Cataclysm Beta: New blacksmithing items revealed
by Matthew Rossi 
Jul 1st 2010 at 1:30AM
From armor to weapons, there's a wide assortment of gear already datamined by the folks at MMO-Champion and I have to say some of this stuff is astonishing. We've talked about gear resets before when previous expansions come out, but when you're looking at such a massive DPS increase between an epic weapon dropped by the heroic Lich King and the crafted weapon you can equip at level 81, it seems like this expansion is really serious about it. Just one example is this level 80 blue tanking hat with 290 stamina on it, a clear sign of the increase in health pools we were told we'd be seeing. The new design paradigm of Cataclysm is definitely showing up in these items. It's safe to say that if you haven't been raiding, you'll probably catch up quickly, and even if you have you'll be replacing items pretty early on.
Filed under: News items, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 4)
Lios Jul 1st 2010 2:55AM
I find the new values are too high. I don't want to have 10.000 AGI and 100.000 HP on my hunter at 85. It's just too much :-/
Zanathos Jul 1st 2010 3:46AM
Why? It's all relative. Wrath stats are pretty ridiculous if you're looking at them from BC or Classic.
zdave Jul 1st 2010 3:56AM
just think where stats will be in 2 years. level 95 cap? tanks with half a million hp, dps charts reaching 100k, healers...well healers still just heal.
it's over-whelming if you think about the scope of things. go to youtube and watch any power of 10 video. that should give you some perspective :)
theRaptor Jul 1st 2010 3:56AM
Well I was wrong. This gear re-set is way over what I expected. I do wonder why we have such a large gear re-set though as the original idea for them was to level the playing field when very few people had even gotten tier 1. I would much rather where matching tier epics until the first tier of raiding than be replacing them with "of the clown" greens.
Blizz are trying to stop level inflation, but they are doing nothing to arrest iLevel inflation.
Reed Jul 1st 2010 7:51AM
I guess it's all in how you look at it. I just enjoy upgrading my characters' gear. Even with the "gear reset", I found it more enjoyable to play on my relatively newly 80 warrior than my raid-geared main, simply because my warrior was faced with much more clear-cut upgrades than my main.
shkss Jul 1st 2010 4:11AM
I have a point to make, correct me if I'm wrong.
A lot of the stats are much higher than anything even at high end Wrath content. But they also use the new set of stats and formulas that Blizzard has come up with for cataclysm. Does this mean the seemingly HUGE (as in over double) difference in stats on comparable items, is due to the fact we are comparing with items that I presume would also be affected by the changes?
I.e. That epic sword may look worse than the blue, but will the epic get better in cataclysm?
Because I don't know.
theRaptor Jul 1st 2010 9:29AM
No, the blues are just better. Highest iLevel PVE gear in wrath is 284. These starting blues and greens are 300. Basic crafted weapons look better than Shadowmourne.
Mike 'The Smooth Dude' Senger Jul 1st 2010 5:43AM
I really like the way things are looking from this post. I'm a firm believer that with each new expansion, all players should be starting off on the same grounds.
By this I mean that no player should have an advantage over other players in the leveling up, 5-man and early raiding phases granted from having really high end gear from the previous expansion.
Both Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King had some issues there. In TBC it wasn't that bad, unless you were pretty much full T3, you were still going to find a ton of upgrades in the 5-mans, but a fair few players still had a distinct advantage during at least a portion of the leveling phase.
Wrath of the Lich King really screwed up in this area, players who were clearing up to 4/5 Hyjal and 3/9 Black Temple or around that mark of progression were vastly outgearing the leveling gear by a significant degree, even being able to pass over a lot of the 5-man stuff. Players who were closer to the full T6 spectrum were able to jump right into the 10-mans, players clearing Sunwell were able to clear the 25-mans right away. With all those realm first achievements around, this was incredibly unfair as it gave any newer guild no chance at the titles.
