35 Reps achievement screenie

Getting to 35 reps is something that I’d not planned on. Fundamentally now that Exalted does not grant a mechanical benefit, it is just something that might happen. Still a very long way to 9000 pts.

Achievement bounty

I’ve been getting the odd and strange achievements recently, and instead of sliding them by there are screenshots.

Firstly here are some shots from the Blacksmith quest-line to use the Thunder Forge, then onto some random shots from doing daily quests, the 5000 quest achievement, and also getting Mortigen’s Black Prince reputation to Exalted. Then another for looting 50k gold.

Standing atop the Thunder Forge

Mortigen staring at the forge itself after clearing up the Mogu hanging around the entryway. This forge really deserves more attention, it is beautiful.

The Achievement for Pay to Slay, which I don’t understand the meme for.

And the Achievement for 5000 Daily Quests. Jesus that is a lot of regular activity.

And I am also now Exalted with Black Prince.

And then “Got my mind on the Money”, to loot 50k gold.

Exalted with the Lorewakers

I didn’t want to be exalted with the Lorewalkers for the Red Disc, although that is a nice bonus. The real goal was the Archy tools to spin up the Archy nodes in Pandaria, and to teleport to a random active site. Such good function needs to be acquired.
I do like the fact I can fly around like the trash mobs in the Malygos fight though. Very cool.

Dungeon and Raid Requirements

A “note to self” on what item levels are needed to get into the MoP Scenarios, Dungeons, and Raids, and what item level they drop. Also what is obtainable from Factions and Craftables, via gold and Reputation.

Why? Because I frequently get them confused with each other…

Scenarios

• Requires: 425
• Awards: chance of 463, and now a small chance of 476

Heroic 5-mans

• Requires: 440
• Awards; 463, with very rare 476 on a few end bosses.

Mogushan Vaults (raid)

• Requires: 460
• Awards LFR: 476, Normal: 489, Heroic: 502

Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Spring (raids)

• Requires: 470
• Awards LFR: 483, Normal: 496, Heroic: 509

Reputation Rewards

• (most) faction = 458 gear purchased with Justice points
• (some) factions = 463 gear, such as Klaxxi Exalted weapons, for gold.
• (most) Honored and Revered with faction = 489 gear purchased with Valor points
• Friendly with ShieldWall Offensive = 458 gear purchased with Justice points
• Honored with ShieldWall Offensive = 496 gear purchased with Valor points
• Revered with ShieldWall Offensive = 496 gear purchased with Valor points
• Exalted and doing a Quest chain, with the Golden Lotus grants a 489 Neck
• Exalted and doing a Quest chain, with the Klaxxi grants a 489 Ring

Craftables

• Item level 450s (no special mats needed – dirt cheap)
• 463 (Spirit of Harmony needed – cheap-ish)
• 476s (Spirit of Harmony needed – not badly priced at the moment due to new gear)
• 496 (Bloods needed – very expensive)

Happy killing

Gearing up for an adventure

That scene in the Matrix when Neo fights an upgraded Agent and says, “hmm, upgrades…” resounds at the moment.

Recently I’ve been lucky to have some very good gear drops in normal MV and also had some of the hard work grinding and AH farming pay off. I found it odd that the relative score of the gear in sites like Wow Heroes did not jump significantly. It’s not like there are not 300+ characters who are better geared on the server, but bragging right are fun sometimes.

Gear which changes was:

• a Dps 489 ring from Quest/Exalted Rep with Klaxxi. It is no small effort to get to Exalted with this faction, and it is a pity that I took the reward so close to the update to patch 5.1 as the ring will hopefully be replaced in the coming months. I will not be doing the Klaxxi zone at all unless I max out all the other dailies, which in very unlikely.
• a Dps 489 gauntlets from MV, upgraded from item level 372.
• a Dps 489 cloak from MV, from level 372,
• some Dps boots that I’ll be using as part of a Tank set,
• switched the old 472 dps Cloak and Gauntlets to the Tank set,
• and purchased the Dps trinket from DMF, which replaced the 450 ilevel dragonling trinket. I’ll miss that little dragon proc. I think it cost around 12,000 gold buying it with cards.
• then finally purchased the other DMF trinket too for the Tank set, for around 8,500 gold. It was far less of an upgrade that the Dps one, but it will serve well for the rare Tanking I do in instances and is more than powerful enough for 5 man runs.

