Ahn'Qiraj Paladin Set

"She thinks she's the pink of perfection!"
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

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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

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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 EMPERORS

I 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.

VISCIDUS

My 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'THUN

C'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 FAMILY

Bug 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

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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

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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.

What Rhymes With Orange?

Well nothing really, I think orange is almost the only word in the English language that nothing rhymes with! And a fitting name for this set. It was hard to find matching orange pieces that could be worn by one class. Originally I had pally gloves and warrior shoulders planned out! I stuck with the warrior though and found pieces to match her. In case you didn't guess from the teaser pic, this set is based on the orange one from the background picture.

In order to complete this set you'll have to run quite a few Cata raids and farm faction. I do list some alternatives however and I must admit that once again I haven't quite completed this set on my warrior. I'm still working on the belt from Heroic BWD, and I've decided I'll make do with another shield since I can't stomach grinding the Shattered Sun dailies again. The shoulders are an older tier piece. Luckily, the Void Reaver in Tempest Keep is fairly easy to solo as a meelee. It does help and speed things up to take one ranged dps with you though.

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Slot	Name	Source
Shoulders	Destroyer Shoulderguards	Warrior Tier 5
Chest	Breastplate of Ire	JP vendor in Shattrath
Belt	Belt of Absolute Zero	Heroic BWD- Maloriak
Legs	Leggings of the Ursa	Quest-Deadwood of the North
Boots	Master Cannoneer Boots	Stratholme -Willey Hopebreaker
Hands	Conqueror's Gauntlets	Random Green
Hands	Conqueror's Helmet	Random Green
Main Hand	Eye of Purification	Firelands - Boss drop
Shield	Dawnforged Defender	Shattered Sun - Exalted

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I used the Conqueror's Gauntlets on my warrior since the best matching orange gloves were Paladin only. The Conqueror's Aegis Gauntlets can be acquired by running the Vault of Archavon and getting lucky. You might even get the Black War Mammoth. If you want to make this set as a pally the Conqueror's Aegis Shoulderplates are a good switch for the shoulders. The Glimmering Steel Mantle from Mount Hyjal will also match the set. I'm currently using the Shard of Torment as my shield, and I plan to transmog it only if I manage to get The Fel Barrier. I refuse to pay 20k gold for the Skullflame Shield!

Red Gold

I love red. It's one of my favorite colors. I had planned on doing a fiery red set for my paladin, much like the red and gold armor on the background picture, however I was having difficulty getting a few of the pieces. Some of the pieces I ended up using were from random dungeons and what not and I had kept them because they looked cool. I didn't plan on using them with this set until I began to put it together.

My two main focal items where the Hyperion Armor and the Drillborer Disk. The Hyperion Armor is a just a gorgeous set of red and gold. The most likely places for these peices to drop are in the Vanilla raids. I got sick of farming MC and BWL and only having a belt. I finally found the chest on the AH for 200g and snapped it up! I did get the Drillborer Disk while farming for the Hyperion though, thank goodness. I've drooled over that shield since my baby healing days in Vanilla, now I can finally use it! I did not however end up using the Hyperion Girdle since I "Ooops!" vendored it somehow. I have on the Conqueror's Girlde instead.

Since I was having rotten luck getting the rest of the Hyperion plate I started looking for other options. The Legplates of Blazing Light dropped for me while I was farming AQ for the Avenger's gear. I saved them in case I found a set for them to match. Well so far so good. During WoW's Seventh Anniversary Event I used my little token for reputation gain and farmed Old Hillsbrad Foothills. The Bloodskull Destroyer dropped. I was still sporting a sword at the time and I didn't see myself switching to a hammer any time soon but I kept it for a possible red set anyway. I wanted to use the heroic versions of either Soaulders of Manifold Eyes or the paladin tier gear, Immolation Shoulderguards but I find a nice substitute in the Lightforge Spaulders. I had of course vendored my my set from Vanilla a looong time ago so I just cheated and got the BoA ones instead.

Now, the boots and gloves and I chose. I found these both by using WoW Model Viewer. These were a pain. Both are crafted. The gloves, you can't get the pattern anymore and the pattern for the boots is a rare drop. Oddly enough I didn't have either on my blacksmith and no one in my guild had either piece so I spent a few days spamming trade chat looking for a blacksmith with the required patterns. The Fiery Plate Gauntlets recipe was a reward from a quest that is no longer in game. I also like the graphic much better than the Hyperion Gauntlets. The Hyperion ones have a fat orange stripe going through the middle that hits just at the waist where the belt is so it splits your character in half. I also rather have more red-gold and less orange. The Khorium Boots are the same graphic as the Hyperion Greaves so they matched beautifully.

I'm not a big helm fan as I've stated before and I prefer crown types where I can see my face. I helped a bunch of guildies with their transmog runs and ended up with a few token pieces myself. After turning them in, I decided the Lightbringer War Helm wasn't half bad! It did however require a trip to the barber in order for it to fit over my hair properly. I chose the Shroud of Silvermoon (or Mantle or Cape) because the colors matched, I decided I liked the slightly shorter length and well, I'm a Blood Elf, racial pride and all that.

