Stats in Cataclysm

Without a doubt, most of you have already seen and read about the updated information about, how stats are going to work in Cataclysm. Of course, we should keep in mind that we have yet to see but a small portion, or a much bigger picture. Because of that, I would suggest caution from assuming too much. An overhaul of stats like this, in the entire game, is going to have an enormous impact on every aspect of the game. Even leveling up will be affected, as Blizzard has already released that they will be altering most, if not all items in the game; from random drops, to dungeon loot, and quest rewards.

All and all, I am still excited though. It cannot hardly be any worse than it already is, when you are leveling a character. If anything, new stats will only make it more interesting, when going to dungeons and completing quests will again have an impact on your character, beyond just awarding experience. Most of the time, these days I just buy greens from the AH whenever I level up. Efficient but incredibly boring and unrewarding.

Concerning end game play, we are finally getting rid of the biggest baggage that seriously character have; gearing up tanks. I remember when I was subjected to the harsh reality of trying to reach my def cap on Durithim, desperately scratching together enchantments and whatever small pieces of gear I could find, to reach the magical 540 number.

In cataclysm, we no longer have this issue, and we will not have to burden our talents points with it either.

“Defense is being removed from the game entirely. Tanking classes should expect to become uncrittable versus creatures just by shifting into Defensive Stance, Frost Presence, Bear Form, or by using Righteous Fury.”

Makes perfect sense, and is in its way, a genius solution. We already associate certain stances with tanking, which you must have on, continuously or you will fail before you even manage to really start.

So what can we expect for tanking stats on plate in Cataclysm? Funny enough, the exact same stats that we have come expect; Str, Sta, hit rating, expertise, and avoidance stats. With the one big difference, defense is gone. Makes you wonder how things are going to actually change? I am certain it will, but as always, trade speculations are over blowing it with unjustified foresight. The main big one is the fear that the game is turning to become easier. I very much doubt it. It will become clearer and simpler to manage, but I highly doubt all challenge will be stripped from it because of a few stats.

Rawr for Warlocks

I originally, truly began to use this program when I leveled my warlock. However, it has since then dropped very low on my list of priorities. If you are not aware of, this is a program that lets you optimize your characters, by changing gear, talents, etc. to produce something that is more highly tuned, without constantly respeccing and time consuming experimenting in-game.

However, as nice as this sounds, the program has been having a lot of let-downs lately. When I first brought my results up on some forums, I was informed that Rawr is actually broken, at least for warlocks and you should not trust the dps optimizer as far as our class is concerned.

Ohh well, I can still use it to swap gear, change specs, and experiment with various buffs on. But recently, even this has started to get wrinkled. The problem is, Rawr does not recognize nearly all of the useful trinkets and items that I want to equip. Just take the first set of T10 gear. None of it appears in Rawr’s item list. It is also such things as Circle of Ossus and Purified Lunar Dust.

This starts to put a bent in the program that is really has to ignore and I find myself back to using spreadsheets and excel tables to keep track of the gear I want to get. I suppose the good news is that Rawr’s bug tracker has been made aware of these, but remains to be seen, just how soon it will be fixed.

In the mean time, I recommend caution to anyone using the program, it might not always be telling you the truth, so don’t forget to double check your results the old fashion way.

Shadowmourne Released

Blizzard has finally released some concrete information about this new legendary weapon, known so far as Shadowmourne. The first thing that became available was small preview of the item's lore and hints of how the weapon would actually be crafted, itself alone a fair epic in nature. We were giving three of these clues, and although not very specific, it hints to the line of questing that goes into a legendary weapon.

"... Shadowmourne must be hewn from piles of impure Saronite; the hardened blood of the Old God, Yogg-Saron treated only by master metal-shapers."

There are several clues here, one which is the obvious that whatever "impure saronite" is, it must be taken to Ulduar and somehow interact with the last boss, Yogg-Saron. Much the same way that Val'anyr had to be thrown into Yogg's mouth before slaying him. Perhaps saronite is imbued with Yogg's blood or yogg's blood is just another component. The words "master metal-shapers" might just be a NPC smith in Dalaran, but could also mean that you will need a fellow guild member to forge the components together, either a grand master miner or blacksmith.

