Perhaps the only Tank that can use one of these weapons is the Death Knight tank. They use two handers for tanking anyway so this isn’t that big a deal for them. The bigger issue is that every other tank doesn’t get to share with the fun. If you’re a tank, you’ll be doing the Quel’delar quest chain for your off spec and that’s just sad. CM Bornakk has this to say about the situation:

We don’t feel there is a need for it? We aimed to make sure that every class had something to gain from the Quel’Delar series, but that doesn’t mean every spec of every class. Could a tank use the one handed dps version of Quel’Delar? Yes, it may give them more threat. Is this ideal for surviving while tanking? No, but there are other items available for that. Source

I somehow feel what Bornakk is trying to say. If the Argent Tournament rewards don’t even include a proper healing mace for holy pallies and resto shammies then we probably shouldn’t expect better for the Quel’delar. Sure the seven weapons seem to be very accommodating. It’s just that having something this epic and leaving out a whole role doesn’t leave a good taste in my mouth. Even the Argent Tournament rewards, lacking a bit in coverage for specs, managed to get a tanking Axe out. So while Bornakk has a point, it still feels like a whole bunch of bull excrement to me.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

argent tournament grounds

Crusader’s Coliseum

To be clear, the 5 man encounter is called Trial of the Champion. The raid encounter (both 10 and 25 man) is called Trial of the Crusader while the heroic mode of this encounter is called Trial of the Grand Crusader.

Trial of the Champion should roughly on par with other 5 man dungeons in WoTLK. The heroic mode rewards 1 Emblem of Conquest and 1 Champion’s seal per boss. Only the heroic mode will be included in the rotation of dungeon daily quests. Trial of the Crusader will award 2 Emblems of Triumph for each encounter.

There will be a jousting fight in one of the encounters in Trial of the Champion but gear won’t come into play here unlike in the “vehicle fights” in Oculus and Ulduar. It should be just like regular jousting in the Argent Tournament.

Since there are four different modes for Trial of the Crusader, you’ll be able to choose among the four just like you can choose between normal and heroic for other dungeons. This time there will be four choices.

To activate Trial of the Grand Crusader, at least one player in the group should have finished Trial of the Crusader. Activating is done by talking to an npc and everyone in the raid will automatically be doing the tribute run.

The Trial of the Crusader will have one encounter similar to Priestess Delrissa in Magisters’ Terrace. For those who aren’t familiar with it, it was basically a fight where 5 of you fight 5 of them in a sort of Arena Tournament fashion. Gives you that PvP feel inside a dungeon run.

Isle of Conquest

After some testing in the PTR, the devs decided to make a few changes to Isle of Conquest such as increasing keep walls health, lowering reinforcements for both sides, making cannons repairable and other things.

Blizzard’s ideal average time for completing Isle of Conquest (and other battlegrounds too in fact) is 20-30 minutes.

The Cobalt Mine and Oil Derrick will have an added bonus when captured. Capturing one will give a 15% bonus to all damage done by operated vehicles. Capturing both will give a 30% bonus.

Spawn killing or graveyard camping is a potential concern for Isle of Conquest. While making it back to the keep should allow players to dodge enemies, Blizzard might add graveyard portals for resurrecting at a different location if this really becomes a big problem.

While vehicle combat figures greatly in Isle of Conquest, the dev team feels that ground combat will also be a big part of the battleground. The above mentioned change about the Oil Derrick and the Cobalt Mine will make capturing them important and that requires ground combat to do.

Isle of Conquest marks of honor will be a part of the turn in quests. By adding an additional requirement, the rewards will also be increased.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

argent tournament grounds

Trial of the Champion (5-player) normal mode: Item level 200

Trial of the Champion (5-player) Heroic mode: Item level 213

Trial of the Crusader (10-player) normal mode: Item level 232

Trial of the Crusader (25-player) normal mode: Item level 245

Trial of the Grand Crusader (10-player) Heroic mode: Item level 245

Trial of the Grand Crusader (25-player) Heroic mode: Item level 258

In addition, successful tribute runs (Trial of the Grand Crusader only) will result in higher item level rewards from the tribute chest at the end.

The fact that you can get Naxx 10 quality gear from doing Trial of the Champion on normal mode is already huge especially since you can keep going back several times in a day because normal dungeons don’t have lockouts. And then you can get Naxx 25 quality gear from doing it in heroic mode!

