heirloom-items
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The Queue: Hey Sacco, can you do today's The Queue edition
Playing the role of Adam Zibbert tonight will be the Michael Sacco. There will be a brief intermission between acts. Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Zibbert will be your host today. You know the drill! LET'S GET US SOME QUESTIONS ANSWERED.Bearkub asked... My main is a lvl 80 paladin (holy/prot), gold is not an issue, and I have everything I could want off the Wintergrasp PVP vendor/npc. My alt is a level 70 hunter (hilarity ensues). Is it worth it to spend 200 stonekeeper's shards to buy the +10% XP bonus shoulders? Or would those shards be better spent on something I can sell for gold (the non-bound pvp meta-gems, for example)? Is there something to spend the shards on that I'm unaware of? I imagine they're worth it on a lvl 58 DK alt, but I'm not sure what the "cost/benefit" cut-off is.Heirloom items are pretty great, in my experience, especially the shoulders. With 3.1, they also grant 10% extra quest experience on top of mob XP, which is a lot -- especially given that most of your XP earned while going from 70-80 is going to be quest XP. It, essentially, takes a flat 10% off of your leveling time, sometimes more. And, when you're done with it, you can send it to another alt, even if they can't wear that specific armor type, because the item will automatically become the highest possible armor type for that specific character. I'd say it's worth the purchase, but it's a personal choice. Just remember you can get gold back at any time, but leveling time isn't something you can recoup.
The Queue: There are no Roombas in Azeroth
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. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.Good afternoon, everyone. I have a very important question for all of you. Recently, I purchased a Roomba. I'm not allowed to have pets where I live, so a little robot that makes chirping noises and cleans the house for me will have to do. There's only one problem: We need to name it. My girlfriend and I each picked our preferred names. Help us decide, o readers! Name that Roomba! Oh right, and we have some of our usual Q&A after that, too.%Poll-28871%yossarian asked..."Can Death Knights use Runeforging on BoA Heirloom weapons? I'd love to level my DK with an Arcanite Reaper lookalike, but it may not be worth giving up Runeforging. If not, are there plans to "fix" this so that Runeforge enchants don't transfer along with the item?"
The Queue: Somebody has a case of the Mondays!
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.<Insert witty opening remarks here.> Boltzmann asked..."Has Blizzard ever said anything about the prospect of allowing Bind on Account items to be transferred to different servers? It'd be sweet to be able to level a Death Knight on a friend's server and start out with the good gear."
The Queue: Seven
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. Before I wrote six. Now I'm writing seven. And if you got the picture on six, you'll probably understand why Kara Thrace is the featured image for this article where I answer seven of your questions. And if you don't understand what I'm talking about, just know that my girlfriend bears a resemblance to Katie Sackhoff (beyond sharing the same first name), and that's worthy of a Queue introduction right there.And mark my words, she is somehow related to the seventh Cylon. Starbuck, not my girlfriend (although...).Nakabeast asked..."Heirlooms and similar items are listed as "Bind on Account." Now wouldn't this make more sense if these BoA items actually did what their tooltip lists, and let us trade these throughout entire accounts, not just one server? I'd love for my Death Knight on my friend's server to have Murky and the Big Blizzard Bear."
The Queue: Procs and more on Patch 3.1
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. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.Good morning, ladies and gents! Or afternoon for some of you. Probably evening for a few others! It's morning for me, though. That's all that matters, isn't it? Indeed. Adam is out of the office today thanks to a blizzard murdering his internet connection, so I'll be covering for him even though today is technically his turn to do The Queue. Lazy such-and-such, letting weather get in his way. Grumble.Ian R. asked...Do you think the first couple of bosses in Ulduar can be PUG'd on easy mode? Like Sartharion and Vault of Archavon?
The Queue: Hard mode is hard
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. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.Good afternoon, ladies and gents! Before we get started today I just want to thank everyone for participating in my Hawaiian Pizza poll. It was a silly, spur of the moment sort of thing, and it really made my day to see it creep up to around 11,000 votes! Thank you all very much for humoring me.Again, there are a few Ulduar spoilers in this post, but only minor. Be warned. Also, vote Alex.Adrexani asked...This has always puzzled me, Arthas is a Death Knight, Death Knights are dead, yet no where in lore do I see that Arthas died, so did he die or is he still alive?
World of Warcraft: So easy, a caveman can do it
If it feels like World of Warcraft may be losing its luster for your, then chances are that you feel the game has become too easy. Since the launch of Wrath of the Lich King, a large chunk of the game population has hit 80, done the heroic dungeons, and even entered into the raids with ease. Has the game become too easy?GameSpy editor Gerald Villoria has dedicated one of his columns to just some of the ways that Warcraft might have become too easy for everyone. While he points his finger at both the player community and the developers, his main point comes from the newly introduced heirloom items that come from the endgame emblem vendors. With enough emblems lying around to fill a bathtub, Gerald was able to equip a new rogue with three heirloom items and effectively outclass almost everything in the lower levels including blue item drops.At this point, it seems that any higher class player, or any player who enters the game through the recruit-a-friend program, can develop a character that can completely skip through low-end content without giving it a thought. You don't need to get excited about rare drops in early dungeons, or even really pay attention to the item drop system anymore. Has the game become so easy that it's no longer fun?
