official World of Warcraft

[MikeFu84]

Ya I just ordered both plushies the other day. Just waiting for them to arrive! They will look nice on both sides of the Pandaren figurine.

[Eric Veteran]

Where can i locate where this screenshot was taken.

LINK

It looks like the view looking up in the Inscription shop in Dalaran.

[MikeFu84]

It looks like the view looking up in the Inscription shop in Dalaran.

Just checked that out and I'd have to agree.

[Noveed]

That doesn't help as long as players are inventing shaper requirements than blizzard. Case in point: you can be sent to tank heroic halls of reflection with < 24,000 HP. It's possible to do it but if you zone in, 99% of the pugs will look at you and bail. For the average player tanks must have 35k HP (or whatever) in order to bother attempting that zone.

Case in point: Naxx was cleared by guilds where some raid members weren't 80 and everybody was in level 70 gear. Still you see pugs demanding people have some arbitrary amount of gear to pug patchwerk.

I'd much rather have the competent player in blues than the bad player in tier 10: dead rogues do no damage.

There are some roles where having certain levels of gear are required (IE: raids are less forgiving to under geared tanks than under geared DPS) but players still vastly over-estimate the gear needed for raids. You don't need 40,000 raid-buffed health to tank the first 4 in ICC. It's nice when you have it, but it's not required.

A competent rogue would not be in blues unless he/she ding'd to 80 recently. A Competent player would have the required gear for the encounter he/she is going to do.

A brain dead person in Tier 10 would most likely out DPS someone in blues/greens on fights that require you to be brain dead. Might not be the case if there are tactics to consider and they die because they do not follow the tactics.

Competent players would use initiative and be geared most of my guild mates who are levelling alts and have reached 80 already have 5k gear scores just from doing heroics and emblem gear. There should'nt really be an excuse to have bad gear anymore it gets handed to you on a plate.

[Felix_]

Got my druid to 64 today.

395 +healing as resto

11.9k HP with Survival insticts up as feral.

I really enjoy playing it, much more so then my hunter.

It's insane to think I've spend 34 days /played just at level 80 on hunter.. I can't even force myself to log on him other than to cut gems.. I've completely disregarded the daily heroics and raiding.

Same, I played a hunter to a high level and it took ages.

My account got hacked and I lost all my stuff.

By that time DKs were starting to thin out so I thought 'what the hell'

I play unholy DK (tank mostly) and absolutely love it, I even started a mage that is now level 40 after only a few days.

I almost never log onto hunter any more.

[I am Redbeard]

I've loved playing my hunter for over two and a half years, I think it was because I NEVER had an alt. It's taken me since last June just to get this druid to 65. I started it back in june and put the game down until september, left the druid around 20-30, then came back to the game for ToC10/25, forgot about my druid and went on to icc10/25. Now that I just came back from yet another break I have no interest in raiding and thus, no interest in my hunter.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

Just hit 77 today :)

Does EVERYONE need to buy cold weather flying or is it just for the old gryphon mounts?

Basically what I'm asking is can I just buy artisan riding at 4.2k gold, and one of the dragon mounts? Or do I still need cold weather on top of that?

Only got 3.8k gold just now anyway :( Trying to get a level 80 mate to tap me some gold

[_neutrino Veteran]

A couple of things 1) Has anyone else noticed due to the upcoming patch everyone is Needing Frozen Orbs now? 2)I Cannot wait for the New patch becuse they are adding a 3rd flying Carpet (Frosty Carpet) Currently its just a Blue version of the current flying carpets I hope due to the title they put icicles or something on it to make it look cooler. or like a frozen aura around it. Frozo (Frozen orb guy) will be selling the pattern for 6 Frozen Orbs. then it will Require one each Moonshroud, Spellweave, Ebonweave, the four Frozen Orbs.

[dead.cell]

Just hit 77 today :)

Does EVERYONE need to buy cold weather flying or is it just for the old gryphon mounts?

