I haven't been able to find a somewhat organized overview of all available Epic loot from heroics anywhere, so I made this list. Be aware that the drop rates shown here are only an estimate based on the assumption that there is a 100% chance to get at least one Epic item, gems aside. If you wish, you can browse a copy of this list that have mouseover links with item stats here.
I left out the Inferno sets deliberately, other than that let me know if you find any errors and I'll correct them.
All gems are 'hybrids' (Orange, Purple and Green with 2 different stats).
There are 7 PvP gems with Resilience in the game, 6 of those are boss loot from PvE instances.
There are 6 pieces of tank plate but only 1 piece of DPS plate.
There are 3 pieces of Paladin tank plate but only 1 piece of Holy and Retribution plate respectively.
There are 2 different kinds of (cloth) caster bracers, belts, pants and boots but no shoulders or gloves.
There are no chest pieces to be found.
There is no healing mail at all.
There is no healing or caster leather whatsoever.
This is from a grand total of 99 Epic items and 45 Epic gems that are available from heroics at this point, not counting the mount or the Inferno sets.
Last edited by Oprahwinfury : 06/07/07 at 1:19 AM.
Reason: Missed a couple of tank rings, sorry. Added Ring of Unyielding Force and Yor's Revenge, thanks cenzor.
Does anyone else find it mildly disturbing that there isn't a single +healing item drop from a heroic that isn't cloth? Hello gaping itemization holes.
Looks like retribution paladins and moonkin got the middle finger from Blizzard as well.
Does anyone else find it mildly disturbing that there isn't a single +healing item drop from a heroic that isn't cloth? Hello gaping itemization holes.
Looks like retribution paladins and moonkin got the middle finger from Blizzard as well.
You make it sound like Blizzard ever gave Retribution and Moonkin something else!
Nonetheless, with the simplification of many Heroics, some of these alternatives look more appealing finally. There has never been a particularly worthwhile waist piece for Affliction Warlocks and Shadow Priests outside of the Belt of Depravity (to my knowledge) - the Nethershard Girdle from Moroes had a wasted item budget in its Spirit, and the Girdle of Ruination and Malefic Girdle both had +spellcrit over +spellhit. At least now that Belt will be a bit easier to come by.
As a mage, I am still disappointed to see so few alternatives for the feet that are much more worthwhile than the Shattrath Jumpers. We've never seen the Boots of Foretelling drop from Maiden (though they weren't worthwhile until 2.1), and several blue pieces had their +spellcrit removed. Heck, I couldn't convince anyone to take the boots from Aran really, so I took them for an alt of mine. The same goes for the wrist piece and the Shattrath Wraps, unless you want to dip down to the crafted Bracers of Havok or are seeking higher stats.
Overall, I think the appeal from Heroics will probably come more from the new gems and the greater acccessibility. I myself am not counting on worthwhile loot from it at this juncture as an adequate and equal alternative even if it is in comparison to potentially poor luck on a longer timer (read: raiding). We'll see, though.
hats, cloaks, and necklaces would be a supreme waste of drop tables. if you are running heroics for gear, you will have badges to burn, and will be wearing the G'eras stuff, which is very good. One handed dps-caster weapons would also be wasted, as there are good reputation awards at exalted from lower city, and honour hold / trallmar.. which you will be exalted with very quickly via the herioc path.
Note that earthwarden was also earned via heroic mode - Its a rep reward, and I didnt really set foot in normal steamvaults except at wandpoint after getting revered, and auctioned nearly every armament I ever got.
Chestpieces are a real shortage, I'll grant.. but its one slot.
(and I so want magtheridon to die..)
And no chestpieces, and almost no hats, cloaks, trinkets, rings, necklaces or offhands (except from the badge vendor).
So it's not really that much of an alternative to raiding Karazhan if you want to gear up in epics, unless you're a tailor.
Pretty much my thoughts. The lack of caster weapons is more or less ok since you can get the HH exalted or LC exalted weapons. But why are there two wrists (both worse than Shattrath Wraps to boot), two belts, two boots, two legs, but no chest, no shoulders, and no hands? I would really like to have seen the needless duplication replaced by items for those missing slots, and maybe some of the more awful ones tweaked to be at least mildly desirable.
These are all excellent retribution Paladin gear. They're blues, but they are the best you can get pre-raid. Most of them are ilvl115 blues.
This is itemization that should have been available in regular level 70 5 man instances. I'm not a ret paladin, nor do I know a good retribution paladin. However, I think it is extremely unfair for Blizzard to ignore itemizing entire talent trees - at any level of progression.
There are other ridiculous itemization gaps in the expansion as well - for example, getting +healing bracers for a druid is almost impossible. The first ones you can get from PvE in the entire expansion are from the last boss in heroic mana tombs, and they are only a iLevel 115 blue. Before that, there isn't a single pair of leather +healing bracers available from any of the outlands instances or quests. After that, the next pair of bracers a resto druid gets are from the lurker below in SSC. The only alternatives are through crafting the windhawk BoP bracers, buying the PvP bracers, or downgrading to cloth. This is just for one class, I'm sure there are similar holes for other classes, I'm just not as familiar with them.
