So one of the most exciting announcements from the recent flurry of news about WoTLK, at least from my point of view, is the that there will be 10-man and 25-man versions of every raid. Think about that for a moment. Yeah, that's right. That means that you and 9 other friends will be able to scale the heights of Icecrown Glacier and topple Arthas himself from his frigid throne.
No husky loot this week -- with a name like "the Great Apocalypse," this sword is nothing but badass.
Name: Jin'rohk, the Great Apocalypse (Wowhead, Thottbot, Wowdigger) Type: Epic Two-hand Sword Damage/Speed: 380-570 / 3.70 (128.4 DPS) Abilities:
Equip: Improves haste rating by 45, which will help a little bit with that low speed (but look at that damage range!), will bring the speed back to 3.60, which brings it up to 131.8 DPS
+49 Stamina, makes this a nice PvP two-hander
Equip: Increases attack power by 120, which also adds to attack damage. There are better high-end two handers in the game, but anyone who likes to swing a big sword should like this one.
Plus, look at it! And that name!
How to Get It: Drops from the troll himself, Zul'jin, in Zul'Aman. Interestingly enough, Zul'jin means "Leader of voodoo" and jin means "leader," So this sword is clearly a leader, but leader of what? Rohk, in the Zandali Troll language, actually means "end of worlds," or apocalypse. So if all the apocalypses you've ever seen in movies all got together (from Deep Impact to I Am Legend), one apocalypse would be standing above them all: Jin'rohk.
But yes, the sword drops from the last boss in Zul'Aman. Droprate is about 12%, so get to him, be someone who swings a two-hand sword and needs an upgrade, win the roll, and it's all yours. Just don't hurt yourself carrying it around. Getting Rid of It: Sells for a whopping 17g 81s 95c, and disenchants, as you might guess, into a Void Crystal. But the terrible effect that carrying the Leader of Apocalypses has on you for all time? Priceless.
In the wake of SK-Gaming's world-first kill of the Sunwell Plateau boss M'uru, World of Raids has checked out the data files and found some other items that they're pretty sure are on M'uru's loot table. You can also see information on these items, and other new items as they are discovered, on Wowhead's new additions page, a handy resource. Pictured is the one-handed sword Muramasa, which looks pretty bad-ass if you ask me.
For this and the rest of the items, I've made a gallery containing the tooltips with all the stats, and the item models when appropriate. However, M'uru's loot table seems to consist mostly of rings and trinkets, so there's not much to show for those besides the tooltips themselves. I don't mind -- I'll drool just as much over stats as over an item's appearance. Click on, fellow stat geeks!
This week on PLP we're covering a reader request: RetPallyJil sent us a note and said that we should cover this much-maligned mace. So here you go: the Earthshaker, hated by all guilds who've ever run Molten Core back in the day.
Chance on hit: Knocks down all nearby enemies for 3 seconds. Which is actually kind of fun, especially in PvP, and the proc goes off pretty often, too. Radius of the proc is 5 yards (melee range), and one cool thing about it is that there's no limit to the number of enemies it hits -- as long as they're in that range, they get stunned for 3 seconds.
Increases attack power by 22.
As RetPallyJil says, this weapon is actually most famous for being "the single most unilaterally and unfairly unloved and underrated weapon ... ever." There are a number of reasons why this weapon is so hated, but we can start with the low DPS -- never good for a two-hander, and while the proc sometimes makes up for not, it doesn't work well enough for a min-maxer. Plus, just who's supposed to use this weapon? Most people who were wielding two-handers pre-BC were wielding something much more useful, and the stun was more of a novelty than anything else.
But the number one reason why this mace was so hated is probably just where it dropped -- as you can see below, it came from a boss in Molten Core. So imagine you finally get forty people together, finally organize them enough to down a couple of bosses, get to a place where (for some people) your first Tier 1 set piece might drop, and then... this "novelty" weapon. Didn't rub a lot of people the right way, and many, many shards were made with this weapon.
