Items | Bosses | Goodies | Accessories
I've looked high and low to find pink plate armor. It doesn't exist. The closest is the Bloodscale set which I consider to be more of a diluted red. There are a few miscellaneous pieces that have pink in them but not enough to match for a full set. Disappointing. There's a fabulous pink shield and several assorted axes, daggers, hammers and so on. WRU Pink?! Asking for one or two pink plate sets isn't a bad thing. It doesn't mean the armor is all frufru or girly. You can in fact design pink plate that still looks badass. In fact, if anyone's an artist and creative like that, send me a couple designs. I'd like to see what other people come up with.
So the only set I found that had enough pink to be taken seriously was the Ahn Qiraj Avenger's Battlegear set. And each piece is individual, there are no look alikes! There is another belt with a different graphic that matches fairly well however. For this set, prepare to run the Temple of AQ repeatedly. And I mean repeatedly. I was in there for every lockout for almost four months before finishing this set. I already had the legs, chest and shoulders from long ago but decided to finish it off. Check me out on the Armory!
Since this is an actual set, not something you have to hunt down individual pieaces for I won't be making a chart of where to find it. Wowhead has already done that. What I am going to do it give you some pointers on killing the bosses and farming the materials for the quests and certain other little perks that come from farming AQ. I will also list a couple accessories I particularly like with this set.
WARNING: Paladin ONLY! The Warrior set is purple, and Death Knights aren't so lucky.
There are two sections of Ahn Qiraj, the Ruins which is a level 60 20 man raid and the Temple which is a level 60 40 man raid. This set is acquired in the Temple. The quests for these pieces are from NPC's who can be find just inside the temple AFTER you kill the first boss. You go up the stairs and to the left. For the individual quests you can refer to Wowhead.
Items
Make sure you got with empty bags, you'll be doing a LOT of looting. Make sure you get the coffer keys! There are chests, or scarab coffers through out the dungeons that will have satchels of scarabs in them. You need numerous scarabs for each piece. Put the extra scarabs you won't use on the AH or trade them for ones you do need. Here's the list and numbers of what you need:
- Idol of Life (2)
- Idol of Rebirth (2)
- Idol of the Sage (4)
- Idol of Strife (2)
- Bone Scarab (10)
- Bronze Scarab (5)
- Clay Scarab (5)
- Crystal Scarab (10)
- Gold Scarab (5)
- Ivory Scarab (5)
- Silver Scarab (5)
- Stone Scarab (5)
These can drop off of any trash. So make sure you loot and loot! You wil aslo need reputation for boss pieces, so make sure you loot each boss. There is a Qiraj Lord's Insignia on each boss. These are reputation turn-ins. It's a repeatable quest called Mortal Champions from Kandrostrasz, next to the other quest givers. The boss pieces require faction in order to turn them in, but NOT to loot them. So if they drop, snap them up!
| Item | Faction | Boss |
| Qiraji Bindings of Dominance (2) | (Neutral) | Princess Huhuran or Viscidus |
| Skin of the Great Sandworm | (Friendly) | Ouro |
| Veklor's Diadem | (Friendly) | Emperor Vek'lor |
| Carapace of the Old God | (Honored) | C'Thun |
Bosses
Most of the bosses are easy to burn through. I was able to solo quite a few as a tank but trust me, it can be tricky and takes a while. Bring a dps or two to make it go quicker. The three that you need to be prepared for are the Twin Emperors, Viscidus and C'Thun. There is a special little thing about the Bug Family as well.
TWIN EMPERORSI am not aware if it possible to solo the Twins or not. You'd have to pull enough DPS to beat them down while they heal each other or be one spectactular kiter. I do know it is easiest to at least two man it if not more. You'll start with the Twins on opposite sides of the room. One does magic, Vek'lor and the other does meelee, Vek'nilash. Have a caster open up DPS on Vek'lor while a meelee or hunter starts on Vek'nilash. Every so often they will switch places by porting and then they'll run back across the room to where they started. When they are close enough to each other, they'll heal each other, so you'll want to get them as far apart as possible. Each person should just stay on their same target, making sure to kite their boss away from his brother as soon as possible. The twins have a shared life pool so they'll drop at the same time. They will also occasionally explode bugs near you, this is negligible damage for an 85. You can't kill the bugs in the room before hand, they'll just respawn.
