Tier 10 – Psychotropic or daltonism?

Fun fact: daltonism is another name for color blindness, particularly red-green color blindness. Go wikipedia!

Anyway, if you’re curious about the set bonuses and base stats for the tier gear, I suggest you look elsewhere or wait until it’s been released live, then I’ll talk about it.

For now, it’s far more important to review the appearance of the new gear.

So without further ado, here’s a cropped image from MMO Champion to display the data-mined appearance of the T10 set for blood elf mages:

First off, the helm will be hidden. It’s reminiscent of a demonic cake topper or the blade portion of some high-tech blender. With teeth.

Continuing with the form of the garb:

Traditionally (at least recently) a tier set has included gloves. We have seen handless gloves in the past, but this image seems to show a lack of hand covering altogether. Perhaps we get T10 bracers or the graphic just wasn’t available or bugged.

The belt is probably an off-tier piece, much like the Icehowl Binding I’m currently wearing is not a true part of the T9 but looks darn snazzy with it.

But what is up with the shoes? Bony toes? Seriously?

The shoulders aren’t too bad. A little spiky and a little glowy but nothing too garish.

It’s difficult to see in this shot, head over to MMO Champ to get a better image (the male human mage shot is particularly good for a close-up), but there is some nice detailing in the pattern of the fabric.

What the hell, I’ll not be lazy for once and get you that close up.

That’s a snippet of the shoulder, showing off a nice little filigree pattern.

Compare this to the poor warlocks, who *snicker* get gingham.

The wielders of fel forces, stealers of souls, and wanna-be mages are decked out in a fabric often relegated to adorning little girl’s dresses for Easter.

Throw a couple skulls and some runes on there all you want, but the diner down the street called and they want their table cloth back.

Overall, I like the shape of the set, excluding the helm. The detailing wins with the filigree but the toes on what’s hopefully offset shoes have got to go. Trolls and draenei have never been so lucky. Even the Forsaken just show their own toes.

Again, I’m a fan of the sleeveless robes. Since we’re not getting the Horde/Alliance split this time there is less opportunity for the addition of the bits of leather/feather/fur that I enjoyed on the T9, lending a tribal Horde vibe to it. However, it still looks less “pretty” than the T7 set, with the inclusion of the chain bits giving it the harder appearance that I like.

So for shape and detailing (especially in comparison to the *giggle* warlock set) I’ll give the mage T10 an 8 out of 10. I would give it a 9 since the helm display can be turned off and the shoes are most likely off-set, but I’m holding out to see what the gloves turn out to be.

Moving on to color:

WTF people?

Taking them from the top left and moving clockwise we have: the “copper-top” set, the “I want to be a druid” set, the “Mardi Gras” set, and the “Christmas” set.

The “copper-top” set – Of them, I think I like this one the best. It seems more warlocky to me with the use of orange for the trim, but it edges into the red area of the spectrum a bit and gives a nice copper tone to the metallic bits of the set. Copper is an under-utilized metal currently so it sets it apart from other gear. And black is always a slimming choice.

The “I want to be a druid set” – Using green as the base color gives it a whole nature vibe. I think they were trying to go for a bronze look for the trim, but it ends up looking like leather. Green plus leather equals druid.

The “Mardi Gras” set – It’s got purple (justice), gold (power), and green glow (faith). All I need is a bunch of beads and a macro to yell “Show me your tits!” Speaking of which (Mardi Gras, not tits), there should totally be a holiday for Carnival in the game. That would be awesome.

The “Christmas” set – Celebrate it or hate it, the colors red and green scream “Christmas!”

T7 and T8 each had 2 colors, one for the 10-man and another for the 25. T9 had one color per class for all 3 set levels, but the same model used across 3 classes with different colors.

It seems that we’re going back to class-specific instead of faction-specific tier gear so I imagine that 2 of these, if not 3 (if they do 3 levels like for the T9) will make it live.

T7 mix and match between 10 and 25 was pretty bad with the browns and purples clashing, but at least there was a decent amount of the robe that was a neutral color.

T8 mix and match wasn’t too terribly bad because the whole thing just looked like muddy brown with colored trim anyway.

T9 was beautifully done in that you could have pieces from each level (10, 25, heroic) and still look sharp with no one the wiser that you were wearing a hodge-podge of gear.

But what is going to happen when we start mixing this set?

I think I just gave myself a fashion nightmare.