To those in BC, a question...

[angry.bob]

I know that the general information out right now says that level 65 BC greens are better than T3 stuff right now. I've heard that they're much rarer than current green drops are.

I've got enough honor built up to pretty much get any 5 pieces of Field Marshal's Lamellar, and then be able to earn enough to get the last piece and a 2-hander before BC comes out. Considering I will never, ever raid no matter what, and gold being too expensive to buy right now to buy stuff at the AH, is the drop rate and item quality in BC good enough that I would be better off waiting, or should I go ahead and suit up in FM armor?

[Threash]

I know that the general information out right now says that level 65 BC greens are better than T3 stuff right now. I've heard that they're much rarer than current green drops are.

Thats a bit of an exageration, nobody i know has replaced any tier 3 until 70.  PvP gear does get outdated a lot faster though.

I've got enough honor built up to pretty much get any 5 pieces of Field Marshal's Lamellar, and then be able to earn enough to get the last piece and a 2-hander before BC comes out. Considering I will never, ever raid no matter what, and gold being too expensive to buy right now to buy stuff at the AH, is the drop rate and item quality in BC good enough that I would be better off waiting, or should I go ahead and suit up in FM armor?

You might as well wait and get lvl 70 pvp gear with that honor then you will be set to start playing in the arena with a good set of blues rather than having to farm the group instances at lvl 70 for a decent blue set.  Some people dont seem to realize there is lvl 70 gear from normal pvp apart from the uber arena stuff thats comparable to high end blues, the weapons for example are around 71 dps.

[Phred]

I know that the general information out right now says that level 65 BC greens are better than T3 stuff right now. I've heard that they're much rarer than current green drops are.

Thats a bit of an exageration, nobody i know has replaced any tier 3 until 70.  PvP gear does get outdated a lot faster though.

Exactly. While some green items may have some stats better than a T3 epic, it'll be missing other crucial stats that make it the exact equivalent. Rogues for instance might find  gear with sta and atk to match a t3 peice, with absolutely no agi on it.

If you are a class that relies on less stats you may do well with the green gear but most classes need more than just 2 stats to build on.

As to drop rates, they seem about the same to me. Some days are better than others same as live. They only added world blue drops two patches ago so those were nonexistant until then and afaik no one has found any world epic drops yet. Also no rare named mobs and no chests. Hopefully these will all be in when it releases.

[Paelos]

Tier 3 pieces relate pretty consistantly to level 68 Blues. However, those blues aren't combined with set bonuses so they lose their total gains in stats when combined. In essence, Tier 3 will take you to the point where you are ready to fight for Tier 4 pieces, and perhaps beyond.

[Merusk]

Not having seen the stuff beyond 65 yet, all I can say is I've already replaced most of my T1 bits with greens or quest drops.  Those that I haven't are because the majority of the Beta community seems to vendor greens rather than sell them on the AH.  (Of which I'm guilty as well.  No Auction House in Outlands and no mule = "I'm not trekking back to stormwind every fucking day."  Greens go for ~3g to a vendor, tho. So not bad.)

Phred mentions greens not having enough 'good stat' distribution like Purples/ T3.  They've made some strides against this by introducing new "Of the ..." items.   They all have 3 stats on them and are keen for certain classes.  The ones I remember;  "Of the Soldier" - Str, Sta, Crit. "Of the Bandit" - Agi, AP, Stam. "Of the Elder" - (not entirely sure on this one) Int, spell crit, stam.  Those are the 3 I've seen and remember, I'm sure there's one for healing and possibly spell penetration.

In all, while the T2 and t3 stuff might last longer than folks originally were predicting it WILL get replaced once you hit 70 and start doing content there.   BC is like a giant reboot for everyone, and it'll be interesting to see how things shake-out.

[Simond]

Those that I haven't are because the majority of the Beta community seems to vendor greens rather than sell them on the AH.  (Of which I'm guilty as well.  No Auction House in Outlands and no mule = "I'm not trekking back to stormwind every fucking day."  Greens go for ~3g to a vendor, tho. So not bad.)

I'd imagine in live that people will bind in Shattrath and use the one-way portals to the old world cities for AH access.

Also expect a lot of mage (ports) & shaman (hearth spell every 15 minutes) bank mules.

[Ironwood]

Stupid Question :  Are there no mail boxes ?

[MrHat]

Stupid Question :  Are there no mail boxes ?

lol.  There are, he said "and no mule".  Me? I'll be using a mule.

Edit: Here's my question, will I have to preorder this shit?

[Dren]

Those that I haven't are because the majority of the Beta community seems to vendor greens rather than sell them on the AH. 

