WOW - Need a gear resource

[KinsZA]

Hi

I am a discipline healer and just hit cataclysm (level 80) and really any guides I read out there are like ok here's the gear you need for your class and spits out a list of gear you get from raiding, what about normal dungeons and quest chains ? Gearing up is really difficult when you have no idea where to reference.

Could anyone help me out with somewhere that can reccomend gear that doesnt come from raiding ?

Any help appreciated

 

[Ampha]

Hi

Gearing up as a healer is fast if you know where to go

Do the Crucible of Carnage in Twilight Highlands - nice weapon upgrade if you cannot buy one from the AH
Try to get your item level as high as you can by purchasing epics from the AH and replace what you can with Justice Points that you have earned if you completed dungeons while leveling.
You should be able to enter the troll dungeons and just run those until you can replace the lower items.
You will be at a higher item level for Bastion of Twilight, Blackwing Descent and Throne of the Four Wind raids - Im not sure if people still raid these instances as they quite old now.
Get to a high enough item level so that you can do the 3 dungeons that were released when Dragon Soul came out, those have quests for completing the dungeons all with good gear.
You can try find some Firelands raids now, On my server they are still running them quite often.
From there you can start raid finder and get loot from there.
If you struggling to heal on the heroic dungeons, do the normal versions until you get enough Justice Points to replace your gear from leveling.
Also note that all epic items bought with valor points have changed to Justice Points, so dont go and buy an ilvl346 item when you can get an ilvl 397 for the same amount of points.
This did take me around two weeks or so to get good loot, it does take time so don’t think it will happen overnight unless you know people in guilds that have Dragon Soul heroic on farm and can boost you
IMO the troll heroics are really great for stacking up Justice Points (if you cannot do the Dragon Soul Dungeons yet) mainly because you don’t have to clear all bosses to get the completion.

I should mention that the Dragon Soul Dungeons are the following:
Well of Eternity
End-Time
Hour of Twilight

Item Level Drops:
Heroic Dungeons - 346
Bastion of Twilight etc - 359 & 372(heroic)
Troll Heroic Dungeons - 353
Firelands - 378 & 391(heroic)
Dragon Soul Dungeons - 378
Raid Finder Dragon Soul - 384
Dragon Soul Raid - 397 & 410(heroic)

All I can think of at the top of my head, hope it helps

 

[KinsZA]

Hi

Thanks a lot, it seems like I shouldnt even bother with anything outside a dungeon.

 

[Ampha]

No you shouldnt, questing and doing things outside of a dungeon offers really low level gear, 333 and in some cases 346 if I'm not mistaken.
If it is gear your after then yes dungeons dungeons and more dungeons is the way to go.
You are a disc priest, so the queues and wait times will be instant and gearing will go alot quicker than if you tried shadow for example.

 

[Beavis]

As all the previous posters suggested, your quickest bet is dungeons, you can make use of www.askmrrobot.com. You can set it to you just dinged 85 and it will supply you with the best items available for your gear lvl. Very handy tool, to optimize your gear, with gems, enchants and reforging.

Also depending on your gear lvl, you cannot queue for hc dungeons till your ilvl I think is 332, and then further the DS dungeons require ilvl 350, and LFR ilvl requirement is 371...these figures just the top of my head, so just check them.

....but dont worry to much with breaking your head on gearing now, just gear enough to see the content and await MoP in two weeks time.

Happy dungeoning

 

[Kelerei]

There's a fairly significant problem with answering this question at this juncture: by the time you hit level 85, we'll all be exploring Pandaria and trying to get up to 90 and geared for Mogu'shan Vaults.

However, for the sake of completeness, I'm going to assume that the new expansion isn't going to drop for a while yet (which, we know to be untrue, but we'll ignore that), and that you're trying to get into a raid spot for Dragon Soul. Some of what I'm about to mention will be applicable to a freshly-dinged level 90, so not all of this will be a waste.

Firstly, you have to know what stats on gear is good. Obviously, since you're a priest, we can ignore all leather, mail and plate gear. On cloth gear, look out for:

• Intellect. This should be on every piece of cloth gear. While it no longer increases your mana pool as of 5.0, it does give you spell power and crit rating. Back in 4.3, Intellect was by far the strongest statistic, to the extent where folks would often ignore non-Intellect socket bonuses and stuff Brilliant Inferno Rubies in almost all of their gem sockets. I haven't seen much to suggest that life in 5.0 is too different (disclaimer: I play a protection paladin, so I may be wrong here -- if I am wrong, corrections are most welcome).
• Spirit. Mana regeneration. You don't want to go OOM on long boss fights (*cough* heroic Ragnaros).
• Crit rating, haste rating, and mastery. None of them are wonderful on their own, but there's a nice synergy between the three of them.
• If you come across gear with any other stats on them, it's likely intended for a class and spec other than your own.