Post from: WOW Obsessed

argent tournament weapons

I already marked my holy paladin as the next alt I’m going to level to 80, which I will do once my warlock gets geared decently to run at least heroics and maybe even Naxx acceptably. Already excited about the prospect of getting a cool epic weapon for my holy paladin when she gets to 80, I started looking for the weapon I’ll get from the Argent Tournament. I was quite disappointed to find out that there was no real obvious option for them. The obvious choice would be spell power mace with some haste or crit and maybe some mp5. What they have as far as a healing weapon is concerned is the spell power dagger which is a wrong fit for holy paladins for 2 reasons, they can’t use daggers and it has spirit and no crit. i realized that the best fit from the weapons is the Blade of the Keening Banshee for the Horde or the Gnomeregan Bonechopper for the Alliance which is really a dps caster weapon since it has some +hit.

After giving it some thought, it seems that Elemental and Restoration Shamans don’t really have a perfect fit either as far as Argent Tournament weapons are concerned. It’s quite sad that these specs are left out. I mean it’s understandable to limit the weapons that drop from a boss because a big loot table especially when it comes to catering to specialized gear like spell power plate means that if that specific spec has no representation in a raid, it just goes to waste. But I don’t see the problem when it comes to vendors like in the Argent Tournament.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

argent tournament grounds

CM Zarhym came up with a post in the forums earlier to mention a few things. He said that assuming you’re eligible for all the new daily quests in the Argent Tournament, the maximum number of Champion’s Seals a player can get in a day is 15. This means that you’re exalted with and championed all primary factions plus Sunreavers/Silver Covenant and Argent Crusade and also do the Trial of the Champion in heroic mode,

He also gave a listing of the costs for the new item rewards from the Argent Tournament:

Argent Crusader’s Tabard: 50 seals
Argent Pony Bridle (for your squire): 150 seals
Bind-on-Account chest pieces: 60 seals
Bind-on-Account weapons: 60-95 seals
Bind-on-Account trinkets: 75 seals
Argent Warhorse/Argent Charger (epic ground mounts): 100 seals
Quel’dorei Steed/Sunreaver Hawkstrider (epic ground mounts): 100 seals
Silver Covenant Hippogryph/Sunreaver Dragonhawk (epic flying mounts): 150 seals
Shimmering Wyrmling (pet): 40 seals

So even with potentially more Champion’s Seals that a player can get per day, it seems like it’s still could a while to get what you want especially if you want so many of these things.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

argent tournament grounds

First of all there will be two new quest hubs involving a new camp of the Cult of the Damned and a former Tuskarr village located in an island to the north where the sea vrykul have gathered for battle against the Silver Covenant and the Sunreavers. As expected these are progressions in the story, being a new patch and all, so these aren’t just new quests and new dailies but a thickening of the plot. Speaking of the plot thickening, they also announced the return of the Black Knight! Hopefully they make him a bit more of a challenge since he’s currently a lot easier than those champions you joust.

Argent Tournament will also offer new rewards like Sunreaver and Silver Covenant tabards and even a new Argent Crusade tabard that can teleport the player to the tournament grounds. Players will also be able to get new heirlooms (bind to account items) to give to alts, also an Argent Crusade banner and even a new Shimmering Wyrmling pet. Players will also be able to get new mounts in the form of the Quel’dorei Steed and Silver Covenant Hippogryph for the Alliance and the Sunreaver Hawkstrider and Sunreaver Dragonhawk for the Horde. And since the Argent Crusade is a paladin group, obviously paladins are favored with a new Charger mount they can buy. Probably the most interesting of these items is the upgrades squire who has a mount and can be called on every 8 hours for 3 minutes to perform bank, mailbox and vendor duties.

Phew. After seeing all those things that you can get, it’s definitely a lot of reason to visit the tournament grounds more often and participate!

Post from: WOW Obsessed

mounted standing

I don’t know why but one time I decided to mount the horse for this quest in Moonkin form (I’m usually resto but I go Moonkin for questing) and lo and behold I got what you see in the picture above. It wasn’t a freak incident too since it seems to happen every time as long as I’m in Moonkin form. In my Tauren form everything is ok. This really gave the group quite a laugh!

Post from: WOW Obsessed

argent tournament goblins

The sad thing is that it’s already been confirmed that those goblins won’t be around anymore by the time patch 3.2 comes out because well, the Coliseum will be built already by that time. I wonder if the Argent Tournament will ever know where all that wood and stone came from. The goblins did admit to us players that we should keep quiet about it, although there really isn’t a way to tell them even if we wanted to.

