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Lichborne: Buy your death knight some patch 4.2 valor gear
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. Now that patch 4.2 has been out a few weeks, if you've been faithfully raiding or queuing up for your random dungeons, you should have a pretty good chunk of valor points ready for use. That means it's time to start thinking seriously about what you should buy. This week, we'll be taking a look at the new valor point gear from patch 4.2 and figuring out what each brings to the table for you.
The Light and How to Swing It: Gearing a new level 80 tankadin, part 3
With the Light as his strength, Gregg Reece of The Light and How to Swing It faces down the demons of the Burning Legion, the undead of the Scourge, and soon an entire flight of black dragons. First up, I'm looking for action screenshots of retribution and protection paladins. They can be any level between 1 and 80. I'll be using these for header graphics like the one above. Please send those as well as any other comments to my email at gregg@wow.com. Secondly, this is it. We're almost done. We're finishing our final installment of how to gear your new level 80 protection paladin. If you've been reading our previous weeks of this guide, you know that we talked over reputation and profession gear as well as all of the various dungeon gear you can nab. This week we're going to be taking advantage of all of that dungeon running and spending our badges with a look at all of the badges from Frost to Heroism (and yes there are exactly 7 useful items that you can trade Emblems of Triumph down to Emblems of Heroism for ... and 6 of them are epic gems).
Time Is Money: Putting your emblems to work
Kebina Trudough here, offering you the best gold making secrets they don't want you to know about! I was like you once, poor and homely, before I discovered my patented system. Now you too can fill your pockets with the good stuff without ever breaking a sweat! Why spend all your time toiling when you could be vacationing in the Hot Springs? I'm not offering these tips for 100 gold, or 90 gold, or even 50 gold! No, not even 20 gold! My system is yours for FREE! Satisfaction guaranteed or I'll give you a full refund (handling charges may apply). After all, Time Is Money. If you're like me, you have a lot of excess emblems sitting around. Maybe you never got around to spending them before the next tier came out, or maybe the badge gear just never quite compared to your raid drops. Whatever the case, there is no sense letting them go to waste when you could put them to work and earn some gold! First, here is a quick breakdown of the current badge system, from most recent and difficult to acquire on down: Emblem of Frost: These can be acquired primarily by raiding Icecrown, completing the Raid Boss Per Week "weekly," or by completing one WotLK heroic dungeon per day using the Random tool. Emblem of Triumph: Most raids now drop these badges, as well as heroics. You will also be awarded these for doing any number of WotLK heroic dungeons past your first one per day using the Random tool. You will also get some by completing your first normal WotLK dungeon per day using the Random tool, as well as completing the Raid Boss Per Week "weekly." Also of note: If you get Heroic Oculus using the random tool, don't drop group! Not only has it been nerfed like crazy, but when you defeat the end boss, every player will receive a loot bag that will contain these badges and more, plus a chance at getting the super rare Reigns of the Blue Drake, which used to be available only by killing Malygos, who now drops his 25-man version (Azure) in both 10 and 25-man. Emblem of Conquest: Originally, these were acquired by running 10-man Coliseum, or 25-man Ulduar. Emblem of Valor: Originally these dropped from Ulduar 10-man and Naxxramas 25-man. Emblem of Heroism: These were among the first WotLK badges, and dropped from Naxxramas 10-man and heroic dungeons.
