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.
A gun... for tanks. But that speed makes things a little weird. Maybe some of the theorycrafters in the crowd can come up with some good reasons for that one (or just debate my own) in the comments.
Name: Rifle of the Stoic Guardian (Wowhead, Thottbot, Goblin's Workshop) Type: Epic Gun Damage/Speed: 120-224 / 1.90 (90.5 DPS, which is the highest on a gun, save for the Arena PvP guns in S3 and S4 -- except most of it comes from that low speed, see below) Abilities:
+31 Stamina, which might make you think this is a PvP weapon, except for:
Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 20. Which is a weird little stat -- with the stamina added on to it, that means that this gun (named after a "Stoic Guardian") is basically meant as a Tank pulling gun -- it'll let you shoot bullets and give you about the bonus of a minor trinket to dodge and Stam.
But if that's true, what's up with that speed? You might think that a high DPS would mean this gun is good for a Hunter, but that's not quite true across the board -- especially for BM Hunters (a.k.a. Hunters that rely on their talents and abilities to do damage), a bullet pouch will often make this gun too fast to sneak special shots in, which will actually lower the DPS you can do.
But on the other hand, from what I understand, weapon speed doesn't actually affect what happens when you first fire the gun. So the idea here may be that a Warrior, pulling, should have a fast enough gun to get a few shots off during the pull, in order to build up more threat. Why else would Blizzard give tanks such a fast gun?
How to Get It: Drops from our old friend Teron Gorefiend, who we last killed for the Soul Cleaver. He's in the Black Temple, there's a Know Your Lore about him, yadda yadda yadda, you know the drill by now. Drop rate on this is about 15%, but the good news is that if you need this (as in, you're a tank who often pulls at the late endgame), you'll probably be able to get it.
You might have to fend a few confused Hunters off for it, though. But the dodge rating and the Stamina (not to mention, as we said, the title), should make it pretty clear that this weapon is for a "Stoic Guardian," not a "Pet-loving Peashooter."
Getting Rid of It: Sells for 10g 79s 6c. Will disenchant into a Void Crystal.
This week we take a trip once again into husky loot (a.k.a. cool items that anyone can grab) and dip into ye olde garbage bin at the Darkmoon Faire.
Name: Last Year's Mutton (Wowhead, Thottbot,MMODB) Type: Common One-hand Meat/Mace Damage/Speed: 44-82 / 2.00 (31.5 DPS) Abilities:
Pulverize your foes into mincemeat with this leg o' lamb. Whether you're biting down yourself, or flanking your foes until they're well-done, this club o' grub will let you tenderize even the toughest turkey. I'd steak my reputation on it!
Not to be confused with Last Month's Mutton (see in the right hand in the pic above), which does smell a little better, but isn't nearly as tough.. or green.
Unfortnately, weapon enchants don't currently appear on this item, so while it would be completely awesome to have a flaming mutton, apparently that can't happen. Yet.
How to Get It: How can you wield this Excalibur of Lunchmeats, this Frostmourne of Foods? All you've got to do is redeem 50 Darkmoon Faire tickets with Gelvas Grimgate, a goblin at the traveling Darkmoon Faire (it's either in Elwyn, Terrokar Forest, or Mulgore, depending on whatever week of the month you're in).
And how do you get tickets? WoW Insider's Daniel Whitcomb has you covered -- they're the main currency of the Faire, so there are all kinds of turn-in quests and various silly things to do to earn them. Get 50 (or just 10, if all you want is last month's meat), go to Gelvas, and the mutton's all yours!
Getting Rid of It: Is not a good idea -- who knows when you might be hungry next? But it isn't BoP, so you might be able to drop it in the AH. Otherwise it doesn't disenchant, but a vendor will give you 1g 93s 76c for it. Too bad you just can't eat it -- this would be the ultimate marinade!
For those of you who do not frequent the forums, you might not know that since patch 2.4, there has been a Tauren outcry.
It seems that cows everywhere are logging in to find that their weapons are roughly 50% smaller than they were previously. Should you take your weapon out to get a better look at it, you'll get to watch it grow back to pre-patch size.
Unfortunately, this is not a bug. Hortus has confirmed that it was an intentional change because certain weapons would clip the ground while sheathed.
While the Tauren have been getting some support on the forums, some players seem unsure of why this is such a big issue. Let's take a deeper look into why players are upset, including the fact that cows will seemingly be the brunt of even more jokes. Not innocent jokes either; not like "steak! It's what's for dinner!"
Now's a good a time as any to talk about a "husky loot" item (one that anyone can get) that will give you the luck o' the Irish, and one that has a pretty good quest story behind it too.