Basically what I'm asking is can I just buy artisan riding at 4.2k gold, and one of the dragon mounts? Or do I still need cold weather on top of that?

Only got 3.8k gold just now anyway :( Trying to get a level 80 mate to tap me some gold

You need Cold Weather Flying to fly around Northrend, which you should certainly get first. (no sense in flying fast when you can only fly in Outland)

You will need it for some quests from Sholozar, Storm Peaks, and Icecrown.

A couple of things 1) Has anyone else noticed due to the upcoming patch everyone is Needing Frozen Orbs now? 2)I Cannot wait for the New patch becuse they are adding a 3rd flying Carpet (Frosty Carpet) Currently its just a Blue version of the current flying carpets I hope due to the title they put icicles or something on it to make it look cooler. or like a frozen aura around it. Frozo (Frozen orb guy) will be selling the pattern for 6 Frozen Orbs. then it will Require one each Moonshroud, Spellweave, Ebonweave, the four Frozen Orbs.

Yes, many people I know are getting tired of it. Just sometime before the last boss, say, "EVERYONE ROLL NEED ON THE FROZEN ORB!!"

Best way to do it, unless you'd rather be a douche and let others roll greed while you roll need...

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

You need Cold Weather Flying to fly around Northrend, which you should certainly get first. (no sense in flying fast when you can only fly in Outland)

You will need it for some quests from Sholozar, Storm Peaks, and Icecrown.

Cool thanks I'll get that first.

Afterwards what's the easiest drake type mount to get? (the big dragons). I think there's some quest chains to get you exalted so you can buy them, no? I was thinking those quest chains would provide good exp as well as give me a nice mount at the end :)

[the evn show]

A competent rogue would not be in blues unless he/she ding'd to 80 recently. A Competent player would have the required gear for the encounter he/she is going to do.

I don't get what your point is here. Is it impossible to someone to recently hit 80 and not have farmed gear yet? Maybe an alt?

You seem to be arguing that "every good player has good gear" - I don't accept that this is the case.

A brain dead person in Tier 10 would most likely out DPS someone in blues/greens on fights that require you to be brain dead. Might not be the case if there are tactics to consider and they die because they do not follow the tactics.

So apart from patchwerk what does that leave? Every fight has some sort of fire to cull the idiots.

Competent players would use initiative and be geared most of my guild mates who are levelling alts and have reached 80 already have 5k gear scores just from doing heroics and emblem gear. There should'nt really be an excuse to have bad gear anymore it gets handed to you on a plate.

So they hit 80 and were instantly awarded a full set of Tier 9 or 10? I'm not sure what queue times for DPS are like on your battlegroup: on mine they're roughly 15 minutes. Assume an average of 15 minutes to clear a dungeon with three bosses and you'll get 5 badges ever 30 minutes or 10 badges per hour. To farm all 355 badges needed for a full set of welfare epics takes about 36 hours of play time - a day and a half. If somebody has a character they play 8 hours per week doing nothing but random heroic dungeons and it'll take them a month to farm enough badges on their own.

I don't think it's unreasonable for somebody who plays a "sane" number of hours each week might have a character with low-end gear, even more so if it's an alt that they only really play for frost badges & farming. It's not unreasonable that a good player will have a poorly geared character for a couple of months.

[dead.cell]

Cool thanks I'll get that first.