Blizzard already announced that patch 3.2 will see an expanded Argent Tournament, not only because we’ll be able to enter the built Coliseum as a dungeon but also because there will be more quests and more reason for players to visit the grounds. This means that the daily quests the two goblins are currently giving players now would be replaced by two (or even more) different ones. Hopefully the replacements will be as easy and fun to do. I’m also kind of hoping that we’ll see more dailies involving the Crystalsong Forest. The tree cutting daily that one of the goblins gives made the Forest a little more meaningful since players finally had reason to go there. While some of the dailies will still involve going there, the removal of the tree cutting daily takes one off the list making the Forest less meaningful in patch 3.2 if they don’t add more quests for there.

So if you’re a new level 80 or just for some reason haven’t seen these goblins yet ot done their dailies, now would be a great time to start and enjoy them before they go away!

Post from: WOW Obsessed

argent tournament grounds

We know that the Coliseum will have a 5 man dungeon and a 10/25 man raid dungeon and that both will be Ring of Blood/Amphitheater of Anguish type fights, only that they will be “more epic”. But the 5 man version will have different bosses from the raid version. I actually find this information both cool and disappointing at the same time and this is how I’ll feel until we find out more about these fights.

The reason why I find this idea cool is that a ring of blood type of setup for a dungeon should make it short and thus popular. There’s a reason why Violet Hold is a popular heroic to run. Short raids like Onyxia, Magtheridon’s Lair and Obsidian Sanctum are also loved for the brevity of the raid. Epics for less time spent is the motto here.

But thins brings me to why I find it a bit disappointing. Considering that this is the main PvE focus of the next major content patch, something like this seems like a let down. I mean imagine of patch 3.1 didn’t have the epic and massive looking Ulduar but a raid version of Violet Hold. Imagine if the patch that brought us the Black Temple instead gave us another Magtheridon’s Lair type raid. I mean raids like Vault of Archavon and Obsidian Sanctum are good once in a while but raids that come out of major content patches are supposed to be epic looking instead of just epic feeling. By this I mean that not only do the encounters have to feel pretty awesome but they also have to feel like it’s a big enough place to be raided, not just one puny coliseum.

What do you guys think about this aspect of patch 3.2 so far?

Post from: WOW Obsessed

Considering that we’ll be able to meet the Lich King inside the Icecrown Citadel by patch 3.3, it makes sense that patch 3.2 would be about events and preparations leading to what will happen in patch 3.3. In fact, that’s exactly that it’s mostly about, judging from the features listed by Blizzard.

argent tournament grounds

Expanded Argent Tournament

According to information given by Blizzard, we’ll see more dailies and more rewards and more things going on to lure more adventurers. This will definitely involve the Coliseum which will be build by the time the patch comes out. I’m actually hoping we’ll see more action (dailies included) that doesn’t have anything to do with jousting since i really hate it and suck at it.

Crusader’s Coliseum

We knew about this Coliseum ever since the Argent Tournament was announced but until now we’ve never known exactly what kind of action we were going to see in it. Back then I guessed that it would be used for some kind Ring of Blood type event for a group of 5. Apparently I got a part of it right but I never expected it to be as big as they said it will be. CM Zarhym mentioned that it is going to be a Ring of Blood type fight inside the Coliseum but there will be two versions, the 5 man version and the 10/25 man version, with one version having different bosses from the other. I’m guessing that this should be pretty quick and thus making it a pretty popular run for both heroics and raids. I’m not sure if the raid version will be the same tier as Ulduar or higher but my guess is that it might be the same, making it that tier’s version of Obsidian Sanctum.

Isle of Conquest, the new Battleground

The announcement of this battleground should put to rest the speculation that it’s going to be the one in Azshara that Blizzard junked before. Besides I don’t think that one would have had any relation to Wrath of the Lich King. CM Zarhym also mentioned that this new battleground is going to be like a mix between Wintergrasp and Alterac Valley with a few twists, which should mean more vehicular combat. I’m guessing that while this probably won’t have a real geographic location in any map, it should theoretically be in Icecrown just like Eye of the Storm is theoretically in Netherstorm.

Arena Season 7

there really isn’t much to say about this except that, like all new seasons, we should expect a new tier of PvP gear.

That’s all we have for now but even with that little information, it’s enough to make us excited all over again and make us suffer in anticipation!

Post from: WOW Obsessed