Green-quality armor sets...Follow

After the announcement that gear would soon be 'transmogrify-able' (is that even a word?) I went browsing through Wowhead's forum page, where they have the gear all nicely sorted and available for a 3D display on the race of your choice. Wow, some of that old gear looks stunning! I picked out sets that I thought would look great...some of my toons will be garbed in old PvP sets, others in a mix of raid tier, and in particular, my warrior I wanted in some Vanilla green quality gear...she's a BE and would look stunning in some of that armor!

Here's where I've been running into nothing but trouble and problems. The gear sets I most admire are those from levels 40-60 ...plate gear of course, since she's a warrior. So, methodically I began soloing instances and raid dungeons that would net me that level of gear on random drops. Blackrock Spire, Sunken Temple, Blackrock Depths, Dire Maul, Molten Core, AQ10. With three level 85 toons that can blast through those places with rediculous ease, clear every single mob, reset the dungeons and repeat...I thought I'd collect a few pieces here and there until I got a full set.

But that's not all! I began flying over relevant level zones, picking off the rare spawns that have a guaranteed green-quality drop.

So, for the past ..week? ten days? I've been doing nothing but dungeons, raids, and rare spawn hunting, even resorting to killing high-density packs of regular spawns in the hopes of greens dropping. And let's not even go with the frenzied obsessive-compulsive checking of the AH for the pieces I want.

And what has this netted me? Well, aside from bags and bags full of runecloth, and cloth, leather, and mail gear worth posting on the AH...it has gotten me absolutely nowhere. The only plate gear that ever seems to drop is the Templar set, which I'm not interested in at all. What the heck is up with this?

Not only have I noticed that green-quality gear drops have plummeted noticeably in dungeons and raids, but plate gear in general is almost non-existant. Is this just horrible luck for me? Surely I can't be the only one seeking out old-world armor sets, and having a rotten time of it.

I think finding anything on the AH is going to be rather difficult. The majority of people seems to be spending most of the time leveling through doing dungeons and harld spends time in any zone, especially if they're alts with rested XP wearing heirlooms and possibly having the guild bonus too. Drops in dungeons are usually disenchanted by someone without 2nd thought. It'll probably take a long time until people start becoming more aware of the potential value of the pieces that are part of a set. After all, for years everyone was conditioned to the green=crap mindset.

I have indeed checked to insure the sets I'm after are still available in game. I have nerdishly made a table of the gear sets and which slots I still need. The Tyrant's set, just for example, I have the shoulders, belt and legs. Glorious set, only the belt. Jade set, shoulders and chest.

I have run AQ10 six times now, cleared it ALL, every last mob...and in all my runs I'd see perhaps 3 or 4 green drops per run. None of them plate. I don't believe AQ40 is soloable, or I'd be trying my luck in there, too. Maybe I'll go in and clear trash and see how far I get...I'm getting desperate here! lol I really think Blizz needs to up the drop rate of greens in dungeons, at least. I've found that clearing Blackrock Spire has netted me the most greens per run, but once again, NO plate. We're talking 20+ runs of clearing both upper and lower sides, and NO plate.

Thankfully, the only green helmet I'm interested in, I already have in my main's bank, the Sentinel's Headguard or some-such (old, old, Lv40-ish quest reward in Feralas before the Cataclysm).

I always loved how that thing looked on my human, looked just right. I'm glad to be able to use it once again, dunno why I stuck it in my bank, but I'm glad I did.

From what I can tell from here pretty much everything you'd be looking for is a fraction of a % drop rate. Even the drop rates from rares are often less than 1%. Though it appears you can fish up some of the items, not that I imagine that's any faster.

Thinking this may be a long-term project for you...

Personally I was just commenting the other day how I like some of the green item sets. They have a lot less bling than the epic items, and that's often a good thing. I've kept the bloodscale and cobalt sets atm, and I may well keep others that I like when I come across them.