Friday, November 13, 2009

3.3 loot preview



 MMO-Champion has given us the first preliminary loot lists from Icecrown.

The 5-man loot will be ilevel 219, heroic 5-man ilevel 232
10-man loot will be ilevel 251 and  264, respectively.
25-man loot will be 264 ilevel  and 277, respectively.



I’ve already plugged in the numbers from the gear that MMO-Champ has datamined so far and interestingly, at least for the first few bosses so far, the loot doesn’t look overwhelming given the ilevel increase.
Obviously, 25-man loot will eventually be superior, and I anticipate Tier 10 gear will be quite … epic, but given comparable item levels, the early Icecrown Citadel loot is itemized worse than TOC was.
Example: the Lightborne Spire and Citadel Enforcer’s Claymore grade out as marginal upgrades to Lothar’s Edge, Justicebringer, and Sharpened Obsidian Blade, despite being a higher item level. Quel’Delar is good, however, and it does look great!

The 251 ilevel Flesh-Shaper’s Gurney Strap grades out a considerably weaker than the 258 Bloodbath Belt – as in, about 15-20% worse.
I guess that means if you’re already in 245s and 258s, then your upgrades will come from later in 25-man Icecrown, crafted gear, and Tier gear. That’s not so bad I suppose :)
 
Of course, every new raid instance has to have that shiny object of our love and attention. In Naxx, it was the beautiful Betrayer of Humanity (Death’s Bite was pretty cool, too). In Ulduar, there was the Worldcarver and Voldrethar, Dark Blade of Oblivion. In TOC, it’s been the Justicebringer. Some weapon that stands out from the rest as the coolest, best looking, most dramatic, and of course, provides the most dps ownage! We know that Shadowmourne will be the ultimate 2-hander we all lust after, so I suppose a ‘regular’ epic of any persuasion will play second fiddle, but I’d still like to see some really awesome upgrades, particularly since Shadowmourne will probably (should) only be obtainable in hard modes.


The Tier 10 gear item stats aren't known yet, but the 2 and 4-piece bonuses have been published and they are pretty good overall. 2-piece should be about a 1.5% overall damage increase, and 4-piece should be easily sustained for the 3% overall damage bump - very nice for top end sets. Tier 9 4pc is overwhelmingly powerful right now which is why I roll diseases, but in 3.3 it will be nerfed signficantly to entice us to adopt T10. We won't drop 4pc T9 until we have 2pc T10, but at that point it will probably be worth doing.



Can’t wait to see what else we’ll be able to get in there!

2 comments:

  1. :)
    I'm working on my new spreadsheet with some of the AEP (attack power equivalence points) estimates for 3.3, and the newer items seem to grade out a little better for their item level.

    Watched my runes in raid last night to confirm (which I did) just how easy it will be to keep the T10 4-piece bonus for dps active all the time - and it will indeed be easy :)

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