Afterwards what's the easiest drake type mount to get? (the big dragons). I think there's some quest chains to get you exalted so you can buy them, no? I was thinking those quest chains would provide good exp as well as give me a nice mount at the end :)

Easiest one to get would be to pug Herioic: Culling of Stratholme at 80. If you beat it under a certain time (which is easy as hell even for pugs), the Bronze Drake will drop. Only 1 though, so here's hopin' you win the roll. :p

As for other drakes, there's a red one from Wyrmrest you can buy at exalted I believe. 1600g though, so I really don't think it's worth it. Since you're 77 now, you could probably start doing the Argent Crusade stuff. Quest should start in Dalaran around the flight master. Easy daily XP and will get you started along their quest line / daily hub. Plenty of mounts you can buy through them, including a white hippogryph.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

Easiest one to get would be to pug Herioic: Culling of Stratholme at 80. If you beat it under a certain time (which is easy as hell even for pugs), the Bronze Drake will drop. Only 1 though, so here's hopin' you win the roll. :p

As for other drakes, there's a red one from Wyrmrest you can buy at exalted I believe. 1600g though, so I really don't think it's worth it. Since you're 77 now, you could probably start doing the Argent Crusade stuff. Quest should start in Dalaran around the flight master. Easy daily XP and will get you started along their quest line / daily hub. Plenty of mounts you can buy through them, including a white hippogryph.

I noticed you can get the Netherwing Drake mounts as well - http://www.wowwiki.com/Netherwing

Only 200G to buy once you do all the quests to get exalted.

Think I can get that at 77 as well.

[dead.cell]

I noticed you can get the Netherwing Drake mounts as well - http://www.wowwiki.com/Netherwing

Only 200G to buy once you do all the quests to get exalted.

Think I can get that at 77 as well.

Those are Outland related. Did those at 70. It takes a bit of time, dailies, etc., but if that's what ya want, go for it. I planned on doing it myself, but got lazy. Already did it once..

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

Those are Outland related. Did those at 70. It takes a bit of time, dailies, etc., but if that's what ya want, go for it. I planned on doing it myself, but got lazy. Already did it once..

Yeah I probably will to experience it, only thing is I need to buy this damn artisan riding at 4.25k, and I only have 2.8k just now

[Noveed]

I don't get what your point is here. Is it impossible to someone to recently hit 80 and not have farmed gear yet? Maybe an alt?

You seem to be arguing that "every good player has good gear" - I don't accept that this is the case.

Random LFG Times vary on my server from 1 minute to around 10-15 tops. My Pally ding'd to 80 on 06/12/2009 , i had full tier 9 holy and ret set a week later just by doing heroics and not setting a foot in a raid group... had i had no life i could have accomplished this in 2-3 days. I see many players in trade channel looking for encounters beyond their gear capability and they have been 80 for some time as its the same people month after month spamming for the same instances/raids. Every good player will have good gear, if people can not be bothered to run simple tasks like heroics to gear up then in my eyes they can't be "good", I don't know how you define good, but in my eyes if you are lazy and want to get boosted (even though you know tactics and its your 20th alt) then you can't be THAT good, you simple either have too much time to level all those alts or you can't be bothered, like i would really want a player who cant be bothered in one of my raids.

So apart from patchwerk what does that leave? Every fight has some sort of fire to cull the idiots.

Fights in ToC (apart from champs) can be done by "not good" players. Moving from fire, poision and charge etc is overrated... if you fail you should not be playing the game, fights are tank and spank, Anub can simply be zerged to 30% and the adds can be left to burrow... thats easier than patchwerk or even at the same level if you are a dps specced class.

So they hit 80 and were instantly awarded a full set of Tier 9 or 10? I'm not sure what queue times for DPS are like on your battlegroup: on mine they're roughly 15 minutes. Assume an average of 15 minutes to clear a dungeon with three bosses and you'll get 5 badges ever 30 minutes or 10 badges per hour. To farm all 355 badges needed for a full set of welfare epics takes about 36 hours of play time - a day and a half. If somebody has a character they play 8 hours per week doing nothing but random heroic dungeons and it'll take them a month to farm enough badges on their own.

So that someone is not a part of a guild? and they do not do guild heroic runs? That person can't form a group by spamming trade like Before the Randon X Server LFG system came in place?

