Hey guys, ever since
Seathrift's vid w/ Mizdirect concerning movespeed potential coming in SL, I've been looking into the subject myself and things have changed pretty significantly since then. Video and spreadsheets to follow but first let's talk about what's changing and what's possibly coming.
First off, all this information is based on SL beta, which is still in development. If the relic shuffle change teaches anything, it's best not to treat info from a development environment as a guarantee at launch. In addition, I would wager Blizzard probably doesn't have a full sense of what they've created here. They have shown little hesitation in the past to send in the Fun SWAT Team when players start surmounting their guard rails.
With pre patch, Legion legendary effects will be going legacy and no longer work. These were often the crux for a lot of old movespeed twink builds. Thankfully they've introduced a new gem with SL Jewelcrafting called Straddling Jewel Doublet. The tooltip for these state they will increase your speed rating by 13 for every SL gem you have socketed.
So here's the plan. All SL gems require ilvl 87 gear (keep in mind ALL ilvls, stats and levels are getting squished pre patch) to socket. So you will want to assemble a full set with as many sockets per slot as you can that are still ilvl 87. That means you will want a lot of the old crafted gear with high socket counts. Most of the ultimate/raid pieces from old expansions are ilvl 87 when crafted and more still can be relic'd to 87. One slight exception is that the old Minor Speed boot enchant is 10% movespeed and one of the best singular speed sources a character can get, but the enchant is limited to ilvl 50 or lower gear. You can Relic III any old boot and accomplish this, though. Shadowlands also introduces a cloak enchant with 30 speed rating, which you can use.
So that all sounds good but what does it get you? Right now on the beta, I have an exp locked 51 Feral Druid going 213% movement speed in cat form. Yes, faster than a land mount. And I'm working on squeaking out a bit more still. That is static speed, so even faster with Dash, Stampeding Roar or other consumable/item effects. The reasoning behind locking @ 51 is explained in detail in the spreadsheets below. Uses for this are pretty obvious. You will be able to farm old dungeons for transmog very quickly and this Druid is also able to get around the map to gather in SL faster than almost anyone on a mount, all the while in Prowl!
So while Druid is the stand out case because of cat form's huge movespeed buff, using gems this way is completely class agnostic and high socket pieces are available to everyone if you do a bit of research. In particular, my 51 DH is @ 182% movespeed, socketing mastery whenever possible to sort of "double dip."
The new gems and their interaction with the Jewel Doublet are pretty buggy right now on beta and you have to do all kinds of alternating gem types (this is never mentioned in the tooltip) in a single item, destroying and resocketing gems over and over and taking gear off and putting it on again to finally get the gems to register correctly. Also, the tooltip states 13 speed/gem yet is only granting 12. If that discrepancy of 1 Speed is fixed, we might squeeze out another 1%. The recent changes to secondary stat diminishing returns should hopefully extend to speed, too. I'm also currently researching the potential of these sets alongside azerite shoulders and helms with speed traits and a Heart of Azeroth with Rank 3 Ripple in Space and it's 5% movespeed. Using those BFA items would only work in non SL content but would probably net an additional 2-3% movespeed.
So for anyone who is interested in a dedicated movespeed toon I would first give you this advice: Jewelcrafting will be required for the BIS 2 socket trinkets, make sure you are keeping any high level (as in ilvl 87 or higher POST-pre patch) weapons and rings you currently have with sockets. These are the most difficult sockets to easily obtain a crafted item for, for everyone. Also, keep any azerite helms or shoulders you have, I'm still researching what pieces have the most ideal trait combinations for those slots.
Lastly, here's
the spreadsheet I'm putting together. I have most of the BIS pieces for leather wearers locked down. I'll be collecting more lists for each armor type, it just takes a lot of digging and confirming (read: time). Here's a video of my druid
farming old dungeons and
gathering out in SL's open world.
If anyone wants to help me test this on beta, especially on classes other than DH or Druid, I can throw together almost all the same items I used to test for you on Torghast server. Serious testers only please, it takes me some time to assemble it all. Any class that can equip a leather item welcome.
... questions?
