Posted by Spooner | 5 Comments
Loot QQ: Colossal Skull-Clad Cleaver
This item is somewhat on my own personal vendetta list. For retribution I use the Titansteel Destroyer which is essentially the same weapon only I swap hit for haste rating and that just happens to work out immensely better for me. But I can see how fury warriors want this thing badly.The Colossal Skull-Clad Cleaver.
The Good: As far as 2H weapons go it looks amazing. Somebody said “Hey, let’s put an axe on a scythe and then add some more axes on it. Ok now add a skull. Sweet, there we go!” The top end damage is pretty much on par as well as the other stats but where this item shines for 2H Titan’s Grip fury warriors is in it’s exceptionally high haste rating.
The Bad: Haste really doesn’t benefit Death Knights much at all. It’s pretty much a wasted stat for DKs and any Death Knight that argues haste is better for them doesn’t understand his class all that well. Even for Paladins as well I would rather have the Titansteel Destroyer for the high hit rating on it. Then again if you’re already hit capped at 8% for 2H weapons then the skull clad cleaver gives more.
The Ugly: It has a DISMALL drop rate, and yet you see them all over the place in Dalaran; even warriors DW these things is somewhat common. The worst part aside from the drop rate would be that it drops off Loken. Yes Loken, the biggest asshole encounter in the game right now. The fight is not complicated at all, but it’s hard. Hard only in that you have to be at least halfway geared with iLv 200 gear and not have rocks in your head. It’s not too much to ask for the healer to get the fuck out of range for Loken’s ring of lightening. That doesn’t mean running the 10k away from him and dying in 2 tics of the aura, just step back a few yards then run back. This is too much to ask of many many people and thus Loken remains one of the hardest bosses to take down for this item.
For the record, I have seen this twice, both times I was retribution, both times some TERRIBLE dumbass Death Knight won it. I just went ahead and made the 2H Mace. I can almost promise it will never drop and I will never get it because I despise Loken immensely. It’s a hit or miss encounter because I have managed to kill him something around 10 times without fail and been unable to finish the instance 5 times now.
Pff, running from loken’s AOE is for wimps. Get a good healer and just ignore it
BL+CH spam worked for one run when I got this axe for my alt and i’ve helped people get it by PoH spam as healer.
Well… Loken is annoying but nothing else. The proximity dot during the fight can be easily overhealed (for a priest it just means to cast renew for every char of the party… or use Holy Hymn). it’s not that hard in my opinion.. there are more annoying boss out there (i think the void boss in Violet Hold ^^)
Casting renew and keeping it up is not mana efficient in that situation and will use lots of GCD. PoM and CoH is by far the best HP per Mana.
For the bigger damage a PoH is the easiest way to cope and keep going through the Nova although it might help if everyone has around 20k HP.
I just had this axe drop for me tonight on my second time of running heroic HoL.. I am a DK, and I see what you mean about the hit rating.. but My hit rating is already over the capped limit and I am working to replace gear to bring it down. Let me tell you.. it was no walk in the park getting this thing. We went 6 attempts and 3 healers until we downed him (all because of the healer(s) not being able to run, or possibly use their keyboard?).. I haven’t seen too many of these on my server – Hakkar – so I am fairly happy that I rolled against 3 other in my group and rolled 100 thus getting me the Needy achievement.
I hear you about healers not knowing how to press the W key to get out of range. Grats on the axe all the same