How to Get It: Drops from Magmadar in Molten Core, which, like I said, is probably one reason why people hate this thing so much -- if it had come from anywhere that didn't require 40 people and a few weeks of raiding, people probably would have appreciated the great proc a little more. Then again, back then, there weren't too many places to get epics anyway, and ... but I digress.
Anyway, make it to Magmadar, usually the second boss in MC (you've got to down Lucifron to get to him), and this drops at about at 22% rate from him. Back in the day, you could go with any run, and they'd be happy to let you take this off their hands (unless they wanted the shard). Nowadays, it's such a novelty that you might have to fight with the raid to get it, especially if there's another 2h wielder around. But it's easy to run -- come back the next week with another 5-10 guys, and odds are you'll get it again.
Getting Rid of It: You never know when that proc will be useful, so if you've got it, you might want to hang on to it. If not, it sells for 9g 19s 3c, and it doesn't disenchant at all. No, of course I'm kidding -- as anyone who's ever run MC knows, this will disenchant into a Nexus Crystal.
Like the ol' Orb of Deception, here's another fun toy -- that's brand new in patch 2.4.
Name: Orb of the Sin'dorei (Wowhead, Thottbot, WowDB) Type: Rare Item Damage/Speed: N/A Abilities:
On use, transforms the user into a Blood Elf. Lasts for five minutes with a 30 minute cooldown between uses.
Also drops on shapeshift of any kind.
One of the cool things about this trinket is that it keeps your equipment looking the same. Always wanted to see what a Blood Elf warrior looks like (since they don't exist in game)? Use this on your tank, and how they might appear.
Unfortunately, there is a catch: if you use this item on your Blood Elf, they won't change at all.
Lore note: "Sin'dorei" actually means "Children of the Blood" in Thalassian. Before the High Elves got all corrupted, they were the quel'dorei ("Children of Noble Birth") and then they split into the BEs and the Night Elves (who are also known as the kal'dorei -- "Children of the Stars"). Unfortunately, there still isn't a perlman'dorei in Azeroth (though that, of course, would be the "City of Lost Children").
Yeah, this orb thingy is kind of silly, but Blood Elves are, as the kids say, pretty hawt. Who wouldn't want to be one?
How to Get It: Drops from any of the bosses in Magisters' Terrace, but on Heroic Mode only. The drop rate is pretty low (about 1-2% per boss, but considering that you get a chance for it to drop every time you down a boss, this is actually a relatively common drop -- definitely moreso than, say, the Baron's mount).
And don't forget that to get into MrT Heroic, you've got to finish the quest to kill Kael first. Get that done, get Heroic Countenance, head on into Heroic MrT, and down bosses until you see this pop up.
Getting Rid of It: Sells to vendors for 46s 18c, and disenchants into an Arcane Dust, Lesser Planar Essence, or (very rarely) a Large Prismatic Shard. But I'd keep it if I was you -- you never know when you want someone's girlfriend to wish you were "hot... like... me."
After a serving a short stint with the intern babes - involving tape and piñatas - V'Ming returns to laughing ominously in AV, tanking Olm with his own minions and pondering troll fashion from Zul'Aman. He's rocking SSC and TK with his 0/21/40 build and still bragging about consecutive 8k shadow bolts.
Your comments in my previous Badge loot shopping article got me thinking about warlocks having multiple outfits, just like tanks and hybrids. Warlocks usually serve a single role - DPS - so our outfits aren't generally as dramatically diverse as what a druid, for instance, might pack.
After accumulating a bunch of epics with varying stats, most of us have moved beyond the "one outfit for everything" situation. In fact, I'd say we're spoilt for choice now and can afford to use the right gear for the right situation.
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.
OK, guys, here it is: the column you've all been begging me to write. If e-mail had weight, I'd have approximately 1.5 tons of it about how to take a casual guild into the raiding endgame. You want to know how to motivate people, which I've covered, how to keep it from getting too "hardcore," which I've also already covered, and how to succeed where so many others have failed. It's that last bit I'm going to focus on. Since so many have written in about this, I'm not going to quote any particular person's e-mail. So I'll just say this to all who wrote me: Thank you for reading the column and having faith in me that I can explain it. We'll see if that faith was well placed or not!