If a player is Good they most likely will be in a guild (note: I said most likely and not certainly) and will be able to farm badges with ease. You can easily farm between 10-15 badges an hour depending on what heroics you get and who you do them with(random lfg or guildies). One does not have to play lots to get lots.

Gearing a level 80 tank or healer is simple, you are in groups instantly, gearing a dps might be a bit more difficult and more time consuming however i managed it on my ret pally by playing casually in 1 week.

I don't think it's unreasonable for somebody who plays a "sane" number of hours each week might have a character with low-end gear, even more so if it's an alt that they only really play for frost badges & farming. It's not unreasonable that a good player will have a poorly geared character for a couple of months.

I have extreme casuals in my guild. They log on once a day, get their 2 Frost emblems and log out. Most of them are very well geared and it took them a few weeks, not months. There are many BoE items one can buy and other items one can craft or get crafted, if a person is levelled an alt then they can also get gear easily that way if they have the money for it.

If good players expect invites to Raids (pugs) then they should have the gear to go with their skill. Too many times have i see blue/green geared people in ToC25, ICC, VoA failing on Toro but their RL mates say they are good players... who gives a flying **** if they are good players, they have a bottleneck and thats gear, if they can not pump out the required minimum dps for an encounter they should not be in the raid in the first place... now a really good player would understand that sort it out and then ask if they can join instead of turning up and getting boosted.

I like the idea a few people have took up on the server, if players do not perform well in raids then they wont be allowed to roll on loot so essentially they may get a boost and achievement at a price for not rolling on loot.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

Finally got 4.25k together to pay for riding, damn that hurt.

Left with about 18 gold :(

By the way, once you hit 80 can you tell the LFG function to look for heroics only or is it still random?

[dead.cell]

Finally got 4.25k together to pay for riding, damn that hurt.

Left with about 18 gold :(

By the way, once you hit 80 can you tell the LFG function to look for heroics only or is it still random?

It will show in the drop down menu: Random Heroic, Random Dungeon, Specific Dungeon.

[the evn show]

Fights in ToC (apart from champs) can be done by "not good" players. Moving from fire, poision and charge etc is overrated... if you fail you should not be playing the game, fights are tank and spank, Anub can simply be zerged to 30% and the adds can be left to burrow

Okay, so game = 0 skill check.

If good players expect invites to Raids (pugs) then they should have the gear to go with their skill. Too many times have i see blue/green geared people in ToC25, ICC, VoA failing on Toro but their RL mates say they are good players... who gives a flying **** if they are good players, they have a bottleneck and thats gear, if they can not pump out the required minimum dps for an encounter they should not be in the raid in the first place...

Let's assume under geared players and run 7 healers instead of the more typical 5.

That gives you almost 50% more than you'd normally have - bad gear can be compensated

for by just stacking extra players.

Normally you'd go with 2 tanks but let's bring a spare (maybe a druid for battle res) and

let's also imagine a new kind of tank that does 0 DPS while holding threat just to make the

math a little easier. Let's consider anub'arak in ToC25

That leaves spots for 15 DPS classes.

20*10^7 HP / 600 second enrage / 15 players = ~2200 DPS per player.

You also have burrowers x 2 x 4 to deal with roughly 6 million health total. Divide that by 15 DPS

and that adds adds 6000 raid DPS to the requirement. and a handful of scarabs with ~100k HP

that your healers can kill if they wanted to (100k HP, ~20 seconds to kill them)

Add that all up and you get a requirement of slightly less than 3000 DPS per character in order to kill anub'arak

before his 10 minute enrage - assuming 15 DPS classes

These numbers are consistent with real world performance, check world of logs: most groups today are killing

him half way to his enrage and most raids have players doing slightly less than 6000 DPS each.

You don't need Tier 9 to do 3000 DPS with full raid buffs, and you've already said that you don't need any skill to

deal with the encounter gimmicks so why all the fuss about gear?

Gearing a level 80 tank or healer is simple, you are in groups instantly, gearing a dps might be a bit more difficult and more time consuming however i managed it on my ret pally by playing casually in 1 week.

