I like the look of the "Ironfeather" (chest, shoulders) and "Devilsaur" (legs, hands) Leather mini-sets very much, and their stats and bonuses fit not only a Druid but a Shaman, too. So here's my question:

Shaman can wear Mail armor with much better defense values past level 40, and I'm not sure if Mail is therefore a MUST in the end-game (level 55+). If a Shaman is using a good 1h-weapon (i.e. Masterwork Stormhammer) with a good shield (defense, block), can he use the "Ironfeather" and "Devilsaur" Leather sets without having to worry about constant deaths?

Summarizing those four pieces (Chest, Shoulders, Legs, Hands);
165AC, +12int, +28spi
117AC, +20Int+8spi
148AC, +12sta, +46AP +1%crit (melee & ranged)
103AC, +9sta, +28AP +1%crit (melee & ranged)
with the set bonuses of +2% to hit and +5% resist silence

533AC, +32int, +34spi, +21Sta, +74AP, +2%crit + bonuses

For primary pieces of armor these stats are lacking in my opinion for the end game, they might be nice looking but you will die. Our benchmark for Onyxia is >3000 unbuffed health, which gives you a chance to survive a deep breath or time to recover from a fireball.

I'd look at the crafted Dragonscale mail options, along with some boss farmable drops, like Dracorian Gauntlets or Gordok's Gauntlets quest reward. If you look at mail loot, Blizzard loves shamans with set pieces from Elements, Bloodmail, Gladiator. You might need to wear different parts depending on where you go.

It IS viable for Shamans to wear leather end game, just not those. For grinding/gathering/offtanking, they don't have enough armor. For raiding, they don't have enough int/spirit/FOCUS(very important for a raiding shaman). However, having several leather "druid" pieces in your raid armor set is not a bad idea, I personally use http://www.thottbot.com/?i=35594 tanglemoss leggings in raids.

There is a thread on the amazon basin about end game shaman gear. They do seem to aim mostly at MC though and not much else, but maybe the gear would work for other stuff you will be doing end game. The thread is here. I've been looking over the list for the past week or so and starting to pick up a few of the pieces. Basically it seems like the opinion is that in the end game a shaman needs to pump their healing ability. So you will see alot of pieces that increase that. Of course some items say "Equip: Increases damage and healing done by magical spells and effects by up to 18." Which I'm hoping increases shock damage as well, but I'm a little unsure what "magical" refers to.

In regard to the leather vs mail bit, in that thread they seem to consider stats > armor. So there are even cloth pieces that they recommend. I guess if you are healing mostly then you probably aren't tanking and so armor isn't as important. So you kind of need to decide more on the role you want or the versatility that you want. Are you a healer, caster dps, melee dps, or a tank? End game I tend to find myself going more and more towards healer, though I do still use my shocks and melee a little bit so I'm trying to stick to mail pieces.

Well, I'm not going to read that thread. I'll respond to your comments, though.

The general "Damage and Healing" focus effect does work on your shocks. Shocks and LHW probably get 43% benefit, though I haven't personally tested it.

At the end game, you will want 2 sets of equipment, though some pieces may overlap. You want one with sta and either str or agi (if you have flurry) for farming materials and gold, as well as being an offtank type in 5 man instances. You will want another set with spirit/int/and focus for backup healing 5 man and raiding. My healbot set has > 100 healing focus (some but not all of it applys to the shocks), and that is without the healing power enchants I plan to start farming for soon. MC and Ony raids you are totems and healing, just like a pally. The first set, you are planning on meleeing, and should be nearly all mail. The second set, you are not planning on meleeing, and can have several leather or even cloth pieces. You can mix and match a little. Basically, the more people the less you should be meleeing the more it is ok to go with leather or cloth.

But this whole discussion eliminates the possibilty of the devilsaur armor. They have unacceptable armor, but melee stats. If you wanna play a hybrid with those, make a feral druid.

One recommendation: Use a the observers shield + the lorespinner for your healing duties. They are relativly easy to get, you can enchant 2 things as opposed to one, it's about as good as any blue staff statwise, and 2k armor never hurts when things go bad.

AC means jack in the endgame for anyone besides your primary couple tanks. So does defense, really.

Mitigation won't save you when something's hitting for a couple thousand. You MUST be healed to survive any significant amount of attention from an angry monster. Thus, stats become king for everyone but the tanks as acquiring meaningful mitigation values is difficult to do without sacrificing statistics that may be necessary to perform your non-getting smacked around roles.

/agree, sortof.

Personal example... even as your guild downs Ony and everything but Rag in MC, you probably still have 5man/solo goals, like your class DM book and enough AD faction to get resists. Armor is still important for those, because shamans make very poor mages.

I get smacked around in MC by Lava Surgers and Anhilators quite a bit. My hunter wearing mail can survive two hits now if I get an unlucky PRNG ADD roll. Having even 40% DR from armor helps, and I would rather not die everytime I'm hit.

The Surgers do straight 1000 damage when they charge, so breaking a 1k hp barrier is more important than armor there. The Annihilators pick a random second target alot, but don't hit that target much. It's rare when I get in trouble to these mobs, and I'm stuck in Leather

Surgers suck.

What I don't understand is why people insist on treating surgers like annihilators just because they look the same - you have to handle them like a rubberband, so you have:

• Tank at the front - tank the surger here
• Raid in the middle
• A paladin or shaman in back

The surger's aggro can be controlled, the surger just also picks a random target at the back and zaps over to hit them, then back over to the tank. When you try to beat the surger up like an annihilator, you have a lot of people taking the 1000 health hit.

Never said we did fight 'em like annihilators.

They still suck.

Thanks for the tipps. So, stats is what counts over defense for a Shaman in the end-game. That's what I wanted to know