Hunter Transmog – Black Dragon Mail

Mushan in Black Dragon Mail (click for a much better view!)

This is the first of what will be several posts about some of the Transmog sets that I use.

Hunters and mail

We play World of Warcraft, in the fantasy world of Azeroth.  As such, things don’t necessarily have to make sense, and they often don’t.  After all, what is a misdirect, really?  How does that work, exactly?  How can I shoot an Auto-shot at the same time I’m casting Cobra Shot?  Why do hunters wear mail?

Well, it’s a fantasy game, so things tend to be fantastic.  We wear the heads of our kills on our own heads and shoulders.  We wear their scales on our legs and torsos, pieces of their bones fashioned into our boots and bows, their eyeballs on various pieces of armor.  It’s just the way it is.

I’m not that big of a fan of the hunter-mail thing, personally.  Certainly, there are some amazing-looking sets out there, but, as I play only big-shouldered male hunters at the moment, I find many of them to straddle – or cross – the line from fantastic to ridiculous.  The Lightning-Charged Battlegear comes to mind (apologies to those Murloc-stalker fans out there!)…

Mail users lead sort of a double life when it comes to gear.  We start out looking something like the leather-wearing rangers we are, but at level 40 we learn to wear mail, and at 50 we pick up Mail Specialization.  The 5% Agility bonus makes it very important that we wear only mail.  With this, we tend to stop looking like rangers and start looking like something other-worldly.  For some, this is great; others are indifferent to the change.  I tend to be a little disappointed that I lose that look.  But, as I said, this is a fantasy, and we’re hunting demons and dragons and undead and monsters from the shadow realms, so it’s not entirely an unexpected development.

With transmogrification, we get to mitigate some of the abominable looks that happen throughout the course of both leveling through the game and gearing our characters.  Hunters are still limited to mail choices, but it’s absolutely better than the alternative: anyone else remember sporting the combination of T-11 pastel-green, Zandalari, and T-12 orange?  Yeah, I was glad to put that kind of look to bed, too.

Side note: here’s a great photo of Rades trolling LFR in a crazy transmog set: OH GOD MY EYES: Trolling LFR With Bad Fashion.

Black Dragon Mail

This is not the first set that I put together for Mushan – it’s actually the sixth or seventh.  It’s also not my ideal set, which I’m one piece away from completing and will unveil at a later date, provided I find the elusive chest piece at some point.  However, when I saw this one on WoW Roleplay Gear several months ago, I was intrigued enough to bookmark the page for future consideration.

The Black Dragon Mail set is, unfortunately, only four pieces – Black Dragonscale boots, shoulders, chest and legs.  Creating a set around this is a bit challenging, since there is nothing else made in the exact same color and style, but the fine folks at WoW Roleplay Gear put together a combination that I felt I could do something with.  Their suggestions of Nerubian Gloves and Nerubian Belt seemed to fit the green-tinged grays in the set, so I went with them.  The great thing is that all of these items can be crafted with Leatherworking, although the Black Dragonscale gear comes from Blackrock Depths drops and vendors, and the boots in particular require Exalted reputation with the Thorium Brotherhood.

This set shows a lot of midriff, which I suppose is great for female toons if you’re into that sort of thing.  However, I wasn’t too keen on that for Mushan, so I tried out several shirts, finally settling on the Stylish Black Shirt.  However, the black in the shirt contrasts quite a bit with the greenish-gray belt, in particular, so I finally decided to add the Lower City Tabard.  This made for a much more satisfactory look, in my opinion.

For a weapon, I fell in love a while back with Keeshan’s Bow, which is available toward the end of the Redridge questline.  Although I really wanted the bow that John J. Keeshan actually uses, which is a badass black compound bow, this one is a perfect blend of “bow that a night elf would use” and “doesn’t look like a child’s toy.”  Not only does it match well with the hues in the armor and tabard, but it fits that somewhat understated aesthetic that I was going for.

Finally, there’s the eyepatch.  Malefactor’s Eyepatch is a quest reward from completing a chain in Blade’s Edge, but I didn’t get it specifically for this set.  Rather, I got it because it was an eyepatch, and I’ll be wearing it with every set, regardless of how it looks with that set.  I enjoy having an eyepatch, so that’s the end of that!

My (currently) green-haired elf looks pretty good in this set.  When trying to visualize it, before I pulled the trigger, I wasn’t sure it would work out, but I’ve been very pleased with it!

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Thanks for reading this post by Mushan at Mushan, Etc.  Comments are welcome!

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