Gearing for Naxx

Welp, I'm trying to spend some of 79 positioning myself for good entry raid gear. Thanks to WoW Insider/WoW.com's Dan O'Halloran's comment about Shifting Perspectives' gear at 80 list, I thought I was starting off well. Unfortunately I made two mistakes.

The first was to go for shoulders first, and to try for Shifting's best quest piece: "Mantle of the Flesh Giant, from the quest The Flesh Giant Champion in Icecrown". Decent questline, horribly quick XP, but it turns out that Mantle isn't even as good as one of their runner ups, "Purehorn Spaulders, a Leatherworking BoE," which not only gives more boomkin power, but is a leather item. So I dropped the fleshwerks quest line and off I went last night to start farming Hath'ar Skimmers.

The respawn rate was ridiculous, and I was able to put on some melee gear and the Staff of ye olde Sorrowful Chieftan and grab 30 Nerubian Chitin's in no time. I was helped by someone who didn't reply to /whispers who was whacking everything in sight, but didn't skin. I usually like to /whisper before I start vulturing all the leftovers, but after throwing a MotW and Thorns on the farmer, I gave up. It was a level 80 character, so I'm not sure what the angle was. Gold farming? No idea. The mobs did keep respawning so quickly that it supported four folks running around whacking things. You can just barely see my proverbial benefactor over Jal's left (your right) shoulder in the screengrab with the Spaulders.

And though the Spaulders look pretty kewl and all, this brings us to my second mistake: Not comparing the list to Laser Chickens. I completely missed his wrap up, and it's a very good one. For shoulders, I do have the best craftable from Shifting Perspectives, it appears, but I'm apparently looking for Mantle of the Eternal Sentinel, a BoE drop from Sartharion. That's a big difference. Still, Shifting's on the mark here.

Shifting might not be for other slots, though, compared to Chicken's more recent gear. Let's compare the "accessible" gear (so the best spellpower (oversimp, I know) from Chicken's list, with the best craftable for any drops, and from WoW.com's.

(This will have to be a two-parter; here's the Chicken list, and the Chicken List totals:)

Intellect 405
Stamina 541 (616)
Spirit 185
Armor 3087
Resilience rating 186
Critical strike rating 238
Haste rating 37
Spell power 673
+ two sockets

Set bonuses in parens.