Technically I could be wearing hot pink pants under this robe.

I’m in full transmogrification planning mode right now.

Lathere and I, with the help of two very geared guild-mates, did a quick run through the BC raids last night. We went right past our bedtimes (oops). It’s 7.30am now and I’m running on a couple hours sleep but, even without the alarm set, I always seem to wake up at the same time anyway (goddamn work alarm!). I hate that.

Running the BC raids last night (for those who don’t believe I used to play a Rogue in BC here’s a flashback) splintered my focus and got me trying to finish all my raid sets. I was very confused. I don’t think I got one item in the end. I had most of what dropped in the bank! I spent a good hour thinking I needed boots for all my sets, only to be reminded that, duh, boots aren’t part of Tier 4 and 5 five piece sets.

So I’ll point out some basics to remind you, dear reader, and myself.

Pieces in an Armor Set

Blizzard tend to stick to a trend here and usually pick the major five armor pieces.

Check out this link and you can quickly see on Wowhead’s Priest Armor Set page that the majority have five pieces to the set, but there quite a few three piece sets – my tailored Shadow’s Embrace set is one of theses – and the rare six piece set.

In Classic/Vanilla/Level 60 World of Warcraft the sets tended towards more pieces and I’d say that, with the exception of Zul’Gurub and the AQ sets, the standard was six pieces in a set or more.

By the Burning Crusade/Level 70 the five piece set was the norm. Originally Tier 6 (Black Temple and Mount Hyjal) only included five pieces but they added to the set with extra, smaller, items when they released their end-of-expansion raid zone, Sunwell Plateau.

In Wrath of the Lich King/Level 80 five pieces per raid set was consistent. They also stuck to the same shared class tokens (more on that later). I presume that they’ve stuck to this formula in Cataclysm/Level 85.

Regardless of what set you choose to collect you’re going to need to fill out a smaller set with accessories. Otherwise you’ll be running around in bare feet, like me!

Visible Armor Slots

Unless you’re completely a numbers man, or woman as the case my be, you’ve probably noticed that your character doesn’t actually look like they’re wearing a necklace or rings on their fingers. Not all armor slots are visible and contain 3D models that adorn your naked, virtual, self.

There’s no need to collect the non-visible items. I’m sure these will be greyed-out or disabled on the future transmogrification screen.

1. Helm: Visible (optional – in display you can always Show or Hide)
2. Neck: Not visible
3. Shoulders: Visible, extremely so
4. Back: Visible (optional – in display you can Show or Hide)
5. Tabard: Visible (although if you’re rocking an awesome set I wouldn’t cover it with a Tabard)
6. Chest: Visible, extremely so
7. Bracers: Not visible
8. Gloves: Visible
9. Waist: Visible
10. Legs: Visible; Not visible if you’re wearing a robe in your chest slot
11. Feet: Visible
12. Ring 1 & 2: Not visible
13. Trinket 1 & 2: Not visible
14. Main hand: Visible
15. Offhand: Visible
16. Ranged/wand: Visible (you might hit need to hit “x” to see it in hand though)

Basic information, yes, but important!

The most simple set of visible armor for a caster class would contain:

• Caster Basic: Shoulders, Chest(Robe), Gloves, Belt, Shoes, Weapon

The helm and cloak would be hidden using the Display options and the robe would cover mis-matched pants.

The most simple melee visible armor set would contain pants:

• Melee Basic: Shoulders, Chest, Pants, Gloves, Belt, Shoes, Weapon

 The Rules

As Klep pointed out in a comment on my previous post the only rule to transmogrification should be “awesomeness”. That means

• YES: making a set from different expansions
• YES: wearing a set that you never collected when it was current and all-the-rage
• YES: wearing items that were intended for another class originally (I’m looking at you Mages and Warlocks here!). As long as you can equip it, go for it
• YES: wearing a set from Cataclysm

I’m going to focus on raiding armor sets on this blog because, frankly, I’m not sure how easy/difficult it is to get hold of the old PVP stuff. I have a feeling it’s impossible to collect past Arena sets because the currency has been discontinued.

Resources

There are some great resources out there, and I hope I can be of assistance to other Priests reading this blog in the future. A guildy pointed me to:

www.DEAzeroth.blogspot.com

They have a visual guide of every single Staff, Shield ect available in game. At first glance it doesn’t look like enough but I could be wrong! An amazing resource for selecting your weapons by looks alone. I’m not sure if they will be tackling armor, too.

www.wowhead.com

Wowhead has had a nifty feature tucked away for the last year or so. When you browse to an item (for example: Collar of Cho’gall) next to the Comments tab you should be able to see a “Same model as…” tab too. Clicking that tab will show you all the other items in the game that, while they have different stats and names, use the exact same 3D model and colouring.

Scanning this list is the best way to find the most attainable piece of gear that looks the way you want. My example above shows me that there are 5 items in the game that will give me the look I want for my helm.

Collar of Cho’gall: This is a drop from the first boss in Gruul’s Lair. We cleared this zone with 4 last night so this is definitely a go-to option. You can only clear this raid zone once per week though.

Arcanist Crown Mage: This is ruled out for now because I can’t wear a Mage class piece. I’m not sure if transmogrification, once implemented, will let you transmogrify to something in your possession… or only something wearable. For now I’ll play it safe and not upset any Mages.

