I am using the same two staves, and even though I have only 3/tier 1, have replaced most except those pieces, even my hakkari cloak I replaced with a green quest reward that had less +heal but more int and mp5, which now that I'm back to 5 manning I find I need more int. (maybe because i've been pugging again)

However the socketed stuff looks interesting. I was looking at the higher level gems, and you can really upgrade that stuff pretty well. There is a robe in Blood Furnace that looks slightly worse than Prophecy, but with the right combination of even skill 310 gems it surpasses it.

This is a great skill site I read, it shows you all the gems you can put in: http://wow.crafterstome.com/home.html
 

I stepped through the dark portal wearing 5 pieces of T2, the epic PvP shoulders, some other epics that were better than T2 (Mana Igniting Cord and Leggings of the Black Blizzard) and the high warlords Spellblade.
So far (I dinged lvl 63 yesterday) I replaced the necklace, my robe, one ring, one trinket and my shouldes with blue gear from BC.

Initially it hurt replacing those items, but not for the fact it took me a long time to get them, but rather due to the style of the newitems (my whole look was black with a light thouch of blue, and now I look like a colorblind charwoman) ;)

I don't have a problem if there isn't really a final endgame, but a moving target that shifts with each content patch or expansion. Itemization as a way to improve your character is an important part of the game, but it's not the only aspect, and certainly one that shouldn't be overrated. Most players focus too strong on the items and forget the other aspects of improving their characters: gameplay (skills, talents), social interaction and diplomacy with the other players, character development (style, tactics, interaction).

I can just laugh at those empty figures dressed in T3 that dedicate a way too large portion of their lives into raid progression and now QQ about everyone soon having equal gear. It's not other player's gear, it's the lost time they bewail.

As for the guild dramas: we had ours in december, when our guild leaders said they want to disband the guild, move to another server and there join a guild to play on as normal guild folks, but then secretly formed a new guild on the same server, taking half of the guild members (the ones with the same greed for items as they were) with them. I then decided to not follow them, and formed a new guild with some of the ones left behind, and now we really enjoy the pleasure of being a casual 'family' guild. Blind dedication to raiding shall never fall on us again :)

The new endgame will come, raid encounters will be beaten, new items will be farmed, but for elune's sake, never take it too serious, and always keep in mind that it's the fun with the other people you're playing with that make a MMOG precious, not your equip.
 

I came into the BC with 8/8 trans and an epic wand. For healing, I've only upgraded my trinket and both rings. There just isn't enough stats on the equipment so far that would overcome the greater heal set bonus (lvl 64 atm).

In preparation for the expansion, I picked up some BWL bracers and some random odds and ends for a dps set. The bracers haven't gone anywhere, but everything else has been upgraded. I picked up the same +80 spell damage staff, so ol' Benediction is in mothballs. My only complaint is Mart looks like a hobo running around in random gear. I guess I got used to "matching". hehe

If I had stayed disc/holy, I think I would have been very disappointed DE'ing nearly every item drop and quest reward. By going shadow (but playing dressup in instances when needed) I've gotten the best of both worlds. I also feel like a hunter, rolling on nearly every cloth blue drop. >:P

-Mart
 

Tobold,
My first day in Outlands, my guild group went to Hellfire Ramparts and obliterated the instance in just under 40 minutes. No deaths until the Dragon, very little stopping, and out group was 2 warlocks with Felguards MT and OTing for the group, 1 priest just healing, 1 rogue and 1 mage.

I Main Tanked the Dragon boss at the end, with my pet, and I only needed to resummon him once during the fight. Our priest died right at the end from healing aggro, but with a Soul Stone, we didn;t even stop for minutes.

There is no way we could have done that with less than top tier raid gear on every player. Our guild has progressed through instances now at a very fast clip, and the top raid guilds on most servers are advancing at faster paces, having more success early than most other players. Thants why people raid for top gear, so that there is no learning curve...

...that and its fun. If it isn't fun, don't do it.
 

And I wonder how Burning Crusade plays for somebody who is already wearing tier 3 armor

Early gear switching also depends on your class. From what i see rogues in particular sharding their old stuff really fast, cause for 2 years there were almost no items with Atk and Agi combined, now there are.

Same goes for my class - Paladin. In WoW 1.0 you could count the number of plate items with spell damage with one hand, now those things drop left and right. I think i already switched 5 items.

There are some classes who struggle with early upgrades. One of our def-skilled warriors is lvl 65 now, and he only gained one item upgrade yet. Same thing for priests. Loot winners right now are the true hybrid classes, who actually can loot gear for every spec now.