So lets go with your numbers: instant queues = and an average of 12.5 badges/hour best-case. You need

345 badges for 4/5 T9 + offset healm, ring, trinket, and libram - pretty typical of what most people

gearing their first toon will need. 345/12.5 = 27.5 hours.

That's not accounting for time to farm gems, enchants, and rep. And assuming you get lucky with drops

from the dungeons for the spots you can't fill with badge gear.

27.5 hours per week counts as full time employment at Wal-mart (they screw their numbers to claim

80% full time employement). My "real" 9-5 office job was only 32 hours per week and I spend less

time as a university student with a double major than it seems like you're claiming to play warcraft in

a week.

When you spend enough time to qualify as a full time employee or as a student who has 'dedicated his life'

to a subject: you can't claim it's casual any more. Blizzard's average player (that is: within 1 standard

deviation of average) is 8-10 hours per week according to court filings with Glider. The amount of time

you're claiming to have played is dangerously close to "negative consequences in real life" levels in

studies of MMORPG players.

I have no doubt it can be done - but going from fresh 80 to "done with 5-man gear" in a week isn't realistic

for the average player. I think it's even less realistic to expect that from a player with more than one character

that they play on.

There are many BoE items one can buy and other items one can craft or get crafted

The going rate of <crafting material X> (cloth, bars, etc.) is 150g a piece*. Primordial Saronites run

approximately 1500g a piece. The cheapest current-end-game item are the boots at 5 bars + 10 cloths or

9000g. Are you arguing that a typical player can consistently make 9000g in 3 hours (the time it takes to farm

enough badges for an 'average' piece of triumph emblem gear).

ICC BoE items go for somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000g. Battered hilts fall somewhere between 8,000g on a

good day and 12,000g on a more typical one.

* Numbers for my server only.

[Noveed]

Okay, so game = 0 skill check.

Let's assume under geared players and run 7 healers instead of the more typical 5.

That gives you almost 50% more than you'd normally have - bad gear can be compensated

for by just stacking extra players.

Normally you'd go with 2 tanks but let's bring a spare (maybe a druid for battle res) and

let's also imagine a new kind of tank that does 0 DPS while holding threat just to make the

math a little easier. Let's consider anub'arak in ToC25

That leaves spots for 15 DPS classes.

20*10^7 HP / 600 second enrage / 15 players = ~2200 DPS per player.

You also have burrowers x 2 x 4 to deal with roughly 6 million health total. Divide that by 15 DPS

and that adds adds 6000 raid DPS to the requirement. and a handful of scarabs with ~100k HP

that your healers can kill if they wanted to (100k HP, ~20 seconds to kill them)

Add that all up and you get a requirement of slightly less than 3000 DPS per character in order to kill anub'arak

before his 10 minute enrage - assuming 15 DPS classes

These numbers are consistent with real world performance, check world of logs: most groups today are killing

him half way to his enrage and most raids have players doing slightly less than 6000 DPS each.

You don't need Tier 9 to do 3000 DPS with full raid buffs, and you've already said that you don't need any skill to

deal with the encounter gimmicks so why all the fuss about gear?

So lets go with your numbers: instant queues = and an average of 12.5 badges/hour best-case. You need

345 badges for 4/5 T9 + offset healm, ring, trinket, and libram - pretty typical of what most people

gearing their first toon will need. 345/12.5 = 27.5 hours.

That's not accounting for time to farm gems, enchants, and rep. And assuming you get lucky with drops

from the dungeons for the spots you can't fill with badge gear.

27.5 hours per week counts as full time employment at Wal-mart (they screw their numbers to claim

80% full time employement). My "real" 9-5 office job was only 32 hours per week and I spend less

time as a university student with a double major than it seems like you're claiming to play warcraft in

a week.

