Dark Coven's Regalia

So, T10 looks official now. A number of caster items were changed recently, so the sets are no longer identical, tier vendors are up, and today's PTR build is marked as a release candidate. Background downloaders also kicked in for another 200 or so megabytes compared to last week's.

Lots of people noticed one thing: No spirit. There's a lot of theories on this, one of them being that blizzard is weaning us off spirit in preparation for Cataclysm, but I don't entirely buy that - there's a lot of spirit on icecrown gear.

My personal theory: We just got Holy Pally'd. Holy Paladins hated tier 8 because it wasn't itemized at all like they favored stats. Not just poorly like tier 7, but counter-intuitively to how their spec worked. Their talents were changed so they preferred how tier 8 was itemized more... Then tier 9 was itemized more like they USED to want stats. Tier 10 is exactly the dream set just about every warlock would have put together going into Naxx late last year. Spirit wasn't a huge stat for us, just not a waste. Crit and haste were our DPS stats after the obligatory hit and spellpower.

I've joked for a long time that tier sets aren't allowed to have more than two of our three favorite stats. We've liked spellpower, haste, and crit for much of this expansion, and our sets were very haste poor. As we've come to like spirit more and more with patches, it's also moved well up our lists, far eclipsing crit. More detailed stats through the break.

There's three sets, as with tier 9. Dark Coven's Regalia, at itemlevel 251 (not a stat upgrade from heroic tier 9 if you have it), purchased with Emblems of Frost. Sanctified Dark Coven's Regalia at itemlevel 264, purchased with tokens plus the lower level item - similar to tier 9, but without doubling up the emblem cost if you already have the cheap version. Heroic Sanctified Dark Coven's Regalia is itemlevel 277, and purchased with heroic tokens, though probably (hopefully) not so restrictive that they only drop off Heroic Arthas. My guild's gotten so many defender's tokens one almost went to off spec last week.

Socketing stays the same through all three versions, just like tier 9 (It remains to be seen if the widely follow the rule of adding sockets to heroic gear like they did so much in tier 9). The sets aren't ideally itemized, but they're not terrible, and it's not like that's something new. Tier 9 wasn't ideal, just not awful. Tier 8 and tier 7 were both much the same.

Set Bonuses
2 Piece: The critical strike chance of your Shadowbolt, Incinerate, Soulfire, and Corruption spells is increased by 5%.

The familiar bonus that's been in some form on all our Wrath sets, 5% crit. This time it's pretty extensive, giving something for everyone. Incinerate for destruction, Shadowbolt and corruption both for Affliction, and all three nukes for Demonology.

4 Piece: Each time your Immolate and Unstable Affliction spells deal periodic damage, you have a 15% chance to gain 10% damage done by you and your pet for 10 sec.

Not the familiar +10% DOT damage that's been on all our sets. 10% damage increase to both you and your pet at a 15% proc rate from every 3 second tick on one of your DOTs. Pretty big bonus all around, though note demonology would normally drop immolate from their execute range rotation, so you will have to adjust to keep it. I'd have to play with it, but I'm almost positive it would be worth keeping immolate up for procs. With no internal cooldown, the uptime isn't bad at all, you have nearly a 40% chance of it refreshing within it's own duration.

Stats

Head: Dark Coven Hood
Stamina: 109/123/139
Intellect: 109/123/139
Spellpower: 140/162/186
Haste: 80/92/106
Crit: 88/100/114
Gems: Meta/Blue
Bonus: 9 spellpower

Shoulders: Dark Coven Shoulderpads
Stamina: 81/92/103
Intellect: 81/92/103
Spellpower: 116/132/150
Haste: 63/72/82
Crit: 71/80/90
Gems: Yellow
Bonus: 5 spellpower

Chest: Dark Coven Robe
Stamina: 109/123/139
Intellect: 109/123/139
Spellpower: 149/171/195
Haste: 80/92/106
Crit: 96/108/122
Gems: Red/Yellow
Bonus: 7 spellpower

Hands: Dark Coven Gloves
Stamina: 81/92/103
Intellect: 81/92/103
Spellpower: 116/132/150
Hit: 63/72/82
Crit: 71/80/90
Gems: Blue
Bonus: 5 Spellpower

Legs: Dark Coven Leggings
Stamina: 109/123/139
Intellect: 109/123/139
Spellpower: 149/171/195
Hit: 80/92/106
Crit: 96/108/122
Gems: Blue/Yellow
Bonus: 7 spellpower

Nothing fancy like shaman shoulders big ghost pig proc, but the set bonuses are powerful and the set's no worse itemized than tier 7, 8, or 9. In fact, the argument can be made it's better - haste is the stronger stat than spirit, so instead of spirit/hit/crit, it's haste/hit/crit, which is a net improvement. Set bonuses are spellpower all the way around, though I'd like to see a few less yellow sockets and a few more red. If normal/heroic item changes look in ICC like they do in TOC, I'd expect the chest to be the item to drop, in favor of some amazing 3 socket robe woven of uncut death and win. It'll probably be a recolor of that mage set, though. Gah.