Yes, its been a good few weeks.

I know that using Dps gear is not ideal for Tanking as I miss out on loading the secondary Tank stats like Parry and Dodge, but a 486/472 dps item is rated higher in terms of overall itemisation than a 463 item with those stats because often the Mastery loading on the dps items is still good. It is not ideal, but any upgrade is an upgrade.

Next on the list is:

• I’m likely to valor-upgrade the two-hander Star Shatter, as it is likely the best weapon I’ll see before we are either killing the end boss in Heart of Fear on normal (a while away), or killing Heroic Elegon (longer still). Spending Valor on that seems a worth while update as it is unlikely to be replaced.
• Rep farming the Shieldwall faction is important (Ring, then Trinket, then Boots/Belt),
• but as is completing the Exalted rep with Goldebn Lotus for a Tank Neck (a quest reward), because I have a 489 item on neck already and the itemisation on the Dps quest reward is sub-par for DKs playing Frost 2 handed. Might as well get +5 Valor and a nice upgrade when it does not disadvantage the other grinds.
• getting to Revered with the Shadow-Pan for a new 489 trinket (also costs VPs), but I am now sure that the Ironbelly Wok is nothing compared to the upgrade of switching to a 496 with the Shieldwall trinket. Those poor Shado-Pan might have had their day.
• I’ll visit the August Celestials soon to see how I can help them too.

At this stage I’ll wait to see how my reps are when I next cap out on Valor, then purchase the item which gives the best upscale in core ilevel, with a preference for the Shieldwall gear.

I did wonder and have no answer, except to perform case-by-case testing for:

• Is it worth upgrading a weapon by 8 item levels (say 489 to 497), or a trinket (from 472 to 480)?
• or better to spend VPs on higher gear? buy a 489 which replaces a 472, which is more of a point difference.
• How far does the preferred vs sub-optimal secondary stats factor in that?

Perhaps the answer is to only upgrade the gear which is both the highest level you expect to attain in the short to mid term, and also only when the same amount of Valor Points could not purchase an equivalent upgrade elsewhere on the character.

i.e. You’re better off purchasing a higher ilevel item than upgrading another, as you change the base level of your gear to be higher, and therefore open to enhancement with Valor later. This means that as most of my stuff is 489 now, I’d be mad to upgrade a 472 with VPs, especially when 496s are available with Reputation.

There is no sneaky way to grab my last 472 upgrades for Legs and Bracers except getting lucky in a few runs, or Valor farming – so farming it is. Yay! Cough.

Related articles

• Shieldwall VP rewards (typhoonandrew.wordpress.com)
• Numerious daily quests yesterday (typhoonandrew.wordpress.com)
• Faction reps gaining slowly (typhoonandrew.wordpress.com)
• Patch 5.1: Upgrading your gear with valor (wow.joystiq.com)
• Gearing can take a while for some (typhoonandrew.wordpress.com)

Shieldwall VP rewards

The Shieldwall rewards are live, and are as follows (5.1 patch notes):

• 458 trinket for approx 100 gold as a starter reward,
• a 496 ring at Honored, costing 1250 VP,
• a 496 Belt, Boots, and Trinket at Revered, costing 1750 each,
• Exalted gets you a new flying mount.

The starter reward is likely to go to an offset, as most raiders have better in main at the very least. Despite the undertone of my last post, this gear is welcome, and will make the dailies for the other factions a secondary consideration.

Getting to Revered will be very rewarding for raiders as 496 gear is far better than MV gear, and good for HoF. The honored Ring also means that you should skip the other Valor rings now if you have not purchased them, by comparison this is better – because it can be upgraded with more VPs to 504 gear level.