Patch 3.2 PTR unveils Tier 9 sets
Now that the PTR is up, the floodgates have been opened. We're beginning to see a ton of new information about the next major content patch, the Call of the Crusade, including but not limited to the new Tier 9 sets. I know, it's crazy, right? I haven't even completed my Tier 8.5 set and here comes Blizzard dumping all this new gear on my lap. Ok, it's technically not that easy to get the gear but it'll certainly be easier with the new badge loot system. It's the dawn of the casual age of WoW, and Blizzard is taking a huge leap experimenting with dungeon modes.Whatever happens, we players win. So take a gander at pieces of the Tier 9 sets, which are available on the Tournament Grounds on the PTR for a token piece and small change (and purely for testing purposes, Michael Sacco notes that one vendor is giving away tier sets for a song). While there aren't any models for the gear yet -- they're currently using Tier 8+ placeholder graphics -- it's interesting to note that there are two sets of gear for each spec. They're identical items, just named differently for the Horde and the Alliance because, as Blizzard revealed, Patch 3.2 marks the return of faction-specific gear. Even cooler, Blizzard departs from the old tier set naming convention by naming the sets after notable figures in Warcraft lore. Check out all the items in the gallery Alex and Adam painstakingly put together. You know you want to. %Gallery-66640%
Patch 3.2 PTR: Badge of Triumph loot gallery
We've spent a bit of time on the Patch 3.2 PTR compiling images of the new badge loot available with Emblems of Triumph. You'll find the vendors in the usual spot -- by your specific faction's other badge vendors. There's quite an assortment of pieces available, though still no Elemental gear (thanks Blizzard!).As with all PTR foofaraw, the stats, names, and most certainly art for these pieces can and may change by the time Patch 3.2 goes live, so give feedback if you think something's amiss on the Test Realm Forum. For now, drool away at the item level 245 loot. %Gallery-66635%
The Queue: Ziebart vs Sacco
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.Sometimes late at night when the sun is down and the moon is up, the writers at WoW Insider sit around the campfire and talk about things. Weird things. Like owning a pet snake and cat at the same time (Sacco), or how putting together a desk can be a pain (Alex). More and more often these days there has been a little friendly feud going on between Alex and Sacco. You can read their little quips at each other over a few posts. So today in the Queue I want to ask you: who would win in a writer cage match? Alex Ziebart or Mike Sacco? %Poll-27017% Also, I'd like to thank all of you who left questions not about the crazy delicious Hawaiian Pizza yesterday. You gave me something to work with!Blinger asked..."Will the emblems of Heroism be really useless now? If there is no more badge gear I need, have plenty of Frozen Orbs I can throw a stick at, is there going to be any point in me ever doing the current Wrath heroics again other than just to help out mates all of which are in the same boat anyway? Or will it be likely that there will be some form of Heroism to Valor exchange?"
Encrypted Text: Emblem of Heroism rewards for Rogues
Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the Rogue class. This week, we'll be talking about Heroic gear available in Northrend.So, I have been hearing that many of you have put in the time and effort to level your Rogues to 80. Congratulations to all of you who have the perseverance and dedication to stick it out and focus on the goal! You do us Rogues proud. It takes a special kind of player to pull those all-nighters on the road to Icecrown. Unfortunately, I'm not one of those players.I've been leveling casually through Northrend, exhausting every single quest in a given zone before moving on to the next. In addition, I've been focusing on leveling my tradeskills to 450 and also helping my friends and family as they quest as well, with a little bit of World PvP mixed in when the opportunity presents itself.However, that hasn't stopped me from looking ahead at all of the "badge reward" gear available for us in Dalaran. I guess we should start calling it "emblem gear" or something, but it just doesn't roll of the tongue. Whatever you call it, I've compiled a list of the 5/10 man loot that is of interest to us subtle shadows. Read on for the details.
The Queue: Easy heroics and reverse DPS
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft.Another day, another Q&A! Now, without delay, let's get to the questions.Ven asked... In looking at badge rewards, a couple guildies and I noticed that there are more rewards and item types available for 25-man badges than for 10-man badges. Is this intended? Are the heroic and 10-man level badges relegated to stacking endlessly once you have the two or three pieces of gear you need from them? Or is Blizz planning on adding more gear soon? Compared to BC badge gear, there is very little available.
Bornakk: Next Blizzcast to include talk on the status of badge loot in WoTLK
One of the biggest and most successful features of Burning Crusade has been the inclusion of Badges of Justice. Especially in 2.4, these badges have allowed even relatively casual players to get their hands on gear that comes close to the same stuff raiders are able to pull out of end game instances. While the system seems to have been mostly a success, there's still some question as to how it will evolve in WoTLK. The current 2.4 badge loot seems to have been created in part to allow a smoother gear transition between BC and WoTLK for both casuals and ubers, with badges dropping out of 10-man instances and the most powerful badge gear yet. But the question is, will this continue in WoTLK? Will we see badges off of Naxxramas' 10-man version (perhaps earning it the name Badgeramas)? Will we see loot purchasable from a Dalaran vendor that will be comparable to what raiders are pulling out of Icecrown Glacier? Or will they dial it back, or maybe not even include the badge loot system at all?