With the weapon itself forged, we have this:

"... it is vital that Shadowmourne be drenched in the souls of the most potent servants of the Scourge"

To me this seems very self-explanatory; just go ahead, armed with the weapon, behead enemies in the Icecrown Citadel raid instance. The fact that it mentions "most potent servants" suggests that you have to slay an X amount of raid bosses. How many or what the exact process is, I cannot say.

"... Shadowmourne is to be adorned with fragments of the Frozen Throne."

Again, as the last step, very self-revealing prerequisite, in which you must face Arthas at the last chamber of the instance, and defeat him - multiple times, since "fragments" is in plural. And then, finally in the end, from all the trouble, you will eventually be able to receive Shadowmourne as a just reward. As a level 284 item, it will most likely last you a very long time. Way into the next expansion.

Sounds definitely worth the trouble to me.

Preparing for PvP

This morning I finally wrote and posted my humble review on PvP Leveling in World of Warcraft; a very viable and interesting way to level a character. I have personally had a lot of fun tackling horde, stealing flags, and laying waste blizzard and fireball. However, I believe my success so far has been largely thanks to the preparation I did before hand, or during my pvp career.

Here are some very simple steps I suggest everyone considers for themselves, when making the decision to level using battlegrounds.

Heirlooms

I cannot stress it enough, how important these are for you. When you level mostly using battlegrounds, you will be short on both gold and gear from instances. Sure, you can run a few instances on the side, but it will not make up for the difference much. Heirlooms act as blues of their equivalent level and improve the same time your level increases, so they will always be up to date.

There are enough heirlooms available to give any class you choose, a weapon, two trinkets, and two pieces of armor. In order of priority, the items go armor, weapon, and trinkets. The armor is first because each gives a 10% increase to all experience gained from quests and the killing of a target or monster that yields honor. In case you are wondering, they stack.

In patch 3.3, we hear from wow.com that there might be new heirlooms available, for data mining has shown that there is an item or spell that provides a 5% experience increase; A little extra XP bonus.

The weapon is important, for obvious reasons, as they are often the most important and sought after items that relate to your dps. Some classes can choose from different weapons even, as is the case of the rogue, depending if you are going for combat or assassination specs.

In my case, I chose the following for my mage;

Tattered Dreadmist Robe

Exquisite Sunderseer Mantle

Grand Staff of Jordan

Discerning Eye of the Beast

Inherited Insignia of the Alliance

Notice the fact that three of the listed items are pvp in nature. They are available, not from the Dalaran heirloom vendor, but from within the Wintergrasp fortress, for pvp badges. The rest of the slots for my gear, I mostly buy from the AH or get a high level to quickly run me through a low level instance.

If there is one item I suggest everyone buys, it is the last, pvp trinket that frees you from movement impairing effects. It is an absolute must have for every pvp player and will save you from a whole bunch of grief, since playing pvp is half struggle for control and it is achieved through stuns, roots, etc.

Professions

Every player should level his or her First-Aid skill, as high as their current level allows. It is true, you can buy bandages but for me, it is essential that I can create them myself. There is never a shortage of cloth at the AH, and if you level like most do, with quests on the side of BGs, you will also gather some yourself.

As items, bandages are a lifesaver in any battleground match, particularly when short on healers (and you always will be); head to head matches often leave, even if you survive, starving for health, and though you are still standing, the next opponent only needs one arrow or spell, or stinking breath, to put you down.

There are a variety of professions that can be useful to you, particularly crafting professions that allow you to easily put together the best craftable items, to supplement your heirloom gear. However, I decided to choose herbalism and alchemy.

Healing and mana potions, the first more than the second, are crucial for me. The two professions allow me to both gather and prepare my own potions, as well as gain Lifeblood. It has saved me more than once when out running the horde, their flag in hand.

Class Capabilities

It is very important to learn and understand the capabilities of your class. Particularly how they play in pvp, since when going head to head with other players, the game changes drastically. Few, if any of the skills you had in pve, will apply on battlegrounds. Some abilities are only useful in pvp situations learning what your class can do is the only way to shine.

Also do not let anyone gouge you into picking some select, so called "best" classes. Personally, I enjoy playing less obvious choices and it bores me to tears when I check the match roster and realize five from ten in the enemy team are rogues or hunters. Particularly on certain levels, like the 10-19 branch is infested with players of those classes, since they are the obvious, strongest contestants.