There are five dailies to do each day, each granting +250 reputation, 5 VPs, and 2 Lesser Charms of Good Fortune.

You will need 6500 Valor points to buy all the gear for one spec, and will also need to have unlocked the various Reps. That is 1300 daily quests performed if this is done by dailies, so I hope everyone has a realistic impression of how long these will take to get, and also how important a 496 ilevel is compared to some raiders still using 476 gear. I think a raider who is missing key items such as Boots, Belt, Rings, or a Trinket should be doing these dailies before they raid – the upgrade is guaranteed and a powerful change.

Or 13,000 VPs if you wish to have gear for both specs which might be used in raiding.

Yet the VP rewards for activities are apparently as desired and working as intended? Bullshit. Only working as intended by people who don’t play the game. I’m nudging closer to giving this Valor treadmill away for good.

ps. Wasn’t operation shieldwall something in Mass Effect, or by Bioware? Have we run out of names for armies fighting?

pps. If the end boss of the Tier is the Sha of Fear, does that mean this is the War on Fear? How did the war on Terror go?

Numerious daily quests yesterday

Yesterday I did a heap of dailies in Warcraft – All the Golden Lotus, Klaxxi, Tillers, Shado-Pan, Fishing, Archaeology, and the {dragon flying mount guys}. It took the better part of my time online, and was not so bad. It was not my objective to do that many, but there queue times for 5 mans were long, and it worked out that way.

It didn’t suck as much as I thought it might. I think knowing that the task ahead was to grind that many is probably a big part of what puts me off, as thinking about tomorrow I have no intention of doing that many.

I raise this as there is flack about daily quests through out the wow community, and I’m on the fence on the overall issue. Pondering this I thought:

• I like that there is no limit to the amount you can do, even if that means going back and doing dailies from old expansions. It’s your time, do whatever you like.
• I dislike that I’m doing it for 5 valor points a quest. It seems too low.
• I like that we get the coin-thingy which eventually allow extra loot rolls.
• I dislike the gated release of Shado-pan and the other guys at Revered, as I think the idea is OK lore wise, but it should have been opened at honored. Getting to that faction sooner would have made a world of difference to my level of boredom in daily quests.
• I dislike that the non-valor Rep rewards are all but useless compared to crafted gear, drops, and easily available alternatives. Essentially most of the rewards are not usable.
• Soon (patch 5.1?) the Justice points will upgrade gear, as will the valor. Thankfully that will help me a lot, but I cannot see that as a justification for the low point rewards.
• Players who play every day will get capped quickly, but then those players will get capped quickly anyway – so we have a barrier in place for the grinders who play daily, which also applied to the more casuals. I see both sides of this – limiting the grind rate help stretch content, but that also frustrates players. Tough call.
• If I was given a choice there would be some way to enhance the rep gain per week. Perhaps a tabard as implemented in previous expansions is not “right”, but the grind to Exalted feels wrong at the moment too.
• Daily quests are not “fun” enough by themselves to keep playing, I do them because of the valor and rep reward. That is a slightly depressing thing, and I wonder how much I will feel like playing if I ever get the required factions to Exalted.

I got a heap of valor points from the many quests, and thankfully some gold which helps cover the raiding costs and flippant purchases (like extra node detection goggles for my gathering alt). I also skipped a few of the quests available which only rewarded rep and gold with Vanity Factions – those factions that have no PvE advantage, but have mounts and tabards. Perhaps I should have included them for the sake of being a completionist, but honestly I don’t care for achievement points.

As a method of gearing my character a valor grind via daily quests is the longest and most banal method I can think of. Its an utterly poor way to garner gear – but casuals have very few other choices. So tomorrow is more – an unless I’m lucky enough to see a Sha of Anger group, it’ll be that until the cows come home.

As an aside – the Lore for many of the daily quests feels like things that an apprentice or scrub could do. Is this really the tasks that need the attention of a person who vanquished Deathwing, The Lich King, and all the other old gods? It’s an old snark, but still relevant when you pick-up your eleventh flower. The quest givers in Pandaria are no more or less lazy then elsewhere – asking for the dull tasks to be done by those who have something to prove.