Now, the above should help you out while questing, but when you hit level 85, it's a different ball game. You want to get geared up, and you probably want to do it quickly. Here's some advice on where to quickly get gear from:

• Reputation rewards. Don't laugh; I know that the gear isn't well itemised by Tier 13 standards (333 at honored, 346 at revered, 359 at exalted), but if you want to quickly dump a lingering questing green, this is a great way of doing it. Depending on where you quested and which quests you did, by the time you hit level 85, you should be honored with a few factions, maybe even revered if you're lucky. (You won't be exalted with any of them, and at this stage of the game, the grind to exalted just isn't worth it, unless you're hunting achievement points or the Ramkahen camel mounts). A list of rep rewards can be found here. (Note: don't bother with Avengers of Hyjal stuff, since the only way to get rep with them is to raid Firelands, and patch 4.2 is now a distant memory.)
• As soon as you ding 85, go and do the Elemental Bonds questline. It's a royal pain in the ass, but it gets you an ilvl 365 cloak.
• And while you're at it, you can do one day's worth of Molten Front dailies. This does require questing in Hyjal, so at least do all the quests up to Aessina's Miracle while you level up. Doing a single day's worth of dailies should get you access to the first Molten Front vendor (Zen'Vorka) who will sell you an ilvl 365 necklace. Don't bother with the Molten Front after this (unless you really want those achievements) -- by the time you unlock the other vendors, you'd have obtained better gear than what they'll offer you.

With that done, you should be all ready to set foot into your first heroic dungeon. Now, the grinding starts...

• Once your average item level is over 329 (and by doing the above steps, you should be able to get there), you can queue for the original Cataclysm heroics. These drop ilvl 346 gear.
• Once your average item level is over 346, the troll heroics (Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman) additionally open up, which drop ilvl 353 gear.
• Once your average item level is over 353, the three Hour of Twilight heroics (End Time, Well of Eternity, Hour of Twilight) open up. These drop ilvl 378 gear, equivalent to what dropped in Firelands.
• Once your average item level is over 372, you can queue for a Dragon Soul LFR group and (hopefully!) have ilvl 384 gear drop for you. With the new LFR looting system implemented in 5.0, for every boss kill, four players out of the 25-man group will automatically receive a piece of 384 gear appropriate for their class and spec, with everyone else receiving 25 gold.
• Grinding all of these will reward you with Justice Points, which you can then trade at the vendors in Stormwind/Orgrimmar for ilvl 397 gear (equivalent to normal Dragon Soul). This gear often isn't as well itemised as the gear that drops in the raid itself, but it's still great for gearing up.

I'm not going to post a list of "get this piece of gear from this place", because that kind of information is rather subjective and gets outdated rather quickly. Hopefully this advice gives you the start you need to make your own informed decisions on how and where to gear up though.

 

[zippy]

if you avoid questing, your gear will suck until something decent drops in a dungeon. You will tend to level faster than you can upgrade your gear to meet the requirements of the new dungeons. You will notice this when you hit level 80 and then cant enter a dungeon because your item level is too low. And when you hit level 85. This is especially a problem if you leveled with heirlooms.

I found I had to complete some quest chains to get things like a staff, offhand etc.

Also, getting rep is a slow process without doing quests for the factions. The dungeons at lvl 85 are a bit dead atm, and when Mop hits everyone will be either leveling a panda or getting their 85's to 90.

So if you are in between, its gonna be slow grind to 85.

 

[Ampha]

As a healer if you do alot of dungeons from 80-85 you will get decent gear from the dungeons.
When I leveled my DK I lived in dungeons tanking them and got enough gear from them to go straight into heroics

But like its been said before, with MoP two weeks away or so, the dungeons might be a little empty.
What server are you on ? maybe I can help out in a few dungeons

 

[KinsZA]

Hello

I'm on twilights hammer (Horde).

My current problem is the average gear level hopefully AH can fix that and I can get rolling again.

 

[Beavis]

There's quite a huge sa player base on TH, kelerei, myself being on there as well. I know of quite a few in the guild that will gladly help you out gearing running dungeons, till MoP launches, that is...hehe.

I just dinged 85 about a week ago, and did not find the dungeons that dead if you are on TH. I lvl'ed from questing while queing dungeons and lvl'ed to 85 quite quickly. The guildies helped me gearing though, now ilvl 378 in less than a weeks time since dinged 85.

 

[KinsZA]

The more assistance the better, came back to wow about 5 days ago after a long break and most of the people I know have moved on.

Characters name is Expiria

 

[Kelerei]

My current problem is the average gear level hopefully AH can fix that and I can get rolling again.

You just dinged 80, right? Go and do some quests in Hyjal or Vashj'ir -- a few quest reward greens will fix that up.

 

[KinsZA]

I'm running hyjal while doing wotlk heroics (I'd rather have the 200 gear with spirit than the higher gear without)

 

[zippy]

I'm running hyjal while doing wotlk heroics (I'd rather have the 200 gear with spirit than the higher gear without)

I think you need a higher item level to do the low level cata dungeons. Wotlk heroics are a waste of time. There are quest rewards in hyjal etc with spirit. You also need the rep from quests to get access to the faction rewards. They are very good.

 

[Ampha]

I think you need a higher item level to do the low level cata dungeons. Wotlk heroics are a waste of time. There are quest rewards in hyjal etc with spirit. You also need the rep from quests to get access to the faction rewards. They are very good.

Agree, woltk heroics are a waste, the quest rewards from Hyjal will be fine for you, also you dont need a massive amount of spirit to heal a cata dungeon.

 

[KinsZA]

Hello

So I've hit level 85, thankyou to everyones advice. One last question...

Can anyone reccomend horde guilds on twilight's hammer to approach, currently I've just been part of one that does nothing but there's the whole 10% xp bonus attached.

 

[Kelerei]

You want this thread.