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Slot	Name	Source
Shoulders	Lightforge Spaulders	Honor Point Heirloom
Chest	Hyperion Armor	Random Vanilla Green Drop
Belt	Conqueror's Girlde	Random BC Green Drop
Legs	Legplates of Blazing Light	Boss Drop - Temple of Ahn Qiraj
Boots	Khorium Boots	Blacksmithing
Hands	Fiery Plate Gauntlets	Blacksmithing
Back	Shroud of Silvermoon	Silvermoon Reputation - Horde only
Main Hand	Bloodskull Destroyer	Boss Drop - CoT Old Hillsbrad
Shield	Drillborer Disk	Boss Drop - Molten Core
Helm	Lightbringer War Helm	Paladin Tier

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Look Alikes and Options

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Slot	Name	Source
Legs	Hyperion Legplates	Random Vanilla Green Drop
Legs	Lavacrest Leggings	Boss Drop - Blackrock Depths
Boots	Hyperion Greaves	Random Vanilla Green
Helm	Crown Empowered Fate	Boss Drop - Black Temple

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It Looks Better On You

I took a moment to redo the For The Tauren outfit and put it on a Blood Elf. Looks better on the Tauren me thinks! The shoulders sit a little differently, the chest piece doesn't fit the same and belt seems clunkier. So judging from the comparison my quest "Make a Taurn Look Good" was a success! While the set doesn't look bad on a Blood Elf, there are quite a few sets that would look better.

I'm currently working on the "Top Ten Reasons to Level Blacksmithing" I've found some incredible pieces that bind on pickup when they're made by a blacksmith. Big drawback if you don't have blacksmithing leveled already. And it's turning out some patterns may no longer be available in game so I'm searching to find my favorite pieces that can still be learned and let you know where to get the pattern! Perhaps I can provide you with enough incentive to level a new craft. I may have to break down and drop mining in favor of BS just so I can make those Swiftsteel Shoulders.

For the Tauren!

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.

I ran into a Tauren pally in Orgrimmar last night. He must be hearth bound at the same Inn as myself since I see him quite a lot. And frankly he makes me green with envy. He has Invincible. I can't tell you how badly I want that mount, but we won't go there. So every now and then I take a moment to check out what he's wearing. He actually has several sets of role playing gear. Last night he was wearing a mix 'n' match set of whatever that looked very cool and very intimidating. And frankly, Tauren or not it wasn't half bad. So I took the challenge and I embarked on a quest to find a set of plate gear that looked good on a Tauren female.

I usually start the shoulder but this time I started with the chest. That chest is the most important piece on a female Tauren. It has to be feminine without making her look deformed. Trust me, some of those chest pieces do NOT look good. The Breastplate of Blade Turning was perfect. Not only does it have lovely smooth lines it doesn't distort. Some of the chest pieces that were full coverage made the Tauren female look as though she had no neck. Ick.

I continued the "skip the shoulders" trend and went to the legs next. The legs had to match color wise and transition smoothly at the waist. I didn't look very long. And frankly once I found Valorous Aegis Greaves I quit looking. I usually obsessively compulsively look at every single pair of legs to be sure I had the right ones but I loved the look. There must be something wrong with me. I HATE plate dresses but the feel that I wanted for this set was starting to evolve. I decided to finish the design with a healer in mind.

The shoulders had be something medium. The large one were HUGE and made her head disappear and the small ones seemed to stick out at funny angles or were just lost to the rest of her armor. There were quite a few decent bronze pairs but I chose a pewter winged look instead. I love the smooth profile and feather details of the Chilled Shoulderplates. They also seemed to lend the set a distinctive custom feel rather than a matchy matchy set feel.

The Belt of Regret and Gauntlets of Serene Blessing pulled it all together. The belt had that extra little touch of gray blue that pulled the shoulders in and the full gloves matched the legs (or skirt!) perfectly. The gloves needed to be fuller. The half gloves or the "skin tight" gloves just didn't feel right on a Tauren model.

Since I decided to design her with a healer in mind instead of a tank, I chose a hammer for the weapon. And a very fitting hammer it is! It's extremely unique, very lovely, matches the color scheme and is dropped off Arthas in Heroic 25M ICC, just like Invincible. I'm going to be keeping my fingers and my eyes crossed farming that thing. "Please drop the mount, please drop the mount, please drop the..." you get the idea. The (H) Royal Scepter of Terenas II even has the right shade of glowy. Make sure it's heroic, the regular has a slightly color.

The shield and cloak are both fairly common graphics. I listed the Drape of Fiery Dreams because it's a random BoE blue drop. There are quite a few other cloaks with the same graphic though, such as the Cape of the Brotherhood from heroic Deadmines. The shield, Observer's Shield, is a simple boss drop. It drops in Dire Maul or Mana Tombs or is a simple level 69 green.