My wife just got an Eye of the Sea from her fishing daily quest reward. Yesterday, she got the Weather-beaten Fishing Hat and last week, on the second day of Patch 2.4, she picked up The 2 Ring. She fished Mr. Pinchy mere hours after she had the skill to fish in the pools around Skettis, while we'd met anglers who had been after him for weeks. She also gets at least one Badge of Justice a day from Shattered Sun Supplies. I, on the other hand, have gotten only one on either of my two 70s despite doing all the daily quests since the patch went live. Whenever we do drop quests, she always finishes before I do even when I start killing before she does. I guess you could say the RNG, or Random Number Generator, has taken a liking to her.
The RNG hates me. I ran Heroic Slave Pens and Steam Vaults enough times to get to Exalted with Cenarion Expedition but never saw the Pauldrons of Wild Magic or Wave-Fury Vambraces drop for my Shaman, who was Elemental at the time. I guess this is also why I just PvP, because I have the kind of luck that Danasked about in an another Breakfast Topic. Here's the flip question -- do you know anyone with insane luck? Someone who gets a quest drop on the first kill, perhaps, or even the luck of finding really cheap stuff on the AH? I've mispriced wares on the AH as Silver instead of Gold (alright, that's more stupidity than bad luck, but hey...) while other people find those exact misplaced wares. So, who's lucky around here?
Phase 3 is now upon us! According to us.gorgonnash.info, Proudmoore has now just barely hit the Armory phase of the Shattered Sun Offensive. As of 9:07pm PDT, April 2nd, Cenarius is behind them at 95%, with Zul'jin behind them at 90%. Congratulations, Proudmoore.
Of course, the biggest thing this means is that they've unlocked the quest Making Ready, which will allow them to eventually unlock the new Badge of Justice loot. Good luck to them, and may the unlocking go fast! For everyone who needs to catch up to Proudmoore, be sure to check out our phase 1 and phase 2 quest walkthroughs. For all you Proudmoore inhabitants, and all the rest of you raring to go, be sure to check out our phase 3 walkthroughs for all the information you'll need to forge ahead with the offensive, and look out for the Phase 4 walkthroughs coming soon from Alex.
The idea of being able to customize your character's look and feel beyond choosing one of 4 or 5 basic face and hairstyle choices at character creation or upgrading to a new piece of loot is one that's near and dear to me. I'm an RPer, so I like to think of each of my characters as a unique person with unique quirks, ideas, and fashion sense that I can't always express as I'd like to due to the limitations of WoW's mechanics. I've even had some very good friends quit WoW because their characters weren't customizable enough.
The idea came to the front of my mind a few weeks back when I was visiting my brother. We played EverQuest together, but when it came time to move on from that game, he (and most of our EQ guild) chose Everquest 2, and I chose WoW. So, of course, he ribs me about it quite often, and since I was visiting, he decided to load up EQ2 and show me what I was "missing."
Now to be honest, I'm still a bigger fan of WoW, but that's a subject for a different article. One thing I will say for EQ2 is that I was very impressed with the wider range of options to customize your character and show off your character's accomplishments. There's a few ideas related to character customization from EQ2 and other games that I'd really like Blizzard to continue emulating in future patches and in the WoTLK expansion that I believe would deepen the game experience for me and my friends, and for many other players as well.
About a week and a half ago I reported on an experience I had in Mount Hyjal while fighting Azgalor. While the fight went fine and we did him in one try, I wasn't on Azgalor's threat list and thus did not get any loot. I wasn't on the threat table because I had to tank some spawned demons up and away from the rest of the raid. It was a rather nice conflict of game mechanics.
This all happened on Tuesday, March 18th. By Saturday, March 22nd, I had the two shiny pieces of loot that were coming to me: Glory of the Defender and Onslaught Handguards. Specialist Game Master Skelend had sent me the items, along with a form letter apologizing for the issues we experienced in game. I was quite happy to see this resolved. I was even more pleased that it was resolved quickly and did not take a few weeks; as many people, both those of you who left comments and friends of mine that I talked to, said it would.