I now finished both Hellfire and both Coilfang 5-man instances. Visited Mana Tombs once, but didn't finished it. Even Slave Pens and Underbog are quite more demanding gearwise, than Ramparts and Furnace. People who entered outlands without any WoW 1.0 raidloots will probably start to struggle in Coilfang.

As for "is it ever worth it to play endgame again": look what your server's endgame guilds do right now in BC. On my server they are in Caverns of Time, grinding Heroics, getting ready for Karazhan. They still are at the "end" of the server's content. The "end" changed, but the still are there, before anyone else.
 

One of the things that is bugging me is that all my Reputation gained in Azeroth has absolutely no meaning now I am in Outlands.
I have acheived Honoured Reputation with the Timbermaw, and have at least Friendly - Revered with every other Faction possible (bar those I am at war with).
Now I have another 5 or 6 Factions where I am Unfriendly/Neutral once again.
I don't have much enthusiasm for another Reputation grind, do you?
 

I would guess that Blizz has made a design decision that the repetitious hardcore raiding scene (or endless trips into a few PvP battlegrounds) is not really the game environment they wanted to create. After all, people eventually burn out on endless repetition, and will then leave WoW for another game. And reading the previous comment reminds me that *hopefully* rep grinds are gone for good - they never should have happened in the first place (bad, bad design).

You can't let people get bored and leave, because the 'social net' will fray and you may have a domino effect of people leaving the game together to play another game together. As others have said before, MMOs are 'chat with swords'...

So I would speculate that Blizz is trying to pull the rewards (quest / rep / PvP / raid) into an 'easier mode'. Sure, there will be the jobless 30-year-old living in his parents' basement who will level to 70 in less than 36 hours or have a level-60 BE or Draenei in less than a week, but Joe Average has a job, a life... and a toon (or two) to take to 70 and gear up, a big new continent (with instances) to explore, and wants to try out the new races and the new profession (and see 'old' professions to the new cap).
Guildies and friends band together to overcome the new challenges and win powerful new rewards.
And all is good under the rosy BE skies of Azeroth... :P

There are probably not many persons who did everything there is to do, and saw everything there is to see, in the "original" WoW. I still see new stuff all the time in the 'old' WoW - just in the last week my 60 ran down a couple of engineering schematics tucked away in places I'd never discovered before (for my engineer alt), and with my currently-active alt I'm intentionally following quest lines I'd never done (many of which are great fun). If I ever tire of Horde, I guess there's always Alliance...
And I have to say that 'grinding' misses a lot of the fun and challenge of WoW.

Sure, you'll have the obligatory SM run for the umpteenth time, but it's not so bad if I have plenty of other things along the way that feel new and fresh, be it your first rogue or pally, or your first jewelcrafter or engineer, or your first troll or BE, or the first run through a quest line (whether it's new with the BC or not).
 

While my main character hasn't seen many upgrades, I can't wait to take my underprivileged alts to the Outlands. It will be like a kid in a candy store!
 

I play a rogue who came to BC in a mix of Tier 2 and Tier 2.5 armor and rank 14 weapons. So far at 64 I've replaced my cloak 3 times, 1 trinket, and my ranged weapon.

What I have seen is a ton of stuff that was almost as good as what I was wearing. In some cases I only chose my old gear because all other things being equal I was very attached to it having worked hard to get it, plus it was enchanted. I can imagine if I were in Tier 1 I'd have replaced almost everything, and I can't wait until my warrior who's in mostly greens gets his greedy orc hands on HPF loot.
 

While this will likely make me unpopular amongst priest set, I do not have a "healing set". I did when I raided, at 60, and when I knew it was going to be a rough fight, I'd toss on that stuff and squeeze an extra 100-200 +healing out. And also, I knew, that it wasn't like I was getting much other gear.

In outland, I knew I'd be healing in instances. Still, I made a point of being somewhat picky on gear and snagging good +damage/healing stuff. As of last night, I'm at +419 healing/damage, and walking through the portal a week ago I was +380 healing and +109 damage. I still have a +29 wrist to load as well, after a mp/5 enchant (love my mp/5).

The gear comes too fast, at least right now, for me to get attached to it. Last night I also got my first BC +healing only item, the Bloody Gloves from Furnace, with the sockets. (Side note - these look like the Hamburger Helper gloves and are dead ugly...) I tossed a +damage and +mp/5 gem in them and away I went. I think I'm down to 2 or 3 pieces of gear left from before I walked in the door.

