Not to long ago, I had a question in one of the comments asking why I hadn’t talked about the new five-man instance, Trial of the Champion, yet. To be honest the reason isn’t that I dislike the new five-man or anything, since I rather DO like it, it’s just that I figured… hey… it’s a five-man, since when do I make in-depth posts about those? Ya know? It simply didn’t seem necessary.
Recently though, I’ve discovered something noteworthy about this new five man. Namely, this place is Epics Heaven.
See, interesting thing about me is that I usually have no idea what loot various instances drop. Well, unless I see something super awesome that someone is wearing around town, in which case I find out where it drops and get all fanatical over it. But other than that, I don’t have Atlas Loot, I don’t really comb MMO-Champion or WoWHead for stuff… and I’ll go to a new instance or raid and have no idea what drops out of there. It’s actually really funny because more than once now I’ve headed into this new instance, watched everybody in the party, in turn, link exactly what they want from each boss, and then we get to me and I’m like “Um, I have no idea what drops here” while I bounce around on my Argent Horse or Wolf.
It actually ends up in a lot of pleasant surprises for me. For example, the time I healed Heroic Nexus for the first time on my Tree. Some apparently super awesome healy mace dropped from the last boss. Everybody starts congratulating me and telling me how many dozens of times they ran their healer through the place for it and I’m just like “Oh hey, cool, I didn’t even know that existed. /yoink”
Same deal with Trial of the Champion. I’ve ran Lunapike through it about a dozen times on Normal at this point, and once on Heroic. The gear is just ridiculous. So many surprise upgrades. It’s great for gearing up a fresh 80.
During one of those runs, a super epic trinket dropped. I kid you not, four people rolled Need on it, including myself. The only person who didn’t roll need was the healer. I won it with like a 96. Immediately this was followed by the other three people lamenting how they’d ran the place twenty times and had never seen it and/or won it and now would have to run it another twenty times. I was just like “Ooooh shiny, I didn’t know this dropped out of here! *pats it gently* *equips it* *immediatly sees like a 400 DPS increase*”
My lack of looking-at-potential-loot also makes me rather behind in some areas. For example, I had aforementioned Lunapike run Heroic Violet Hold about ten times for this staff, which used to be pretty much the best thing you could get pre-Naxx, and I assumed it still was. So I finally get it and ‘chant it up, and then two days later I run Heroic Trial of the Champion and this drops. For the record, that’s pretty much a sidegrade of Tawyn’s Ulduar-10 weapon. So yeah. Won it over a Death Knight, which is okay because the Death Knight won a helmet that dropped off of the same boss.
The pleasant surprises would not end anytime soon, because not long after I was back on my main, Tawyn, doing Heroic TotC and I wound up with a necklace upgrade. Another thing that I had no idea existed. Awesome!
Also there is apparently a really nice gun which drops out of Heroic which my rogue friends enjoy waving in my face. I’m holding out for an Ulduar25 weapon though. I’m going on Saturday ^_^!
So yeah, the new five-man. Fantastic for gearing up. I’d recommend doing it on Normal several times first if you’re a fairly fresh 80, because it is a relatively difficult instance, but the gear you get out of it will help you a lot in Heroic in the future. Plus, jousting is awesome, and I WILL NOT HEAR THIS BE DENIED! =O
Now I’ve just gotta summon up the courage to get my HealyTree back in there. I did it on Normal once and found it to be fairly challenging but not unmanageable, but then an attempt on it on Heroic turned into about five wipes on the first boss, a dissolved group, and me rocking back and forth in the fetal position while I felt rather decidedly like the Worst Tree in History (although my friends assured me that the tank was undergeared, but hey, I’m hard on myself.) Ever since then, I’ve sworn off ever going back as a healer.
I was going to make some sort of horrible tree pun about growing back some nuts to go in there, but ya know what, it’s so bad that I’ll pass. …oops, too late.
>.>
ANYWAYS, this post has got me thinking (scary no?), and I’m thinking of potentially starting a long-running series where I go through Every. Instance. In. The. Game. and talk about hunter lewts and other potentially helpful hunter info for each one. That way, hunters like me who love to level up via instances would sort of have a roadmap for the better places. Would anyone be interested in that, or would it be the TL;DR of the Century?
Speak now, or forever hold your peace!
To be perfectly honest I think the idea of being forced to joust in a dungeon of any kind is silly at best
In a typical game session, I’ll maybe spend an hour total in Dalaran. Crafting stuff, talking to guildmates, waiting for groups to form up, whatever. Maybe an hour spent, in total.