And lastly, you may have noticed, I'm not a big fan of helms. I love the option to turn off the helm graphic. There was one particular helm back in Vanilla that I rather liked. I thought it might be a fitting match for this set. It would fit and frame the face without covering it. The particulat helm I was thinking of is no longer in game. Most of the helms sharing that graphic are actually mail not plate. So it took a bit of extra searching to find the Glorious Headdress

The only drawback with this set is that the legs are Paladin only. However, I chose not to sweat that detail since I was thinking healer. I mean when's the last time you saw a DK holding a shield and casting Holy Light on someone? For that reason I won't even be taking the time to find a possible two hander for the set at this time. Check back in a few days. I'll be doing this set on another race to see how it compares. At which point I'll find boots,(they didn't seem to show up under a Tauren's dress at all!) a possible alternate set of legs available to all classes and of course the optional two hand weapon.

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Slot	Name	Source
Shoulders	Chilled Shoulderplates	H Stop the Plague A There‘s Something Going On In Those Caves
Chest	Breastplate of Blade Turning	Random Rare Drop
Belt	Belt of Regret	Neutral Quest Hazard Disposal
Legs	Valorous Aegis Greaves	PALADIN Only - Boss Drop or Token
Hands	Gauntlets of Serene Blessing	Justice Points
Back	Drape of Fiery Dreams	Random Rare Drop
Main Hand	(H) Royal Scepter of Terenas II	Boss Drop Heroic ICC 25
Shield	Observer's Shield	Boss Drop - Dire Mail
Helm	Glorious Headdress	Random Green

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Imbued With Blue

While flipping through WoW Model Viewer I ran across a fun pair of legs. The Bejeweled Legguards are lovely. I love the cobalt blue with the red swirlies. Unfortunately, I ran into that funny problem that Cataclysm caused, they are no longer available in game. There was no "same model as" tab in Wowhead, but I proceded anyway. I knew there was a chest that seemed to match and I wanted to see how they looked together.

The chest is the Imbued Plate Armor. I quickly went through and checked to see if there were other Imbued Plate pieces. Woot! A full set! Complete with legs of the same graphics as the Bejeweled ones. One problem, I didn't quite like it. The shoulders were an obvious "Don't match!" and I felt the belt was a little too busy. It drew the eye to the waist and you missed the rest of the armor. So I switch out a few a pieces and here's what I came up with.ed

As you can see I switched out the belt, boots and shoulders. The shoulders were a "must" /shudder, and the quieter belt allowed the eye to look at the full set of the armor, not just the middle. The boots, those were personal preference. Unfortunately the Bloodsoaked Greaves in the redo are longer in game so I stayed with the Imbued Plate Greaves. I chose the Grimscale Belt since I felt the red of the Imbued Plate Girlde was too much. However if you do prefer the red for the belt the Girlde of Galantry is another fitting option.

I went through every set of plate shoulders I could find. Quite a few sort of fit, but with a "meh" feeling. The Pauldrons of the Great Ettin were the right color combination for all that they are of a totally different style. Their size balanced out the multitude of color in the armor and kept them from being too diminuitive. The Slatesteel Shoulders or the Symbolic Pauldrons were also good matches, but didn't have quite the impact as the Ettins.

I wasn't sure what I wanted when I began looking at cloaks. At first I was thinking of finding a red and blue one, not a very common combination. I hadn't looked far when I came across the Arakkoa Sage's Shawl. Not only was the blue perfect, the solid color once again supported the armor, rather than detracted from it.

I used the same rule of simplicity while looking for a sword and shield as well. This is one of the few sets I've put together where I haven't tried for an eye catching shield. The smooth lines and soft shades of the Rock Golem Bulwark allow you to look at the colors of the armor instead being intimidated by some giant bulwhark on the left arm. The Battlecaster's Edge nicely complemented both the shield and the armor set.

This set is MUCH easier to acquire than the Dark Iron plate. It is all drops or from quests that are available to either faction.

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Slot	Name	Source
Shoulders	Pauldrons of the Great Ettin (H)	Heroic Raid Boss
Chest	Imbued Plate Armor	Random Green Drop
Belt	Grimscale Belt	Random Green Drop
Legs	Imbued Plate Legings	Random Green Drop
Boots	Imbued Plate Greaves	Random Green Drop
Hands	Imbued Plate Gauntlets	Random Green Drop
Back	Arakkoa Sage's Shawl	Quest - Horde or Alliance
Main Hand	Battlecaster's Edge	Quest - Horde or Alliance
Shield	Rock Golem Bulwark	Dungeon Boss Drop

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The image below is an accidental "recolor". To be honest, I still have no idea how it happened but I thought it was quite interesting and gives a good idea of how armor is changed by simple recolors. I actually like the old red with the green too. All else fails I can just say my Human Female is getting ready for Halloween!