Gladiator's Blackrock Foundry Gear Guide *Updated 2/16/2015*

Gladiators!

We've got a new raid in 1 week. I'm sure you're all scrambling to be ready for the bosses coming and I wanted to try to highlight some of the best gear to go for ( and coin for ) in Blackrock Foundry. 

Blackhand's Battlegear

Most important is going to be our new set bonuses shown here on WOWHead.

http://www.wowhead.com/itemset=-1261/blackhands-battlegear

Warrior T17 Protection 2P Bonus Requires Warrior

Shield Slam has a 8% chance to automatically cast Shield Charge.

Warrior T17 Protection 4P Bonus Requires Warrior

Shield Charge increases the damage of Heroic Strike, Shield Slam, and Revenge by an additional 20%.

Currently we're able to get 50% uptime on Shield Charge in a 5minute Fight ( Mythic Butcher ). This is obviously dps in a vacuum but with our new 2piece bonus we should see at least 10-15% better uptime on Shield Charge. This only increases the importance of our 4piece, now making us do even MORE damage inside the charges. 

Blackrock Foundry BIS Gear

I used the latest Simulationcraft result to generate this basic list.I then edited the gear based on what we know about sim weights, and our breakpoints and have increased our results by a few hundred dps. I'll be keeping this post updated throughout BRF in case there is a change in the gear list. This is a Work In Progress.

Slot	Average Item Level: 694.69
Head	blackhands_faceguard,id=115584,bonus_id=567
Neck	gluttons_kerchief,id=113882,bonus_id=567,enchant=gift_of_critical_strike
Shoulders	blackhands_shoulderguards,id=115581,bonus_id=567
Chest	blackhands_chestguard,id=115582,bonus_id=567
Waist	ironcrushers_collar,id=113950,bonus_id=567
Legs	blackhands_legguards,id=115580,bonus_id=567
Feet	iron_bellow_sabatons,id=113961,bonus_id=567
Wrists	bracers_of_visceral_force,id=119331,bonus_id=567
Hands	gauntlets_of_dramatic_blows,id=113906,bonus_id=567
Finger1	spellbound_runic_band_of_elemental_invincibility,id=118308,enchant=gift_of_critical_strike
Finger2	seal_of_unquenchable_flame,id=113922,bonus_id=567,enchant=gift_of_critical_strike
Trinket1	Vial of Convulsive Shadows
Trinket2	Blast Furnace Door
Back	gronnstitched_greatcloak,id=113873,bonus_id=567,enchant=gift_of_critical_strike
Main Hand	taners_terrible_spine,id=113862,bonus_id=567,enchant=mark_of_the_thunderlord
Off Hand	kromogs_protecting_palm,id=113926,bonus_id=567

# Gear Summary

# gear_strength=3312

# gear_stamina=4540

# gear_crit_rating=1323

# gear_haste_rating=745

# gear_mastery_rating=893

# gear_armor=3041

# gear_bonus_armor=498

# gear_multistrike_rating=688

# gear_versatility_rating=490

Some points to note on the list:

• This list is a Work in Progress. Small Tweaks I made right after seeing it have already increased the results by a 1500dps.
• The Simcraft list doesn't reach the 700 Haste Breakpoint I recommend, I've re-ran the sims and see a difference of  270dps just by swapping the ring to Seal of Unquenchable Flame, and stilll enchanting crit all around. 
• The Swap Piece is going to be Gloves this time around. Our Gloves ended up having the worst stats of all the set pieces.
• This list is based on Mythic Gear levels, so if you didn't manage to get the Mythic Evergaze you may need to aim for one of the other trinkets first.
• Your weapon is still the biggest single upgrade, especially because of all the buffs to devastate. On PTR right now Devastate is sometimes 1st on damage done.

Trinkets

Updated 2/16/2015

Basic Trinket DPS Values with the above BIS list on, and combined with a Mythic Bottle of Infesting Spores ( the least amount of variance ). Updated 1/30/2015

BIS Trinket Combinations from Blackrock Foundry:

- Cyclonus

Gladiator Haste Changes and New Stat Weights

Gladiators!

With the recent changes to haste for World of Warcraft, we are now easily hitting the first haste breakpoint with less gear ( 225 instead of 330 ) and should be looking to also get the second. I've updated the original Stat Weights post to include this information as well. Here is what Haste looks like for my 667 Glad Warriors Gear. Because of these changes our stat weights are going to be different. I decided to show the entire graph on Cyclonus. From 0 haste on gear, all the way to 700 in 25 haste increments.

So, from 0 haste, we see the biggest gains between 200 and 225 Haste, and 650 and 675 Haste. Haste is also now a bit more valuable than it used to be, because we get more of it per stat now. From there the two caps are 225 and 675, Accounting for Interface and Network lag, I would recommend 250 and 700 haste for these caps.
Remember, these are raid buffed values!

New Stat Weights

630 ilvl

WDPS	250 Haste	STR	Bonus Arm/AP	700 Haste	Crit	700 Haste+	Multistrike	Versatility	Mastery
1.43	1.2	0.95	.90	.44	.42	.41	.36	.32	.30

665 ilvl

WDPS	250 Haste	STR	Bonus Arm/AP	700 Haste	Crit	700 Haste+	Multistrike	Versatility	Mastery
1.32	1.2	0.95	.90	.60	.53	.49	.48	.41	.38

695 ilvl

WDPS	250 Haste	STR	Bonus Arm/AP	700 Haste	Crit	700 Haste+	Multistrike	Versatility	Mastery
1.26	1.2	0.95	.90	.62	.62	.58	.55	.48	.45

Gladstance Buffs!

Hello Gladiators!

If you are following the latest patch notes, you will see that we got some serious changes. This is going to be really nice for our AOE damage, and especially nice for our scaling. Look at that haste buff! I will need to do the math's to confirm ( and will update the post ), but I believe this to be the case.

The Patch Notes from MMO-C :

• The Haste stat is now 11.1% more effective. For example, characters at level 100 now receive a 1% increase per 90 Haste (up from 1% per 100 Haste).

•  Warrior (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • General
    
    • Thunder Clap’s damage has been increased by 40%.
  • Arms
    
    • Mastery: Weapons Master’s effects have been increased by 57.1%.
  • Protection
    
    • Deep Wounds’ damage has been increased by 40%.
    • Devastate’s damage has been increased by 20%.
    • Revenge’s damage has been increased by 40%.
    • Shield Slam’s damage has been increased by 20%.
  • Talents
    
    • Gladiator Stance (Protection) now increases damage by 5% (down from 20%).

First, I'd like to explain that this was a brilliant design decision by Blizzard. We're seeing a 15% damage nerf to Gladiator Stance, and between 20 and 40% buff to the other abilities here. This means that we're going to scale better with gear ( devastate is based on weapon damage ). What is also important is to note that at the beginning of the tier, when weapons and gear were a lot harder to get, we had that damage passively ( though less of it ) and the original design would have kept us up with our Fury and Arms friends. As I said earlier though, I'm going to be working on the updated simcraft whenever it becomes available to confirm all of this, but I thought i'd get the word out there before I started having to read forum threads saying RIP Gladiator LOL.

As a side note, I was also seeing a ton of threads popping up by Raid Leaders and new Prot Warriors talking about jumping into Challenge Modes and Raids and getting trucked by the bosses. Most often when they posted logs they weren't even keeping shield slam up, so I did a guide on how to analyze your Tank on Warcraftlogs. Here is the guide:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1678334-Protection-Tank-Logs-Guide-amp-Analysis-(-Read-OP-First-)

- Cyc