In a typical guild session, then, I’m pretty much guaranteed to see three or four people running around with Marrowstrike. Which is the only, the one-and-only, piece of gear I want from Trial of the Champion. And the only, the one-and-only, piece of gear I haven’t seen drop at least once.
Yes, I got my gun there, to finally replace my Nesingwary 4000. I got some decent leather shoulders that I replaced with Conquest gear. And I got a lot of emblems, and I got the wonderful experience of doing crowd-control again on the first phase of the Black Knight fight. But I haven’t gotten Marrowstrike, and I want it, and I’m starting to wonder if it’s disappeared down the same hole that swallowed the Sonic Spear I never got from Murmur.
Of course I’ll read a long series of posts about hunter loot. But I’ll be sobbing quietly as I page down.
Hehe finally addressed the issue I see. In any case, EVERYTHING that could possibly drop for a Hunter in both normal and heroic TotC have dropped for me already. I could’ve decked myself out in virtually all TotC gear. I unlike most people didn’t have to wait very long to obtain the gun, necklace, trinket, and polearm. I use all of these and it is unbelievable how good they are. I’ve also had a chest, shoulder, gloves, and boots drop although I don’t use any of them except the boots. It’s almost unfair how good the phat lewts is in TotC.
The every instance guide sounds helpful. Could you maybe go back in time about 4 months and do it, so I could’ve known it before I hit 80 and had to figure it all out? 😉
That sounds like an awesome idea for a series of posts.
I would love the hunter lewts posts you are tossing up doing 😉
for my nub self comments on which are great items for MM or BM would be great, I am trying MM as my secondary spec – total newb at it!
kind regards – Kota
Dew it! I wants to see the Hunteriing loot tables for EVERY instance in the game.
Awww curse you 🙁 Ever since I head from / saw Marrowstrike, i’ve been running heroic ToC and it never even dropped, though all of my guildies, once they’ve run the instance without me, link it to me the next time I meet them 🙁 But well, I got a new chestpiece, shoulders and a nice gun from there, so it’s not a waste of time actually ^^
I would really appreciate a series about hunter loot, because my knowledge about the what-drops-where is very similar to yours. I have atlasloot, but I don’t really use it and I was quite happy when doing daily heroic (Nexus) some day ago and a trinked dropped that finally replaced my last below-ilvl200-piece (though ist was a good one (/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(“\124cff0070dd\124Hitem:44014:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0\124h[Fezzik’s Pocketwatch]\124h\124r”);)! the new one does the same, only harder and longer >:D /script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(“\124cff0070dd\124Hitem:37166:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0\124h[Sphere of Red Dragon’s Blood]\124h\124r”);).
Oh I see, Wowhead’s links don’t work here *ahem* ^_^
Hehe, I’ve had kind of a similar experience on my Enhancement Shaman… I think almost everything I could use dropped for me in the two regular and two heroic runs I’ve done, and since I hadn’t been paying attention to what kind of drops to expect I was completely shocked and surprised (and thrilled) every time.
(The trinket dropped on my second regular run, I beat a Death Knight for it. For some reason the feral Druid only Greeded. /boggle)
I think it’s more fun to be surprised than to go in looking for something. 🙂
Ooh, and a Huntery guide to instances would be fun. Instead of one post per dungeon, though, maybe go by level so you can set similar loot side by side? For instance WC and Deadmines are about the same level, both have leather sets. That kind of thing.
Ohhoho, lucky Pike. xDDD;
I’ve been after Marrowstrike on my Druid for DPSing, for a while now. It’s really nice. So, congrats on that! I’d love to see the Banner drop as well, I need a good DPS Trinket upgrade, but I think due to already knowing and wanting these things so bad, they won’t drop for a while. xD;
I’ve been looking forward to gearing up my Hunter through TotC, cause as well noted, the gear is awesome in there!
As for a Hunter guide to instances/loot, I agree with Kate. Heck, that’d be a good resource for little twinks and whatnot, and even just for people who want to see roughly all the gear for that level bracket so if they feel they can’t handle something (I hope they can, as a Hunter though. o_o) Then, they can just go into the guide and say, “Oh, this would be a great upgrade! Oh, and this drops too, let’s go try for it and get some experience at the same time.” Higher up though, it is less useful for Heroics and such due to the lower iLevels of items in circulation now. :[
On a side note, have you gotten to do the new boss in VoA, yet? If so, any thoughts?
Heh, I brought my abandoned hunter up to 80 last Sunday, abandoned because they took away my awesome BM dps, and my hunter IS BM (BM 4 life lulz …).
Anywho, I got an urge to shoot stuff again. When a guildie hit 80, we normally (pre 3.2) gather up and craft him/her a set of epics to be ready to farm heroics.
