I suppose that makes sense, and after all every caster class can use daggers. Strange to not have a lower-level sword for mages and warlocks, though. Perhaps it just hasn't been datamined yet.

Maybe they looked at Tempest of Chaos and Hammer of Judgement/Maelstrom's Fury and decided that they'd rather place a real upgrade for those classes that can't use swords than a sidegrade for those who can.

Not so strange after all, if you look at it in the context of other itemization.

I stil hold out hope for Blizzard putting Badges of Justice on all 25 player mobs - it seems silly for them to not do so given all the other design choices in this patch. 2 Badges per raid mob wouldn't be a huge amount, and it would go a huge way towards the issue of forcing peopel to run KArazhan every week for badge gear when they are already in tier 6.

Well, except that Tempest of Chaos drops off Archimonde, while the Hammer is a trash drop and Maelstrom drops off the first boss of BT. With Sunwell to play with I can't imagine many people are going to want to kill Archimonde any more than they have to. If a guild heads off to Sunwell before their mages/locks all have a Tempest, then their next upgrade could be from Kil'Jaeden, which would be a bit silly.

Still, I guess it's speculation at the moment, unless it's been confirmed that we have an exhaustive loot list.

Imagine if they'd placed a sword instead.

That would give spriests and ele shamans no 1H upgrade between the beginning of T6 and the end of T7, with mages having a pair (Tempest and hypothetical sword). Instead, from T6 through T7, the split is roughly even both in terms of number of sword/non-sword weapons and where they're placed.

Yer that would have been bad! Imagine if there had been no tanking feral staff too! Then there would have been no upgrade from begining of T5 trash to end of T7!


Oh wait...never mind.

As much as I dislike PvP, just suck it up. The 5 minute one is like 2800 honour, thats maybe an hour at tops. Just do the daily quest once or twice.

Well honestly the 2mins one is MUCH better for archimonde, since you'll easily be able to use twice, if not more, every fight. And unless you're not too bright, it's never wasted, since you use it so you don't run into a doomfire, which is taxing on your healer's mana and can be just straight out fatal if you run in it early in the fear(because you forgot to move, but guess that's your fault), or during a soulcharge or whatever.

But yea I guess if you can't afford doing pvp for 4-5hours on an AV weekend, then the 5mins one will do.

Plugging this staff into leulier gets an upgrade of about .5 dps (326.75 for Zhar'doom, and 327.25 for the Torrent), and that is socketed with 6 dmg, 5 haste gems.

Was peeking around the 2.4 maps, thought I'd share some pictures. The west side of Quel'Danis kept crashing me so its kinda restricting till I get the next patch I guess.


Referred to has Dawnstar Village on the map, though area's seem to still be tagged Suns Reach internally(armory, habour, etc). Murloc label leads to Greengill coast (generic Murloc huts) and you seem to be able to reach the Dead Scar from there, although its hard to tell where the 25 man begins/ends since the instanced map pretty much copy/pastes the island.

2nd pic is the last room in Magister's Terrace. Kael having a crack party with Netherstorm energy I'd assume.

3rd pic seems to be the final part of the 25 man, since this was the lowest room of the tallest building. Still not too sure what Dead Scar's role is though due to the map structure.

World of raids seems to have gotten the World Map picture too and from what I've seen the majority of Sunwell Isle seems to be the un-instanced 25man.

I wonder if the duplication of the zone isn't for actual use inside the instance, but for scenery inside the instance proper (presumably just the tower you described). I would think something like what occurred in Karazhan on the Master's Terrace and at the top of the tower. If they were going to use most of the island for the instance, it would be unprecedented for them to label instanced areas on the world map.

I'm thinking a bit lower than that, because steadys don't fire every 1.5s. For me I figured with a Bristleblitz my average steady would be 960.73, switching to Thori'dal, that'll go to 1122.36, so a 161.63 boost, every 2.14s, 75.52 dps?