I would have guessed they were disenchanting them.  That's what I do with anything I can't use.  The mat's are worth more than the item 90% of the time.

[Simond]

Edit: Here's my question, will I have to preorder this shit?

Depends on whether you think Blizzard can ship X million TBC boxes to the shops by the beginning of the week after next. And that's assuming they don't try to throttle back the inevitable server issues by having a limited release.

Personally, I preordered months ago. ;)

[Arrrgh]

This is priest, but the prices all look the same...

http://www.wowhead.com/?itemset=597


Marshal's Silk Cuffs...

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=29002


Sergeant's Heavy Cape...

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28379



Set plus cuffs and cape are going to be 50 WS, 70 AB, 50 AV tokens, and 84,000 honor.

The 70 grand marshal set is blue, the arena set is purple. There's not much difference between them so try to avoid letter color snobbishness. It's great that the difference between blues and purples has narrowed so much.

I suggest you start saving up honor points now because once BC hits you'll want to actually level up instead of grind honor/tokens.

The current 60 BGs will become 60-69 BGs.

The resilience of the tier 5 raid set is much lower than honor and arena sets so PvE raiders won't be able to PvP well simply via their raid armor anymore.  Another good point that shows they listened to all the gear>skill screaming.

[Venkman]

Stupid Question :  Are there no mail boxes ?

Yes.

Also, Engineers get a new recipe for a portable Mailbox. I'll definitely be getting that one, given the size of the zones in BC. While I can port numerous places, and I believe there is a Portal/Teleport destination in BC, the run anywhere without an epic mount (which I won't have for some time) is arduous. Portable mailboxes ftw! Maybe I'll charge people too 

[Ironwood]

Ah.  I had forgotten about the portable mailbox.  My main is an Engineer, so I would imagine getting that is going to be my priority too.

[MrHat]

lol @ Blackberrys.

[Ironwood]

Portable mailbox is pretty overpowered tho.  It's basically a free backpack of unlimited size for 30 days.

[Merusk]

Stupid Question :  Are there no mail boxes ?

lol.  There are, he said "and no mule".  Me? I'll be using a mule.

Edit: Here's my question, will I have to preorder this shit?

As will I, which was the point of 'and no mule' It seems most folks can't be bothered to establish one for something as temporary as a beta.  Hell I don't bother logging into beta more than an hour or two every other day or so, just because it's so temporary.

Or, perhaps as Dren is suggesting they're getting them DE'd. I expect there's a lot less of that now that you actually need a full-on enchanter rather than an R1 alt, however.   If it comes down to me having to spend the time to track down a 'chanter while filling 6-10 bag slots during questing vs dumping the item on a vendor, I know what I'm doing.

[Venkman]

Portable mailbox is pretty overpowered tho.  It's basically a free backpack of unlimited size for 30 days.

Err, not so much these days.

When they patched 2.0 and 2.0.1, there was a LOT of people who lost stuff along the way. One of the main culprits was items in the Mailbox. Blizzard has a pretty solid policy of not reimbursing items in the Mailbox or in that nether realm between sender and recipient. I know a few people personally who got burned by this. Now, sure, it's their own fault for not using every character slot and cheapo bank slot expansion and consistently logging in alts to receive the goods sent by their other alts. But at the end of the day that's still a crapload of time down the drain, enough so to really piss people off.

So I suspect there will be much less reliance on Mailbox as a exploit-storage system going forward. Clearing out one's inventory on a long drop-heavy raid will certainly be useful, but people will be quick to clear the mailbox from their recipient character too.

[Ironwood]

Ok, I'll rephrase :  It's basically a free backpack of unlimited size for the non-retarded for 30 days.

For example, I would only use it for potions and thistle tea and whatnot - Not storing my spare T1 armor.  :)

[SurfD]

Eh, I use the mailbox as temporary (key being TEMPORARY) storage of all sorts of stuff.  I once bounced amonst 20 librams of resiliance around in the mailbox for 2 months before i offloaded them on the AH at inflated prices.

The key to Mailboxing is to get and religiously use a mod like MailTo, which tracks items in the mail, and warns you at configurable intervals regarding when mail will expire.

[Modern Angel]

I hit 70 and scaled off my beta playing awhile ago but no, you won't be replacing tier 3 nearly that fast. That was a combination of the catasses' worst fears combined with the hardcore and bitter non-raiders' wildest dreams. The confluence was so earth shattering it nearly destroyed the western half of North America in a conflagration of the improbable.

At 70 I think the only gear I have left are my Netherwind Pants and (inexplicably) my Netherwind Bracers. Pretty sure everything has been replaced and  that those two pieces would have been replaced had I played beta post 70 more.