For my mage, I was told to be a poor choice for battlegrounds and that I will be ganked by rogues and warriors of lower level than I am. However, so far, I find rogues less imbalanced and more just annoying, who are incapable of anything else except stealth, backstab, and try kill you before the stun wears off.

If it doesn't, or if I can reveal the rogue with an aoe, the rogue better pray for quick reinforcements before he becomes a jar on my mantle piece.

The Battlegrounds

Just like knowing your class, knowing the terrain and purpose of the battlegrounds you play is equally important. It is not a rare sight, to see people wonder aimlessly on arathi basin, not fully understanding how the battleground works, or know the best ways to infiltrate the enemy base in warsong gulch.

Game Mates

Finding people to play battlegrounds with can cut a lot of frustrations from the road ahead. Pugs by nature are chaotic and usually only go with the one tactics; which is to say, they don't have any. Basically, just zerg the enemies, while trying to accomplish the battleground objectives. After you take part in a match, with clear strategies and roles, you realize how much of success depends on people who are willing to communicate and evolve strategies.

And even if you cannot find any pvp guilds to join, just grouping with a friend or two takes you a long way.

Death Knight Tier 10 Review

Odds are I was the only person in the world who was clinging to the hope that we would not have to joggle yet another set of tier gear. Small hope I agree, but I believe justified because as a progression raider most of your game actually revolves around those blasted pieces and not sooner than you actually have managed to gather a set, you are already shopping for a new one next week.

But enough ranting and lets have a look what nice things we are getting this week.

The new death knight art actually looks very nice this time around. Tier 9 was fine but seemed a bit too contained, too neat and polished for someone who is essentially a warrior with a permanent bad temper. The new look is a return to tier 8; death motifs and rustic. Definitely a nice job by the designer.

The tier bonuses look slightly more dubious. Since I a tank night and day, I always look at those set bonuses first and I am getting mixed feelings this time:

2P Bonus: Increases the damage done by your Death and Decay ability by 20%.

4P Bonus: When you activate Blood Tap, you gain 12% damage reduction from all attacks for 10 seconds.

As always, the first set bonus is a threat amplifier but I am worried that the target this time is Death And Decay. True, it is my default opener to any fight, so a good choice, but the problem is integrating it neatly into your rotation. You will of course try to recast it during an encounter but odds are you will not be able to, at least not as often as you would prefer because it actually takes three different runes to use and getting all three refreshed at the same time is not an easy feat.

Also for highly mobile bosses e.g. Hodir, Ignis, and Dreadscale it is particularly difficult because you are then stuck tanking the boss within the confines of the spell.

The second set bonus does make me raise my eyebrows equally. Is this meant as an extra tank cooldown? Seems improbable because blood tap already plays a pivotal role as part of my normal rotation to get extra hits out on the boss. To be forced to save it as a damage mitigator seems out of this world to me.

I am thinking it might provide a nice respite to heavy damage during a fight though. Remember damage of Ulduar hard modes or ToTGC bosses like Gormak and Anub'arak? Using blood tap like I do, whenever possible to make use of a death rune will provide some amount of mitigation just randomly during a fight, and if available, as an emergency cooldown but there is a downside also; random damage mitigation means spiky damage and we all know how healers hate spiky damage.

Sure, you can use Ora2 to announce cooldowns and that way healers can know when you're using it but to me spells hard times for healers though.

Sigils

Since this is a subject I have personally struggled a lot; which is the best sigil for each spec, I decided to put it up here. Sigils are essentially to death knight what totems and librams are to shamans and paladins, and it is not always so straight forward to pick the right one. Each tier set has been, so far, accompanied by a couple of new sigils and the variation of their abilities makes them difficult to interpret.

Like so many things, these are issues that some of us gladly leave to those with math degrees and generally too much time on their hands, to calculate proc rates, rotations, and overall output. The only good news is that both dps and tanks generally use the same sigils. This is due to the fact that death knights generate aggro through dps output. So basically what you have is a bunch of threat amplifiers, like Death and Decay and Frost Presence, and then the rest is up to your dps.

