Blizzard
Confirmed.
Leatherworking drums have been a hot topic since we first started working on Burning Crusade, since they would make Leatherworking feel mandatory.
In the first few patches of original Burning Crusade, the drums had a cast time and smaller radius, which limited their effective use. Leatherworking was an unattractive profession at the time, so the drums were improved in patch 2.3. That led to the fond memories we all have of drum rotations as one of the added layers of teamwork in later Burning Crusade encounters.
Right now in the Burning Crusade Beta, all Leatherworking drums now have an Uncommon and Rare (i.e., “Greater”) version. Our current thinking is that the greater versions will be acquired via recipe drops from Zul’Aman.
While it’s true that we’re generally planning to implement items (and spells and maps and everything else) in their patch 2.4.3 state, this one stood out as something we should make an exception for. By default, we don’t want to change the behavior of items from patch to patch, so we think the right thing to do is to introduce the greater drums as a new item, so that the behavior of the original items doesn’t have to change.
