Sort of a tangent to itemization; I am wondering if the changes to heroic loot on end bosses (guaranteed epic item in 2.1) means an expansion to the loot tables on those bosses. Many of them currently only have 2 epics in their table; so it would seem likely that they would expand. Anyone have any info on that, or can point me to a thread I might have missed on that?

I haven't heard anything about this either. I think not a lot of people are running heroics on PTR. If we get new drops, that's pretty exciting. If the old 5-9% drop rate items will start dropping 30% of the time, that's pretty amazing too.

If Pathaleon would drop his sword or pants just once, I'd be pretty amazed. ~20 clears, 0 of either.

I finally got my Sun Eater after 21 clears, just keep at it and don't lose faith.

By the time we were done, we'd gotten it down to a 45 minute clear. If you think of it as 5 badges in 45 minutes (not to mention Sha'tar, Aldor and Scryer rep), even when the sword doesn't drop, it's still a damn good deal. I'm sure you've gotten it down by now but if you want some advice on an optimal setup and clear, feel free to PM me.

To add to the Sun Eater complaints, I've now cleared heroic mechanar over 40 times myself trying to get it, having seen every other possibly drop at least 5 times each. In a sense it is nice to get the 5 badges, but now I have far more badges than I really have any use for, most of which came solely from Mechanar.

I believe Sun Eater has an amazingly low drop rate. The numbers on wowhead don't seem to add up, but it's appear to be around the same rate as a molten core legendary drop. Now mechanar has 1/7th of the reset timer... but I wouldn't suggest holding your breath for Sun Eater in the same sense that you shouldn't have done so with a binding or an eye.

On the bright side, I bet you've brightened the day of many people in your guild who have enjoyed an EZ-mode trip through heroic mechanar (with your expert guildance).

For your sake, I hope you get your sword before it starts dropping with a 33% chance and everyone's alt has one

Go back and check, Wowhead now has separate loot tables for heroic/normal.

I think it does actually. The badge drop rate is 100%. It says the drop rate is 3%; however, the epic drops don't add up to 100%, so it may be more like 5-6%.

Cool, that's a good change, and it's certainly needed.

We've seen 1 sun eater and haven't tried too hard to get it, /shrug.

So I have to wonder about something. A lot of items were upgraded, and a lot were either outright ignored or made debateably worse. Set bonuses for many classes continue to just be terrible. There is all kinds of problems with the sets even with upgrades. I just don't understand how itemization can actually be fucked up, I mean, don't they just have a formula, assign an ilevel to an item, and budget accordingly?

Maybe I'm just naive. I just don't understand why this is such a problem.

In the case of notoriously bad SSC loots, all the itemization was done with the old stamina value, resulting in virtually everything in there being underbudget 10-15 levels, approximately equivalent to Kara loot. This has been fixed.

The more general badness is due to poorly optimized itemization, probably because the T5 stuff was just "first pass" itemization and had yet to be reviewed by a senior designer. I mean, they put SPELL DAMAGE on the ENHANCEMENT set.

120 spell damage isn't going to make a difference either way

Well that touches on some things. I mean in a way its not worth complaining about T4 drops because you can do the 25 man first tier raid zones in about an hour including travel time, and in the case of shamans the enhancement items are losing spell damage in favor of stats an enhancement shaman would care about.

Its mostly the T5 drops and associated stuff. We kill Void Reaver and get a rogue trinket that proc'ed 4 times over the next 4 hours of raiding, and shoulders no one seemed to have particular interest in (but were looted anyway obviously). We killed the bosses we can kill, get a cloak no one cares about that is getting 3 agi and 1 sta, and a neck which has more use in PVP than PVE after the patch. Trash drop gloves which after upgrades are worse than player made crafted leather gloves. Tanking gear is pointlessly loaded with block rating even with upgrades and lacking in +hit. That neat cloak off Al'ar, barely worth wearing over a cloak from Steam Vaults (6 dodge rating and I think 5 sta versus 29 block value, and a meager amount of armor). There are countless examples that basically while yes, items are better than they were, but that isn't really necessarily good enough.

Anyway pardon the derail. Resume assorted upgrades.

But 170 on the elemental set does?

According to Thottbot: http://www.thottbot.com/test?i=Earthwarden

Earthwarden
Binds when picked up
Unique
Two-Hand Mace
142 - 274 Damage Speed 3.20
(65.0 damage per second)
500 Armor
+39 Stamina
Durability 120 / 120
Requires Level 70
Requires Cenarion Expedition - Exalted
Equip: Increases defense rating by +26 (11.0@70)
Equip: Increases feral combat skill rating by 24 (6.1@70).
Equip: Increases attack power by 525 in Cat, Bear, Dire Bear, and Moonkin forms only.
Sells for 50 Gold 75 Silver 47 Copper to vendors
Item Level 95
Source: Vendor

Solid change.

Has anybody tested Masquerade Gown's changed proc on PTR? Curious to see any info! TIA.

http://thottbot.org/test/i30100

I noticed these are back to the old stats on thottbot/test. Any idea what's up with this? Hopefully I can get my DKP back if they don't end up changing with 2.1.

Huge shot in the dark, but does anyone know if Bloodwarder's Greaves changed?

In my experience it much easier to check as site like www.mmo-champion.com for this sort of news than sifting through a thread of posts about random items.

The proc's been fixed such that it now procs off all heals rather than just critical heals. It seems to have a hidden cooldown of about 60 seconds from my testing, and has a proc rate of about 10%. I tested it as soon as the PTRs first came up, so it may have changed in the meantime. For now, it seems pretty lackluster.

Apparently Spellfire/Shadowweave was nerfed pretty hard on PTRs. Not sure about Primal Mooncloth yet, but I'd assume it was as well. I don't have a screenshot of Shadowweave on hand, but I'll attach a screenshot of Spellfire a guildmember linked me. I'll try and get screenshots of the others soon if someone else doesn't beat me to it.

Holy fuck;/ Talk about massive shadow priest nerf coming in the PTR.

Shadow Weaving, SW and now Shadoweave Armor.

Damn - I hope at least now they will consider looking if our damage with appropriate itemization still warrants those nerfs.