Perhaps one day many expansions from now my character can return to Pandaria and visit farmer Yoon, and we’ll laugh as how much of his work I did for him. For now that guy pisses me off. Happy killing.

Faction reps gaining slowly

A quick toon update on Reputations in progress for Mortigen my Death Knight, making me think that daily quests do have a reward, but by golly that does not make them entertaining.

• Black Prince now Honored. Not a big deal without the drops needed from raid bosses, which are darn rare and most of what I need now coming from Heart of Fear.
• Golden Lotus now Revered, so I can save that little more valor and might soon have some upgraded epic Shoulders. Yay. Anyone got some spare Valor? Also means I can unlock the Shadow Pan to start more quests. And a step closer to the epic quest reward too.
• Klaxxi now Revered, also not a big deal due to the Valor requirement on rewards. I suppose it is one step closer to Exalted and a free 487 epic item. Yippee. Grind.
• Tillers now totally beyond my comprehension of which idiot farmer likes me, and which are snarky. I do not understand why Farmer Yoon (or whatever his name is) actually needs rep or help. What he really needs and actually has is a host of available players to be slaves on his farm while he stands idle beside the hut watching. That shovel pusher is lucky he is not a yellow-mob, because I’d be killing him every week. Yes, I am exalted which is why these turkeys get the biggest rant.
• I also do not understand how to get Cooking leveled quickly. All my non-“Way-of-the” cooking is gray.
• Anglers have had a brief look in, but fishing is no more compelling than before, which means that it’ll be one of the last things I do each week if I have the time.
• Archaeology is after fishing/Anglers. Yawn.

So I keep doing Golden Lotus and Klaxxi for the Exalted quest chain, garnering Valor to buy the Shoulders, then add Shadow Pan into the mix instead of Tillers so that the epic Helm will one day be something available too.

It’s nice to have an upgrade path. See you online.

A few nice things like kills, achievements, and factions

A few nice things happened in the past few days; so this post is a long-ish one.

Firstly I was able to join the raiders for our Guild first Elegon kill – booyah! That is a poor fight to be melee but we did it with a few characters playing up close and personal.

The tricks in the fight are plentiful, mainly based upon how to manage the stacks of the damage debuff so that you (a) increase your own damage to Elegon, (b) don’t take too much regular “pulse” damage, (c) don’t die when the large elemental style adds explode on death, and (d) gathering the sparky-adds in the third stage.

Now we head off to the Emperor fight, which is even worse for melee – with the “fun” mechanic where you watch which way the animation goes to dodge, and need full raid awareness, and luck, and manage the adds. I’d rather be doing many other things – grumble.

I finally gained Exalted with the Tillers (yippee), and very underwhelmed with the rewards. As rewards there is a tabard, a Yak, a few cooking recipes, and a basically useless knife. I didn’t expect the earth, but the rewards along the lines of automating the farming (like the bug sprayer and watering system) would have been good, or reducing the instances where we need to perform maintenance on crops?

Like what types of things you ask?

An actual scarecrow (not the toy), which reduces the chance that you get the birds, or rat-thingy infestation. Or anything which makes doing the dailies a little faster, now that the rep is at maximum.

I still have to get each bloody NPC’s individual rep to maximum so not out of the woods yet. Overall I’d like Farmer Yoon to actually be animated around the farm doing things…like farming. It actually looks like I did a lot of the farming and he just stood there. That lazy son of a bitch owes me more than a “thanks pal!”. If he walked around and did things it would go a long way to making it feel like we both did the work.

Is there a faction or way I can now get back down to Hated or At War so I can kill him? Do the Mogu need a champion?

I also happened to get the achievement Chef de Cuisine for 10 points when learning the 2x cooking recipes from the Tillers, indicating 160 recipes known. I don’t like cooking and these two additional recipes are all but useless. Meh, but yay +10 points!

Upgrades via Valor and Justice points soon – interesting news.