When you spend enough time to qualify as a full time employee or as a student who has 'dedicated his life'

to a subject: you can't claim it's casual any more. Blizzard's average player (that is: within 1 standard

deviation of average) is 8-10 hours per week according to court filings with Glider. The amount of time

you're claiming to have played is dangerously close to "negative consequences in real life" levels in

studies of MMORPG players.

I have no doubt it can be done - but going from fresh 80 to "done with 5-man gear" in a week isn't realistic

for the average player. I think it's even less realistic to expect that from a player with more than one character

that they play on.

The going rate of <crafting material X> (cloth, bars, etc.) is 150g a piece*. Primordial Saronites run

approximately 1500g a piece. The cheapest current-end-game item are the boots at 5 bars + 10 cloths or

9000g. Are you arguing that a typical player can consistently make 9000g in 3 hours (the time it takes to farm

enough badges for an 'average' piece of triumph emblem gear).

ICC BoE items go for somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000g. Battered hilts fall somewhere between 8,000g on a

good day and 12,000g on a more typical one.

* Numbers for my server only.

Efficiency, efficiency and efficiency and the cycle of progession.

I will go as far to say better players will end up with better gear. Weather this is because they have played the game for longer, been 80 for longer or simply can use the games mechanics in thier favour.

I would rather goto toc and finish it in 30-45 minutes then to spend 2 hours with low geared players who have a bottle neck thats thier gear. If players play casual then that means they do not have much time to play wow, so clearing encounter quickly should be the objective.

I was hitting 3-4k in Nax(T7) and Uldaur(T8) Gear. I actually bothered to progress through raids from Tier 7 to 8 then to 9 and now 10. New players who level get Tiered gear handed on a plate just by doing heroics and getting enough badges to to buy the gear. If players are in greens/blues why should they be boosted in places that is far beyond thier gear level surely they can't do 3k dps raid buffed in that sort of gear.

Another thing is that i never mentioned that players have to get expensive BoEs or the Hilt at all, i guess thats you jumping the gun thinking players would need the best of BoEs to get invited to raids. Theres pleanty of BoEs floating about that are in the 100g-500g range, and crafted gear that one could get. You pretty much end up with 2-3k Gold from quests once you hit 80 anyways i strongly do not believe a lack of gold is the problem unless players are doing something wrong.

Just to put things into perspective since you mentioned time and hours played. Well i have a fulltime job as a desktop support technician at a call centre, i work 37.5 hours a week (working overtime now aswell to fund a mortgage), still find time to have a social life and play wow.

Badges are stupidly easy to farm, I do not understand why you are so concerned with Waiting times for Random LFG groups. If these so called players are good and skillful then they will most likely be in a guild and run them with guildies. Lets say hypothetically they are not then it boils down to class/spec, wait times for healers and tanks are virtually none existant, for dps you may have to wait 10 minutes but still the wait is not all that and in most cases its over rated.

There's a reason why wow is a MMO and not just a single player RPG, if players do not use the concepts of grouping, guilding and liasing with the player base to gear up then i do not think they are not that skillful as they may claim to be. What sort of skillful player does not use the games mechanics to his/her own advantage. I may have found it easy to gear the pally as its an alt of mine, i had enough badges to buy the ilvl213 BoE and also purchase other BoEs from AH. Whilst raiding on my hunter i would occasionally win plate drops (BoEs) which i would save up for the pally, i had enough orbs to get crafted gear (ilvl245 stuff). On top of the normal heroics theres also the Weekly Raids now so more badges and gold.

Fresh at level 80 the pally had around 2800 GS, 2 days later it was around 3500 and around 5-6 days later i hit 4900-5000GS, fair enough its my alt thats why i geared up quick but i would not have done it that quick if i had not had guildies helping me out, i wasnt running ToC until i was ready for it, theres no point going into the encounter undergeared as other players will have to conpensate for your slack.

