Challenge Mode Gear

I've been tanking challenge modes lately with some friends from my guild. We have 6 gold medals so far, with 3 to go. I'm looking forward to getting the title, the mount and the pet for the guild vendor. But most of all I really want the transmog set.

Regal Lord Armor with
Preened Tribal War Feathers
and Crab-Leather Tabi

It's been a very fun experience, kind of like a mini-raid. They haven't been as difficult as we thought they would be. We've had a hard time in some that are considered easy, and we've breezed through others that are considered difficult. I would very much recommend everyone to try them out!

We've been reading tips and watching videos from WoW Challenger, which is a great site that covers everything there is to think about regarding challenge modes! This post is a summary over how I decided to gear for our challenge mode runs.

Stats

As challenge modes are timed, any way we can help it go faster helps. If the healer needs mana, we can let them enter their Restorative Amber while we use a cooldown or two and pull the next trash pack. Our damage output matters, a lot. This means I've been ignoring stamina, mastery and other defensive stats when I've put together my gear.

The most difficult, dangerous and time-consuming part of the challenge mode dungeons is the clearing of trash packs. Bosses are kind of easy in comparison. Since the trash is level 92, I've decided to go for 6 % hit and 12 % expertise, instead of the 7,5 % hit and 15 % expertise I usually have for raiding.

Eye of the Black Prince

There are a lot of things that are disabled in challenge modes; set bonuses, the legendary meta gems, the sha-touched gems and the legendary cloak procs.

However, there's one nifty little detail that does work! Eye of the Black Prince provides Sha-Touched and Throne of Thunder weapons with an extra gem slot.

Sockets sockets sockets

All gear is scaled down to item level 463 in challenge modes. So we should "simply" take the gear with the best optimized stats that we have acquired through-out the expansion. For me, that meant visiting the Item Restoration website to get back a couple of trinkets that I had vendored.

All cloaks (without sockets) that are at least item level 463 will have (about) the same amount agility, stamina and secondary stats on them when they are scaled down. That means it doesn't matter if we acquired the item in a heroic dungeon, in heroic tier 14, in normal tier 15 or in raid finder tier 16. But there are two things that do matter! 1) We should go for the items that have the most sockets, as gems and socket bonuses don't scale down, and 2) we should go for the best secondary stats.

As an example I'm gonna compare a cloak without sockets, a cloak that has a socket and a cloak from the legendary quest chain:

Cloak without socket	Cloak with socket	Cloak from the legendary quest chain
501 Agility 752 Stamina 651 Secondary Stats	421 Agility 752 Stamina 585 Secondary Stats Socket bonus: 60 Agility Gem: 80 Agility + 160 Secondary Stats or 320 Secondary Stats	421 Agility 752 Stamina 711 Secondary Stats Socket bonus: 60 Agility Gem: 80 Agility + 160 Secondary Stats or 320 Secondary Stats
501 Agility 752 Stamina 651 Secondary Stats	561 Agility 752 Stamina 745 Secondary Stats	561 Agility 752 Stamina 876 Secondary Stats

The Gear

Slot	Comment	Wowhead search
Head	The legendary meta gem is disabled in challenge mode, so the next best thing is Agile Primal Diamond. 1 socket. Best socket bonus: 180 agility	Link
Neck	1 socket. Socket bonus: 60 crit or 60 exp	Link
Shoulder	2 sockets. Best socket bonus: 180 agility	Link
Back	1 socket. Best socket bonus: 60 agility Best: Fen-Yu, Fury of Xuen and Tigerfang Wrap	Link
Chest	3 sockets. Best socket bonus: 180 agility	Link
Wrist	Only one wrist has socket: Bracers of the Midnight Comet! 1 socket. Socket bonus: 60 agility	Link
Hands	2 sockets. Best socket bonus: 120 agility	Link
Waist	2 sockets (+ belt buckle). Best socket bonus: 120 agility	Link
Legs	There is one pair of legs that has 3 sockets, Cosmicfire Legwraps, but it's from Ra-den and I'm gonna assume not many have it. 2 sockets. Best socket bonus: 120 agility	Link
Feet	There are two boots that have 2 sockets. Quilen Hide Boots, that are made from Leatherworking, and Twist-Toe Tabi, another drop from Ra-den. 2 sockets. Socket bonuses: 120 agi/ 120 mastery/ 60 crit/ 60 expertise / 60 mastery	Link
Fingers	1 socket. Best socket bonus: 60 crit (60 agi on ring from Ra-den)	Link
Trinkets	There are no trinkets with sockets. Trinkets are a more personal choice, depending on what we prefer. The ones I chose were Relic of Xuen and Terror in the Mists.	-
Weapons	Going with two 1handers I get two Dancing Steel and double amount of gem sockets. The best weapon choice would be dualweilding Hellscream's Cleaver. The second best is to take advantage of that Eye of the Black Prince! That means weapons from Throne of Thunder with one gem socket. 2 sockets. Best socket bonus 120 agi (60 agi)	Link

I've been using the same gear in proving grounds, but I think I need another strategy for that. Sure, it's nice to get mobs down quickly, but it would also be nice surviving. :)

Good luck and have fun! Oh, and if everything's going to hell in the challenge mode, here's a handy macro: /script ResetChallengeMode()

/bow