Forum Post of the Day: Burning Crusade constructive criticism
With Burning Crusade winding down as we get closer to WoTLK, Scarpa of the Bleeding Hollow server had the bright idea of starting a thread to do a little bit of post-mortem on the Burning Crusade: Praise the stuff you liked, and offer constructive critcism on stuff you didn't like, in hopes that it can be improved in the expansion. There's a lot of good commentary in there on raids, arenas, badge gear, and other stuff. Some of my favorite criticism included Quaesitor's observation that a lot of reputation gear becomes automatically obsolete, because by the time you have the reputation (or the special tokens) to purchase it, you're too high level for it and probably have something better from a quest or dungeon anyway. I also tend to agree with many that they could tone down the trash a bit in raid dungeons. It's hard to clear the same trash over and over again every raid when you want to get to the generally much more interesting and lucrative boss fights. As far as likes, I like that the reputation PvP sets mean you can get a good hand up to start PvP, then gradually work your way up through Honor gear and into the Arena sets. I am also glad to see many in the thread were big fans of badge gear. I've always liked the concept, it makes for a good reason to run dungeons and means I always feel like I'm working toward something instead of waiting forever for one certain thing that won't drop. It's a great idea and a good positive thread that has even gotten some blue attention, so I'd say it's a perfect change for you to head in and deliver your own critiques and praises before BC is just a speed bump on the way to level 80.
Breakfast Topic: What piece of Sunwell Badge loot is first on your list?
Proudmoore may have been first, but more and more servers are opening up Smith Hauthaa's inventory by the day. As of 9 PM last night, the total shown on Us.gorgonnash.info was somewhere around 45 servers open, with many more servers less than 5% away. You know what that means: precious, precious items. My server's had the badge vendor for a few days now, so I have already partaken. I got the Tameless Breeches for my Druid (as shown off on the right). As shameful as it is for me to say, I was still rocking the Heavy Clefthoof, so this was a huge upgrade for me. I even ran a Sethekk Halls heroic later that evening (no Reins of the Raven Lord, alas!) and claimed the Primal Nether for a nice Nethercleft Leg Armor for them, so I pretty much have the ultimate Feral tank pants for non-raiders now. Which is awesome. As far as my Hunter goes, unfortunately she still has 60 badges left to go until she can get her hands on the Crossbow of Relentless Strikes, but I'm trying to stay strong and not blow the badges I do have on a new ring. 2 weeks of Karazhan and a few heroics on the side, that's my mantra. What about you? I'm sure you've read up up on all our extensive new badge loot guides and already have a pretty good idea of what you're going to go for. If the vendor is open on your server, what did you buy first? If not, or if you're still saving up those last few badges, what's first on your list?
Blood Pact: Dressing for the occasion
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.
The Light and How to Swing It: Badge rewards in 2.4
Now that the patch is upon us, it's a good time for reflecting upon all the new badge rewards available to us in the near future. As a hybrid class with 3 main viable specs (healing, tanking, DPS), it's no wonder that there's a lot of new badge gear for paladins in this patch. Allison did a fantastic write-up of new badge gear for druids a few days back, so I figured I'd follow her format as it relates to paladins! HolyItemization for Healing specs has been pretty solid when it comes to badge gear, and the new stuff is no exception. Just like the Pier 1 set that 2.3 introduced, you'll find lots of healing, spell crit and mana per 5 on the new gear... just more of it.
Blood Pact: Badge loot shopping!
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? Now let's look at the shiny purples!
Shifting Perspectives: 2.4 Badge-A-Palooza, Druid style
Every week, Shifting Perspectives is written by someone who is not me. Except for that one time. Rather an addictive experience, stealing this column. Does anyone even read the italicized portion at the top? Hello? Nobody? I'm just gonna sing. "My baloney has a first name, it's O-S-C-A-R, my baloney has a [censored over copyright infringement] (ed. just do the column, please).While I sincerely hope the rumors about the patch hitting soon aren't true because I'm sitting on all of 43 badges of justice right now (g@^#(*% mother-expletive piece of $%^@ fire resistance set), I am forced to admit that the times may possibly have caught up with me. I confess that for a long time I hadn't even looked at the new badge loot that will become available ingame, partly because things have gotten markedly busier with my guild of late and partly because I'd planned my 2.3 badge acquisitions very carefully and wondered if I could get away with keeping myself somewhat unspoiled for 2.4. That lasted until I found out just how expensive the 2.4 gear is actually going to be ("150 badges for a new weapon, Zach? Are you @*(#&#% kidding me?"). Noble effort while it lasted, though. Well, no more. If 2.4 does hit next week, I'm going to be ready to stand in front of the badge vendor and know exactly what I can't afford to buy for all three specs.This treatment looks exclusively at the new leather gear offerings available in 2.4 and assumes that you won't have access, or at least immediate access, to the new 25-man raid Sunwell Plateau. For my part I am still using six -- count 'em, six -- pieces of badge gear for various tanking purposes in Tier 6 content, which either says a great deal about the general quality of badge gear or says a great deal about how bad feral itemization is in endgame content. I'll be magnanimous today and say it's both.
