Posts with tag legendary-items

Diablo III recently celebrated the second anniversary of the game's release. As part of the celebration, players were given double Rift Fragments, as well as a 100% boost to the chance to find Legendary items in game, in the form of a buff applied from May 15 through May 22. Birthday celebrations are all well and good, but the Diablo III team has decided to go above and beyond with the anniversary rewards.

If you enjoyed playing with increased drop rate buff over the week-long anniversary, there's some good news on the way. Blizzard has just made the drop rate increase permanent. While the double Rift Fragments have now been removed, the increased drop chance for Legendary items is staying put. The anniversary buff was overwhelmingly popular, warranting the decision to let the increase stick around. The anniversary buff has been disabled as of this morning, but Legendary items should be dropping at the bonus increased rate by default now -- keeping Sanctuary's defenders both happy, and a little more geared in the process.

It's confirmed -- everyone does indeed get a legendary, if they manage to finish Wrathion's expansion-long chain of requests. However, unlike any prior legendary to date, Wrathion's offering won't be a new set of weapons to wield ... and that's making some players a little irritated. Rather than the usual arming with weapons, Wrathion has instead chosen to give everyone legendary-quality cloaks, enhancing the cloaks received in patch 5.3 with some extra power -- and a little orange text -- in patch 5.4.

Yes, some may have been expecting weapons -- but really, Wrathion's offering makes a lot more sense in terms of gameplay, balance, and possibly Wrathion's true motives in this little endeavor as well. In fact, the legendary offered in Mists of Pandaria manages to break every single perception we had about what a legendary is to date.

Some fascinating new cloaks have been dug up in the patch 5.3 PTR by the intrepid explorers over at Wowhead -- and they may be more than they seem. There are six cloaks in all, each named with an indicator that points to the August Celestials as their inspiration. But what's really astonishing about these cloaks is the ilvl and stats. Each cloak has been designated with an ilvl of 600 -- far above anything we've encountered in game to date. And each has a whopping +918 to every secondary stat minus hit and expertise.

So what does it all mean? It means that these things are powerhouses of bonus stats -- and if you have a spec that doesn't use one particular side stat, you can reforge it to gain a healthy chunk of hit or expertise on the side. Because of the August Celestials influence in the cloak designs and names, Wowhead has pointed out that these cloaks likely tie into the latest branch of the Wrathion chain. Wrathion's achievement for patch 5.3 has been changed on the PTR as well. Now called Chapter IV: Celestial Blessings, the achievement requires players to accompany Wrathion on his journey to obtain blessings from all four August Celestials. The reward for the achievement is a Cloak of Virture, and all the new cloaks carry this designation, so it looks like Wowhead's assessment is dead on.

But what's curious about all of this is that despite the ilvl, despite the method of obtaining the cloaks, and despite the stats, the cloaks are still designated epic quality. Given Wrathion's penchant for handing over orange quality items, it does make one wonder if this will be changed as the PTR moves on. If these cloaks are indeed designated legendary quality, they'll be the first piece of legendary armor we've seen in game since the ill-fated Talisman of Binding Shard removed in vanilla.

While we don't know yet exactly what the future of these cloaks happens to be, it would be wise to keep in mind that as with anything else on the PTR, it's all subject to change at the drop of a hat until it goes live. We may see the ilvl reduced, we may see the quality change, or we may see them appear exactly as they are now -- it's all up in the air until 5.3 officially drops. Until then, have a look at Wowhead for a glimpse at these gorgeous models.

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mathew McCurley (@gomatgo) will be your host today.

Common may not be quite so common anymore. While working on an article about a legendary quest chain, I recalled the days of class quests -- specifically, the days of Molten Core and The Eye of Divinity, along with the Ancient Petrified Leaf that started the class quests for epic weapons. Epic anything was rare to see in the early days of vanilla, and even when Molten Core first came out, it was rare to see people decked out in purple gear. But these days, it seems everyone is wearing epics, as it's dropping from dungeons with alarming frequency.

When you look at gear labels, each color of gear is assigned a different label. Common quality items are white, uncommon are green, rare are blue, and purple of course are epic. But as the game has evolved over time, each expansion offered more raids and more epic gear, which led me to the question -- just how common is common gear? How rare is rare? Is uncommon gear really that uncommon? I hit Wowhead just for a quick look at these items to compare numbers, and the results were actually pretty surprising.