Trial of the Champion
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So you’ve just recently hit 80 and your unsure where you should get gear upgrades. You don’t have enough time to run Heroics back to back and get locked out. If this sounds like you, then Patch 3.2 brought us a great new instance that is chock full of free (kinda) iLvL200 epics! A lot of them are great upgrades for a new 80 or if you already have some gear! Now lets get into the nitty gritty of the instance.
Trial of the Champion is a new 5-man instance, located in the north-east corner of Icecrown, on the Crusaders’ Coliseum Tournament grounds. If you have yet to enter this instance, the dungeon uses Arena style mechanics, where one member of your party will have to talk to an NPC to start each boss encounter. This new instance is just like Magister’s Terrace, if you ever have run that before in lower levels. The loot found in here is better than what you’ll find in other Regular level instances, so take advantage. When you finally down the bosses, the first loot chest always contains one iLevel 200 epic item, while the second and third boss award two items.
Once the event is started, you will have to listen to the speech Arelas Brightstar gives. Usually lasts 3-5 minutes, a hint for those who want to farm the instance. Have one member of your party go in and start the speech prior to others getting in. Makes it much easier. Now I was going to get into the fight mechanics and explain the fights. But this post is a little late, my apologies, and I am sure most of you have run it already. So let’s look at the loot!
We’ll be looking at a few pieces of gear in particular. First is the belt, Belt of Merciless Cruelty, that may fall of The Black Knight. This belt has quite a bit of good stats on it, including the socket bonus. Throw a Glinting Ametrine in it if your building your hit. Which you should be!
Next item you may be interested in are the Scale Boots of the Outlander, or “chicken feet” as some people refer to them as. These are not the prettiest looking boots, if that’s something your into, they look like you have chicken feet. But stats wise they are pretty good. These boots bring a stat that a lot of high level gear has, Armor Penetration. Which is basically percent of armor ignored on target. These boots have a total of 3.17% ArP rating! Get ‘em while you can because in upcoming patches ArP will be gone forever!
As for Bracers, you’ll be wanting the Wristguards of Ceaseless Regret. These are great starting iLvL200 Hunter bracers! Just awesome! Again these are stacked with Agility and ArP. The socket bonus will even give you another +4 Agility! Fill the socket with a Shifting Dreadstone for a little more Agility and Stamina.
There is also a Ring and Trinket that you should be looking to pick up as well. Uruka’s Band of Zeal could be considered a Melee DPS class ring, but an upgrade is an upgrade. The Expertise on the Ring isn’t really going to give you any boost to DPS, but the other stats are all things you’d be interested in.
As for the Trinket, Banner of Victory, is definitely something you should be attempting to get. Again, another piece of gear that is stacked with ArP, 6.82% actually. But the second bonus is what you should be looking at, 1008 Attack Power for 10 seconds! That’s a lot of extra Attack Power! Best of all it does stack with the Mirror of Truth ! Simple math will tell you that if both proc at the same time gives you an extra 2008 Attack Power! Wahoo!
Trial of the Champion is certainly somewhere you should be looking to get into as soon as you ding 80. If you are in a pretty good group the entire instance shouldn’t take longer than 30 minutes. If you have the time, reset the instance and run it again!
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