The recipes that required it were changed to only need the equivalent amount of Khorium and H. Adamantite last time I was on the PTR (which, to be fair, was about 6 builds ago). They might have reverted it though.

I believe they split the difference. Last I checked the Blackmithing recipes were split so the BoP chest required Hardened Adamantite and Khorium while the gloves required Hardened Khorium.

I don't remember any kind of actual evidence that they were going to add a gem transmute. There was just rampant speculation on the subject, which people decided was supported when they added the recipe to convert green gems into blue gems.

QQ being forced to keep mining. I guess I'm too lazy to switch anway.

(Yes, I do spend 5 minutes mining alone after Anetheron and Azgalor.)

Note that we haven't seen any drops from the last 2 bosses. It's pretty much a given that Mu'ru will drop the Naaru Slivers, but that's 4 slots out of a loot table containing 15-20 items (or even more). There's also a possibility that the loot tables for Mu'ru and Kil'Jaeden aren't even fully populated (there's a very scarce number of ilvl 164 items datamined so far). This might be part of the reason that the opening of the gates is going to be staggered, allowing more time for balancing and fixing itemization issues.

The "evidence", such as it was, was this.

Thottbot World of Warcraft: Transmute Gems

A cooldown of 23 hrs on "gem transmutes". Could just refer to meta gem transmutes, but there's nothing that's changed about those in this patch, so why would this be added?

Forgive me if I sound like a sorry pathetic noob [I kind of am, as far as gear goes], but how exactly does one obtain the new rep gear? I'm aware you need Honored with different factions, but what else is needed? Honor? World PvP items? Just plain gold?

My main will be 70 soon, and I'm just curious as to how I'd go about obtaining them, should I want to.

EDIT: and no, I didn't read the other 100+ pages, so forgive me if someone has answered this already.

AFAIK (I haven't been on the PTR lately) it's just money - so it's really easy to gear up to start for PVP...

Yes -- all it takes is Honored reputation with the various 'instance hub' factions and you can buy them for a modest amount of gold.

I am curious... Are blue weapons available somewhere too? Or it is only 5-piece blue set?

To be exact, the 5 different factions you need to be Honored with are: Thrallmar/Honor Hold, Lower City, Cenarion Expedition, Keepers of Time and the Sha'tar.

Of these, you can get Honored with the first three simply by questing.

Keepers of Time may take a little more effort since the only way to gain rep is through instance runs, but the large rep awarded by the questline should only require about 2-3 extra BM runs, if at all.

The Sha'tar are quite unique in that they don't quite have enough quests to carry you into Honored unless you specifically game for it. That is, do your Scryer/Aldor quests first since half the rep is also awarded into Sha'tar, and then do the small number of quests available in their Bone Wastes camp.

However, since Terokkar Forest comes before Shadowmoon Valley and Netherstorm in a leveling progression, the above method is quite counter-intuitive. A more feasible method would be to simply turn in Scryer/Aldor rep items (Sunfury Signet/Mark of Sargeras) until you're 1 rep away from Honored (since the rep gain from a turn-in also spills over) then have someone help you kill a single mob in one of the Tempest Keep 5 mans. The best would probably be the Botanica, since the first pull is a pair of melee mobs.

As for the cost, it comes down to:

Shoulders - 15g
Gloves - 10g
Head - 20g
Legs - 20g
Chest - 20g

That's a total of 85g. However, since Honored comes with a 10% discount, it will only cost 76.5g when you can first buy them, or 68g if you're Exalted.

Oh, well then, that's a pretty nice little starting point at level 70. 85 gold is a joke, and I'm Honored with most of those factions just by doing a few instances along with my leveling. I guess I can ding 70, grab this blue gear, and start working on PvP or pre-raid gear...

I don't see these sets as doing all that much. Don't get me wrong I'll buy them for my alts and it will make running BGs better on my 6k life mage. The big complaint I hear, though, is the about the gear barrier to being competitive in arena and the grind associated with overcoming it. Before the blue PvP gear the fastest way to gear up was to start farming honor for your Vindicator gear and get on a crap 5s to start earning current season Gladiator gear. That hasn't really changed and I am not really convinced that that the blue gear will do much more then make it take a little longer to lose in Arena while gimping your offensive abilities to the point where you can't do much with the extra time you get. It's a step in the right direction to be sure, but gear that was outdated a year ago isn't a big step.