+13 Shadow Resistence, which was pretty good back when this was gear you picked up right before the endgame. But not so much anymore.
A leprechaun did tell me that this thing will grant you good luck, though.
How to Get It: This is the fun part -- this is actually the quest reward at the end of a fun little self-contained questline that will take you from either Stormwind (for Alliance) or Undercity (for Horde) into the Plaguelands. Yes, the Plaguelands -- it's that little lobby right before you enter the Ghostlands. Just look for those poor, lonely Argent Dawn questgivers (or just follow the sounds of them whining under their breath that the expansion isn't here yet).
To start the quest, you've got to grab Janice's Parcel, which you can find on the Felstone farm while in the Western Plaguelands. That will send you off to the capital city of your faction, and then take to you some familiar faces (apparently the Felstone family roots reach far and deep). You'll meet a few Felstones, and eventually you'll be able to collect the Felstone Good Luck Charm, which, in true luck o' the Irish fashion (it's actually a curse), is being handed down to you from a family that hasn't had much luck at all.
Kind of a fun quest, not too long, and has some good flavor text in it. And if nothing else, you can consider this Blizzard's holiday reward for you, since there is no "Aldor Patrick's Day" in Azeroth.
Getting Rid of It: Sells to vendors for 71s 64c or disenchants into a Dream Dust, Lesser Eternal Essence or a Small Brilliant Shard. Happy St. Patrick's Day, everybody!
Haven't done an offhand in a while, so while this one isn't exactly at the top of the heap, it's a nice item for your newly-70 alt to pick up, and it has a fun nod to a guy who's been working hard lately. Also, have a suggestion for a piece of phat loot to cover? Share it in the comments below or drop us a note on the tipline.
Name: Hortus' Seal of Brilliance (Wowhead, Thottbot, WoWDigger) Type: Off-hand Accessory Armor: N/A Abilities:
+18 Stamina, +20 Intellect
Increases spell damage and healing by up to 23
The stamina on this says Warlock, but if there aren't any warlocks around, this wouldn't be a bad pickup for any damage caster (Elemental Shaman, anyone?), especially one looking to head into PvP. For most casters, odds are that even if you grab this, it'll be replaced pretty quickly with either a better offhand or a 2h weapon.
But on the other hand, it does look cool, and it's named after one of the most beloved CMs (if you can believe that CMs can be universally beloved) on the forums, the hypno-gnome Hortus. He's the bug guy, so many times (especially when a big PTR is being tested like this), he'll be the one to show up with answers to players asking about whether something is bugged or not.
And he's brilliant. Hence the seal.
How to Get It: It drops from the Fel Horde's Warchief, Kargath Bladefist. We've talked about him before on PLP, so suffice it to say that he's a mean SOB with blades for hands. No idea why he's carrying around Hortus' seal, but if you are able to grab it from the guy (it drops pretty often, in both normal and heroic modes) , you might want to see about getting it back to Hortus -- he'll probably need it for all the PTR testing going on.
Getting Rid of It: Sells to vendors for 2g 20s 45c, and disenchants into a Large Prismatic Shard.
This is probably old news to a lot of you, but just in case you happened to join us after Burning Crusade dropped, you might not know about this magical liquid available only in the snowy wastes of Winterfall. Here's something fun that almost anyone after 55 can get.
Increases your attack power by 35 for 20 minutes. This counts as a Battle Elixir -- you can only use one Battle Elixir and one Guardian Elixir at a time.
But the best part of this nowadays (since 35 attack power ain't that much, especially when you scale up to 70) is that it makes you grow in size, which lets you do funny things like the picture above.
There are a couple of other ways to grow in size -- the most common is the Shaman spell Bloodlust. Stack a few of these together with the Firewater, and you can see some pretty crazy stuff. You can put your own "huge player" experiences in the comments below.
How to Get It: This is a drop only from Furbolg in Winterspring, and though most of the percentages out there say it drops only about 4-6%, experience tells us that it drops pretty regularly. Anyone who's ever grinded those bears for Timbermaw Hold rep will tell you that they've seen tons of these. And for that reason, they're also pretty readily available on the AH as well, for as cheap as a gold or two.
Still, it's always fun to have a few around, just in case things get a little boring during a raid, and you feel the need to, y'know, be big.
Getting Rid of It: AH it, because vendors won't buy it. Or just drink it, specifically during raids when Bloodlust gets dropped. Always fun.
After a short hiatus last week (due to the Friday evening patch 2.4 mayhem), the phat loot is back, this time with an axe that not only has one of the best names in the game, but can give you a little ranged help as well.
Use: Hurls the axe through the air, directly at a target's head (very "vorpal," if you get that reference). Causes 513-567 damage with a 3 minute cooldown.
