Yes, I should have said hit instead of crush there. I was thinking in terms of my paladin. Regardless of that error, BR will still help to mitigate incoming damage when SB is down and is therefore not useless.

So hey, how about that badge loot?

Regarding the armor values of the new badge gear, they're indeed very off and I think it's really a mistake since they are not consistent between themselves:

Legplates of Unending Furty (DPS Plate): 1650
Greaves of Pacification (Healing plate): 1459
Sunguard Legplates (Warrior tanking): 1406
Inscribed Legplates of the Aldor (Paladin tanking): 1406

All items are ilvl 141, so the DPS plate has a sizeable chunk more armor than the tanking items, which makes little sense. But anyway, the point is that I don't think that Blizzard has actively decided to reduce armor values of Sunwell items since they would have left them the same across the items in a same armor category.

The Healing chest has also more armor (1886) than the respective tanking chests (1668)

Just give it up please, BR is neigh on useless.

The DPS plate is disappointing much like the badge plate that was added in 2.3. Strength and hit, or strength and haste. Even the other DPS gear for other classes isn't that bad.

I'm too lazy to cross check all items, but wouldn't that mean that armor is now dependant on the "role" of the item, such as armor on an healing plate item has less item value than armor on a tanking set, and as such you end up with more for same overall ilvl. It'd make some sense, somewhat, even tho I could see it leading to some balancing issues, like prot wars or feral tanks needing on dps gear because the high avoidance/threat combined to high armor would make it interesting.

That was my reaction too. The dps plate is pretty resoundingly "meh" imo. But that makes sense given what people have been saying in the thread, that the intention is probably not to put out stuff that people will prefer over real T6 loot.

Actually, you won't have to resort to heroics because of the badge drops in 25's come 2.4.

(Edit: reword)

I just caught a Luminous Bluetail and they are consumed like potions. The one i caught said it restores 455-585 mana, which would be really awesome. The only problem is it is on the same cooldown as potions, nice for encounters where you don't use tons of pots. For those that you do it's just a waste of a pot.

There's a one-hand sword that's been datamined to be 107.9 DPS (2.60 speed), 17 hit, 35 haste, and 27 stamina. It is highly unlikely the fists from badges will be better than those.

Looks like they did an excellent job of making the loot tier 6-ish quality. No quite 100% optimised for the things a real tier 6 raider would be looking for - but close enough to be accepable if its an itemslot you really need the upgrade for (eg, never got the tier 5 upgrade for that slot).

Yes, there might be some example where they messed up a bit - but overall the intentions are clearly good and heading in the right direction to make alot of people happy.

I would have less of an issue with the new badge loot if 25 man bosses started dropping badges in 2.3 or so we could have a nice stockpile of them. I haven't run kara or even many heroics on my mage in ages, but my alt warrior who does may suddenly vault ahead and grab some nice stuff since my guild is just now working on Vashj and Kael (months behind, but we are making progress). It's nice to see stuff for when the RNG hates you, but it seems T5 content guilds really got the short end of the stick.

Quoting these two for emphasis.

Again, you will not have to explicitly farm for Badges anymore. With 25 man bosses themselves dropping badges, you will earn your way to these rewards just by doing your normal raid routine. I think that bears repeating.

Clearly, then, the problem was not the ZA patch badge loot, but T5. They're doing it all backwards. Making bad items on purpose is just stupid when they already have an internal system for determining item quality. I'm not saying make every item 100% efficient with exactly the same stats, they can change it up with spellcrit/haste/hit, melee crit/haste/armor pen/hit etc. and either using or not using sockets on an item, but to purposefully waste item budget is just disingenuous.

It kind of makes sense for the weapons since the primary stat is the base DPS/healing anyway, but for armor, just use the ilvl for what it was designed for: determining item quality. ilvl 139/140 is still going to be a huge upgrade for the intended audience of this gear. And optimal ilvl 139/140 in the end should be the same dps contribution as sub-optimal ilvl 141.

