Vodrin

Rogue was chest/WAIST/legs but you appear correct on 3 pieces of gear per spec.

 

Pars

You're right, my bad. It appears prot Warriors, DPS warriors, holy pallies, rogues, and elemental shamans all have belts.

 

Deathwing

Commend rescinded, didn't see timeless britches.

 

Trouble

I like the look of that presumably badge gear. It's not perfectly itemized so the stats aren't quite as good as the ilevel would lead you to believe. They're itemized pretty "generically" in that they either stack one stat or only have two stats (caster weapons are JUST spell damage, healer weapons are JUST healing, etc), and have zero or one socket, as well as having less useful stats stacked such as spirit. Less sockets and less well itemized but still good for people who just want to farm badges because they don't raid or are gearing alts. I'm pretty happy looking at that gear.

 

◊ Praetorian

Right. They're intentionally somewhat inefficient. Fewer sockets than the best raid pieces. They stack a lot of budget in a handful of stats. But many of us are approaching them from the vantage point of a t6-geared raider. Now ask yourself whether they'd be an upgrade for your alt who goes on Kara runs sometimes.

 

Sillia

For ferals who don't raid 25s, the [Tameless Breeches] come as a hugely welcome upgrade, since the only item for the slot before that was [Heavy Clefthoof Leggings]. The [Embrace of Everlasting Prowess] is a pretty welcome upgrade from the rather badly itemized [Vestments of Hibernation]. You're probably right though, the [Handwraps of the Aggressor] probably won't see as much play due to T4 glove/hat synergy.

 

Trouble

Small example, but I think this exemplifies perfectly an advantage of badge loot. Take these two weapons:

[Vanir's Left Fist of Brutality]
[Vanir's Left Fist of Savagery]

Identical stats, but different speeds so good for different classes/purposes. You couldn't get away putting nearly identical items like these on a loot table, but it's great for badge loot.

 

UnholY_Prince

I agree at the first glance, though I'm sure there's more coming out. Kudos to Blizzard for being able to somewhat appease two crowds; making Badge level T6 gear for the non-raiders, but making it itemized in a way that is mostly inferior for the majority of true T6 raiders. It's a really efficient system that I'm pleasantly surprised Blizzard had the foresight to implement. Sorry if this gets flagged as a useless post, just wanted to also vocalize my support and pleasant surprise at the way they implemented this.

 

panny

The Vindicator gear IS best in slot though. It seems pretty ridiculous that you can get that gear through honour and raiding but not arena. I'd also like to see some PvE items for arena points (bracers, rings, necks, that kind of thing). Stick a rating requirement on the items if you're worried people will lose 10 games a week towards them.

Fix Spirit Wolves not responding to commands.
DK/Rogue

 

tibbles

This bow: [Crossbow of Relentless Strikes] is better than both the Illidan and Archimonde bows for a BM hunter (due the the speed), and the hit/crit/AP will probably make it best in game for rogues and dps warriors too. I suppose it could be a late addition to the SP25 loot table, but the dps is less than both Illidan and Archi's bows, so I doubt it. I just really hope I don't need 200 badges or some silly amount just to buy it, because it would be slightly annoying to need Kara runs to upgrade my Illidan bow.

 

Bael

Hasn't been posted here yet, Nethaera being quote on worldofraids:

Infinitely more useful than the HT set bonus.

 

• Falk

25-mans drop badges. I'm pretty sure sooner or later with a normal raid schedule people will be overflowing in badges.

 

Lodekim

I guess I don't know what to say, obsoleting old gear this fast just seems to kill any enjoyment I get from gear progression in this game, call it a whine, but they damned well better deliver on enjoyable bosses throughout all of Sunwell if the gear progression is getting thrown out the window.

 

Fleebenworth

3 pieces does not a set of gear make.

 

Lodekim

It's got nothing to do with any piece of gear in particular or any set, it's just the continued trend to make every piece of raid gear obsoleted by gear you can get by doing Kara and heroic Mech over and over, and it just keeps happening.

It's not the pvp gear either, I like being able to get Vindicators gear with t6 tokens, from a personal standpoint, I like not having to farm the honor, it's the fact that as is, the badge gear is just as good as most t6 raid gear, and I guess it just bugs me. And I'm not gonna continue this line of thought, just a little disappointed.

 

Xav

Next step: Different ranks of badges. Regular old 5 man heroic badges. 10 man badges. New hard 5-man badges and new 10 man badges together.

Badge of Justice
Badge of Integrity
Badge of Robocop

 

Rane

"Start raiding 25-mans for this. You have 10 seconds to comply!".