I'm loving all the upgrdes on the gear, but I'm attached to almost none of it. I loved the look of the Crystalfire staff, and it was a HUGE upgrade over what I had, but I chucked it the next day for the easy quest from the orcs in the north. Well, I banked it, anyway. It's purdy...
 

Walked through the portal as a shadow priest with +396 damage ZHC and ToA, now @ +425. Not a big upgrade, but an upgrade onoe the less.
I ALWAYS keep a healing set because +healing always has bigger numbers than +damage and really make up for having 0 points in holy. @ +602 healing, and still looking for the trinket from furnace.
 

Yes, I finally broke down and started a dmg set for my Disc/Holy priest out of BoE greens, quest rewards, and the like. I went from 0 to a +300dmg set in about 3 days. Sure makes a difference when soloing. And I still have my +700 healing set for groups and pvp.
 

I wanted through the portal in T1/T2 gear and lotsa stats gear, my lvl 60 shammy had roughly 5k health and 5.4k mana, i did lotsa pvp but didnt have any warlords gear. He had +120 dmg, im 63 now and have 6.1k hp and 6.5k mana and +430 dmg......I havent had any problems lvling up gear.
 

Everyone's raving about the new greens coming down the pike, and granted while they are more potent in terms of stat bonuses they suffer from what greens have always suffered from - they are too focused in too few areas.

Take for instance the "Of the Sorcerer" line. Great Stam, great Int, great heal. But I'm a Pally - what about Strength? And Spirit isn't total shit. Also what about that kick-ass 10 second de-cool on my stun-lock ability. By the time I hit 62 I'll have a cool down on it of only 35 seconds.

That's HALF of the standard time on that ability.

So point blank I'm sticking with my PvP set and not getting my panties in a wad over the fact that I'll get +20 something in Stamina. I'll be a fucking one-trick pony.

Okay so it's not as bad as all that, but you get the picture. The new loot is sharper but more specialized. The old loot is better all around.

Now when I'm 64?... (and WILL you still love me when I'm 64?) yeah I might start thinking of changing.

But shit, at the rate I level I don't have to worry about that for a while.
 

Havin levelled up a Pirest for our raid due to the burnout rate of that class I decided to switch my mains form hunter to that Priest twink. He had everything from aq20 and ZulG to buff him up, no T1/T2. Still he could keep up with the other priests in Healing.

That priest is now level 66 and got most equipment from quests (not drops). He is now up to +580 Dmg/Heal in his dmg gear (I am HOly specced) and +1050 Heal in his heal equipment. His Int/Stamina/Will is very high but I dont know how this compares to T1/T2 set items.

But the former poster is right: The char looks like a colorful clown. No style ..
 

Can someone point me to a decent looking pair of pants in Outland (that also have decent stats)? I'm forced to carry on wearing a robe, because the pants I've got at the moment are like Bikini bottoms, and whilst this may excite all the men out there, I don't want to look like I work in a brothel, thanks.
I have a couple of nice tunics that are so much better than my robe, but there is no way I am changing into them at the moment.
Blizzard. where is your dress sense??
 

Yeah see, the whole style issue is important to me too (does that make me gay?).

But seriously for while in my late 50's I looked like the He-Man action figure that nobody wanted to play with. Bright red chest peice, gold pants, and that god-forsaken bright-blue foreman's head protector from BRD.

So what I did then was haunt the AH for a month or two and put together a matching set of "Commander's 'of the Eagle'" armor. It all matched, looked cool, and I had Stam and Int out the ass. Still I was a one trick pony though. I couldn't hit for shit and was totally dependent on drinks to refresh my mana.

I figure once I'm in my late 60's I'll do something similar provided that Blizz doesn't offer a better way for casual players to get a nice set of matching armor (they way they do with PvP now). I'll probably mix up the stats though so they are more well rounded.
 

I complain nightly about how horrible my character looks, especially now that I've gone from a robe to a tunic because of a massive stat/bonus boost.

Purple fedora, green/blue crystal staff, red wand, neon purple shirt with gold designs, massive purple and gold shoulderpads, green and pink pants, blue ankle wraps or whatever trolls use, and a turned off red and gold cloak. Oh, and my hamburger helper gloves. Looks like I got dressed at a salvation army wizard surplus store.

Did I mention I hate the color purple too? Ayyeeiiii
 

There should be a way to transfer stats from one piece of equipment to another.

For example, you like the way that a cloth chest piece looks, and you find another ugly cloth chest piece with better stats. It would be cool if you could somehow put the two pieces into a dialog box, click "transfer stats", and have the stats swapped (with the penalty being that both pieces become soulbound).

Maybe it could be an NPC vendor function.