A 3:2 will give more steadys & thus leverage more dps out of this too.

Is is entirely unreasonable to expect that the badge items on the Sunwell Isle vendor will take some kind of Shattered Sun badges instead of the normal heroic badges? Seeing as there's always a lot of complaining about the RNG loot system maybe Blizzard wanted to take the token system one step further? Instead T6 for T4 instances you get T6 from badges from the actuall Sunwell instance(s)?

That'd be fairly misleading on the part of Drysc if that were true. I also think it'd have been mentioned in some way by now if that were to occur, either in one of the interviews about Sunwell or in a post on the Sunwell info. Until I see otherwise, I'd expect them to be loot rewards for BoJ.

The majority of the Outland hosted Sunwell Isle map has the zone title of Sunwell Plateau around the main structure, which is mostly unreachable dead ends and scenery with no doodads. The seemingly empty parts of Sunwell Isle have the zone title of 'Isle of Quel'Danis'.



On the first pic, red = Sunwell Plateau/Magister's Terrace on the world map, blue = Isle of Quel'Danis. Other than that, the only other zone titles are the individual parts of Suns Reach (Suns Reach Sanctum, Dawnstar Village, Dawning Square, Suns Reach Habour, Suns Reach Armory, prob more but that area crashes me) Greengill Coast, the three blood elf boats at the top of the map and The Dead Scar.

The Dead Scar is also the only place which has a zone title in both the Outland map and the 25man instance, so I'll assume the big wall of fire is the invisible blockade on both maps. Third pic is the incomplete tower which had the Kil'jaeden art at bottom and elaborate entry (texture also appears in Magister's Terrace briefly).

Anybody who's on the PTR, is the Badge vendor in Sunwell showing the new badge loot? I've been looking around but have not see any linked/posted.

Dont think the servers are up yet.And if you look at http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...apons_3000.jpg
it seems the possible season4 loot is on it too. Many items look the same on it just with a different color like pvp items used to be.

Probably because the PTR isn't up yet (and won't be till atleast monday according to blue posters) and items with their stats are impossible to datamine out of the PTR client. No doubt when there's info available, it'll be in plain view.

I'd be very surprised if they don't. It doesn't make much of a difference either way though, even those who haven't done the old attunement can gain Scale of the Sands reputation easily enough, they just lack the initial boost from neutral to friendly and the upgradeable ring.

A couple of thoughts on the bow:

1. While being disappointed that it's not OP, the fact that it's a DPS upgrade over T6 bows (discounting Black Bow of the Betrayer's mana returns for a moment) with a neat side effect (bag slots) means that while players may still want one every raiding hunter doesn't HAVE to have it. Since it's described as a random drop, many players won't ever see one show up from the dead boss anyway, and the advantages it confers won't be on the level of the DPS upgrade of the Warglaives.

This may be Blizzard's new trend for Legendaries - "neat" effects rather than "omgwtfbbqpwn" items. If the previously posted math is accurate, it'll still be top DPS ranged weapon until WotLK while not allowing the lucky few to leapfrog up the damage meters.

2. This may be a Legendary weapon designed to NOT give a huge advantage in Arena. A Warglaive-equipped rogue or warrior has a massive advantage over any opponent not equipped in S3 weapons... whereas the Legendary bow pumps up Steady Shots (not used as much in Arena, most decent players refuse to stand still at range and let the hunter cast) and otherwise matches the T6 bows. If I had the Illidan bow, I'd use that over the Legendary for Arenas as the mana drain/mana return is far more useful.

I am no expert on hunter mechanics but I've seen a lot of math about the weapon explaining how much of a DPS increase this weapon is. I don't know exactly how much the Twin Blade of Azzinoth give as a set bonus but the ballpark figure being thrown around for the bow is ~100 DPS increase. Should it be the same? Well, its hard to answer that question as you're comparing two legendaries to one and the other additional perks that the bow itself gives.

The weapon seems pretty legendary to me.

nvm