This time however (with everyone else having gotten a boost to their dps), we decided to just run ToC norm and HC, carrying me through.
And now they all despise me – I have had such loot-luck/karma, that I even have a hard time believing it. I just need the polearm, other than that I’ve had every piece of available hunter loot from that place. Every time I have been in there on heroic, I have walked away with a new shiny Epic 😀
It IS an awesome instance that place!
@ Donovitch –
Fixed your quote! =D /giggle
@ Nayu – WoWHead links should be enabled, just do a normal URL link to them and they will automatically work.
@ Trinia – I’ve been at work A LOT these past couple days, so no, haven’t done the new VoA boss yet.
I still haven’t gotten into the new instances yet.. My guild has been AWOL for months and I’m still leveling my hunter, who’s now lvl 73. On my Paladin healer, seems no one ever needs a healer anymore. And my DK is too under-geared as I just use her for farming.
I would really look forward to a post or series of post about hunter’s loots that drops from all the instances. As always great post.
I love jousting as well, though I’ve not done it yet in ToC. As much as I love it, though, I don’t know if I could do it without healing between opponents. I’ll have to give that a try.
A roadmap of instances would be awesome!
About the jousting …
I do not really mind it that much, but can someone tell me how you are supposed to handle picking up the 3 bosses, when it is over?
Even if you get them down so close to each other that a DK can get them with a DnD, they seem to just ignore threat in the beginning …
I find it hard to believe that they designed an instance you are supposed to run in and out of ..
Oh yeah, and then I do not remember anything being as bugged as the jousting .. last night the warrior got knocked off the horse, then we trambled him – which lead to him doing some sort of “walk-in-place” while getting his shields back up. That was a new one for me.
I had to chortle at
Sorry tried to quote something from the post. Obviously didnt work 🙁
If you wanna run every instance in the game and catalogue the hunter loots, it might encourage me to actually level my lvl 37 Orc hunter that I currently can’t bring myself to play further.
My main’s a hunter and has been in here maybe twice on heroic just to see what’s the dealo. I outgear everything in here (just got my Talonstrike from 25-man ToC last week – /drool). The trinket’s nice and I should probably get it given that I haven’t upgrade my badge trinket, but I’m not overly motivated to run this place when I have dailies and raids and other toons to level.
However, the reason I post is because of your Healer comment. I had just dinged lvl 79 on my disc priest that is relatively well geared in dungeon blues. I went in with a pug on Wed and I literally could not keep the tank up on the first pull. We even switched tanks to a ulduar geared one, and I didn’t have the spell power to keep him alive.
So I ended up in the same place you were with Tam – wiping 4-5 times and excusing myself to go rock in a corner quietly. I had hoped to snag some gear upgrades in anticipation of hitting 80. Bwahahahahahaha! I’ll go back in at 80, but I might not do so until I’ve purchased some better gear.
Pike, wow-loot.com has a list for every class of every drop that drops from them from every instance.
I would suggest maybe just directing the people on your blog to there instead of re-doing all the work again yourself.
Grats on getting the banner though, I have been running ToC regular fairly often and have yet to win it (it’s especially good for MM stacking ArP).
Pike…
jousting….is not awesome….
The only thing worse is flying all the way down to the foot of the citadel to do it down there….
>_<
But I do like running over Colossus over and over again after we knock him off his mount 😉
If you’re struggling to keep up with the healing on the first encounter, try having an offtank pick up one of the less hard-hitting faction champions. We had a DPS Death Knight just keep one of them busy and it made a world of difference for the MT. I’ve performed the same role by hitting the Bear Form button as a Cat DPS Druid.
/agree Muron
Just link http://wow-loot.com/hunter.htm
I put it on in the background everytime I run an instance for the first time so I know what to look for in drops. It still might be useful to go through and point out some of the better pieces, or items that hold a special place for you tho 🙂
My level 59 Tauren Hunter would thank you for days for such a heads up. After grinding for half his life some nice equipment would be real nice . . .
@ Muron and Znodis – dang, that’s depressing. I was really looking forward to making a series. I think I will anyway…
Hello, Pike! Just found a link to your site from Steady Shot (http://wowwhimsy.wordpress.com/) and I gotta say, I really like your blog a lot. Just turned 80 some months ago with my hunter which is my main and only dude I play… I just can’t do alts… :-(…
Although I gotta admit that I do check WoWHead for new gear wishlists, the same thing happened to me a bunch of times in ToC… I just kinda shrug it off when I win an item that I wasn’t looking forward to, but then I get all excited when I check on the stats in gear websites… Loving ToC!
Yeah, I totally approve of the dungeons posts and will look forward to them…
“Pike gets +1 new frequent reader!”
I made a list on my blog.