Frost has it the easiest, alas the best sigil for them is still the Sigil of Awareness. This can be bought cheap with emblems of conquest from your local Dalaran vendor. Since the patch 3.2.2, both blood and unholy now use the Sigil of Virulence, which basically acts like a miniature version of the Darkmoon Card: Greatness, procing your strength by 200 with a very high up time (estimated 80%).

The downside is that the Sigil of Virulence costs 25 emblems of triumph, so it can take many daily heroic quests for you to get it. However, Sigil of Vengeful Heart is still a very good spaceholder until you get virulence. It is sold by the conquest vendor as well, for 19 emblems, and of course it also has a chance to drop from 25-man XT-002 Deconstructor.

Get Started with Gear

It isn't a rare case when I meet people who are stuck in their gearing phase, desperate to make a break into raiding but are hindered by others when they do not have whatever achievement or are not all glad in sexy purples. It is a vicious cycle, there is no doubt about it, since you cannot get the gear and achievements without raiding,and cannot get into the raids without the goods.

Those of you who read my blog regularly (yes, amazing isn't it? *grin*) know how I feel about this so I will not bother to reiterate my disgust, but instead of ranting I decided to put together a small guide of how I personally solved the issue.

First of all, do not bother with progression guilds. Yes, they might take you in and might even gear you up, but personally I would feel like a bag and most still will not bother with you. This is understandable, so don't take it personally; a player with such outstandard gear and experience just simply does not bring anything to a guild so far ahead.

Casual guilds however, they should be your first home. You will find other people in very similar situations and a lot more opportunities to evolve than you would anywhere else. Yes, it is not sexy the way progression guilds are, but if you're poor, can't drive a jaguar. Casual guilds are good places to make friends and get people, who are willing to over-look your lack of awesomeness, and get into doing heroics.

Start from the easiest and work your way up, developing your skills and getting experience. It may not feel like it now, but some heroics are in fact harder than a full naxx10 clear. Also, get yourself the Atlasloot addon and browse all possible drops. I did this back in the day, with the help of notepad to remember what pieces I wanted from whichever boss.

While on it, you will have a chance to earn a lot of emblems and also reputation with various factions and these are actually extremely important. You should aim to get exalted with all major factions in northrend, for they all sell valuable gear and enchants that you will continue to use, even after heroics. So visit the emblem vendors in dalaran, write down the pieces you need and get the tabards for the faction you wish to start with.

Here are a list of the faction quartermasters and the respected list of goods they offer:

• Argent Crusade
• Kirin Tor
• Knights of the Ebon Blade
• Sons of Hodir
• Wyrmrest Accord

Rules for grinding reputation are very simple; a) always wear their tabard (if available) to heroic dungeons, b) do all normal quests associated with that faction, and c) continue with any daily quests that become available. It takes a lot of hard work and you will be doing the dailies once a day, everyday, but it pays off.

Another good place to find good gear is the Argent Tournament. Get in there, earn the rank of a Champion and you will be able to use your racial quartermaster, on site, for some exciting blues, or even purples. Plus the Crusader titles look good on anyone *wink*

Next place to get good gear, is to actually craft it. Here again the presence of a good guild pays off, because your guildies will likely have the designs and plans needed, so you only need to get the materials. To find available pieces, ask and look around what the various armor pieces have; titansteel for plate armor, arctic fur for leather, and frostweave for tailors. There are craftables for everyone, so look them up.

At this point, a lot of people tell me they cannot afford to craft the items, costs too much. While it is true that a frozen orb can cost up 80g, a titansteel bar up to 100g, making gold at max level is extremely easy. The best gold comes from quests, so you should make a nice buck just by grinding your reputation. Next off, search for daily quests. Doing 20 or more of then a day, can earn you an easy 300g a day. Practice selling the materials you collect on the way, or go out of your way to farm them, can make you two or three times that.

But it all takes the effort and you will not find anything for free. World of Warcraft is a game you need to spend time playing and there are very few short cuts along the way. The more you spend earning your success, the more people will infact respect you. It is a mark of a good and dedicated player when they know how to enchant and gem their gear, when they have factions on exalted, and display the experience of working through content and not just jump from first heroic to Naxxramas.

