Yes, because encouraging characters to stick with one weapon for the remainder of the time they play the game is clearly the best choice.

They haven't missed it at all, I'm pretty sure they've commented directly on the issue in fact and said that legendaries are fully intended to be replaced at some point. They will never make a "best item forever" item.

[edit]Beaten twice.[/edit]

they've said countless times they want people doing the new content, not farming old stuff

Exactly why in my mind the Black Qiraji Battle Tank is the only true Legendary.

So you'd like to see all future legendaries be solely cosmetic in nature and provide no additional in-game benefit? Because that's the only reason it doesn't become obsolete.

But but but, filling the 2.4 thread with pointless chatter about legendaries is fun!

I believe he considers it the only true legendary because there can only be one per server.

There can be multiple. You just needed to strike the gong within some time of the first guy doing it.

Well clearly that's not what said, but it's the logical follow-through on his line of thought. "The only true legendaries are the ones you'll never have to replace". Ok, that means the only true legendaries will be solely cosmetic. How exciting.

Considering his post followed 4 or 5 in a row that discussed the fact that all legendary weapons are intended to be eventually become obsolete and be replaced, I think he was referring to the fact that the Battle Tank is still as useful now as it ever was.

I'm not the guy you're quoting (and he didn't say that) but I'll go ahead and say yes, they should. Extremely rare items that are available to all classes that simply act as status symbols don't really disrupt the game. Extremely rare items that are available to select classes that act as massive boosts to their power and effectiveness, not so much.

Also oranges always seem to cause drama. There is almost certainly something special about The Goon Squad that makes this happen, but of our three Thunderfuries, two quit the game and one quit the guild (though later returned), and of our two Sulfurases one quit the game and the other quit the guild. We never completed an Atiesh, never even came close in fact, but the person chosen to collect splinters quit raiding when it became clear it would never be finished. If we got a warglaive tomorrow (though we won't, 5/5 4/9) I know who it would go to, but I don't know that he'd still be playing a month later. Yes, the obvious counter-argument is "fix your guild, don't take away my orangezzz!" but I just think we lose more than we gain by having legendary items that are more than vanity trophies.

I'll be highly disappointed if you don't have to be exalted with the major Burning Crusade factions to buy full HWL gear. (Thrallmar/Honor Hold, CE, Sha'tar, Lower City, Keepers of Time, and possibly Scryer/Aldor) I don't pvp often, I'm a raider, and doing the honor grind isn't that time consuming and I have fun doing it while being PvE speced and having very little resiliance. It isn't like arenas where you'll die in 3 seconds if you don't have resiliance.

I remember some CM saying a while back that they would add quest lines to upgrade existing lengendaries. It'd be pretty cool if they did that; something along the lines of some Sunwell clearing quest plus some combination of mats to upgrade your Sulfuras or Atiesh so it has "modern" stats. Hell even if it wasn't any better than comparable items off the end-boss' loot table, it'd still be pretty cool and rewarding for players that happened to get a legendary in the past.

Yeah, I guess you are right. I read too much into it. Sorry.

Considering that Exalted rewards are typically epic, it would strike me as odd if they didn't make the blue HWL set available at revered or below.

This is stupid, why would you have to grind every faction to exalted when you hit 70 to get a little survivability in PvP?

There would be many tears.

The idea behind making it readily available is to make it easier not harder to jump into some pvp action.

Exalted with every faction? Seriously? I don't think you're on the same page as...well...anyone else here. I have 5 70s, I don't think any of them have one faction at exalted (I despise rep grinding), let alone every single faction. That would be a nightmare.

At our current level of progression, enabling Fear Ward to be cast in shadowform will be a boon. The Archimonde encounter in the Mount Hyjal instance especially comes to mind. At a very minimal impact to their mana pools, our raiding shadow priests can be more actively involved for our healer/trinket fear rotations.

I'm embarassed that this thread has my name attached to it.

Since we're going with the purely anecdotal and wildly speculative, the alignment of Jupiter's moons tells me that the PTR will be up next week.

While it's not unreasonable for a pvp player to have significant faction standing from collecting particularly good PvP items, or badge rewards, the amount of time it takes to grind through a bunch of PvE instances to exalted, especially when you're only interested in PvP would probably be as long, and more painful, than just PvPing for Season 1 epics.

I see the point of the HWL gear on the vendors to be a way to somewhat start on an even playing field with other players in BGs as you start to collect the season 1 items.

I don't see the point of really restricting it like that. The HWL gear isn't incredible. It's ilvl 115 blues. Basically dungeon blues, but geared for PvP with resilience and stamina. Making an exalted-with-every-faction requirement would defeat the entire purpose of making it available to start with.

A raider would likely not even want the HWL items. They're not incredible. If you have PvE epics, chances are the PvE epics, despite the lack of resilience, will probably do you better in the long run than the HWL items. A player who maxxed all factions would probably not want the HWL items either, because if you have the time to bring all factions to exalted, you have the time to get season 1 gear.

The point of the HWL items is really to give new players and alts a leg-up as they get into BGs and Arenas. The point is to give players an opportunity to play on a more equal playing field without forcing them to AFK through hours of Battlegrounds that they don't want to be in. Getting the HWL set gives you maybe 30 less resilience than getting the season 1 set, depending on class. But they are well behind in stats. It allows you perform in arenas while you start earing your season 2+3 gear without getting crushed.

The real reason this was put in, in my opinion, was due to the "reasoning" that people were giving for AFKing through battlegrounds that they didn't want to do. That the only reason that they even BG'd at all, was because it was the only method in which they could obtain a decent amount of resilience. And without that resilience they couldn't even attempt Arenas. Making this available will mean that many more people will have access to the resilience. This should hopefully have the side effect that more people in the battlegrounds are there to fight in the battlegrounds, not so much being there because they have to, to arena.

I'm fully sure that there will still be a lot of people who feel they need to get full season one gear before they can even start trying to play in arenas despite the fact that they hate the battlegrounds. But it should help it a bit.

So you think that the solution to having to spend hundreds of hours grinding honor to have a good arena kit is having to spend hundreds of hours grinding rep for inferior gear? Brilliant.

Cutting commentary aside, what's the general consensus on what the requirements should be? I would think revered with each major faction gets you a blue piece, and exalted could have the first epic version of the bracers/belt/boots/ring/neck (the later is somewhat iffy due to them being iLvL 123/128 epics, but honestly at that iLvL they lose too much to resil to be much good for PvE).

Honestly, all it's going to do is save them a GCD. They should be warding themselves and then going back into shadowform as is - Archi is NOT mana intensive, you get tons of regen time while running from Doomfire, getting airbursted, etc.

Actually, I was referring to the shadow priests using their Fear Wards on those healing the tank. However, considering that it's awfully important for the entire raid to stay alive, it could be equally imperative that they use their own wards on themselves. In that case, you're right. The only affect 2.4 would have is them saving a GCD and some mana to revert back to Shadowform.