Our server hit Phase 3 last night at around 8:30 PM.

Knowing as I do that the new Badge reward vendor won’t have the goods until we meet her extortion… I mean, until we build her an anvil… I went on over to do my part and do her Daily quest.

A personal request; if you take the time to actually READ the daily quest, the keys you’re looking for drop off the Myrmidons. Just the Myrmidons. ONLY the Myrmidons. Those are the big scaly ones with big pointy things, okay?

I got sick of seeing crying on general about key drop rates after 30 seconds on the Isle of QQ.

I, on the other hand, killed six Myrmidons and got 4 keys. So I used 3 and saved one for the next day. Nice that they go right into your keyring, no cluttering up bag space. And also nice that you can farm the keys in advance.

After doing that quest and the “light the ships on fire and fight 400 players for respawns on a single tiny ship” quest, I went exploring the new Armory on the Isle of QQ.

There are three floors to the Armory, and on the very topmost floor are 4 vendors. And these vendors, bless their little black hearts, sell PvP gear.

Epic PvP gear.

In 2.4, if you remember, they released sets of PvP gear, blues, purchasable for gold if you had Honored rep with each Outlands faction. Different factions have different pieces of gear, and if you want an entire set, you’ll have to visit each Faction Quartermaster.

This is pretty win, since having Resilience on these pieces, decent armor and Agility and Stam make them pretty darn strong for starting tanking. 

I mentioned it in my last serious WoW Insider article. I like that I can have a matching set of PvP gear, true starter stuff, so at least I last longer than a lit match in a wind tunnel. And having something to fill out my tanking set until I can get better upgrades is awesome.

Well, the new vendors on the Isle of QQ that appear when the Armory is captured sell epic PvP gear. They are called ‘Exotic Gear Purveyors’.

They have PvP stuff for sale in exchange for Tier 4 or Tier 5 armor tokens. This is pretty amazing, since I know for a fact that in my guild, Karazhan runs have often dropped tokens no one could use, so they get passed out for off-spec gear or simply vendored.

I imagine this happens in more progressed raiding guilds as well.

Now, thats pretty sweet for folks. You raid all the damn time, you have zero time to run Battlegrounds for honor, and so you can’t get the PvP gear for some cooldown fighting in between raids. Now, you can turn in those pesky extra Tier tokens!

Yeah, right. Like I’m ever going to worry about having too many Tier 5 tokens.

But guess what? They have Epic PvP gear that you can buy that does NOT take Tier tokens. Instead, you buy the pieces with… Badges of Justice.

That’s right. The Veteran’s armor pieces are there, available for varying amounts of Badges of Justice.

Kayri sells all of the various Bracer, Belt and Boot pieces of Veterans’ epic PvP gear, the pieces that match in color and appearance to the Season 2 Arena gear.

If you HAVE been farming your honor, and you’re just waiting for the chance to buy your Arena S2 gear when it goes live for Honor and Marks, then awesome! You can fill out the complete set in appearance. 

Now, I don’t PvP. So I look at the pieces in terms of PvE utility.

The two sets Feral Druids would be interested in would be the Veteran’s Dragonhide for tanking, and Veteran’s Leather for Kitty form. 

It is Boot, Belt and Bracers. Not Shoulders, which would make me weep with joy.

But let’s be honest. If you ARE running Heroics, or you’re running the early ranges of Karazhan, then you’ve got Badges of Justice coming in. Do your three Daily quests in Shattrath that net you the bags, and you get a chance of a Badge of Justice in them. I know I’ve gotten at least 5 Badges just from the Quests.

Well, these are pretty damn good Tanking Druid pieces. If you are weak in one area, picking up a piece that has strong armor, high Agility, high Stamina and Resilience to buff up your uncrittable for 25 or 40 Badges is pretty win.

If you want to know how gear stacks up, go check them out in Rawr compared to your existing stuff, see what you think.