I've heard more than a few complaints about how hard it is to gear to get into raiding.
Honestly, it's incredibly easy. There's a few different paths, but here's how I did it across multiple toons, and how you can go from being a fresh 90 to raiding Terrace (ilevel 470 required) in about a week.
So let's say you've been the semi-feckless leveler, queueing constantly for dungeons and doing a modicum of quests. You hit 90. Let's say your ilevel is in the 420 range (with 430 being the requirement for heroic dungeons). What do you do?
1) Have crafters. Several professions can make toys/gems/enchants that will mitigate the cost to you as you gear. Focus on REASONABLE, but BIG ilevel gains. If you can make and wear some cheap PvP gear, but your ilevel goes up 30 points for that slot...do it.
2) Specifically for crafters, have an
inscriptionist. There are three crafted staffs that are upgradeable from 476 to 484 with 1500 valor points, usable at level 90. Any 2-handed weapon counts as a double-slot as far as gear weighting goes for ilevel...soooo, even if your hunter would never use a melee weapon, HAVING IT IN YOUR INVENTORY is all that the raidfinder looks for, hence your 450/460 ilevel score. 450 is equipped, 460 is everything you have in your bags and bank that would give you a higher ilevel.
3) Alchemists get a BADASS 458 upgrade to their philosopher's stone (trinket) which procs your primary stat and yields static mastery.
4) There are two upgradeable BoA ilevel 463 items that are HIGHLY recommended to get, via archaeology,
AND USABLE AT LEVEL 85--the Spear of Xuen (2H, agility spear), and the Quillen Statue (800-odd mastery, /use summons a pet that will fight for you).
5) Level one main through all of the reputation FIRST, before starting ANY alts through the process. At REVERED with every faction, you can purchase a commendation that yields 100% additional rep across the account. NOW level your alts. Reputation unlocks valor and justice point upgrades, recipes, mounts, etc.
6) Quest relative to your level. That means, at 85 you quest in Jade Forest. At 86, drop your jade forest quests and go to Valley of the Four Winds. At 87, go to Kun Lai. At 88, Townlong Steppes. At 89, Dread Wastes. At 90, Golden Lotus dailies to exalted for your 489 necklace.
7) Do the world events. They typically have a pretty big upgrade available (love fest had 480 necks, brewfest is bound to have upgrades in october as well).
NEED on offspec gear if you're the only one who can use. Peeps try to be considerate, but understand that your greed does not outweigh their disenchant roll. If any bitch, "needed for offspec and I was the only one who could use it."
9) Dungeons only as much as you can tolerate. At 86 you open Stormstout Brewery and Jade Temple. At 87 you open Shado-pan Monastery and Mogushan Palace. The ONLY reasons to dungeon while leveling is to get justice points and XP from the run AND QUESTS in the dungeons. My standard is to queue DPS randomly until I get those dungeons and only run them ONCE (except for MSP, which I will explain), as you level. Diminishing returns on the mobs as you hit 88 and 89 (with no further dungeons being opened). MSP is the ONLY dungeon to queue for after you run the others once, because it drops the highest ilevel gear (450). ALL OTHER REGULAR DUNGEONS DROP 430 OR LOWER. You will have a full set (and probably an offset) of 437 gear from questing per below.
To summarize, quest in jade forest until 86, move to Valley. Queue for randoms until you run them each once. Level in the valley until 87. Ignore Krasarang for now, go to Kun Lai. Queue for randoms until you run shado-pan once, then ALWAYS QUEUE FOR MSP (until you get every item or tired of it). Level to 88. Wear your MSP gear and immediately move to Townlong Steppes. You can keep queueing for MSP if you so desire, but you will get less and less XP as the mobs are still regular (87), and the quests are not repeatable. Townlong Steppes gear tops out at 429, so you can fill any holes you are missing while starting some rep with the shado-pan. At 89, ride into the area in the northeast corner of Dread Wastes. There is where you find a rope up to the serpent spine wall, to get your intro quest to the area. ALL QUEST REWARDS ARE 437 GREENS, or 450 BLUES. Do your damn quests to 90, while getting rep with Klaxxi. If your 2nd (or later) toons, you WILL be revered by the time you complete the majority of the storyline quests. At this point, you should be sitting at roughly ilevel 440 (TEN POINTS over your heroic dungeon requirement).
Ding 90. Get flying, do your archaeology to get the Spear and Quillen statue while queuing for random heroics. Download the /losttreasures addon and farm for all of the 450 BoA items that are literally lying around on the ground in the overworld; these cannot be upgraded but they make good filler. Upgrade both archaeology drops with justice points (1500 each for an 8-point upgrade) while leaving your staff in your backpack (if your toon can use; spend valor points to upgrade the staff as well, whenever works for you but probably after you have a toon that doesn't 'need' their valor). Equip any dungeon gear that you can use; but DO NOT DISENCHANT gear that you COULD use--if it is an upgrade, it raises your LFR score. Finish your claw of anger quest (drop from the Sha of Anger) to receive your 476 boots. Golden Lotus dailies to exalted for your 489 necklace (about 2 months tho). Between the toys you should MORE than have from the roughly 2k-worth of valor points from dungeons, you should be at or above ilevel 460. Queue for the two MSV raids.
If you are still extremely close (ilevel 459 or whatnot), ask around in guild chat for a crafter to make you something cheap, even if you will not use it (soulbind) but CAN use it. For instance, a paladin asks a tailor to craft some ilevel 476 gloves for him at the cost of 4 pieces of imperial silk (CHEEP btw). Never uses the gloves, sends them back to the tailor to sell after getting enough raid gear to move on.
Buy perhaps (if necessary) ONE PIECE of valor gear with the points you accrue over a couple weeks (dungeons and valor dailies) that is level 489 (klaxxi is my personal favorite for the belts). Hopefully get a raid drop. You should be at (or shockingly close to) ilevel 470.
Queue for HoF1, HoF2, and Terrace. Just benchmarking, you will probably take 6-8 weeks from JUST raid drops to go from ilevel 470 to 480. I think Ange did it in about 3, but she has insane luck and was spending valor points while questing on her main.
Get to 480 and wait for 5.2!!
J
PS When I got into a dungeon on my shaman, I had a strength ring, several intelligence items, my quillen statue, and my staff in my backpack. My ilevel was 447/460, and I was able to complete all of MSV. Same concept for my hunter, who is still not 460 on his own. If you want a real hoot on an alt (and speed leveling, so to speak), you can craft an entire set of blue-con ilevel 415 gear for them, usable at level 85, but with basically Pandarian stats. When you go into a lowbie dungeon or fight with all that extra haste/spirit/stam/hit rating/etc AT LEVEL for 85, you are actually WAY overcapped and will probably put up the same damage all the way to level 90, without changing a thing. I was doing 30k dps on a twinked boomkin for the duration. Same for a DK WITHOUT the armor--just the weapon.
Mon Feb 25, 2013 1:30 pm