That's not going to happen though - Badges seem to have been made available specifically so people who don't raid (much) can still get their quality loot, that doesn't help if the good stuff once again only comes from raiding.

 

Metrosexuelf

I hate to state the obvious but this is the last content patch before WotLK. Another gear reset is coming in six to eight months time. It shouldn't be too surprising to people that they are making good rewards available to the vast majority of the playerbase. Those badge rewards really aren't that amazing compared to most Tier 6 drops and pale in comparison to Sunwell Plateau drops. And the developers have already gone down on record as saying the gear you get leveling to 80 and/or blues from level 80 five-man instances will be superior to all but Sunwell Plateau loot and even that will almost certainly be outpaced by the Karazhan of WotLK be it Naxx 2.0 or something else.

World of Warcraft was my first MMO but it hasn't taken me that long to pick up on the reality that all gear is fleeting. At best, you can only expect a two or three month window before it ceases to be 'unique' and then Blizzard is going to allow the rest of the playerbase to catch up rather than have them serve as the virtual 'peasantry' of WoW filling the role of idle gawker as a raider afk's in Orgrimmar/Ironforge/Shattrah.

 

ildon

Why do this, though? Why not just make the items slightly lower ilvl, with balanced stats?

 

tibbles

I agree with releasing better and better rewards that are more easily available to the masses (and not just because I have alts to gear up), but putting out Badge of Justice loot on par with Illidan loot is going a bit too far, in my opinion.

Compare:

[Gavel of Naaru Blessings] vs. [Crystal Spire of Karabor]

[Crossbow of Relentless Strikes] vs. [Black Bow of the Betrayer]

[Adorned Supernal Legwraps] vs. [Leggings of Eternity]

[The Blade of Harbingers] vs. [Cataclysm's Edge]

Yes, the Illidan/Archimonde pieces are better (except for the bow, for reasons I listed a few posts above), but the items are very close in quality. BT quality loot is fine, but loot that rivals drops off the two T6 end bosses is pushing it.

But maybe I'm just irritated that I'll have to buy another freaking scope.

 

Cirocco

If this really is the badge loot then they need to again bump the ilevel of gear in the 25 man instances, both in TK/SSC and in BT/Hyaji or what's the point of having them at all. If this stuff turns out to be the badge loot then it's making a lot of the instance loot completely worthless.

Are they trying to make us farm fucking Karaz/ZA till our eyes bleed and completely stop doing SSC/TK.

 

Oaklin

Perhaps they're hoping that the big armor and stat numbers make casuals THINK the items are BT level while still letting T6 raiders know they really aren't? Make both sides happy?

Its obvious they're trying to find some way to make Int less of a useless stat to most casters, while not duplicating the effects of Mp5 and Spirit. Almost anything they go with will have significant balance implications, be it upping its effect on spell crit, making it affect mana pot effectiveness, spell cost, cooldown time etc.. I just wish they'd pick something that doesnt make my healadin main even less optimal in T6+ content than it already is.

 

Roywyn

These items are high ilvl items whose power is actively watered down by bad speed, stats, sockets.
High quality junk, from a certain point of view. If you have access to high-quality gear, the bad stat spreading makes them undesirable. If you don't, their pure raw power from ilvl makes them superior to well-designed low-level gear.

A 1.7s dagger, 1.5s off-hands, 2.5s main-hand. Caster/healer weapon with only 1.5 X sta / X int. Feral weapon with X str / X agi / 1.5X sta, no armour.
A 3.5s two-hander (Cat's Edge shouldn't be 3.5s, but that's another can of worms).
A bow with a "bad" 2.8s speed, while the other "good" ones have 3.0s speed. The good will went bad as itemisation seemingly still does not know how hunteres work and what speeds they want/need. (Off-topic)
Caster cloth with either hit or crit, not both. And no haste. No stat spread, less sockets than usual.

As for the leggings, there are just no good off-set drops before Archimonde. [Gilded Trousers of Benediction] is to appear on your local AH soon though.


It's great for people to catch up or cover bad loot luck. Those items may seem too powerful now.
But it takes 2.4 to go live and some effort with dailies to get access to them.
By that time, the top people will have their first Sunwell weapons, and season 4 is pretty likely to start soon with season 3 gear losing their rating requirement.

I think they are pretty great from that perspective.

 

Salis

Note that SSC/TK bosses also drop badges, as well as all BT/MH bosses.
Not to mention the endbosses in these four places also drop essence of immortals apparently. I'd personally farm 25mans for badges rather than 10mans.

 

archeron

Badges drops in 25man raids too.