Avoiding the Clown Look
One of the biggest complaints from almost anyone that leveled through Outlands was the gawd awful look of the quested gear. None of the pieces matched or for that matter even looked good (there may have been a few exceptions). I’m sure one of the big fears for any WoW player is repeating that “ugly” leveling process again, and for many aspiring Death Knights that fear is compounded even more due to the fact that we quest for an awesome looking set of gear upon creation. Even at creation our “starting” gear looks nice. The gear we leave Ebon Hold with is even better. How bad would it be to have that gear for only 2-3 levels? Well fear no more!
Beta tester and DKinfo member Dogtank posted up some screens of his Death Knight at level 70 that is wearing a full set of newly quested Northrend greens and guess what? He still looks cool.
He explains that he avoided any visible armor upgrades from Outlands that only offered a “slight” upgrade. The new leveling speed through Outlands makes keeping your Ebon Hold gear that much easier:
I currently play a Level 71 Death Knight and have leveled it fairly fast considering the limited time I’ve spent on beta. I leveled from 57-69 in Outlands before hitting Northrend. At this time there were definately upgrades along the way but I really didn’t want to give in and upgrade my awesome looking gear and - that being said they were only SLIGHT upgrades. Exceptions to this included belts, rings, trinkets and such.. all teh non visible things.
So don’t worry about looking like a homeless Death Knight. Also, for those of you that feel the need to spend thousands of gold buying the best level 60 and 70 BoE epics, it might be a good idea to sell that crap now and put it to better use:
I’d personally suggest saving your time and money and stock up on things for your professions, and consumables and such for leveling rather then items that you’ll just end up replacing.
I’m assuming most of you are going to be rerolling and making DK’s your Main and subsequently you’ll be leveling them incredibly fast - don’t waste money on things which are seriously not worth it. Leveling from 60-70 is insanely fast now and so getting yourself all this awesome gear will just be a waste of time later on down the track.
What about the gear in Northrend?
You can browse a lot of the new gear drops on Wowhead and even MMO-Champion has a nice list of Northrend drops. We haven’t seen too many profiles or screens of the actualchoices leveling Death Knights have made for gear, but Jayde posted a screen on his blog that shows his stats at max beta level (77) along with another glimpse of how green gear in Northrend isn’t so bad looking. It even looks like his shoulders have the same model as the old starting DK gear from alpha:
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I wonder why people make such a fuss about gear looks, unless you’re RPing, the looks of your gear shouldn’t be such a problem… even then RP’ers always use various pieces of low & high lvl gear to make their RP sets look great. Besides that, the “clown” look is only temporary, untill you’re at another “endlevel” (lvl 80 this time) since that will open up the availability of new sets that don’t have messed up looks =)
I’ve managed to lay in a Lifestone and a Blade of Misfortune, and I consider my “Death Knight Prep” gear complete. Everything else from Ebon Hold looks to beat the stuff I’d be spending gold on by a mile. I might get some enchanting mats/armor kits/leg armor as I’m sure the +Strength supplies will be pretty dear come Wrath. However, I think the best thing I can hold on to in order to make a difference starting off in Wrath is Gold. Gold and profession stuff.
Now if DK’s can’t use the Furious Gizmatic Goggles like Wowhead is saying then I may have to make my first non-engineer… weird.
I can see the point of view of wanting to keep your DK looking all goth and what not but really…its just 10 levels of outland. You want the gear to change somewhat in look/style. Imagine having the same toon model from level one to level 80. Things have to change sometime. Mismatches are unfortunate but as soon as you level cap your bound to find a set that works just fine.
I can see sometime in the distant future blizzard might add something client side to allow only you to view your character in a non changing set of armor. Doubt many people would use that option though.
I think there should some sort of profession or maybe an offshoot of BS or Herbalism that allows for “dying” of armor… There was another game that did this, was it NWN? Could spend gold to alter the look and color of your armor, buy dye to change color, and pay to add spikes and other chachkis, was a really great way to customize your look, and all stats remained.
the issue with customising ones gear is the need for more space in the game then for armor with 99 different colors - might be a bit of a nightmare for coders with limited room to develop.
On saying that though id love some sort of armor dyeing idea to work in wow, though i think the spike thing is cool i think it might be to much :*(
ON the not about clowning, got all my blues for 60-70, ill keep the wicked ebon set and set it to my town set on itemrack (never gotten to use it before ^^). The faster i level the better i say =)
ps: anyone saving scrolls, flasks and other pots of the such? eg. BEM flasks for more buffs to level with? yeah i seriously want to get through outlands fast =D
lolz @ chaosheaven,
Blizzard is making questing gear look cooler while leveling. Why complain?
The shoulders she’s wearing drop out of The Nexus off the third boss. They’re http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=35602
I managed to aquire some very nice blues and greens and at 77 I look like this in dps gear: http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p89/Connmac/WoWScrnShot_080508_151159.jpg
and this in tank gear: http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p89/Connmac/WoWScrnShot_080508_151316.jpg
I don’t really care that much for looks, but I’m definitely keeping all my Ebon Hold gear. Even the login gear looks pretty good.
While i like having a basass looking character, i’ll never skimp on stats to avoid putting on a pair of pink gloves.
I read a Blue post regarding armor dying a long while back. The answer was that it can’t be done because of technical reasons. It seems they’d need to overhaul the graphics engine to accommodate it.
i agree with the maker of this post outland gear(most of it) looks like crap and doesnt match, and the deathknight starting quest gear is the coolest gear ive seen imo, and should be reused as like an arena set, plus the new northrend greens look way better then outland greens, i couldnt stant to see all my awsome starting quest gear armor be replaced by some retarted looking armor.
oh and one more thing how come that picture of jayde has only almsot 10k armor? thats not alot for plate.
You forget DK don’t wear shields. That is why their armor is not as high as per say a paladin tank or warrior tank.