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WoW Archivist: WoW's 20 greatest non-legendary weapons
WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold? Wrathion has kept us quite busy since the Horde and Alliance landed on Pandaria's shores. Many players assumed that all this work wouldn't lead to mere metagems alone, but a legendary weapon as well at the end of our service. Given that all (most*) prior legendary items were weapons, the assumption was reasonable. As it turns out, Wrathion will reward us with orange-grade cloaks rather than stabby bits of metal. Some players have been disappointed by this revelation, and let's face it: legendary weapons are absolutely the most cherished and coveted items in the game. However, legendary weapons don't have the market cornered on awesome. The game includes thousands of non-legendary weapons and some of them have earned the love of players despite the color of their font. Let's look at what I think are the top 20 non-legendary weapons from WoW's long history.
Midsummer Fire Festival: Frostscythe of Ahune stats to remain uncool
Things are heating up all over Azeroth for the Midsummer Fire Festival. Well, everything except the Frostscythe of Lore Ahune, that is. Blizzard updated the holiday Ahune cloaks to ilevel 353 for players to grab, but Ahune's trademark staff just got the "scale" upgrade -- it's not really ideal for the classes it is intended for. In fact, it's fairly worthless for intellect-reliant classes. Bashiok responded on the official forums that to make Ahune's Frostscythe an ideal weapon stat-wise would be to dissuade players from getting their weapon upgrade in ZA or ZG. Many players were concerned with the Frostscythe's stats because of its inflated +700 stamina instead of plus intellect, which casters obviously prefer, since stamina has been normalized across gear. To be fair, I think it is completely fine to have this holiday fluff item be a non-ideal, cosmetic item that players can wear for it's on-use effect and prestige-luck. Not every item that drops has to be the ideal, especially during a holiday that is coinciding (potentially) with patch 4.2 dropping. That staff you want to be ideal so badly isn't going to be exactly ideal in week if the patch hits June 28. For now, it was an easier alternative to just scale the item opposed to tinkering around and making something perfect. I'd say just leave it as a fun, unique item.
Lord Ahune's loot table
Like Halloween's Headless Horseman, the Midsummer Fire Festival's summonable boss Lord Ahune offers a nice selection of epic loot, as well as some really fun vanity/joke loot to keep the mood light. Most of the epic drops from the Frost Lord are duplicates of old Badge of Justice loot to help save you a fair amount of badges, but there are also a few new, completely unique drops.From completely awesome scythes to the Frost Lord's personal booze, we have a full listing of Lord Ahune's known drops. Even if you're geared to the teeth from Sunwell Plateau, Ahune has something for you, though it might come in a form a little sillier than traditional equipment. Take a look behind the cut below to see it all!
Meet Lord Ahune
First off, I'd like to warn everyone that this post contains fairly detailed spoilers for the upcoming holiday, the Midsummer Fire Festival. If you'd like the details of the new boss to remain a surprise, this post probably isn't for you! But I know quite well that most WoW players can't stand not knowing what's what, so I'm sure many of you will continue.As mentioned in Daniel's post a few days ago, this Festival will bring us another Headless Horseman-esque boss, complete with phat lewts. You can check it all out on the PTR right now. Found within the Slave Pens, this boss, named Lord Ahune, is another Ragnaros look-alike. As you can probably guess from his appearance alone, Ahune is another lieutenant of the Elemental Lords, like Prince Thunderaaan. Ahune is serving one of the Lords in particular: Neptulon. Is this another bit of the story of Skar'this? Time will tell!The Lord Ahune encounter is an alternating two phase battle, again similar to the Headless Horseman. Without giving away too many details, be prepared to fight a number of adds in one of the two phases and have some burst damage queued up for the other. Most any group worth their salt should be able to put away Ahune relatively easily.While the battle is fun, the loot is funner. More fun? Funnerer.