Are raiders becoming obsolete?
At first glance, I didn't really think there was much out of the ordinary about a post made by one of Nihilum's resto Shaman, Neg. A number of raiding guilds have complained strenuously about the presence of easy-to-obtain epics in the game, but any post entitled, "Does Blizzard Hate Raiders?" is typically going to get a scoff and little else. I had read the article shortly before zoning into Black Temple for the third time ever, and for the first time with the ingame sound on. My guild had recently killed both High Warlord Naj'entus and Supremus, and while the Karabor Sewers portion of the instance is interesting to look at, it pales in comparison to what you'll see once you're offered a teleport to a different floor by a member of the Ashtongue Deathsworn. My guildies and I were really just there to farm Hearts of Darkness for resist gear and to explore a little bit, with nothing really important on our minds. Nevertheless, what we saw that night was beautiful. The floor you're ported to has a tiny, friendly area with the Ashtongue Quartermaster, but beyond that lie a number of sinister things. The ceiling is pillared by giant statues much like those that guard the portal into Outland, and rogues lurk in pairs seemingly all around you. Not infrequently you find yourself turning around to shouts on vent to see them rapidly killing off members of the raid; we finally hit upon the strategy of sending our own rogues off to sniff out the presence of danger while the raid itself was ringed and guarded on all sides by the tanks. Once another set of rogues was found, our hunters set up Flares to flush them out of hiding, marked them, and pulled carefully. You were only really safe if you were in the middle portion of the raid; wandering off to go explore on your own was unthinkable.The music is lovely, the atmosphere is stellar, and for the first time ever in a raid I felt the real sense of a dangerous place with violent, unpredictable creatures that didn't want us there. It was one of the few times that we've actually had to use real strategy as a raid outside of a boss fight. Black Temple makes it abundantly obvious that you are a small, embattled group struggling to survive against overwhelming odds. Most raids are pretty straightforward - learn the tricks to the trash, pull the trash, clear the trash, ask "What's the respawn timer?", and then kill the boss. Tempest Keep is a pretty cold and sterile environment; Serpentshrine Cavern is more interesting visually but the trash is, in many cases, just pull after pull after pull of the exact same stuff (weirdly enough, Karazhan and Zul'Aman seem to come a little closer to the Black Temple raid mentality than their Tier 5 brothers). But there is so much obvious care and attention lavished on the endgame raids, I said to myself (while taking tons of screenshots and turning the sound up), that I just don't buy the argument that Blizzard doesn't give a hoot about raiders. But Neg isn't really writing about the conflict between raiders and the rest of us, which has been a pretty thoroughly discussed in one form or another. It's his contention that the raiding world - what I saw on Thursday and what Nihilum practically does professionally - is becoming obsolete in this, the Age of Purple.
How many Badges of Justice do you need?
So with the new badge gear vendor showing up on the 2.4 PTR, I know a lot of people who are getting a little bit of shell shock seeing just how many Badges of Justice they'll need to get that gear. At this point, I've got two words for them: Don't Panic. You'll have plenty of time. With 2.4 likely needing at least another month or so to go live, and then at least a few more weeks before most servers do enough dailies to unlock the vendor, I'm betting on somewhere around a good 10 weeks before we're even able to spend the badges we gather. In 10 weeks, you can gather a lot of badges starting right now, and add a few more badge gaining methods when 2.4 itself goes live. Let's look at the options for collecting badges and see how much bang for your buck they give you after the jump. Hopefully, almost everyone can find themselves able to do at least one of them, and we can all look forward to fitting ourselves out when we finally make it to the Sun's Reach Armory.
New badge gear vendor unlocked on PTR
We've already discussed the loot, but we now have official confirmation: It is badge gear, and the vendor is unlocked with the "Make Ready" quest from the smith herself after the Armory phase of the daily chain is unlocked. You're going to want to start saving up the badges now, though. the prices are as follows: -150 badges for the two-handers, the crossbow and the one-handed caster weapons.-105 badges for the main hand melee weapons.-45 badges for the off-hand melee weapons.-100 badges for chest and leg armor.-75 badges for waist, belt, and foot armor.-60 badges for the rings.This is the PTR of course, so these totals could easily change, but if you want to get yourself some of this phat loot the moment the vendor gets unlocked on your server, you'll probably want to start planning those Karazhan runs and Heroic sessions now.If you want to go check it out yourself, by the way, the portal to Quel'danas from Shattrath has been opened on test server as well, so you can just head to the center of Shattrath city and teleport directly there. Thanks to our various tipsters for the heads up.