Some information via MMO Champion on how the items will be upgraded in patch 5.1. Basically PvE players get the option to use Justice to increase lower level gear by about 8 levels (463 to 471), and Valor gets two steps of 4 levels each costing 750 Valor per increase (489 to 493) and then (493 to 497).

As an offering its not bad – perhaps… I don’t have a sense yet if all gear will have this option, or if it will be only selectable items. If the items themselves are rare, then I can’t say much positive about this offer, as it will do nothing to stop luck being a major factor in improving gear. The point seems to be that effort can get a reward which is absolute. It would give reasons for the daily quests rewarding Valor, as it would have a permanent and tangible use beyond the initial purchase.

Related articles

• Random stuff from MMO Champ and Blue Posts
• A thought about the Brawlers Guild

A few more Blue comments, Bag Space, and random linkage

Those Blue posters really do put up with a heck of a lot of splatter and vitriol from the community. Thankfully the mess is easy to find and enjoy. This time Bag Space is something I’ve got some thoughts on at the end, which the Blues seem to think cannot be solved by adding space.

• Apparently post trolling for “survey feedback” on Dailies is not productive. Fair.
• No AHs in the Pandaria zones. Consistent with other expansions. Fair, and the OP phrased it well enough to sound like a request too. +1.
• WoW custom Monopoly has been released. I don’t get it, but can accept it. Fair.
• A DPS comparison with Blue, via Noxic. Hmm. Not what I’m seeing.
• I am not the only one (surprise!) that dislikes the Loot-Need rolls in 5 mans, but it is working as intended. That makes it just more evidence that the folks I hate who proceed to take everything are doing nothing “wrong” and everything selfishly. They have great gear though. Again here.
• Blue confirmed that bigger bags won’t help the issue of no space in the long term. Ahem. That does not mean that larger bags, or better stacking of items in stacks larger than 20 (for most buff food for example) won’t significantly help. I think there is a bit of snarkin the Blue’s response where they offer that bigger bags is such a good suggestion. How about:
  • Make all things that stack to 20 now go up to 100 instead (or maybe 99 if you must). Food, ingredients, crystals, herbs, ore, mats for enchants, cloth, etc. All of it. We’ll have heaps more bag space, with no change in the size of the variable in the DB which stored the stack count.
  • Give me an item (yes it will use a bag slot) that allows me to DE. Sell it as a special Rep item from the Consortium as an Exalted special. That way we can DE as we go too.
  • Make lesser charms stack to 900+.
  • The the quest items for Dailies that I do not have auto-disappear when the Daily is dropped or complete (Duh).

  

Random stuff from MMO Champ and Blue Posts

An assembly of trivia from readings around the place, mostly from a MMO Champ post..

Mists of Pandaria Flying for Alts – “WTB Book of Pandaren Flying (BoA – requires level 90 to purchase) = 2400gold, PST.”

“We’re not sure if we’ll be doing this. The tome worked out well enough for Wrath of the Lich King as an experiment, but so much of the experience we spent a lot of time and effort shaping in Pandaria is negated by flying. In addition to the upcoming reputation changes for alts (when a character on the account hits Revered), we’ll consider other methods of potentially speeding up the leveling process for alts, but we don’t think “allow flying” is necessarily the best answer.”

Meh, either way. It would be nice but also not a game breaker to walk while leveling. It really didn’t feel restricted to me. When I bring an Alt through it will be nice to see the content faster, and perhaps level in a manner I enjoy, or have more control of. Nice, but not a drama. By the 3rd Alt I can see their point.

Updated Raid Schedule Heart of Fear & Terrace

• Oct 30: Heart of Fear (N)
• Nov 6: Heart of Fear Part 1 (LFR), Heart of Fear (H)
• Nov 13: Terrace of Endless Spring (N), Heart of Fear Part 2 (LFR)
• Nov 20: Terrace of Endless Spring (LFR), Terrace of Endless Spring (H)

Are you guys happy with the daily system playing such a large role in end-game content? (via Blizzard twitter)

“I think the valor and charms feel good because you can cap them. I think rep itself would be better with a cap.”