The Queue: Heirlooms, mounts, and more
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.Today we're going to have a couple of simple answers and just plain "I don't know" responses mixed in with the usual stuff, because they've been repeat questions and not necessarily just one person asking them. Maybe a straight I Don't Know will help a little, but probably not.Delshay Dethecus US asked... My question is: Are Heirloom items worth getting for your Alts? If so why? I understand with End game going so well (easier) a lot of players are doing a lot of Heroics still and they are a good way to spend Emblems after you get the gear you need, but are Heirlooms a good thing to buy or should we save the Emblems for something that may come in the future?
Wrath 101: Heirloom items and how to get them
Wrath of the Lich King introduced not only new content, but an entirely new type of item. These items are called Heirloom items, or Bind to Account (BoA) items. They aren't tied to any one character and can be freely passed from alt to alt, but they're all tied to one account, the account that bought the item. No handing them over to your friends, no mailing them to other players, no mailing them to your second account. So far none of these items are drops, but rewards for more veteran players of the Wrath content. There are two different ways of earning these items, but they dovetail nicely.Quite simply, you need to participate in Wrath's content. Items suited to PvE are acquired via Emblems of Heroism, and items suited for PvP are acquired via Stone Keeper's Shards.
The Queue: Finding treasure where there's no treasure to be found
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 Queue. Forgive the awful quality of the screenshot above, I tried to show off Malygos' righteous beard but the guy doesn't sit still, even if you ask him nicely. He's a crabby son of a lich sometimes. Well, let's forget about him and dig into today's questions. As always, if you have a question for The Queue, leave it in the comments section below and we'll get to it in a future edition. Magebleck asked... As a mage, my main weapon is almost always a Staff with some good stats to it. Since Wrath of the Lich King has come out I have read several places that there are now some really well speced staffs that are "Bind to Account", such as the Dignified Headmaster's Charge and the Grand Staff of Jordan. I understand that their stats scale with level, but how does one go about aquiering these new "BtA" items?
The Queue: Ebonweave and heirloom longevity
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.Welcome to today's edition of The Queue, in which we don't have any witty or necessary preamble, so we're going to skip straight to the questions.Aigarius asked...Is it possible to craft Ebonweave without cold weather flying?
Ask a Beta Tester: Heirloom items, class trainers, and more
Another day, another edition of Ask a Beta Tester. Today, as a special treat, I am going to answer your questions while blindfolded. And on fire. And covered in bees....actually, I don't really like that idea so I'm going to answer your questions like I normally do, starting with Naraxus's question...Something I was thinking about was how much of an important stat "Hit" was on endgame gear in BC. A couple of patches ago a lot of the lower level gear was given a hit stat to it and I was wondering if the 70-79 gear in WotLK has "Hit" or is it just basic stats and spell power, attack power etc?There's some Hit on leveling gear, but not enough to keep you capped right to 80 in my experience. I actually didn't really try, I concerned myself more with survival and longevity. In the case of a Priest, that meant stamina, spirit, and spell damage. Leveling gear is a bit more simplified. Raw stats, and some attack power/spell power in most cases.You'll also find some crit, hit, and haste, but your leveling gear isn't going to have as many random stats slapped on it as you see on some raid gear.
Ask a Beta Tester: It's all about the money
We have a lot of profession questions today, but also a few about Achievements, the Beast Mastery 51-point talent, and what happens when you push Death Knights off a cliff:Riley asks...How is the Shaman Hex ability working? Does the target still have control of movement and does the PvP trinket work against it?Hex is a the crowd-control spell for Shamans referenced by the devs at the class panel here, and it's been tinkered with a lot since we first heard about it. It was originally meant to be more of an emergency-only, short-duration CC. In its present form, Hex's duration has been increased to 30 seconds and it doesn't necessarily break on damage. However, in PvP the target can control where they go, the PvP trinket does work (you can also shapeshift out of it as a Druid), and it's considered a curse and can be dispelled by Mages, Druids, and restoration Shamans (who will have the ability do dispel curses with a 31-point talent Cleanse Spirit). Think of it as a somewhat odd combination of Counterspell, Fear, and Polymorph.
Ask a Beta Tester: Baron Rivendare, heirloom items, and more
Remember a little while ago on Ask a Beta Tester, someone asked if Jaina Proudmoore has any role in Wrath? And I said no, she has no new story involvement? Well, a recent beta patch made a fool out of me. She has a role, it's epic, and no she doesn't make out with Arthas you horrible, horrible people.And with that out of the way, let's get on with the questions. Shadgalaul asked...What about the whole dual-spec situation? Was this implemented, or did it just fade out and get scrapped? This hasn't been implemented yet, and nobody is sure whether it's on hold or been scrapped. It seems like instead of giving dual specs, they're trying to make one spec be able to hold its own. For example, tanks are getting higher DPS so they can go off and do their quests without wanting to hang themselves. It's not a perfect solution and there are still a few balance issues, but I bet that if they shelved the dual spec thing, this is what they tried instead.We may still see dual specs in the future, but we haven't so far.
Heirloom items are for leveling
You've read already about Heirloom items, which were implemented in the latest beta build and are bind-to-account. You can equip them, and then when you get a replacement, send them to any alt you have on the server; the stats on the items scale with level. They're bought with heroic/raid badges, as far as I can tell. So what are these items for? My interpretation is that they're largely to help your alts level, and to give you something to do with badges if you have too many on your mains. Although the stats do scale down when you equip them on lower-level characters, they're still quite powerful items, on par blues. And here's one thing that's reinforcing that impression: I've found four Heirloom shoulders so far that give +10% experience from killing monsters. This is a great idea. You know that anyone who has these shoulders has at least one character at level 80, so why not let them level 5% faster? (5% is based on an estimate of half of one's experience being from quests and half from mobs.)