It's a 40-yard range, instant cast, so definitely very nice for pulling. Shows up as a black version of the Paladin's ranged attack.
And it was rumored that this was counted not as a melee attack, but as a spell. However, players have apparently confirmed that spell damage does not add to it, although we're still not sure if spell crit helps the percentage. Maybe commenters can shed light on that one-- I don't have this one around for testing.
Bosses, as you may expect, are immune to the throw. But it is pretty easy to put together a macro which will let you use the throw ability to pull, and then switch over to your usual tanking weapon.
How to get it: Pretty simple-- drops from Prince in Karazhan. People are downing him with PUGs nowadays (and odds are your guild, if they're raiding at all, has like three groups clearing it every week), so hope for the 13% percent drop chance to kick in, win the roll (tanks and shammies might be rolling on it, but by now, everyone who wants one probably already has it), and it's all yours.
Getting rid of It: Sells to a vendor for 12g 44s 56c, and disenchants into a Void Crystal. That's all I got-- I guess you could destroy it if you want, but this is the kind of item where the proc would probably come in handy at almost any level. Have a good weekend.
Equip: your attacks ignore 335 of your opponent's armor. And that's not a proc, that's an equip. Wild. The math around that is complicated to say the least, but suffice it to say that whenever you attack anything with the sword, you treat the opponent like it has 335 less armor than it really does. Which means even more damage.
And all that strength adds damage as well, since strength adds to attack power, which adds to melee damage, too. In short, when something gets hit with this sword, it feels it.
How to Get It: Drops from Archimonde, the last boss in Mount Hyjal (and arguably, the game itself). It's a 10 to 15% drop, so you'll need to get him down a few times for the odds to fall in your favor. And you'll have to fight all those Mortal Strike warriors and ret pallies for the roll, since everybody who likes chopping things in half will be after this one.
But the good news is that this will last long after the "gear reset" coming in the expansion. I hesitate to say that it will actually be able to challenge Frostmourne (because who knows how they'll implement that in the game), but odds are that if you're lucky enough to get this now, you'll be chopping things with it for quite a while.
Getting Rid of It: Are you nuts? If you have so many of these things laying around that you have to get rid of one, go talk to Matthew Rossi, our warrior writer-- I'm sure he'll want one. But if you must vendor it, you'll get 19g 57s and 38c for it. Disenchants, as usual, into a Void Crystal.
Improves critical strike rating and resilience by 20, attack power by 46, and your attacks ignore 112 of your opponents' armor
So it's a Rogue PvP cloak. But wait-- this cloak actually comes from, well, go read the "How to Get It" part below. Go ahead. I'll wait.
Isn't that a little weird? To get one of the best PvP cloaks for rogues in the game, you have to do PvE. Blizzard doesn't think it's that weird-- they say that originally, they were keeping PvP gear only for PvPers and PvE gear only for those raiders. But later on, they decided that was a bad idea, and now we've got cloaks like this. Still, it's a pretty awesome (and nice looking) cloak.
And your guess is as good as ours who "Dory" is. I thought it was that fish from Finding Nemo, and it turns out that it's actually a type of fish, but considering the flavor text is "approximately priceless," that doesn't seem right.
How to Get It: To get this cloak, you've got to visit good old Gears G'eras in Shattrath, and turn in a whopping 60 Heroic Badges. Badges, as you probably already know, are available from Heroic instances, as well as from raid bosses in Karazhan and Zul'Aman. So this is a cloak that you can only get from doing PvE.
If you jumped down to this section from the section above, you can go back now.
This cloak was added in with the patch 2.3 gear, so if you haven't seen it there before, that's why. The good news is that even though 60 Badges is a lot, you can supposedly pick up 22 Badges in a full Karazhan run. So just run it three times and you're all set.
Getting Rid of It: This cloak is disenchantable, and like all level 70 epic items, DEs into a Void Crystal. Sells back to a vendor for 60 Heroic badges. No, I'm just kidding, but wouldn't that be nice? Vendors won't buy it back at all-- apparently they have no need for your ratty old Epic gear.
I find it hard to believe that we've never done this, but a search through the archives leads me to conclude that we haven't, so here you go.
Name: Orb of Deception Type: Rare Trinket Damage/Speed: N/A Abilities:
On use, transforms you into a character of the opposing faction.
That means you suddenly change your look, from Alliance to Horde or vice versa. Humans to Orcs, Undead to Night Elf, Troll to Dwarf, Tauren to Gnome, and Blood Elf to Draenei (or vice versa).
Lasts for five minutes, and has unlimited charges on a 30 minutes cooldown.
