Hit cappingFollow

If your not going to raid you shouldn't have to worry to much about getting your Spell hit capped. The reason you want hit in raids is because bosses are 3 levels above you and therefore you have a 17% chance to get a resist. Getting 202 spell hit will reduce that chance to 1%(there will always be 1% chance to resist). However outside of raids the highest lvl mob is 72, and they only have a 6% chance to resist. Thus for anything outside raids anything over 63 spell hit is wasted.

Once you have the spellstrike set made thats 38 spell hit and if you guild is far as you say you can probably get the belt of blasting as well which will bring your spell hit to 61. That should be fine for everything outside raids. After that you can focus on boosting your +damage and a little bit of crit, badge gear should fill most of your spots.

Basically any heroic is good to run, if you just do the daily and a kara every once in a while you'd be suprised how quick badges can add up. The offhand, wand, ring, trinket, and cloak from badges are all really nice. The ring from scryers is nice as well and the vindicators silk cuffs are really good for only 9000 honor. When it comes to gems just socket for +damage, maybe some stamina if your looking for the socket bonus.

As far as leveling in WotLK, I wouldn't be too concerned. The 63 spell hit will do you fine(unless they change the mechanics) However, you kill things alot quicker with 1200 spell damage then with 700.

gear will be redundant by lvl.80 with the exception of some gear from sunwell.. it's the same as how it was when TBC came out, T1 was upgraded by lvl 63, T2 by lvl.66 and T2.5/3 was good till 68-70 (heck I couldn't upgrade my mis'undars hat until 69-70, and that's equal to the T3 head). so if you have godly BT/MH/SW gear, you won't be upgrading anything until lvl.78 minimum, but by lvl.80 you'll be replacing those lovely epixxx with blues ^^

they're giving more bank and bag space :)
all mounts and vanity pets are being given a tab in our ability book for themselves, they're no-longer items, they're abilities :) for me at least that's like... 20 additional slots across my inventory and bank.

undoubtably the 20 and 22slot bags will become easier and cheaper to get (relatively to now, be it due to inflation or increased drops/crafts). also if we're lucky we might beable to glyph our spells to not require shards... in which case we gain an entire additional bag :D

Edited, Aug 4th 2008 11:36am by Jenovaomega

Not too hard to verify that. There's been almost no sockets on any leveling gear whatsoever, which immediately makes badges stuff last until 75-ish and BT/Sunwell gear until you hit the 80 dungeons. As always, the small item budgets of necks, wrists, cloaks, and rings means they will end up lasting the longest compared to robes, helms, and especially weapons.

Thanks for the replies, I see it has gone a little off topic..

To stay off-topic, my statement that gear would become redundant was perhaps a little misleading. Perhaps I should have said "You don't need epix to play WotLK". While Blizz makes a bucketload of cash off the addicts (sorry, but if you play every day and get upset missing a raid, you ARE addicted) they CAN NOT ignore the people that will play from the ground up.

It MUST be possible for a solo player to play to 80. So while your epix makes the game easier, you simply don't need them. You are simply rushing to lv 80 to start the grind that Blizz knows keeps you hooked.

When I went from 40-70, I had ZERO epix and I made it just fine, the same progression will apply. I had a tough time in thrallmar and had to work hard, after that I was geared and things became the normal grind I had before.

Blizzard can say whatever they like about you not needing new epix, that simply means they are making THE GAME EASIER, rather than gearing you at 68 like they did in BC.

Blizz has also said they will make leveling 60-70 easier and they have dropped mounts to 30. They have done that for 2 reasons that I can see.
1) They want new people to have an achievable goal (a balancing act between maxing out how long someone stays active and keeping their interest)
2) Their business NEEDS new gamers

If their business needs new gamers, they are not going to throw them away when they get to 70 without epix, they are going to make it harder, but possible, to get to 80. (making it harder sets the addiction better, too easy lose interest, harder makes it a challenge and keeps the player on a few more months)

Look at Blizz decisions as business moves and you are MUCH more likely to see what they are going to do.

My 2c

they may not remove the requirement for shards from all spells, but i get we could get glyphs for like.. 1 pet (the main one we each use), shadowburn/soulfire and maybe SS or healthstone well... tbh if I could glyph the removal of Shard requirements to my succy and HS well and I'm sorted for raids, I'd just carry like 5-10 shards in a normal bag then :D lol

and then if you're in a progress raid, chances are you'll be stuck on a boss for awhile with no oportunity to replenish your shards