The problem with WotLK had it's origins during the start of TBC, players were complaining a lot that their level 60 raiding gear was being replaced too quickly, so Blizzard appeased them. A bad choice really when you look at it, as they were appeasing the people who were complaining about getting upgrades. Yeah, because getting an upgrade really sucks...
malaki Jul 1st 2010 6:02AM
omg item level 316 for a 81 blue :O :O my epics are going bye bye fast i can see
nieboh Jul 1st 2010 2:10PM
Yeah, I think it's funny. Back on March 5th (I had to look it up) there was a posting of The Queue subtitled "you know this because you are psychic". In the comments I made the following:
"My turn to try to be psychic. I'm gonna go ahead and predict that level 81 greens from mob drops will be ilvl 284 with quest greens being the same, or possibly a little higher. By 85, the first set of dungeon blues and purples will be 375ish.
Note: (just to be clear) I am not a psychic."
From what I've seen here, I think my guesses were pretty close.
DanKOzz Jul 1st 2010 6:38AM
Keep in mind that certain stats are changing, and certain stat are going away.
Alvraen Jul 1st 2010 7:00AM
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25626576101&sid=1
Links for stream of gob/worg beginning areas, taking requests in this thread of what to look at.
Bonasus Jul 1st 2010 7:09AM
Naxx was so easy, that you could clear it right after turning 80 in crafted blues and quest rewards. I had 4 pc T6, but only kept it 2 weeks into raiding because of the set bonus. Apart from that, players just beginning will never get server firsts over experienced raiders.
From my point of view as a fairly ambitious raider (ICC25 9/12 hard modes) this itemisation politics is pretty much devastating. Why should I run another 4 months the same raid instance to kill the same old bosses over and over again, just to earn some achievement points and items, which will be replaced within a couple of hours once cataclysm is live?
Even farming shards for one or two more Shadowmourne makes little sense now with these crafted level 81 weapons on the horizon.
Jez Jul 1st 2010 7:12AM
OMGOMG... this lack of spellpower on weapons and stuff is really freaking me out...
Nice Healing mace for level 85... oh wait no spellpower... oh wait... REALLY no spellpower.
Feels... weak because of it...
So weird. : / >< :D
Olicon Jul 1st 2010 7:43AM
Talk about getting one-shotted for anyone who start the game again..Oh, look...that lvl81 bastard hits for only 3 times my HP when I'm level 60..maybe I could pop my CD and just die instead of getting totally overkilled.
Have fun getting ganked in PvP server.
blado111 Jul 1st 2010 7:50AM
Warlord Gorchuk must have a really high mastery rating! :O
styopa Jul 1st 2010 8:22AM
LOL @ everyone spending hours and hours grinding ICC for the BiS item. Your epeen will be replaced by my crafted blue at 81.
Just more proof that playing the game for FUN is the point - obsessing over drops is retarded.
Narlic Jul 1st 2010 12:48PM
Perhaps peoples goals change depending on what's available to them at the time? If they're raiding the same content for weeks at a time, then they may only have a: the urge to find gear they wany, and b: the urge to get further into the content.
Once the available goals change, in this instance to leveling up, then the levels and pre-raiding gear will become their new goals.
You need to relax your thinking of how other people operate a bit. Let go of some of the disdain.
Rob Jul 1st 2010 9:17AM
Agreed w/ this article. When the dungeon drops from alpha were released, i pretty much stopped doing heroics/raiding. The only point for that is to prep for ICC. Well, i haven't done ICC in a month now (and I feel fine). As a (ex) hardcore raider, I never thought I'd say this, but there is no point to the end-game grind right now, unless you are serious into ICC/RS. But yeah, no longer do I feel like I have to have 5T9 on all my toons. Its kinda sad, but that's the game.
I'm leveling my last alt right now, and will stop at northrend, then I'll likely shelf the game until cata comes out. Its cool that people are still doing iCC, but its not for me.
theRaptor Jul 1st 2010 9:39AM
No, people did Naxx in Sunwell gear because all Wrath heroics and Naxx were a cake walk compared to TBC heroics and raiding. The problem wasn't that Blizzard didn't iLevel inflate that gear to uselessness, it was that they slow balled the content to open up raiding to more people.
Which was why the band aid of hard modes had to be developed (hard modes were never intended in Wraths development). Blizzard realised they couldn't make raiding accessible for more than 20% of the player base without also making the content far too easy for that 20%.