The Spirit Realm

Thurvok is currently outfitted with all visible slots from the Tower.. Tier II raid armor.. and the emblem in the chest piece ( slot 15) is maxxed.. Soo now I am in HoT in Tier 4 zones and armor is dropping.. would I be better off to change to HoT Tier 4 or stick with the tower armor??

keep your neck & range (if they're tower) since the improved effects VII are much better & offer more mitigation than the extra HP/AC. Swap out the rest for tier 4 (if it's all tower you're replacing), you're upgrading focuses, AC, HME and in many cases Heroics.

Just to clear things up.. by visibale slots I mean feet, legs, chest, head, arms, wrist's and hands..

You will probably do fine with HoT T4 gear, even with the decreased emblem power. The only thing I watch for on converting to group gear is watch the AC drops, in the past they have been substantial from raid gear. As long as that is even just comparable, you should be fine with the HoT gear.

AC on T4 visible gear is lower , I believe it s the same about heroics, not worth remplacing.

Dont forget you will also loose purity, with a metal orb equiped that could be significant amounts of AC

My gear strategy has now done a 180... hehe I USED to belive get all your visibale armor from the highest current group zone avialable and save all my DKP to bid on the other stuff.. like neck/range/shoulder etc etc.. and ONLY after I have gotten all that stuff to start on raid armor.. Now I have switched 180 degress on my thinking..

(I'm a new paladin, so please forgive my ignorance);

I'm curious as to which would be better, t4 HoT gear, or the new cultural stuff (extravagant/illustrious). It looks to me that they're fairly comparable, but I wanted a bit of a more seasoned eye to vet out that opinion.

Thoughts?

The HoT T4 group stuff is slightly better than Tower in my view, you lose some AC, but gain lots of hp in addition to significantly better heroic. The UF T6 raid stuff is better than HoT T4 group, you get more AC, better heroic verse slightly more hps. HoT culture armour with UF or higher raid seals will blow all above out of the water.

I end up decide to go with UF T6 and use whatever else to fill the holes, as I am not expecting a full suite, guild probably won't be in T6 long enough for that. Ultimately what your guild is doing will largely decide on what you go with. I decide just to ignore emblems mostly as in my play situation it is pretty hard to gather a full suite most of the time.

If you have the platinum or the time for trade skills, cultured the stuff is the way to go right now provide you got access to raid seals as well.