Since wrath of the lich king expansion the game has been made easier for casuals and beginners no question about it and if they can't take advantage of that then its their own fault, i have no doubt any "skillful" player would gear up with ease and use the mechanics to his/her advantage.

[Minifig]

Has anyone read any of the books?

I'm thinking about picking up the first one, Of Blood and Honor by none other than Chris Metzen, but I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on it/them.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

Those are Outland related. Did those at 70. It takes a bit of time, dailies, etc., but if that's what ya want, go for it. I planned on doing it myself, but got lazy. Already did it once..

Dailies for this look to be a pain, but because im 77 they're easy/quicker to do.

I just think the proto dragons look cool, but I never got one in the BC, so it's still a first for me :) Just dunno what colour to pick when I finally get there :laugh: Think I'll just instance and work on these dailies, so I'm still getting EXP.

Luckily I took mining makes neutral to friendly much easier :)

[___DaviD___]

Just finished doing netherwing on my hunter 2 weeks ago.

IF you can try and farm eggs early in the morning/late at night.

All depends how busy your realm is and how many people are doing them.

Was quite a few 80's when i done them so had to fight for eggs :(

[_neutrino Veteran]

Has anyone read any of the books?

I'm thinking about picking up the first one, Of Blood and Honor by none other than Chris Metzen, but I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on it/them.

I have the autographed box edition of Arthas, Rise of the Lich king, and it was very well written. I was happy with it, I will be getting Stormrage in a week or so.

[the evn show]

I would rather goto toc and finish it in 30-45 minutes then to spend 2 hours with low geared players who have a bottle neck thats thier gear. If players play casual then that means they do not have much time to play wow, so clearing encounter quickly should be the objective.

A raid full of good players doing 3k DPS vs crumby players with gear capable of 6k DPS will clear ToC faster simply because they're not going to have to repeat an encounter due to wiping to foolish mistakes.

Even if you carried every encounter to the enrage timer instead of setting world-fastestest kills: the difference in clear time is < 15 minutes.

If players are in greens/blues why should they be boosted in places that is far beyond thier gear level surely they can't do 3k dps raid buffed in that sort of gear.

I can pull 3,000 DPS without buffs in a 5-man dungeon wearing a full set of Dungeon Set 2, you don't need good gear to pull numbers like that.

So again, why the fuss with gear?

Another thing is that i never mentioned that players have to get expensive BoEs or the Hilt at all, i guess thats you jumping the gun thinking players would need the best of BoEs to get invited to raids. Theres pleanty of BoEs floating about that are in the 100g-500g range, and crafted gear that one could get. You pretty much end up with 2-3k Gold from quests once you hit 80 anyways i strongly do not believe a lack of gold is the problem unless players are doing something wrong.

Bracers, boots, belt. are you choices for holy paladin.

In my calculation of time needed to farm badges i assumed you'd get better in the natural course of running dungeons in order to keep the "time to aquire loot" from getting too inflated.

That left leaving you a helm, and chest that are minor upgrades from blues when we compare "second best in slot crafted pieces" to level 80 blues.

200 blue chest vs 219 BoE chest and blue helm vs 200 boe helm

The difference boils down to 37 mp5 + 67 spell power + 0.9% crit vs 28 int + 10 stamina: it's a difference that can be made up with consumables.

If I'm given the choice between "good player without consumables" and "bad player with consumables" - I'll take the good player. <1% spell crit isn't going to keep somebody from standing in a fire.

Just to put things into perspective since you mentioned time and hours played. Well i have a fulltime job as a desktop support technician at a call centre, i work 37.5 hours a week (working overtime now aswell to fund a mortgage), still find time to have a social life and play wow.

I doesn't matter how many hours a week you play; the average player is putting in about 8 hours a week whether they have a crack addiction or a typical 2.5 kids+dog life.

Badges are stupidly easy to farm, I do not understand why you are so concerned with Waiting times for Random LFG groups. If these so called players are good and skillful then they will most likely be in a guild and run them with guildies.