So what are we doing to make sure this never happens again? Well for one thing, all the melee is hitting the boss now with a ranged weapon after the tank gets a couple hits in. That's pretty much all we can do to assure this problem doesn't pop up again for us. Despite a few enquires I've made, there is no word from Blizzard if they've fixed this. I suspect that one day it'll just be hotfixed without much fanfare.
All in all, not a terrible experience when something went wrong. Quick and quality support from Blizzard.
One Yellow socket (socket bonus of +4 attack power)
Improves Haste rating by 53, and attack power of 120
With the Agility on there, this thing is probably best meant for Hunters -- only they can really benefit by changing Agi directly into Ranged Attack Power. Warriors and Paladins may benefit occasionally, but since Agi translates into Armor and Dodge for them, and the goal when wielding a big two hander is to do damage, not dodge it, it's really at cross purposes with most DPS melee-ers. Armor is always good for tanks, of course, but a shield will give you much more armor than this thing's Agility will.
The only problem with this thing is that it doesn't really have any Stamina or hit/crit on it, so players looking to max those will probably pass on this for something else. But Hunters looking to crank ranged DPS (especially with a slow bow or gun) will like this one a lot.
How to Get It: It's brand new in the game as of patch 2.4, and while on the PTR it supposedly dropped from Felmyst, we're told that it now drops from the trash near Kalecgos. Since players are just starting to head in that way, expect this to start showing up in player hands soon.
We don't have too much info on the drop rate yet, but there's good news and bad news. Since it's from trash you'll have a lot more chance for it to drop, because it'll be in the loot tables of more than one mob. The bad news, of course, is that it is probably a super low rate, so cross your fingers and hope for it to show up if you're running Sunwell Plateau regularly.
Getting Rid of It: Disenchants into a Void Crystal, as usual, and sells to vendors for 18g 80s 53c.
With patch 2.4 live, lets take a look at what it's offering those of the more Priestly persuasion. Gear, a few talent and spell changes, and some new fun in the new instances will be a boon for your Priest.
For our Shadow brothers, you can now look forward to Fear Ward in Shadowform and a somewhat nerfed Vampiric Touch (they've fixed the bug where casting lower ranks wasn't penalized like other healing spells are).
Disc priest, like Nethaera, can look forward to a slightly buffed Inner Focus (though in reality it's not a very big buff, just Chastise, Starshards, and Shadowguard corrections in that they'll no longer trigger the Inner Focus charge). Reflective Shield will not break CC, and a penalizing effect has been added to lower ranked Power Word: Shield. Chastise is now instant cast, and will no longer dis orient the target. And of course, Power Infusion has been changed.
Holy rollers will like that Silent Resolve now affects a wider range of spells. Mass Dispel will affect 10 targets instead of 5.
There will be several pieces of gear added as well.
Between Arenas, V'Ming spends his time as a lock laughing ominously in AV, tanking Olm with his own minions and pondering troll fashion from Zul'Aman. He's recently started to plumb the depths of SSC with his 0/21/40 build and bragging about 8k shadow bolts.
I don't know about you, but the first thing I'm going to do when patch 2.4 goes live AND when Smith Hauthaa becomes available (added for clarity) will be to spend my hard-earned badges on some new shiny loot. I've been wearing my Frozen Shadoweave Robe since forever (no luck with Magtheridon for my T4 - *cry*), and frozen or not, the dress is smelling a little ... musty.
Gearing up, as we know, is serious business and I'll walk through my Warlock loot decisions here with you. We also know that the new 2.4 badge loot is pretty expensive, and with a finite amount of badges, players need to make some hard buying decisions - which is the fun part really. Personally, I evaluate each item based on the following criteria:
Incremental upgrade vs existing gear, keeping set bonuses in mind: Duh.
Future progression: Will I be replacing this piece one week from now with drops, PvP gear or other loot?
