Rare Skin Spotlight - Band of the Great Tortoise

The rare skin in this post is a lie. Rings don't really have a skin. But I thought this item was so cool it deserved its own spotlight anyway. One thing I particularly love about leveling alts is that I always seem to discover something new, something I've never seen before even after having played this game for more than 5 years. One reason for this is simply because the game keeps changing, of course. There is no way to keep track of all the changes! Actually I rarely discover things I've never seen before, but rather things that have changed into something new than last time I saw it. And since there are some areas, quests, items in the game that I don't see often (usually because I avoid them) I always tend to find something new when I decide to go check them out again. Places like Feralas, Desolace and Stonetalon Mountains. Quests like Tooga's Quest, which require you to escort him through the entire Tanaris desert to his wife, Torta. And items like Band of the Great Tortoise, one of the quest rewards for completing Tooga's Quest.

I hadn't done this quest in a while, so when I stumbled upon Tooga in the Tanaris desert I thought to myself "ah what the heck, he's a rather amusing turtle and will keep me entertained while I run anyway", and off we went. The quest itself isn't so horrible anymore. I only entered combat a handful of times, eventhough being somewhat of a lowbie in the area. And then finally we arrived at Torta and I started checking the quest rewards out. The cuffs were actually an upgrade for my holydin so I thought I'd go with those, but then I checked the ring out.

Wait a minute... There is something wrong here. Band of the Great Tortoise was never an awesome ring, but back in Vanilla it used to be a decent tank ring for druid bears because of the extra armor it had. Back then druids used to collect any jewelry with some extra armor, and this one wasn't too shabby. That was a long time ago though, and Blizzard have since removed bear armor bonus from jewelry and lately even removed any armor on jewelry all together. This is funny, because armor used to be the only stat Band of the Great Tortoise had. But instead of having the stat converted into something useful, Blizzard just went on and removed it. Where has this left Band of the Great Tortoise? In a rather unique position as it turns out.

Band of the Great Tortoise is now the only green item completely without any stat (to my knowledge, correct me if I'm wrong). This is not a bug, but simply what happens when Blizzard make changes in a game and forget about some of the items those changes affect. In a way this makes the item cooler than it used to be. It is more useless, in fact it is now completely useless, and that makes it special. And completely awesome to own. I had to have it of course. Those cuffs could go hide under a blanket. I wanted my green ring without stats, that's way cooler. In fact, the only difference between white quality gear and green quality gear is that the latter should have stats. Should have, but that is no longer 100% the case. Thanks to this ring alone!

I am quite sure that fixing this isn't on top of Blizzard "things to do"-list, actually I'd be cranky if it was, considering there is plenty to fix in endgame right now (and forever). Once things settle down I am sure some dev' will give this beauty an overhaul on some coffee-break however. Until then I think you should go get your very own completely useless green item (unless you've already done the quest of course!).