Battered Hilt - I want it

Ever since patch 3.3 hit, there's a new epic in town: the Battered Hilt. This purple thingamajig drops in the 3 new 5-man instances, Forge of Souls, Pit of Saron and Halls of Reflection and it has a chance of dropping from trash, not bosses.

At first, when I didn't know exactly what the big deal was about this item, I dismissed it. I saw people hustling it on trade for fabulous amounts and I assumed it was another of those components for some really high-end weapon that can be obtained by shedding lots of blood, sweat and tears in raids.

It turns out that nothing's farther from the truth. Finally, a powerful weapon has become accessible to just about anyone... or at least anyone who's 80 and willing to run a couple of heroics. But wait, I hear some of you protesting, what weapon are you talking about?

I won't be getting into details about the whole quest chain required to get your hands on this nice, juicy weapon, because you can read all the details on this page from Wowhead. Basically, the end result is a ilvl 251 weapon, which is pretty damn sweet for a non-raider. As a hunter, I set my eyes on this piece: Quel'Delar, Ferocity of the Scorned.

This would be a big upgrade for me in terms of stats, since just until half an hour ago I was carrying a Silvery Sylvan Stave. But then I ran a random ToC and Marrowstrike (ilvl 219) dropped for me so I obviously needed it and found myself with a nice upgrade for less than 20 minutes worth of work. In any case, the Quel'Delar sword will be another upgrade over Marrowstrike, if I decide to go for it. Unfortunately, Quel'Delar doesn't have any sockets. Here's a comparison between the three if you are interested.

So how does one go about acquiring a Quel'Delar? It's easier than I thought. Here's a quick-and dirty summary.

Once you get the Battered Hilt (more on how to get it later), you use the item and it starts a quest. Follow the chain, which sends you to Dalaran, Dragonblight, etc. Easy stuff. At one point it will ask you to go inside Pit of Saron (I know, this part is a bit backward), gather some ore and then forge some stuff (the blade I think). You can find the ore scattered around the instance but you need to obtain the hammer dropped by the first boss in order to forge it. After that, the next step in the chain sends you to Forge of Souls where you're supposed to temper the blade in the thingy behind the last boss. After that you need to go to the Sunwell, enter the instance (which I believe is phased somehow) and do some stuff. At one point you will need to kill a bunch of normal mobs and an easy elite. And that's it.

I'm not sure you've understood much from my haphazard account of this quest chain but the essence is this: the "worst" part is the two new instances that you need to at least partially complete in order to get your stuff. Now that I've completed both of them, I'm no longer scared of going in there, so Quel'Delar is within reach.

There's one little problem. The Battered Hilt itself. Since the drop chance is very low, I'm not counting on having it drop during one of my runs and then winning the roll. So the only option here is to buy it. On my server I've seen it for about 15K, which is not a bad price but even though I can afford it easily, I have chosen to wait a while for its price to drop to about 10K. If a Hilt ever drops for me and I win the roll, I can always go back and sell it.

So what do you folks think? Is it worth waiting a while longer? Is 10K a good price? Is the damn thing even worth the hassle? It sure as hell looks cool.