Consider this to be your 6-month warning. Like the Challenge Mode armor from Mists of Pandaria, the Challenge Mode weapons from Warlords of Draenor will probably be going away forever in the 7.0 patch. I remember the mad rush for people to complete the MoP CMs in the final days leading up to 6.0. I knew people with the gold to spend on carries who couldn’t get it done in time because of the sheer demand those carry groups were under in the final days. So if you want these? Don’t procrastinate!
What’s more, it looks like Challenge Mode transmogs will be going account wide for the same class. So if you unlock this stuff on a Hunter, theoretically you should be able to use it on any Hunter on your account. For someone like me who only plays Hunters this is pretty cool news. There’s no word yet if the weapons you unlock will be usable on other classes though. For example, Hunters can buy almost all of the weapons (except for a few), but I’m not sure that means you could use the 2H sword on a Warrior alt (don’t count on it).
(Above: A gif of the CM gun idle animations. See the bow and polearm as well)
Beast Mastery really shines in CMs, but Marksmanship can work too (if your group has good AoE elsewhere). For BM, pick up as much 630+ Mastery gear as you can. Ultimately, BM plays well with any stat, but the more Mastery the better (with Crit being second best). Probably the biggest game changer (gear wise) is going to be the Mirror of the Blademaster trinket. It’s absolutely OP in Challenge Modes. If you look at realm best times, there’s a good chance at least 2 or 3 people were using it. Sometimes even healers use it.
OK, let’s get to the transmogs and suggest some sets to go along with them.
Note: If you click any of the images in this post they will take you to a Wowhead dressing room where you can view the transmogs on other races.
Crystal-shot Longrifle
The Crystal-shot Longrifle is interesting to me because it can so easily be seen as an alternative look to the Titanstrike artifact in Legion. I don’t know about you, but to me this definitely looks like a Titan-powered artifact brimming with power… much more than the actual Titanstrike even. It has a unique firing animation and a really spiffy idle animation. If you like flashy weapons, you can’t really get flashier than this as a Hunter.
It goes well with any of our blue tier sets, such as tier 5 (Rift Stalker) and tier 8 (Scourgestalker):
I think anything black also goes well with the gun (such as the Black Scourgestalker in the header image of this post).
Living Longbow
The Living Longbow is a homage to Rhok’delar, Longbow of the Ancient Keepers. If you weren’t playing in the early days of WoW, Rhok’delar was the reward from an epic Hunter-only quest. It featured encounters similar to the Fel Rangari Anaara fight where you had to utilize your Hunter abilities. You also had to pick up some drops from 40-player raid bosses.
The limbs of the Living Longbow animate as growing vines, butterflies hover around it, and it also flowers. It’s pretty much the total opposite of the Crystal-shot Longrifle in theme. This is the one weapon that actually matches with the original Howling Beast (MoP CM) armor, which featured lots of greens and browns. Of course you don’t always have to match weapons with armor color. Sometimes having the armor be a different color makes the weapon stand out more.
Cloudsong Glaive
The Cloudsong Glaive is the polearm reward that future Survival Hunters will be interested in. This thing is MASSIVE. When sheathed on my back, its total length about 3x the height of my dwarf. It’s one of those weapons where when someone walks by, they can almost never resist stopping to do a double-take.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but you can basically transmog a polearm into any other 2H weapon as long as your class can use it, right? In that case, Survival should also be able to transmog their spear artifact into other CM weapons like the 2H sword or one of the staves. That opens up a whole bunch of new transmog options for Survival.
Hopefully this post sparked some transmog ideas for you, and gave you a kick in the butt if you’re still procrastinating on challenge modes. Have any other good CM transmog suggestions? Post them in the comments (preferably as a Wowhead dressing room link so we can all check it out).
Can you link the pieces for the transmog set? At least for the one with the shado-pan hat.
If you click each transmog, it takes you to a wowhead page that lists all the items. You can also preview it on other races there.
Thanks!
Something worth noting; the only reason the class sets are becoming available to all the same classes on the account is due to them not being able to restrict it via achievement in the wardrobe (or so the tweet went iirc) and that there’s likely a good chance you’ll get the WoD CM weapons account-wide if your character can equip said weapons (so a Hunter who cleared them would unlock all but the maces and wand, whereas a Warrior would be all but the wand.
But it’s not even in Beta yet or functioning, so no idea until then anyways.
They sure are unique, but none of them look particurarly appealing to me. I’m killing myself over paladin transmog set from pandaria CMs, but these weapons? Meh. Too unique.