After seeing the loot from a couple of boss kills, it appears that they drop (or have a chance of) dropping an epic trade skill pattern. So far, the three that have been posted here have been blacksmithing, and each has a passive haste buff.

If you look up the pattern on Thottbot you can see that the item with the ID 32428 is the Heart of Darkness.

From here, we can look at other unknown trade skill patterns to see other patterns using this (that aren't the shadow resistance gear from the Ashtongue Deathsworn).

For tailoring:

Swiftheal Wraps
Swiftheal Mantle
Mantle of Nimble Thought
Bracers of Nimble Thought

For leatherworking:

Bracers of Renewed Life
Shoulderpads of Renewed Life
Swiftstrike Bracers
Swiftstrike Shoulders
Bindings of Lightning Reflexes
Shoulders of Lightning Reflexes
Living Earth Bindings
Living Earth Shoulders

For blacksmithing:

Swiftsteel Bracers
Swiftsteel Shoulders
Dawnsteel Bracers
Dawnsteel Shoulders

Bracers appear to be BOE, shoulders BOP. Judging by what we've seen, and by the names of the unknown items, they would all appear to have passive haste or spell haste on them.

Say it ain't so!... a reason to go blacksmith for a Holy Paladin? I need to check if the sky is falling hold on. If they are indeed BOP, time for me to ditch herbalism and start the long hard road to 375 smithing on a healer's budget!

Is it possible to data-mine anymore for confirmation on BOP Mantle?

Right now that was just going off the assumption that there was a pattern with the three that dropped already.

The two bracer patterns that dropped were both BOP patterns, and the items they made were BOE.

The shoulder pattern that dropped was not BOP, but the item it made was.

Once more patterns are found that will fill out, but going from existing things it is fairly safe to assume that this is the case.

Either that or they just mislabeled the BOP and BOE on the items

Dear god the current list has more leatherworking recipes than both other crafting professions. Could we finally be getting some more love?

First two sound like healing leather, then four hunter/shaman items, then 2 healshaman items. Very excited, can't wait

Maybe. But then again the 2 piece Nether Vortex items are one BoP (boots) and one BoE (belt).

Damn, here I was hoping one of those sets would be feral, I could use some good bracers
Did anyone find any of the patterns already except for the BS ones?

Gorefiend Drops from Impervious raid in BT today.



Finally Blizzard is really getting the idea with weapon skill and its use as a tanking attribute

Only it still costs a bit too much.

Eh its cheaper than Hit Rating for avoidance reduction.

For druids its also the cheapest DPS booster on bosses.

Just for number comparison

0.23% Avoidance Reduction per point of Weapon Skill Rating (0.2% Miss 0.1% Dodge 0.6% parry per Weapon Skill so 0.9% per Weapon Skill and 3.9 Rating per Skill so 0.9%/3.9=~0.23%)
0.06% Avoidance Reduction per point of Hit Rating (1% Hit per 15.8 Rating so 1/15.8=~0.06%)

So Weapon Skill rating is roughly 4 times more valuable than Hit Rating for avoidance reduction while tanking (most of the reduction comes in the form of parry reduction).

The amount of reductions is based on Crezax's numbers from here http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread....geNo=1&sid=1#2

Now a lot of that is based on is the numbers Crezax stated as being true. The tests in the class mechanics forum show it at least somewhat close to the values at least. Or close enough the rogues are using it for their DPS spreadsheets




Edit: So for comparison those gloves have 4.85% avoidance reduction effectively on them which you can kinda think of being almost as good as the 4 piece set bonus from dreadnaught for landing those first few hits.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't parry reduction the best sort of avoidance reduction, due to the "thrash" effect of mob parrying?

After seeing those gloves, if it was possible for a guy to miscarry, I think I just did.

What an amazing combination of stats on a pair of tanking gloves but I have just one question;

...recoloured Lawbringer or Might?

No, you are right (each parry reduces weapon swing time by 40% for max of 2 times down to 20% swing time most mobs have 2 second swing time so would be 0,4 seconds worst case). But I was just talking in general since a lot of warrior like the idea of +hit but haven't fully grasped how bad +hit is in comparison to Weapon Skill yet.

Wait,

Isn't 1 point of weapon skill 0.04% miss, dodge, parry, block, crit?
When I put on my mallet of tides my crit goes up exactly 0.12% for 3 skill points.

And its about 4 skill rating per skill point?

The blue post:

Those numbers are so much higher than anything I've ever seen before... In fact, 4 skill rating should be 0.48% more chance to hit, and his numbers are 4.8%? Kinda suspicious... Maybe my numbers are off by a magnitude, but thats why I said it's weak in the first place. I put specifically on the suggestions on the PTR to increase the power of skill rating ten fold - if those numbers are right, then I take it back, its very good!

Haha, one second I will check.



I have to say so far I like the fights in BT three of them seemed very doable but they were also ones tested beforehand decent amount (Supremeus I assume is doable as well but we didn't have FR so he just DT'ed it after one try).

The Akama vs Akama fight which seems we appear to have been maybe the first to test (or at least heard of fighting him) was a little out of tune I felt (its a zerg style burn fight in the veins of say Nef Phase 1).

Wow, I'm amazed - slightly amazing that I completely missed this as well. That is very good to know. Guess my hammer is that much more valuable. Thank you guys

I saw those gloves and I'm pretty excited about them, but to be honest its definately wasteful to budget for weapon skill for a whole bunch of weapon types, when you could have 1 and get more stats instead. It does however show they are at least thinking about the kinds of items which would have an impact on that aspect of tanking.

Personally I'd be in favor of a universal weapon skill stat, or making each cost a lot less in the budget, since realistically you can only ever benefit from 1 stat at any given time. Regardless those gloves are likely to outperform pretty much any tanking gloves we're likely to get for the rest of the expansion.

Edit: actually looking at them again, the weapon skill probably doesn't take up all of that much in the budget. The item still has a fair bit of defense, a lot of sta and a respectable amount of block value, so really there isn't much loss in stats for weapon skill

In that situation don't they only attribute point distribution for 1 weapon type - even though multiple are listed, similar to Eye of Nerub? Anyone have an Item calculator to verify?

I always thought that when they put multiple +skill types on a single item, the additional types didn't cost extra.

Nevermind.