Why the obsession with things external to the player determining skill? If I quit my guild (9/12 hard modes down) and lost my gear to an account hacker or angry girlfriend, would I suddenly start standing in fires until I'd sunk a month or two into farming up badges? Would I become good whenever I had some magic gear score number?

Lets say hypothetically they are not then it boils down to class/spec, wait times for healers and tanks are virtually none existant, for dps you may have to wait 10 minutes but still the wait is not all that and in most cases its over rated.

Official raid & dungeon forums doesn't support your claim. While there isn't good statistical information available that forums seems to indicate that DPS queue times are substantial.

Do you have any evidence to support your claim that most DPS have fast queue times? Through out this entire discussion I've been willing to use your estimates of instant queue times and 10-15 badges per hour, I'm not sure why you keep bringing this up.

There's a reason why wow is a MMO and not just a single player RPG, if players do not use the concepts of grouping, guilding and liasing with the player base to gear up then i do not think they are not that skillful as they may claim to be. What sort of skillful player does not use the games mechanics to his/her own advantage. I may have found it easy to gear the pally as its an alt of mine, i had enough badges to buy the ilvl213 BoE and also purchase other BoEs from AH. Whilst raiding on my hunter i would occasionally win plate drops (BoEs) which i would save up for the pally, i had enough orbs to get crafted gear (ilvl245 stuff).

So in order to quickly gear a character all I have to do is level another character, farm a couple dozen badges, join a raiding guild, play for several months and collect a handful of BoE raid drops, farm a few thousand gold to buy/craft/make more gear, and then play a dozen hours or so farming dungeons?

Also, don't you think this contradicts your earlier statement. "My Pally ding'd to 80 on 06/12/2009 , i had full tier 9 holy and ret set a week later just by doing heroics and not setting a foot in a raid group". At the very best it was intentionally misleading IMO. You're claiming to have done a fair bit of badge farming and raiding - you just did it on a different character. Just because you play on another toon doesn't mean you haven't sunk the time into collecting gear.

On top of the normal heroics theres also the Weekly Raids now so more badges and gold.

How is somebody supposed to get into a weekly raid if you're rejecting them on their gear? Let's just assume that every week the boss is Flame Laviathan (i assume you don't think gear matters for that?)

If you're trying to make the case that you can go from fresh-80 to Tier 9 geared in a week this is a non-starter. The difference is 11g per week: the 7 triumph badges you earn doing the weekly raid could just as easily have come from a random dungeon group (ie: Occulas) for a similar time commitment. That leaves 5 frost emblems - If you're trying to make the case that a casual player can gear up in a week then they don't amount to anything. If you take my position: that a casual player will likely spend a month or more collecting gear then the weekly raid + random dungeon groups turn into Tier 10 pieces at a rate of 1 item every month (average price 78 badges, maximum number of frost emblems per week is 19 unless you kill tier-10 dropping bosses).

Since wrath of the lich king expansion the game has been made easier for casuals and beginners no question about it and if they can't take advantage of that then its their own fault, i have no doubt any "skillful" player would gear up with ease and use the mechanics to his/her advantage.

You keep asserting that gear = skill and that you have no doubt that it's true but I'm not seeing support for the claim.

I think it's perfectly reasonable for an otherwise competent player to have relatively poor gear if they simply don't spend much time on that character.

I propose that it takes roughly 30-40 hours to completely gear a character with Tier 9 quality loot (using your numbers for badges/hour and assuming half the gear is badge purchased and the other half drops while farming those badges). I'm using Blizzards numbers for the average player's time commitment (8 hours per week) and coming up with 30-40 hours or 4-5 weeks. If a person splits their time 75%/25% on mail/alt - it's reasonable to expect that it might take them a few months to gear up.

I don't understand your assertion that good gear = good skill. If everyone in my guild put on blues would they instantly lose all knowledge of how to play?