New Armor Set Models, General Updates

Couple of little bits and pieces for you all, seeing as how there hasn't been one in a week.

New Armor Sets

I'm not sure how many of you adamantly follow MMO Champion; it is understandable as they tend to post about a million times a day. However, they are one of the best sources out there for news and information as soon as it becomes available and are generally very accurate. Before I digress any further, they have recently posted the "finalized" armor sets coming with the release of 3.2. I use the term with some caution because they have released what we think will be the final version a couple of times now, but this one seems to be the most promising.

There has been a bit of a twist with the new tier set. In a bit of a stray from the norm, they have now given each faction a different model for their classes. As such, us Draenei's won't be looking similar to our Horde counterparts as we will both be sporting individualized gear. However, they have made all armor-similar classes wear the same model with differentiation in color schemes. That's right: although we will not look like our factioned counterparts, we will ALL look like hunters. I don't know how I feel about this, I think I would rather be associated with a Horde than a huntard...

Regardless of my opinions, you can check out the sets for Alliance here and Horde here. Give me your opinion, what would you prefer? Do you like the looks of your set? Be sure to specify which faction's you are commenting on.

It seems they are keeping the Arena gear homogenized across factions, which you can see here (both factions included in the link).

All rights to the images are courtesy of MMO Champion (http://www.mmo-champion.com/).

Earth/Wind Shock Changes

Due to the glaring redundancy that was created when Wind Shock was first added to the Shaman arsenal, the developers have decided to make a couple of changes. Wind Shock is now becoming 'Wind Shear' and remaining, for all intents and purposes, pretty much the same. The major change is it is now off of the cooldown shared by our other shocks, so we will have a much better ability to interrupt enemy spellcasts. This is a real perk for PvP where we will no longer be faced with an either/or situation for our Flame Shocks and interrupting the enemy.

Earth Shock is being reinvented. It is, as of the latest PTR build, a debuff that will reduce the enemy's melee attack speed by 10% for 8 seconds. It was previously 2 seconds which hardly seems worth the cast. Even with the change, I am wondering how useful it will be. It is obviously another attempt to increase our PvP viability and prevent melee from tearing us up as soon as they get within range, but is 10% really going to be a game-changer? Another mystery that the patch will withhold.

Progression

On a personal note, my guild and I are really beginning to push the hardmode buck after a period of relative lacking recently. As I have previously mentioned, we got the FL+4 a couple of weeks back which was long overdue. We also got Freya+1 but neither seemed to screenshot worthy and had a feeling of 'finally' to them. We are seriously working on Assembly of Iron Hard mode (and have been for a good 4 weeks on-and-off, this is what has been slowing our progress a lot); additionally we have started work on Thorim hard and Yogg 3 Keepers. If we can get the right mix of raiders I believe we can achieve all 3 of these in the next 2 weeks.

Hopefully more kill pics will be on the way soon.