Battlecast Hood: This one is crafted. Which sounds easily attainable. Except that I know the pattern is an extremely rare random drop from the Burning Crusade level 70 heroics. I don’t think it’s farmable. And I never got it. If you can find a tailor on your realm with the pattern you might be paying a hefty crafting fee (and finding some tricky mats). If you’re playing on a newer realm don’t even bother.

Hood of the Arcane Path, Hood of the Royal Wizard: Possibles. Should be soloable, BRD isn’t my favourite grinding spot though.

Mage-Collar of the Firestorm: This is from Heroic Blood Furnace. I don’t think this would be fun to solo. And it might be difficult to convince your friends to come along. At least clearing Gruul’s Lair will offer up quite a few Tier 4 tokens.

Sharing Tier Tokens with Other Classes

If you’re pugging old raid zones it’s probably good to know a bit about the Tier Tokens before you get there so you don’t miss something you want.

For the level 60 World of Warcraft dungeon and Tier sets (Tier set 3 cannot be obtained because old Naxxramas was thrown out when new Naxxramas was brought in) most of the Tier will just drop, ready to equip. For example, when you kill Golemagg the Incinerator in Molten Core, he might drop this item:

Robes of the Prophecy
Binds when picked up
Chest, Cloth
222 Armor
+45 Stamina
+10 Intellect
+17 Spirit
+10 Fire Resistance
Classes: Priest
Requires Level 60
Item Level 66
Vestments of Prophecy (0/8)
(3) Set: -0.1 sec to the casting time of your Flash Heal spell.
(5) Set: Improves your critical strike rating by 28.
(8) Set: Increases your chance of a critical hit with Prayer of Healing by 25%.

A Priest in your group – or you – can loot this item and equip it. 1 piece closer to your Tier 1 set.

However by the time you get to the end of Classic WoW, the ZG set comes to mind but it’s no longer available, Blizzard implemented shared tokens for Tier gear. That means an item will drop that is flagged as equip-able by 3 or 4 of the game classes eg Warrior, Druid, Priest. These can be traded to the right vendor, usually in the major city of the expansion or near the raid zone itself, for your class Tier.

For example, you might kill Curator in Karazhan and see this drop:

Gloves of the Fallen Defender
Binds when picked up
Classes: Warrior, Priest, Druid
Requires Level 70
Item Level 70

This item, once looted, can be taken to a vendor in Aldor’s rise or Scryer’s Tier (depending on your loyalty to either team) in Shattrath and traded for:

Handwraps of the Incarnate
Binds when picked up
Hand, Cloth
295 Armor
+50 Stamina
+26 Intellect
+33 Spirit
Durability 55 / 55
Classes: Priest
Requires Level 70
Item Level 120
Incarnate Raiment (0/5)
(2) Set: Your Prayer of Healing spell now also causes an additional 150 healing over 9 sec.
(4) Set: Each time you cast Flash Heal, your next Greater Heal cast within 15 sec has its casting time reduced by 0.1, stacking up to 5 times.

You’ll note that this vendor only shows you your own classes Tier options. I don’t think it’s possible to purchase another classes’s Tier items: you can only buy what you can equip.

Shadow's Embrace AKA Frozen Shadoweave armor

Tier 7 is the first tier set that I have collected in World of Warcraft… and I’m getting hooked on the whole matching set thing.

The other day a Paladin in Stormwind was walking around (yes walking, not running) wearing one of the classic armor sets. At first I thought a strange NPC had somehow broken loose from the throne room to visit the Trade District. I’m sorry I can’t be specific about which armor set they had equipped as I saw them on my brother’s screen while he was playing.

It made me miss my first armor set: the Frozen Shadoweave tailoring set. To this day I think it’s one of the most beautiful armor sets in the game (followed closely by the Tier 5 Priest set) and it’s doesn’t even require you to raid to acquire it.

The Frozen Shadoweave set lasted me all the way through the Burning Crusade and I never took a piece of Tier 4 or 5 gear as a result. Unfortunately I wasn’t raiding far enough into Mount Hyjal or Black Temple to collect the Tier 6 set.

With the release of Wrath I took a couple of screen captures of Cassandri’s gear and disenchanted my items as I replaced them in Northrend. Oh how I regret that now. Bag space be damned!

Here is a brief gallery/history of the Priest Armor sets, mostly Tier raiding sets, in World of Warcraft for your reference (and mine). I love them all.

Priest Armor Sets (Tiers 1-8, Dungeons 1 & 2, Frozen Shadoweave)

Please note that the links below are to the damage (Shadow) versions of the armor sets from Tier 4-Tier 8. Healing equivalents exist and you can find them all listed here on the one page.

Classic
Dungeon Set 1: Devout (Scholomance, Stratholm, Blackrock instances)
Dungeon Set 2: Virtuous (upgrade from set 1)
Tier 1: Prophecy (Molten Core)
Tier 2: Transcendence (Blackwing Lair/Onyxia/Molten Core)
Tier 3: Faith (Naxxramas in Classic)

Burning Crusade
Frozen Shadoweave (tailoring)
Tier 4: Incarnate (Karazhan/Gruuls/Magtheridon)
Tier 5: Avatar (Serpentshrine/Tempest Keep)
Tier 6: Absolution (Black Temple/Mount Hyjal/Sunwell)

Wrath of the Lich King
Tier 7: Faith (Naxxramas in Wrath/Obsidian Sanctum)
Tier 8: Santification (Ulduar)

I’m contemplating crafting the Frozen Shadoweave Robe, Shoulders, Boots and the Battlecast Hood all over again. The Primal Mights and Ebonweave cooldowns might dissuade me though.