Cost: Can I get two cheaper pieces to get a greater upgrade than a single expensive piece? The cost of enchanting and gemming the new pieces should also be taken into account.
Last but not least, looks! How will the new piece fit in with the rest of my wardrobe?
In the wake of SK-Gaming's world-first kill of the Sunwell Plateau boss M'uru, World of Raids has checked out the data files and found some other items that they're pretty sure are on M'uru's loot table. You can also see information on these items, and other new items as they are discovered, on Wowhead's new additions page, a handy resource. Pictured is the one-handed sword Muramasa, which looks pretty bad-ass if you ask me.
So, now that the Daily quest limit is up to 25 and we have a whole ton of new quests to do courtesy of the Sunwell dailies, a lot of us are starting to build up quite a large bankroll. In addition to the monetary rewards, we're getting tons of green items (that disenchant into very lucrative things such as Greater Planar Essences and Large Prismatic Shards), a good selection of Sunfury Signets and tons of Arcane Tomes from all the Blood Elves we're fighting. All those green gems I've hoarded over the months are finally paying off for me, since my Jewelcrafting mule is able to turn them into Brilliant Glass, and I've even had a blue recipe or two drop that's sold for a pretty penny.
After a serving a short stint with the intern babes - involving tape and piñatas - V'Ming returns to laughing ominously in AV, tanking Olm with his own minions and pondering troll fashion from Zul'Aman. He's rocking SSC and TK with his 0/21/40 build and still bragging about consecutive 8k shadow bolts.
Send Scott your guild-related questions, conundrums, ideas, and suggestions at scott.andrews@weblogsinc.com. You may find your question the subject of next week's Officers' Quarters! For more WoW Insider coverage of raiding, see our raiding directory.
My wife just got an Eye of the Sea from her fishing daily quest reward. Yesterday, she got the Weather-beaten Fishing Hat and last week, on the second day of Patch 2.4, she picked up The 2 Ring. She fished Mr. Pinchy mere hours after she had the skill to fish in the pools around Skettis, while we'd met anglers who had been after him for weeks. She also gets at least one Badge of Justice a day from Shattered Sun Supplies. I, on the other hand, have gotten only one on either of my two 70s despite doing all the daily quests since the patch went live. Whenever we do drop quests, she always finishes before I do even when I start killing before she does. I guess you could say the RNG, or Random Number Generator, has taken a liking to her.
Phase 3 is now upon us! According to us.gorgonnash.info, Proudmoore has now just barely hit the Armory phase of the Shattered Sun Offensive. As of 9:07pm PDT, April 2nd, Cenarius is behind them at 95%, with Zul'jin behind them at 90%. Congratulations, Proudmoore.
The idea of being able to customize your character's look and feel beyond choosing one of 4 or 5 basic face and hairstyle choices at character creation or upgrading to a new piece of loot is one that's near and dear to me. I'm an RPer, so I like to think of each of my characters as a unique person with unique quirks, ideas, and fashion sense that I can't always express as I'd like to due to the limitations of WoW's mechanics. I've even had some very good friends quit WoW because their characters weren't customizable enough. 
About a week and a half ago I reported on an experience I had in Mount Hyjal while fighting Azgalor. While the fight went fine and we did him in one try, I wasn't on Azgalor's threat list and thus did not get any loot. I wasn't on the threat table because I had to tank some spawned demons up and away from the rest of the raid. It was a rather nice conflict of game mechanics.
Our second polearm ever is a brand new shiny piece from Sunwell Plateau, perfect for Hunters who want to talk softly and carry a big stick.
With patch 2.4 live, lets take a look at what it's offering those of the more Priestly persuasion. Gear, a few talent and spell changes, and some new fun in the new instances will be a boon for your Priest.
Between Arenas, V'Ming spends his time as a lock laughing ominously in AV, tanking Olm with his own minions and pondering troll fashion from Zul'Aman. He's recently started to plumb the depths of SSC with his 0/21/40 build and bragging about 8k shadow bolts.
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