Trial of the Crusader

The first reports are coming in from the new instance in the Argent Coliseum and we can finally begin to form a picture of the challenges within. We already had a sneak peek before, in the form of some data mining but we all know just how reliable that is.

The first and most surprising news, for me, is that the rewards within the instance are on par with those from a 10-man Naxxramas run. The authors have graced us with some solid data and even screenshots of the rewarded items. Items are on level 200, which is consistent with naxx10 and seems they are fitting a nice niche, left by Naxxramas itself.

For one, any plate wearer dps, from warrior to paladin and to death knight, will be pleased to learn that getting an epic helm is no longer so difficult. Personally, I tried in vein to hunt for the tier 7 helm, never ever winning the role if it came up for grabs, and I ended up running all the way to Ulduar before a suitable replacement for my Tempered Titansteel Helm dropped. But now, we have a newcomer, Mask of the Violent Fray and it looks great.

The test crew reported the challenges to have been very easy for them, in fully geared tier 8 sets, so the encounters are, in all likelyhood designed for that same level, naxx10, which on itself of course makes sense. Would be very silly otherwise. Both the report and item gallery are available, so if you're curious, suggest you take a look.

I cannot wait to get a crack at it.

Gear Check

I came across this very interesting blog post today, from my fellow World of Warcraft blogger rollinghots.com, titled The Crash Test Dummy is Me. It was interesting because I have been struggling with a very similar problem and the sheer frustration that emanates from her post struck a cord with me.

How many times do you see people in your guild or in the general chat asking if this or that is good for them, or whether item A is better than item B? My first thought, a lot, and it is no wonder. It takes quite a lot of dedication and literally many hours worth of embedded studing to get the hang of the math engine that works under the hood of the game. So far, and will probably continue to, despite improvements in patch 3.2, use an addon called Ratingbuster. It is a simple enough addon, on your item's tooltip, displays the changes that would occur if you swap the item for an old one.

It shows all the changes in a very easy to read formula but still, it is a juggle to keep up if an item truly improves something. It depends on your spec, your role and game style and often you are stuck on situations where you actually, cannot benefit from an item until you get another. This is most evident to me in tanking gear, which still continues to amaze me.

Unlike dps with hit rating, tanks cannot let our defense fall below uncrittable, which can happen a lot easier than you realize. For instance, I did the math on the tier 8 gear and the deal is, I must first get the specific pieces first, namely the ones with the defense stats and yellow gems, so I can maximize my defense before getting the pieces without either and have my defense blummet.

After all, new leggings might be a really nice improvement, but wearing them takes you below uncrittable, they are next to useless. So let me take this moment to say, I understand and feel your pain Sylly. The game continues to test us all, especially with the upcoming changes in patch 3.2. We just have to quicken our stride and pretend we're keeping up.

Reporting Live from 3.2

I must confess, I did not always play World of Warcraft the way I play it today; looking under the hood, bothering to understand its mechanics, or with progression in mind when entering dungeons. As such, I never actually bothered with the thought of PTR, but now, with 3.2 patch in the horizon and indeed available for testing, I told myself I was crazy as a boot if I did not give it a go.

So here I am now, flying over Icecrown, wearing a full tier 8 suit, looking around and marveling at all the interesting changes. As odd as it might seem, changes do not just jump at you from behind a corner. You have to look for 'em and I knew exactly where to go for my first one; the Argent Tournament.

The place has changed quite a bit since the last we saw it, importantly, the coliseum has been finished and dominates the landscape. The old tents and npcs are still on their familiar places, practice rings of valiants and the challenge arena for champion, but there are some new features as well. One of them is a place, just north up the slope from the grounds where the scourge has setup a fortified position, seemingly ready to assault the tournament. I have no doubt there are quests that lets us investigate it further, but I could not yet find them. I suspect, it is for crusaders only.

The emblem of triumph vendors are in place and their goods, as one might guess, look very appetising. From death knight's perspective, nice ones include the two new sigils; Insolence and Virulence. Another update that blizzard has done, concerning item tooltips, is that it provides the same function as the Ratingbuster addon, which is provide easy to read information how the change between the new and old item, would affect your stats.

