#0 - Oct. 21, 2009, 3:42 p.m.
I'm glad blizzard has addressed many of our itemization issues and that mp5 is now useful stat. However, librams are still an area where no progress has been made at all. Blizzard seems torn between attempting to make an original interesting sounding item and making it a practical upgrade.
The main problem here is Libram of Renewal off the original badge vendor. I picked this item up 6 days after the expansion went live and it's looking as if I'll be using it up until the next expansion. It reduces a significant mana cost off our most commonly used spell and it has great synergy with illumination due to the talent restoring base mana costs instead of the actual cost of the spell.
It wasn't that big of a deal when the naxx libram was far inferior. It's fairly common going between tiers of gear to keep a lower ilevel item with better itemization. However, then the Ulduar libram ended up being a slightly more powerful and an equally unimpressive version of the naxx libram. Paladins were now refusing to use a significantly higher ilevel drop off several raid zones later in favor of some thing bought from heroic badges. I really hope this raised some warning signs to blizzard.
We see another raid zone and a larger jump in ilevel then most raiders were expecting. Surely a 45 ilevel gap would be enough to put this issue to rest? Not even close. Libram of Veracity has no icd and a very high proc rate on our most commonly used spell. It has close to 100% uptime and it still isn't appealing.
This is the newest libram which, I believe, was datamined so it could be wildly inaccurate.
Your Holy Shock spell grants 85 spell power for 15 sec. Stacks up to 3 times.
I really love blizzard intentions here. They made a libram that has synergy with the tier 10 set bonuses. However, it's a very minor upgrade over the ToC libram that comes with a clumsy stacking mechanic that forces use of a lower HPS/HPM spell while holy light spamming. I doubt I'd use this libram over the ToC one, and I'm not even willing to use that libram.
A nerf to libram of renewal seems far more reasonable then a buff to every other libram in the game. This doesn't magically fix all of the issues with current and future libram itemization, but it's a needed start. The icecrown libram still needs some number tweaking to make it an actual upgrade.
In the burning crusade I used the Karazhan libram for pretty close to the entire expansion so this isn't an isolated incident. I'm glad that I'm not using Egan's blaster at level 80, but idols, librams, totems, and sigils are an area blizzard needs to improve on.
