enchanting your gear is a vital part of fulfilling your role in a group.  If you add all of the stats up from a properly enchanted Rogue’s gear, you’ll find that not having them at all would be roughly equivalent to removing a few pieces of gear.  Today, I’m going to give two enchantment examples for each gear slot; one example will be a good enchant that you can get on a budget, and the other will be the best in slot choice.

–  Enchanting Your New Gear: Budget & Best  –

Before we get started, I want to note that after I talk about each gear slot there are two more sections to this post you may be interested in.  The first is for Rogues who are still looking for more Expertise and Hit Rating; the second is a list of profession only enchants and Item enhancements.

Enchants by Slot

Head

Budget Option:  Arcanum of Ferocity

• 34 Attack Power / 16 Hit Rating
• Requires Cenerian Expedition Revered
• 85g at Revered

Best Option:  Arcanum of Torment

• 50 Attack Power / 20 Critical Strike Rating
• Requires Knights of the Ebon Blade Revered
• 120g at Exalted

 

Shoulder

Budget Option: Lesser Inscription of the Axe

• 30 Attack Power / 10 Critical Strike Rating
• Requires Sons of Hodir Honored
• 67.5g at Honored

Best Option: Greater Inscription of the Axe

• 40 Attack Power / 15 Critical Strike Rating 

 

Cloak

Budget Option: Superior Agility

• 16 Agility
• Materials needed: 9 Infinite Dust

Best Option: Major Agility

• 22 Agility
• Materials needed: 8 Infinite Dust, 2 Greater Cosmic Essence, 2 Dream Shard

 

Chest

Budget Option: Super Stats

• +8 to all Stats
• Materials Needed: 4 Infinite Dust, 2 Lesser Cosmic Essence

Best Option: Powerful Stats

• + 10 to all Stats
• Materials Needed: 4 Dream Shard, 4 Abyss Crystal

 

Bracers

Budget Option: Striking

• 38 Attack Power
• Materials Needed: 6 Infinite Dust

Best Option: Greater Assault

• 50 Attack Power
• Materials Needed: 24 Infinite Dust, 6 Greater Cosmic Essence

 

Hands

Budget Option: Greater Assault

• 35 Attack Power
• Materials Needed: 6 Infinite Dust, 1 Dream Shard

Best Option: Crusher

•  44 Attack Power
• Materials Needed: 20 Infinite Dust, 4 Greater Cosmic Essence, 1 Dream Shard

 

Belt

Only Real Option: Eternal Belt Buckle

• Extra Prismatic Gem Slot
• Made by Blacksmiths
• Materials Needed: 4 Saronite Bar, 1 Eternal Earth, 1 Eternal Water, 1 Eternal Shadow

 

Legs

Budget Option: Nerubian Leg Armor

• 55 Attack Power / 15 Critical Strike Rating
• Made by Leatherworkers
• Materials Required: 4 Heavy Borean Leather, 1 Nerubian Chitin

Best Option: Icescale Leg Armor

• 75 Attack Power / 22 Critical Strike Rating
• Made by Leatherworkers
• Materials Required: 2 Arctic Fur, 2 Nerubian Chitin, 1 Frozen Orb

 

Boots

Cheap and Best Option: Icewalker

• 12 Hit Rating / 12 Critical Strike Rating
• 8 Infinite Dust, 1 Crystalized Water

 

Weapons

Budget Option: Greater Potency

• 50 Attack Power
• Materials Needed: 2 Infinite Dust, 4 Lesser Cosmic Essence

Medium Option: Mongoose

• Occasionally increases Agility by 120 and attack speed slightly
• Materials Required: 6 Void Crystals, 10 Large Prismatic Shards, 8 Greater Planar Essence, 40 Arcane Dust

Best Option: Berserking

• Sometimes increases attack power 400, but at the cost of reduced armor
• Materials Required: 12Infinite Dust, 4 Greater Cosmic Essence, 4 Dream Shard, 10 Abyss Crystal 

 

Stat Deficiencies

If you’ve got less than 26 Expertise, these enchants can help bring you closer to reaching it:

Gloves – Expertise

• 15 Expertise Rating
• Materials Needed: 12 Infinite Dust

Bracers – Expertise

• 15 Expertise Rating
• Materials Needed: 14 Infinite Dust, 3 Greater Cosmic Essence

If Hit rating is a concern because you’re Assassination Spec and you’re not at 216 Hit Rating (a very rare occurrence with full epic gear), then you can use the following:

Gloves – Precision

• 20 Hit Rating
• Materials Needed: 4 Greater Cosmic Essence

Weapon – Titanium Weapon Chain

• 28 Hit Rating / 50% Disarm Reduction
• Made by Blacksmiths
• Materials Needed: 2 Saronite Bar, 1 Titanium Bar

 

Profession Enhcantments

Many of the professions have perks to them that are better than the standard enchants, the only requirement is that you have the profession.  The good news is that making these item enhancements is that not only are they cheaper than the best enchants I listed in the first part of this post, but they are better than those enchants as well.

Engineers

Hands – Hyperspeed Accelerators

• 340 Haste Rating for 12 secs.
• 1 Minute cooldown

Feet – Nitro Boots

• 24 Critical Strike Rating
• Sprint Effect on use

Cloak – Flexweave Underlay

• 23 Agility
• Parachute Effect on use

 

Leatherworking

Legs– Nerubian Leg Reinforcements

• 75 Attack Power / 22 Critical Strike Rating
• Much cheaper to make than Icescale Leg Armor

Wrist – Fur Lining – Attack Power

• 130 Attack Power

 

Inscribers

Shoulders – Master’s Inscription of the Axe

• 120 Attack Power / 15 Critical Strike Rating

 

Tailors

Cloak – Swordguard Embroidery

• Your melee attacks sometimes increase your Attack Power by 400 for 15 sec.

 

Enchanters

Rings – Assault

• 40 Attack Power (per Ring)

 

– Conclusions –

If you’re newer to the game, you may not have enchanted much, and this might seem a bit daunting.  However, it’s important to look at the big picture and see what you’re gaining for your effort.

If you only enchant the Budget Enchants, you would end up with the following extra stats:

• 292 Attack Power
• 28 Hit Rating
• 37 Critical Strike Rating
• 24 Agility
• 8 Strength
• 8 Stamina
• Extra Gem Socket
• “Side Effects” – 8 Spirit, 8 Intel

The Best Enchants look like this:

• 259 Attack Power
• 59 Critical Strike Rating
• 32 Agility
• 12 Hit
• 10 Strength
• 10 Stamina
• Extra Gem Slot
• Sometimes increases attack power 400, but at the cost of reduced armor.  (this is on both weapons and does stack) 

As you can see, the best enchants will really give you a good boost over the budget ones, but even those make a significant difference.  I’d personally like to thank all of the hard work Zodar put into the spreadsheets at shadowpanther.net.  They helped tremendously in the writing of this post.  If you want a more in depth look at all enchants and how they stack up, that’s where you need to be looking.

**Only one Ret Paladin was harmed in the creation of this post.

– Sam

 

** And he got what he deserved.  I was at the Sons of Hodir Quartermaster looking up prices, and he attacked me while mounted.  I took off, healed, and got in my PvP gear / Spec.  He didn’t live long after that…