Next interesting update comes from Cartier & Co. Fine Jewelry, a location familiar to all my fellow jewelcrafters. Firstly, what we have all been waiting for, epic gems, which include stones like Cardinal Ruby (convertable to e.g. Bold Cardinal Ruby) and Dreadstone (convertable to e.g. Balanced Dreadstone) are available for between 10 to 20 emblems of heroism.

Along with the new gems, the dragon's eye gems have been upgraded as well. Just as we were told, they are now restricted to their respected color sockets, but in turn, the stats have been increased, even if only in a small measure; currently, the Rigid Dragon's Eye provides a +27 hit rate bonus, while the new version provides a +34 hit rate bonus. These numbers are reflected throughout the spectrum.

I always found it extremely annoying, how slow and painful it was to collect Dalaran jewelcrafter's tokens. Now, we finally have a new way to earn them. Mind you, it is not cheap but easily worth it, in my opinion; Timothy Jones now has a new, repeatable quest, in which you turn in Titanium Powder. The powder, can be prospected from titanium ore. Not only will it increase the competition for titanium nodes, but probably revitalize the titanium ore market.

There are plenty of more very nice updates, but too many to list here now, and so our peak into the 3.2 patch ends with a shot of the much desired druid bear skin. A fellow alliance druid, deep in his thoughts near the landing platform, was happy to volunteer as unsuspecting photo candidate.

Next Generation Emblems

The next 3.2 patch continues to raise a lot of emotion and debate about its new features and most notably, changes. I have already given my personal and quite hot opinion on the changes to my favorite class, the death knights. If you wish to read on it, check the article Latest on Death Knights. This time, I am going to briefly touch on the changes to the emblem system, as it has generated a lot of discussion in my own guild.

The main conclusion was that the patch is very much an update for the benefit of casual players and I have to agree. This is true especially when you read the blue post on the emblem system. In simplest terms, the various emblems become mostly worthless. The only emblem that continues to have significance, is the emblem of conquest. To accompany this, Blizzard is releasing a new emblem, called Emblem of Triumph.

Any instance that now drops emblems of heroism or valor, will in the future drop emblems of conquest instead. Emblems of triumph will be available from the daily dungeon quests, both heroic and normal, and from the new instances in the upcoming Crusaders' Coliseum. Exactly what you can buy with the new EoT, nobody knows but all and all, this is a welcome update.

To me, the idea of having 3-4 different emblems is not practical by any stretch of the imagination. It creates a long road of progression, where people have to climb through all three to get to the latest gear and content. While many point out that we all had to do it, it is not quite that simple.

Yes, for anyone in a quality raiding guild, getting through the ladder is not a big issue but it is most difficult for players inhabiting the casual guilds. We have to remember, not all of us play this game like a second job and some just cannot keep up with the demands of a hard core raiding guild. Instead, they will be stuck doing the same instances over and over again, trying to get the emblems and gear to advance into the next tier and usually will be sabotaged by rest of their guild. After all, progression is a team effort and many casual guild will never advance beyond Naxx10 and perhaps Eye of Eternity.

True, it is not very fair to those who actually made that journey but life is not always fair and I would point out, the game has changed quite a bit since WotLK first came out. Those who started progression then, had it, in my eyes, easier than those who are only now getting into the raid scene and playing catch up.

In the end, I feel advanced players are only complaining about this because they feel casual gamers are getting off easy, preferring if they would be put through the same hoops as themselves when they made their progression. But me, I still continue to support my matra that the more people that experience all the content, the better. It does not burst any of my bubbles that someone will less game time gets through the same content as I did.

And also, I would remind everyone, the gear that you can get with emblems barely touches the surface of what you need to successfully navigate encounters like the last bosses of ulduar. It will still require as much dedication, practice and skill to finish them off.

Tier Debunked

It is probably no surprise to anyone that along the way, as I have been writing about loot, the subject has been a matter debate and discussion in our local guild on the Blade's Edge realm. New rules are hashed and changes are in the air. As usual, it generates hot feelings on both sides as we try to find good compromises in our methods.

During the subject I have discovered something I did not personally expect, but have seen signs about. Has anyone ever noticed why, while reading Elitistjerks or just inspecting players you admire, why so many do not actually wear much Tier gear? I am of course talking mainly about 7 and 7.5 now.

