Causa wrote:
Sorry canpick but for me your view is too black and white. When talking about upgrades we can't stare is the item mail, cloth or leather. We must focus on our stats and see what we are lacking. If we have enough of mp/5 then we will take that cloth which has more +heal of course.
His post was all about stats and pointed out that most cloth and leather did not have the stats that chain mail did basically due to the itemization of chain mail to be worn by shamans vs cloth and leather not. At the level the OP is at, "having enough mp/5" is most likely not going to occur wearing cloth and/or leather because gear at that item level does not typically have mp5.
Causa wrote:
Mail gear for resto shammy is like plate is for healadin, it's giving us that extra chance to live after getting agro but we must remember that we get most of our armor from shield and that can't be cloth so nothing can go wrong there.
This is right and wrong. The particular gear that Blizz designed for a particular class is often times optimized for that class(for the most part lol. Silly Blizzard) as far as what stats it should contain to maximize item points. Obviously it's stupid to worry about armor over stats when you're a healer, a lot of the time the natural gear itemization will put you in that gear anyway. You can never rule out cloth or leather but mail typically has the stats we want to maximize. The best cloth pieces you tend to find on AH are the "of the physician" which was +stam +int and +heal.
Causa wrote:
While it's true that cloths and leather many times contain spirit since they are meant for priest/druid but that is not always the case. I think the best gloves for shaman is cloth [Gloves of Unfailing Faith], no spirit but nice amount of mp/5.
This item drops in BT. At the OP's level there aren't many cloth or leather items itemized like this that would benefit a shaman to the full extent so although nice to look at, doesn't really help him at this point. If you know of some easy to obtain gear like this at his level that would be nice to have examples of. (I'd like to see them too.)
Causa wrote:
Also if you compare 1h mace from maiden and merciless 1h mace. Pvp reward is actually better than any mace from kara but still in long fights you may have to use that maiden drop for the extra mp/5.
From neck items also pvp reward is exellent and there are not many necks in game that are better atm for shammy.
s2 gear is great to get into kara with. It will save you a lot of time and angst trying to get the right gear to drop out of instance and will also save you some cash from picking up BoE's off the AH. The big thing to remember about PVP gear is that it wastes Item points on resil which is mostly worthless is the majority of PvE encounters. Due to that fact it's not perfect but it's a great start and easy enough to get if you can handle the PVP grind. Depending on class, shamans are lucky here, some PVP gear will end up still being better for us due to some decent itemization on Blizz's part than it's PvE counterpart.
Overall, gear accordingly as far as stats, don't worry so much about armor, but know that you'll tend to fall into mail anyway eventually and also hit up some PVP if you can handle it because it'll get you into Kara and that's where shammies really start getting geared.