VISCIDUSMy LEAST favorite boss in here. Seriously. Ya really. But he drops your paladin gloves so you have to do him. I don't believe it's possible for a paladin to solo him, at least not in general and I'll tell you why. First, you need frost damage to freeze him. Second, you need to shatter him by hitting him enough times while he's frozen. Like 75 times in a matter of seconds or something nutso. Yeah, so bring friends. For frost damage, the mage is the ultimate choice. Other things work as well, just not as fast. DK's using frost spells, shamans, priests using mindspike, hunter's traps or just someone equipped with a weapon sold by Warsmith SigFinna. (You have to be far enough on the Sons of Hodir rep grind that you turn into a Vrykul babe in order to purchase from her.) You can put a frost enchant on your weapon or use frost oil. You need a total of 200 frost hits in order to greeze him. Once he's frozen he must be physcially hit 75 times in order to shatter. That's why you bring friends with fast weapons. Even healers should be beating on him at that point with one handed weapons that are fast. A haste potion might be helpful once he freezes. If you drop a snake trap shortly before he freezes, each time a snake hits him, it counts as a hit, same with Army of the Dead or any "helper" trinkets like the attack chicken or yeti or dragonling. Too bad the pet trinkets share a CD however. So in a nutshell, freeze with frost damaging attacks and beat the snot out of him really, really fast.
C'THUNC'Thun is fairly easy. It is however possible to insta die if you get sucked into his stomach. GET OUT OF THE ACID asap. Get on an island as quick as possible. You'll pretty much just dps him, kill the tentacles, get sucked into his tummy, hop on an island, kill a tentacle, jump on the little circle with "bubbly" rocks into to exit the stomach and go back to dpsing him. Cake. If you die in the tummy you can't get rezzed, unless a rezzer is in there with you. It also sucks for looting since you'll have to release and run back and have no quick port to get there.
BUG FAMILYBug family is easy. Once you almost have one of them killed another bug will eat it. I usually kill princess first since she heals. However the order in which you kill them makes a difference on loot. Each bug has their own loot and then there's shared loot. If you want a specific item, make sure to kill the bug that drops it last.
Goodies
Now for the goodies! Fun stuff that drops in Ahn Qiraj? Bug mounts, which can't be used outside the instance but are fun to have. They also count towards your mount achievements. There are four mounts, green, yellow, blue and red. They have a chance to drop off any mobs in the instance. If you loot the red one (pictured above) you get a feat of strength. Exalted plate drops in both sides of Ahn Qiraj. It is some of the sexiest uncommon plate in the game. Excellent for transmog and sells for a bundle on the AH. And dropping off Battleguard Sartura are the Robes of the Battleguard pictured on the left. Sexy. A definate carrot to getting a caster to run with you. And my favorite non-set quest item? Blessed Qiraji Bulwhark, one of the coolest shields in game!
Accessories
Now for accessories. I'm picky. Colors have to match. I only found one cloak that I even liked with this set and I do not have it yet. Dumb thing never drops. As usual, an item that by itself might not look so good with the gear, can be enhanced by adding another item that draws it in. There are plenty of "orange" items that match this set, pretty much anything that has a fiery style to it. I'm going to concentrate on the pink things.
| Slot | Item | Source |
| Shield | Dawnforged Defender | Shattered Sun - Exalted |
| Shield | Aegis of the Vindicator | Magtheridon |
| Sword | Elementium Fang | Stonecore - Priestess Azil |
| Sword | Souldrinker | Regular DS Madness |
| 1h Axe | Kingly Axe | Random Green |
| 2h Axe | Burning Crusader | Quest: Nexus-King Salhadaar |
| 2h Axe | Treant's Bane | Dire Maul: Gordok Tribute |
| Helm | Crimson Beholder Eye | Collidus |
| Cloak | Nethervoid Cloak | Hyjal Summit zone drop |
| Belt | Girdle of the Fallen Crusader | BWL: Chromaggus |
My absolute favorite combination is the Souldrinker and Dawnforged Defender. I was so excited when the Souldrinker finally dropped for me. I was waiting to do the transmog until I had it. The shades of pink and orange match perfectly. As for belts, the Girdle of the Fallen Crusader matches very well. I did chose to go with the Belt of the Fallen Emperor however. I made sure I had the Girlde but it didn't quite look the way I wanted on my Blood Elf. The Crimson Eye is basically a pink eye patch! I had several at one point and AH'd them for thousands of gold a long time ago. Now I can't get one to drop for me, I just get mail instead. Collidus is a rare spawn so that doesn't help either. I do like the helm with this set however so I actually have the helm graphic turned on. And cloak, it's the only real pink cloak in game.
Good luck getting this set. A bunch of guildies runwi th me at different time and were able to get achievements, farm rep and get a few cool items. Good tiems were (mostly) had by all. And of course all the QQ stories of killing Viscidus.
Up next I'll be deviating from my "plate" design. I'm so happy with the set I did for my hunter I'm going to post a chain mail set. Sexy. Another one of my customized designs that I had a lot of fun putting together.
I have to admit straight off that I have never really liked the Tauren model. Three fingers and a misplaced tail don't do much for me. On top of that I didn't care for Taurens being allowed to become paladins either. Now that we have that straight I'll let you know what inspired me for this particular set. 