Well children, the fact seems to be that the much coveted Tier pieces are not truly that much better than the other pieces you find along side them. I brought this up in my guild the other morning and was shocked that from our small morning crew, three total raised their hands and gave direct examples where a non-tier piece of at least as good as a Tier piece they had or gotten possession of.

For me, I only donned my new Tier 7 shoulders because they looked awesome. After enchants and gems, the only benefit there was the increase of attack power by 11. For confirmation, both shoulders were drops from naxx10. However, it is true that tier 7 gives the added benefit of granting set bonuses but if you look at them carefully, they are not that great, and certainly do not merit farming for the pieces until judgment day.

Truthfully, if your guild is able to do the progression, by the time you get your 3rd or 4th set piece, you will already have out-geared naxx10 and getting naxx25 pieces, or even Ulduar if rest of your bunch are up for it.

Personally, this makes me disappointed because the whole hype around the Tier gear is that they should outclass anything else in the game. People are trampling each other on raids, especially pugs, to get the Tier pieces and do not even realize that they are not as great as lead to believe. Most of the time you will accomplish a much better balanced stats by combining just one or two tier pieces with some other drops from various runs.

Equipment for the Job

I am something of a nightowl so I’m going to touch on some thoughts I’ve had tonight; concerning pvp gear when applied to pve environment. I have only been on Blade’s Edge server now for maybe a week but upon my very arrival I noticed the huge trend that people would carry pvp gear into instances. And I am not talking normal lvl 70-80 dungeons, but heroics. The first heroic I ran was Halls of Lightning and in that case I had two dps guys (the other was probably a girl though) proudly present that they had over 2k dps.

I remember exchanging looks with my fellow shaman there because we had just finished scanning their gear and it was just full of pvp stuff. The truth was revealed to be a lot less awesome than the two claim and I, as a tank, actually dealt more dps than either of them and that is always a bad sign.

True, we ran the length of the instance, without huge difficulties but it did had that feeling dragging along, like when you’re carrying something heavy. I have since found this trend seems to span lots of guilds and I am truly puzzled by it.

Is there a publically acknowledged WoW guru giving everyone this advice or something? If there is, guys, you need to stop taking his advice now!

Here is the rub children; when the good designers at Blizzard sit down to come up with new gear they have a certain quota of stats to share, depending on the level of the item. Pvp gear is set apart from normal pve gear by the presence of a stat called Resilience. It is very important for pvp environment but completely useless when you are running instances, or worse, raids, and whenever there is resilience on a piece of equipment it replaces a stat that is on the contrary useful for a pve player.

I am sure it is a very sexy idea and I know I had similar thoughts when I first considered my death knight’s offspec. After all, running battlegrounds is not that hard and considering the grind and level of difficulty in gaining good enough gear from heroics, it is not a surprise that easily acquired pvp gear has its appeal. But what comes easy also goes easy.

Also, not only are you hurting your own performance but that of your team. Some heroics are quite difficult and demanding. They are fairly simple if tactics are dealt properly and people are good enough geared, but 1-2 dps wearing poor pvp gear will make it all the more harder and will only add to their frustration when the group wipes and denies everyone the chance for emblems, leaving you only with a big repair bill.

When talking about this to the average person, the common reply is that they are wearing the pvp gear until they get better. Some argue that it is very difficult to gain access to good enough gear. Aye, it seems like it at first but in truth, it is not. Here are two good advices I give to my guild members almost everyday:

1) Craftables

There are a surprising number of very good items that you can craft with the help of a proper craft profession. You can find people able to craft these items from all over the place; your guild, trade channel, or might even be one yourself. Look up saronite and titansteel in wowwiki.com and I am certain there is something for everyone.

2) Reputation

I currently have six factions listed in my game, which I consider to be valuable for reputation. Each is easily found and each has a quartermaster. Again, check the list of items they sell (easily from wowwiki.com) and you find that they sell a large variety of superb items. They are good because most require revered or exalted to get, but some can be had with just an honored status.

Most of the reputation items take tenacity to acquire. Start by completing every quest for that faction and then finish by completing daily quests, and if you are up for it, wear their tabard while doing level 80 dungeons or heroics.

That’s it for the night. Now I am going to hit the sack. Hope this was useful to you guys and remember, gearing up might feel tedious and frustrating, but it is also part of the fun.