Warlock Tier Set Pieces

So a little more on the title topic later. First, a quick leveling update. I spent a few days last week focused on my Rogue and managed to get him to level 42. Combat continues to be a great talent tree for leveling and while the class as a whole continues to be a lot of fun, I am getting a little worn out spamming sinister strike all day long. So I might switch him over to Assassination once I hit 50 and can pick up Mutilate. It's probably not as good in general for leveling, but might be a little bit more fun.

I also worked on my Shadow Priest for a bit and he now sits at 49, just a few bars from picking up Vampiric Touch. When I started to level the shadow priest, I really thought it was going to feel very warlocky, but without the benefit of the minion. I've been very pleasantly surprised how different the class feels for leveling and how very survivable it is with all the various shadow talents pouring health back into my toon. Plus, there's a lot to keep track of in terms of different spells in the rotation and different buffs to keep up, so it's generally a fun leveling experience.

I may spend another day or two on the Priest before switching over to the mage. Gotta get to 50 and get Vampiric Touch after all!

So I've also been running some heroics and doing a few Wintergrasps on my existing 80's in order to continue their slow accumulation of gear. My druid is already in a four piece T9 set with a cloak from frost emblems, and my warlock just picked up the badges yesterday to get his last piece of T9.

It's actually quite interesting, because the T9 cloak for warlocks seems like, if anything, it's probably a slight downgrade from the T8 piece that I've been wearing. Seems like very odd itemization on the part of Blizzard. Conqueror's Deathbringer Robe versus Guldan's Robe of Conquest. If you run the comparisons on those two, you'll see that as part of "upgrading" to the next Tier, I'll be losing 1 hit, 2 spell power and 66 crit. In exchange, I'll be picking up 16 intellect, 9 stamina and 72 spirit. I'll also be trading a yellow gem slot for a blue slot, neither of which I'm likely to use for the slot bonus, which is the same on both pieces. Now don't get me wrong - if you run the stat weightings on Wowhead, it does still show up as a net upgrade, primarily because the extra spirit and intellect outweighs the loss on the other stats, but it just doesn't feel like much of an upgrade.

But, I need it in order to keep the set bonus, because as another oddity, the four piece set bonus for warlocks for T9 is the same as the 2 piece set bonus from T8 which I currently have. So since I'll be breaking up the T8 set anyway for the Triumph emblem helm, I need to replace the chest piece in order to keep that 10% bonus to my immolate's damage.

And, it's exactly this kind of nonsense that makes me tend to focus on leveling in the first place!