The fist weapon being an upgrade over OH warglaive has a lot to do with speed. The OH warglaive was designed for rogues, and possibly pre-WW-change warriors. It's not that surprising to me that an end-game epic designed for the class beats a legendary designed for a different class. Disappointing, perhaps, because its orange-ness doesn't override itemization, or because it wasn't designed with post-2.3(?) warriors in mind, but at least the legendary is better than the epic for the class the legendary was designed for.
There is a case to be made that the weapon itemization requirements of rogues are too divergent from other classes, and that cramped the legendary design, but that's something for a class-balance patch, not a raid-content patch.

The fact that you dont explicitly have to farm heroics to upgrade your legendary illidan loot the instant the next tier of raid instances is released doesnt make it less broken.

The OH Glaive was never good for warriors after the WW change, so I can't even fathom what you're complaining about. For rogues I'm going to bet the sword is still much much better.

According to the Wowhead entry for Luminous Bluetail (Luminous Bluetail - Items - World of Warcraft), it's shared with other non-potion consumables. It might have changed, but I have no idea why Blizzard would make something you fish in a level 70 zone worse than a level 31 Greater Mana Potion Greater Mana Potion - Wowhead Search. I know some people are cheap with consumables but... those are usually not the ones who take min-maxing so seriously that they'd spend time fishing.

The aforementioned sword is about as "in the game" as those fist weapons are. You're pulling a double standard here. These fist weapons are about as "real" as the other data mined items. They aren't available to anyone (yet), just like the other items aren't. You can hardly compare them to anything "currently in the game" when they literally aren't "in the game", and ignore other further Sunwell drops.

Edit: Further, you should really qualify that a bit more. "Better than anything currently in the game" is a misrepresentation too. It should be "Better for fury warriors than what is currently available". It's like T6 shadow priests crying about [Carved Witch Doctor's Stick] being better than anything available in BT/Hyjal. That's not true at all; it's only true for a single spec of a single class (or in the stick's case, one spec for two different respective classes) that happens to value a certain stat more than others.

Also, how is it even better than the MH warglaive? Warglaive's damage range is much bigger, has nearly the same agility, same AP, has 21 hit rating instead of 21 haste. Seems like a sidegrade at best.

As has been pointed out, with only a few exceptions, the bulk of that 'Tier 6 quality' badge gear is inferior to the stuff that drops in BT and Hyjal. And, again, regarding the gear reset, Blizzard has already stated that anything not from Sunwell stands a high chance of being replaced while leveling including Illidan and Archimonde loot. Sure you can quibble at what level it will be replaced whether it be 71 or 78 but in the grand scheme of things that doesn't matter. How long does your average raider spend leveling? It's an extremely small fraction of their game time.

People concerned with raiders getting Season 3 honor items for tokens need to realize what Gurg said is accurate. It will be at least three or four months (barring terrible drop luck) before you see any raider scoop it up for this purpose and, although I have no inside information, I daresay it is likely that WotLK will be in closed beta at that time (assuming 2.4 goes live mid-March you are looking at late June/early July). There is also Season 4 that, by all indications, will be the PvP'ers equivalent to Sunwell in terms of exclusivity.

But again, in the backdrop of all of these 'radical' loot changes is the next expansion which is probably less far off than the six or so months many raid guilds have been waiting for new raid content.

1st Gate is down on the U.S. PvE server. By process of elimination (Kil'jaeden last and Dark Naaru second to last [via MT cutscene]), Eredar twins should be next.

1st Gate is Down.

2nd Gate is the next.

Boss order: Kal->Brut->Fel->Twins->M'uru->Kil'Jaeden.

http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/2504/gate2ms7.jpg

Luminous Bluetail were indeed changed in the last patch. It now acts like a potion, restoring 455 to 585 mana, and sharing the cooldowns with other potions. Level 22 capability on an item that requires level 55 to use and is found in a level 70 zone. Go figure.