What does a Druid do with a battered hilt?Follow

I'd sell it and buy stuff.

Even though the weapon is an upgrade, I expect to eventually get a weapon drop from ICC.

Even if I wasn't hoping for a weapon from raiding I would sell it to fund epic fliers and dual spec for alts.

Sell it. The weapon is nice, but 14k is nicer :)

To play Devil's Advocate though, Gold is really easily obtained. 14,000 Gold is like 3 weeks of tourney dailies or something. That's not really a huge sum. It's nice, yes, but not massive. At this point (for me) that amount of gold would mean I'm almost at the price for the mammoth, or some crafted tanking upgrades (that are much cheaper now) that I don't really need, because I don't raid.

On the flip side, the Quel'Delar (which I do use) looks kickass, especially on my DK, and is the kind of aesthetically pleasing weapon I'll hold onto for a while. Though I can see why you may not care getting a mace, as they don't look as great (Go go basic, reused cudgel graphic!)

So... IDK? If you don't really want the weapon, sell it. If you think you'd aesthetically want it, do the quests. If you have a toon who you don't plan to raid with, but will do Heroics, maybe give it to them.

I got the Battered Hilt in my very first heroic the day after the patch came out. In hindsight, I should have sold it, but we didn't have much idea of the value of it that early on. I completed the quest an on my first raid with my new iLvl 251 weapon in heroic ToC I got the iLvl 258 Twins Pact.......

Oh well....I don't really need gold much now, I just finished paying for epic flying & cold weather flying on the last of my 10 toons :)

So why bother getting any gear upgrades come Cataclysm as they'll just be obsolete the xpac after that? ;-)

Cat is still, what, 9-10 months away? That's a lot of raiding and instances while, as mentioned, gold is easy to get (three 80s, one 76 and one 73 all with epic flight and cold weather flight for example).

The reality also is that level 250+ gear is probably going to last you quite a while in the xpac just the same way high end gear lasted you to mid to high 70s for this one.

I was lucky enough to win the thing first ICC run I did (didn't even know what I'd really won - was just told "Quest item - everyone NEED roll) and I'm very happy with my Lightborn Spire as a feral.

/agree

On the whole stockpiling gold thing, sorry, just seems silly to go without a good upgrade for the next nine to ten months because there's an xpac this fall/winter.

I might also point out that gold doesn't hold its value as we've already seen inflation in game thanks to a combination of gold being easier to get and people no longer working lower level areas. Just take a look at how our attitudes towards gold have changed from xpac to xpac - original WoW having 1000 gold was an accomplishment, Outlands 5k was the thing to do and now we're happily dropping 16k on mammoths and motorcycles.

As such, that 10k or so you get for the hilt today will be peanuts compared to the gold earning capabilities of your toons at level 90 when, what, 30k, 45k a 100k will be the new standard of "I've got cash."