EU+US Rare(Blue) First Mate Hat(s!)

[Infomerc]

These are currently up on the US-Spinebreaker AH. Two different sellers. Neither wowhead nor wowdb mentions a blue version of FMH. Doubly weird that there are TWO. I was able to /w one of the sellers. He/she thought the drop was N.STV, but couldn't recall the mob. I'll see if I can reach the other seller.

Stats are not much better than the old L35 green (+1 +1), but the green is definitely scaling, as I see lvl 51 and 54 greens on another server.

1) Has the green been globally upgraded? Anyone seen one drop lately?
2) Or is FMH now a single-source drop?
If the drop rate's still as rare as it was, then 2) seems unlikely.

I have the old L35/ilvl40 version, but I also see a 35/i35 version with weaker stats.
Ideas?

 

[necroaqua]

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/item/2955 shows it as being able to upgrade to rare/epic. Not really sure what the logic is behind that, perhaps it was a single drop mob at one point in time, even if it isn't any longer?

 

[Sin'dor]

Interesting find!

Maybe a recent patch changed the drop-source?
Maybe a "Stranglethorn-Specific Drop" is somehow itself a type of "single-source"?
Maybe the item was special-enough to get manually adjusted?
Maybe it was somehow included "by accident"?

I'm always intrigued when another item shows-up that doesn't fit our general understanding of the "upgrade criteria", but I've given-up trying to define the exact rules... we've simply found too many "exceptions" at this point.

...and there's honestly just too much minutia that we'll (probably) never know:

• We'll never know exactly which items Blizzard "intended" to qualify for upgrades.
• We'll never know exactly how Blizzard chose to "define" that intent.
• We'll never know exactly what method Blizzard used to "implement" that definition.
• We'll never know exactly how "accurate" Blizzard's attempted implementation was.

Thank goodness we're at least we're able to look-up individual items on Blizzard's site... but until someone takes it upon themselves to go through all 170k ItemIDs, we'll never be certain of just which items really can (or can't) "upgrade".

Oh, well... still a damn cool hat, tho'.

 

[Warglave]

1) Has the green been globally upgraded? Anyone seen one drop lately?

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/item/2955 shows it as being able to upgrade to rare/epic.

I found an epic one on one of my AH right after the patch, didn't think it was a big deal except aesthetics.

 

[Imnotabelf]

There was an epic one available on Aerie Peak (level 42).

 

[Winterly]

Lowest level, I believe, it can scale to is 25. prob not bis either : /