It's mostly just a joke, as NPCs will see right through your disguise, and players will still see red text above your head. But it is fun to cause a little commotion when a newbie spots you walking around a big city as the other faction.
Finally, gender gets a little weird with this, too. Night Elves and undead will change sexes when transformed, and using other shapeshifting buffs, we're told, will make genders change as well. Why is that? Who knows. Probably a bit of coding weirdness that Blizzard isn't interested in fixing.
How to Get It: If "the Orb" (sly Brisco County, Jr. reference there-- anyone with me on that?) was easy to get, everyone would have one, right? Well, it's only kind of easy to get-- it's a world drop, which means that it can drop from almost anywhere in the world. I'm pretty sure it tends to drop in instances, but even that isn't for sure-- lots of people say they've seen it drop out of instances, too.
At any rate, you probably have a better chance just buying it than actually getting it in a drop. Could cost you up to 500 or even 1000g, but given how quickly gold shows up these days, you'll get it faster by just farming gold for it rather than trying to get it to drop for you. Check the AH every day, grab it when you see it pop up, and you're ready for a little bit of deception fun.
Getting rid of it: Sells for 46s 18c to vendors, and disenchants into a Large Brilliant Shard.
All the World's a Stage is brought to you by David Bowers every Sunday evening, investigating the mysterious art of roleplaying in the World of Warcraft.
The Warcraft storyline is part of a great tradition of fantasy literature, and, as with any form of storytelling, the entire span of WoW lore involves a series of events and changes. Arthas wasn't always the Lich King, Illidan used to be able to wear shoes, and your character was once a little child, with no spells or epic weapons at all. All these things fit together in a single story universe, in which the progressive changes taking place in the story made the world what it is today.
But what is it today? Is Illidan now dead or alive? Is VanCleef dead or alive, for that matter? As a gaming environment, any boss you kill today has to be there for me to kill tomorrow. The WoW game world needs to remain basically unchangeable -- but over time this can stifle a roleplayer's sense of immersion in its narrative. To illustrate the impact this sort of immutability has on storytelling, let us take a page from a certain fantasy story you might have read, and see how it might work as a WoW raid instance.
Welcome to Mines of Moria! This raid instance will reset in 6 days, 10 hours and 41 minutes.
[Raidleader] [Gandalf]: Beware! There are older and fouler things than orcs in the deep places of the world. Follow my glowing staff! [Raidleader] [Gandalf]: ... and um... get ready to pull that first group of orcs. Kill order is skull, x, circle... Gimli, can you offtank that cave troll?
Another Phat Loot Request this week (we'll get back to Zul'Aman next week, because there's a lot of great stuff in there). Tachaeon from Turalyon sent us this ring that is strangely remarkable in a few different ways.
Name: Band of Icy Depths Type: Epic Ring Armor: N/A Abilities:
+19 Stamina, +20 Frost resistance, which was nice back in the days of Naxx-- now, it's not as big, but it's still a nice boost.
And on Equip: Allows underwater breathing. That's right, just like the Hydrocane, which we covered over a year ago, this is one of the items in the game that gives this buff without a Warlock or Shaman around. This one's a lot harder to get, however.
How to Get It: This baby comes from the AQ gate opening questline-- which you can do even if the gates have already opened on your server. WoW Wiki has the long writeup on exactly how the quests are all done, and it's a darn shame this quest will almost never be undertaken again. Blizzard must have put a lot of work into developing all these little plotlines, and there is a ton of lore and great story to be found in this thing, but it's all hidden behind a Brood of Nozdormu reputation grind, and considering no one has any need to open up AQ any more (except, of course, on the servers where it's not yet opened), almost no one will ever see it. Bummer. I guess Blizzard is learning from their mistakes more and more, and bringing more epic content to everyone able to do it, but it's a shame that this great, gigantic quest chain has gotten lost in the mix of expansion upgrades and smaller guilds.
This ring is hidden in the second part of the chain, where your goal is to get back the colored shards from the dragonflights around Azeroth. Within the Blue Shard chain, you receive this ring as a quest reward. Definitely a long, long way to go just to get a ring that will let you breathe underwater, but I think the strange placement of this ring as a quest reward is one reason Tachaeon wanted it covered here.
And finally, the strangest thing about this epic ring...
Getting Rid of it: .. is found when you sell it to a vendor. Finally, something interesting to put in the "Getting Rid of It" section! Yes, this ring sells for... wait for it... 82g 80s 85c, making it, to my knowledge, the item with the highest vendor price ingame. I don't know if this ring really qualifies for Phat loot, but it is definitely one of the most weirdly budgeted items in Azeroth.
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