These are all excellent retribution Paladin gear. They're blues, but they are the best you can get pre-raid. Most of them are ilvl115 blues.
Speaking as a horde ret paladin most of these pieces are not very good. They'd be better for alliance but in general they're much too skimpy with actual melee stats, especially crit, to form a backbone for a solid ret set.
DPS warriors have it the worst, and no helm from badges either. Other than nethers for BS weapons and badges for some trinkets, Heroics are barely worth the trouble/time/gold for respecs.
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hats, cloaks, and necklaces would be a supreme waste of drop tables. if you are running heroics for gear, you will have badges to burn, and will be wearing the G'eras stuff, which is very good. One handed dps-caster weapons would also be wasted, as there are good reputation awards at exalted from lower city, and honour hold / trallmar.. which you will be exalted with very quickly via the herioc path.
Some alternatives to the "one size fits all" badge rewards would be nice, like healing items with spirit or spellpower items without crit. Which would fit well as drops, so the people who want them can go for the instance that drops it, while people who aren't fussed for more class specific drops can get the generic rewards.
If you think that, you either havent yet patched to 2.1, or value raw stats a lot less than you should. So many people get tunnel vision when looking at gear. Kara loot was great even before 2.1, it might not have increased your primary stat much, but all your secondary and tertiary stats got a huge boost (certain class/specs exempt due to specific poor itemization).
Going from heroic blues to karazhan loot is often a sidegrade at best...
I'm not sure how you can sincerely mean that, considering all the epics that Attumen drops are ilvl 115 while the heroic blues from three of the easier heroics (Mechanar, Underbog, Slave Pens) are also ilvl 115.
hats, cloaks, and necklaces would be a supreme waste of drop tables. if you are running heroics for gear, you will have badges to burn, and will be wearing the G'eras stuff, which is very good.
Hats would only be a waste to have been newly added to drop tables, their omission prior to 2.1 was clearly so glaring they had to add a whole new section to the badge rewards themselves.
There's a big problem with demanding more itemisation from boss drops: you can't increase the number of bosses without making more instances.
If you keep adding in more items for this spec or that, you end up with huge long loot tables where any one item has a 5% chance of dropping. Is that *really* what you're after?
All gems are 'hybrids' (Orange, Purple and Green with 2 different stats).
There are 7 PvP gems with Resilience in the game, 6 of those are boss loot from PvE instances.
There are 6 pieces of tank plate but only 1 piece of DPS plate.
There are 3 pieces of Paladin tank plate but only 1 piece of Holy and Retribution plate respectively.
There are 2 different kinds of (cloth) caster bracers, belts, pants and boots but no shoulders or gloves.
There are no chest pieces to be found.
There is no healing mail at all.
There is no healing or caster leather whatsoever.
How does the situation look when we include Karazhan? As I recall, there's still a lack of DPS plate, but a plethora of healing gear and chests.
I'd venture to say that much of the heroic gear aims to fill gaps in Kara/Gruul/Mag epics by assuming players will be doing these at roughly the same level.
Looking at epics alone doesn't really give a complete picture. I mean how many times have shaman hunted for wavefury boots? The blues are often very strong in their slots and should be valued for their stats opposed to their color.
There's a big problem with demanding more itemisation from boss drops: you can't increase the number of bosses without making more instances.
If you keep adding in more items for this spec or that, you end up with huge long loot tables where any one item has a 5% chance of dropping. Is that *really* what you're after?
Personally what I would have liked to have seen is to have all heroic bosses dropping a single epic with a chance at a gem, and make sure all of the bosses are actually mildly challenging. For example, the first boss in slave pens is a total joke and would need to be modified. All that really would need to be done is take the current blue heroic items and convert them to iLvL 110 epics, and distribute them to various bosses so that each has a loot table of around 6 items. By a rough estimation of adding up bosses in outlands instances, there are approximately 50 bosses, or enough for 300 epics, which is plenty to make sure that there is something for everyone.
This would leave plenty of room for itemization for all classes and specs, and would have made heroic runs slightly more rewarding than just omgbadges and a wtfnether. Lockout timers on heroics would probably have to be longer than one day though, to prevent saturation of epics and void crystals - or just create more demand for void crystals through enchanting formulas dropped in heroic instances.
There has never been a particularly worthwhile waist piece for Affliction Warlocks and Shadow Priests outside of the Belt of Depravity (to my knowledge) - the Nethershard Girdle from Moroes had a wasted item budget in its Spirit, and the Girdle of Ruination and Malefic Girdle both had +spellcrit over +spellhit.
Belt of Depravity may have spellhit, but it starts out lower for +dmg than Ruination even before you take double runed living rubies into account. Or you can socket it with double spellhit gems if you really need to (though for shadow priests reaching the hit cap is a trivial affair), and it'll still be more raw +damage than Depravity. The fact that Ruination has crit on the item doesn't really matter when that crit is coming out of the base stat budget (lower int/sta) which hurts less than cutting back the +dmg.
Also agree with the above sentiments that the color of the item name really shouldn't be a metric for which specs the item designers are giving a proverbial middle finger to, since many heroic blues (heck, even normal mode blues) are perfectly raid-viable gear.
06/02/07, 2:33 AM
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