World of Warcraft Tier Armor Raid Sets - Part I, Vanilla

Written by Rolf

I have been raiding in World of Warcraft from Vanilla until Wrath of the Lich King. Since Cataclysm launched I am kind of retired. Still, I am mostly impressed how the designers have managed to design unique sets of armors for all the different classes for a dozen tiers.

Tier 1 - Molten Core

When I started playing, only Molten Core existed. But I wasn't even 60 yet with my hunter and even though the set was ugly, I was drooling at other hunters with a partially complete Beaststalker outfit, the 8-piece blue dungeon set. When I dinged 60 (level cap of Vanilla) and slowly started collecting Beaststalker myself, there was 1 or maybe 2 alliance guilds that raided Molten Core. They were untouchable; they were gods!

Stratholme and Scholomance were still officially raiding instances back then, with a player capacity of 10. After pugging them for a few weeks, I chose my guild. I had still been guildless up to 60 and made a big deal of choosing a guild I would fit in. I finally found one and up to this day have been loyal to it. The week after I joined, they started raiding Molten Core. Since the guild wasn't really big and Molten Core was a 40-man raid, we did so in an alliance of 3 guilds in total.

I never really liked Giantstalker, with the silly power plant shoulders but that didn't stop me from spending DKP on the set. If I remember correctly, I never got the boots. Still, no set was so ugly as the 'bananaman' paladin kit. My favourite set was that of the warrior, with the bad-ass spiky shoulders. Since I was playing on alliance side, I never got to see the shaman set, except perhaps outside of Ironforge or at Tarren Mill.

Tier 2 - Blackwing Lair, Molten Core

By the time we were up to Ragnaros, we were raiding Molten Core on our own, without the help of other guilds. By then, Blizzard had released the next epic raid instance, Blackwing Lair and the accompanying raid tier 2. I am not sure what Ragnaros and Onyxia dropped before BWL came out, but now they dropped the tier 2 leggings and helmet.

My set was orange and purple, not my color combination of choice, but I was a female night elf and I totally pulled it off. Needless to say, I owned the complete 8-piece set. But my favourite set by far, look-wise, was the priest one.

Tier 2.5 - Temple of Ahn'Qiraj

Then came Ahn'Qiraj. I have never understood why they designed it like this. Insects? Not really fitting in a world of magic fire and dragons. Although we cleared up to (not including) C'Thun and although I attended every raid night, I never liked this instance. And don't get me started on the tier art. The most positive I can say about it, is that it matched the instances of Ahn'Qiraj.

Tier 3 - Naxxramas

Naxxramas was the last 40-man raid dungeon of Vanilla and the bosses dropped tier 3, a 9-piece set (the usual 8 plus a ring, dropped by Sapphiron, if I recall correctly). We cleared 7 or 8 bosses of the total 14, before the first expansion, The Burning Crusade, came out and I still have 5 pieces of the set in my bank, waiting to be transmogrified, along with the should-be-legendary Rhok'delar longbow. In Wrath of the Lich King, Naxxramas was moved to Dragonblight in Northrend and the names and graphics of the raid tiers were reused.

» Part I - Vanilla
» Part II - The Burning Crusade
» Part III - Wrath of the Lich King
» Part IV - Cataclysm

Related:
» Walking Down Memory Lane in Warcraft