Idiocy. Inspired idiocy. Only a fool is happy with the gating on Valor and Valor gear.

There is almost nothing worth getting until Exalted with each gear faction, and by 90 all the other rewards are moot. Justice Points are useless as far as I can tell, and if anyone knows what Justice can be used for except for buying odd gear for alts then let me know. Please.

This post demonstrates the general feeling of linking dailies to Valor, and the time it takes. The fact that it is written in caps does nothing to dismiss that the sentiment is correct.

HEY BLIZZARD – IT SUCKS.

The charms are fine. It’s not meant to be 100% loot, its meant to be an extra roll of the dice. The dailies themselves are OK in repeat, but what they grant access to is non-nonsensical. For example I’d love to buy an upgrade now that I am Revered with the Klaxxi which was higher than item level 463 and didn’t cost Valor. Instead I keep grinding that out until Exalted so I can get an upgrade quest reward. Then I will not be doing anything for the bugs again, and would go back and kill them in the name of the Empress if given the chance.

What is trolling (post)? Well behaving like a dickhead when somebody else is affected. If you are irritating somebody, you’re trolling. If you are not sure, you’re trolling.

Here is a  happy player, with renewed faith. If sarcastic then weird, if not then why post?

A poster suggested removing rewards from LFR. Yes, I think he’s a troll, but he got 3x Blue responses, so he’s good at it. Apparently.

Acquiring Legendary Drama

Somehow previously the announcement of “a legendary for everybody” was proclaimed and I missed writing on it. GrumpyElf has a great post about the impact that this might have on the player community, and the way we view rewards.

We’ve seen some additional information mined from the Beta fro Mists of Pandaria (via wowhead) where a special item is “upgraded” to legendary via applying an item called the Breath of the Black Prince – in MoP the quest chain gives you an upgrade to ilevel 513 for an item you likely already have. That means a powerful weapon after a set of kills, drops, and gathering quests, which is a good way to start it off.

This looks like a big step for Blizzard and it’s going to leave a lot of people divided. On one hand, the idea of a legendary based on merit rather than class sounds fantastic; on the other, guilds will have a lot of trouble deciding who gets the first one of these.

But is it hard enough? Does a Legendary like that actually feel powerful, or more feel like a reward and not a tribute to your effort?

It got me thinking about what a legendary should be and how they are acquired.

Giving everybody a real true Legendary is bloody stupid.

Giving us the potential to access a Legendary so that every class has something that they might get reward from is OK, but making them easy to acquire is super-crazy. A Legendary is supposed to be just that – a Legend. Something that you proudly display, and something that only a small percentage of the community is capable of. Essentially I am in agreement with the moderate hardcore players who wish to see legendary items stay super tough to get.

Making them easier to access reminds me of the line from the film The Incredibles – When everyone has a legendary item, nobody does. These are items where their particular value is that they are exceeding and exceptionally rare.

I agree that everyone should have the plausible potential to get one, but not the expectation that they deserve one.

When every toon is grinding for the item, then competition for the drops and rewards skyrockets.

More people trying to get the drops means drama. It means that it will still take ages to get which is good, but it also means that every idiot with a BattleNetID will think they are entitled. I’d hate to see that, especially if it invites guild drama.

Something positive about a Legendary that only a few classes can use is that we have less chatter about who is worthy and willing. I didn’t have to stress about the caster staff or Rogue daggers, as a Death Knight was not eligible. It was almost a relief. Sharing that love around lets those people feel special and supported by others, and sometimes helping others is an excellent feeling and reason unto itself. I enjoyed seeing others get their Legendary items, and have helped many folks in the effort.

The behavior in LFR and LFDs is already often puerile and selfish, and the new loot rules only reflect that community cannot behave itself. Essentially the Internet F**kwad Theory applies (go look it up). So I hope the legendary is not progressed by a competitive activity in LFR. Perhaps your own “kill 300x bosses” count can be helped along by that, but not the “get 10x drops” bit.