These pieces will actually help quite a bit, because it allows you to get a set of +resil /sta pieces without having to buy mediocre S1. Thus, you can concentrate on using Honor for Vindicator's gear instead of trying to boost yourself up with a bit of S1 gear.

With full Vindicator's and full Blue-PvP sets, you could be mildly competitive until like 1700s, even.

On this note: I remember something about Veteran's gear for Badges of Justice--but couldn't find a screenshot on MMO-Champion. Nor could I find such a vendor on the PTR. Was this removed?

The blue PvP rewards from reputation is certainly an idea that would have benefited more at the release of TBC than now, with Season 4 on the horizon. Still, large numbers of people are going to be using them, so it's certainly not a waste. And I think more importantly, it's a signal that Blizzard recognizes the problem they've got with the widening PvE/PvP division, and is interested in bridging that gap.

So sure, right now it may be a very minor change in practice, but along with what we know so far about Lake Wintergrasp, it gives me some confidence that WotLK is going to be handling PvP much more fluidly than it is now.

Apparently I got an infraction for not reading 117 pages, or searching for something I wouldn't know what to search for... but okay, I guess. Sorry about that guys.

Anyway, I'm not saying these blues will make anyone a contender in PvP, I was looking at them as more of a starting point for level 70 PvE. Some of them are certainly on par or better than the blues I've picked up from instances, although the set bonuses don't do much for PvE. They have a few socket pieces too, which is a little boost, I suppose.

You guys think these will be worthwhile to start with at L70 for PvE, or is it just better to run a few instances for better gear?

A vendor on Sunwell Isle lets you:

1. Exchange Tier 4 tokens for Season 1 armor
2. Exchange Tier 5 and Tier 6 tokens for Season 2 armor
3. Exchange Badges for Vindicator non-set armor (belt/boots/bracers)

Don't quote me on this, but as I recall, the exchange rate was 35 Badges for a Bracer and 60 Badges for a Belt or Boots.

3. Is actually the Veteran's (s2) gear, and it's 25 Badges to a bracer and 40 to a belt/boots.

In addition, the same vendor sells the s3 (Vindicator's) offset in exchange for the new t6 tokens.

I suppose I was talking from the perspective of someone who takes a month or two to grind out the 100k or so for Vindicators. By the time I am geared with Vindicators I already have 2 or 3 current season peices. For someone like me you never have to get season 1 gear and it's a bit of waste to do so. I was speaking of the quickest way to get to current season gear, and even now that doesn't involve getting any season one at all if 15K honor is a very good week in PvP for you.

I've been doing some BGs out of boredom / to be capped on honor whenever s4 comes out, and there are a surprising amount of players in green gear. As in, ilvl 90 quest reward greens. Warlocks wearing +healing shoulders. That sort of thing. Zero resilience.

All it does is give a just-hit-70 player some manner of gear that doesn't completely suck. As always, it's just blizzard making it easier to "catch up" for a new player. Most of us may scoff at the gear, even for my alts (both of mine are 4/5 vengeful with zero effort on my part), but for a fresh reroll or new player, it's a godsend, and happens to be a matching set.

If I ever level another character to 70, those vendors will be the first thing I hit.

[e]~ignore, late night posting made me somehow forget the heal->spell damage change completly~

The blue vendor gear will be nice for my currently leveling Shaman though, especially as the majority of my leveling gear will be tailored to Enhancement for ease and then switching to Ele around 70.

Wow, I can taste the cynicism from here. I could imagine a variety of reasons you would find a lock with some random piece of healing gear that would not indicate some problem with his or her intelligence - an actual upgrade from their last piece in that slot (completely plausible with the healing -> damage conversion on pieces now), hasn't put the time in to search out quest rewards or quest in general to find a more appropriate piece, etc. Its not like we're talkin about offensive casters in full mooncloth here (On a similar note, I did see an armory showing a lock wearing the belt - prior to the +healing changes.)

I can understand the nature of hyperbole on the internet, but c'mon.