To be entitled to a Legendary at the moment you need to be patient and work at it, and be a tad lucky. That might mean getting 24 mates together 50 times so that you can repeat farm some drops, and do kills in a special order. It might mean grinding a lowbie instance every week for 4 years so that you try to get three items – each with a 1% drop rate.

How to make a Legendary usable by all?

I’m not sure there is a question more prevalent that how on earth is one legendary going to satisfy the range of players.

• A boosted item, where the base item is picked from a range of choices; as per above? Sure, OK. That feels like it will have less lore attached to it. By example Sulfurus felt epic because it was the hammer which Ragnaros was using to wipe the raid each week. It had a weight and presence in the game, and was won by blood and effort.
• A legendary mount which can fly at 350% speed?
• An Neck or Ring with gobsmackingly high amounts of universal stats like Mastery. Perhaps an item with 3-4 base stats like Agi, Str, Int, Stam in high amounts with Mastery to boot will be useful. The re-forge might make that worthy even for folks who need it for other things.

What are useful guides for how to create the quests and goals?

• Require a huge amount of time. I’m normally an advocate for casuals who are time poor, but not in the case. No time, then no legendary. Tough luck kid.
• Maybe require a reputation grind. And make it a bastard of a grind, perhaps first requiring all normal reps at exalted and no handy dandy tabard or booster. Difficult is the key. Perhaps the grind is something that is progressive so that as the character grinds the items needed their rep grows accordingly. The final stage might require Exalted status, but the entry might be Friendly.
• Give moderate and slowly increasing rewards along the way. An item which slowly upgrades is a great idea and we’ve seen the caster staff and rogue daggers demonstrate how good that can be. Sure they will not always be Best in Slot, but they will be a motivator that continues to haunt the player (Shadowmourne still calls to me when I close my eyes).
• Require drops and progress from each tier of the raiding content in the expansion. Thus it should start in the beginning of the expac as an optional quest line, and then end with the completion of special sub-quests at the end. Killing end-stage bosses is typically involved and that is a good theme to keep.
• Require solo effort which is workable to do solo, without a significant advantage if you group it.

Why have the Legendary reward if all Blizzard want is a happy community?

I remember getting the Battered Hilt and quest series in Wrath and the joy of completing that quest-line. It felt awesome and rewarded a special item. For classes with a variety of needs they got to pick one. Job well done Blizzard devs; it was incredible. The item was a epic item with a historic look and feel.

I honestly think that this is what should be done instead of giving an Orange item away. Make it purple at best, and add a special effect/ feature / widget which makes it always cool. It was the special story which made Quel’Delar so good. Doing that gives far more appeal to the wide audience than an orange colour.

A power in-built in the gear like adding 25% character size and a golden hue on use? Or some other stylistic feature which appeals to a wide audience. That way its always awesome.

Related articles

• Next Legendary Goal – Shadowmourne (typhoonandrew.wordpress.com)

Blunt Update

3 days is too long to have a headache. Tired, grumpy, and altogether in a very nasty mood – so this will be short (reaching for pills as I type).

• Grabbed a Crystalforged Sword for my Paladin, then added the Unholy enchant. Unholy is a crappy enchant but its all I had at short notice. Once I’ve got an idea of a better one, it’ll be straight on. Thanks to the Guildies for the advice, it was an immediate upgrade.
• Warlock is now Exalted with Kara (the V. Eye) which means a slight ring upgrade, and access to an enchant that I cant cast yet.
• Leveling my Druid on Horde, which is fun, but taking longer every level. Its not long until it will take some serious time to get each bar, and thats when the fun slows down too. Goal for now is to get to level 30 for the Travel form.
• Finally got a 6 of Furies, which will complete my Furies Deck – bring on Vengence! Now just need to wait till the next Darkmoon Faire, which is probably a few weeks away. This might also have me at 10,000 health unbuffed, which means I’ll be less killable.
• I need to farm and do daily quests, which means the same thing to me. Gold equals improvement at this stage, so its time to be a gold farmer.

Need to remember to say sorry to my girlfriend too, odds are I’ve said something over the past few days which was mean.