Gearing up in World of Warcraft can be a daunting task. If you&rsquo,led lights;re a fresh level 80 then most of the content is locked off to you if you plan on using the dungeon finder and there isn’t a whole lot you can do about getting the ball rolling and the loot flowing in. We’ve recently have gone through the process of taking a brand new level 80 and gearing it up to see exactly how things work now in patch 3.3.
If you’ve just hit level 80 then you’re going to be hitting a massive wall known as the new gear score checks placed into the dungeon finder. These gear ugg score checks will check the total gear score of your equipped armor and weapons to determine if you’re allowed to queue for an instance or not. This isn’t so much a problem for heroics, but for Trial of the Champion and the Icecrown instances you may find yourself unable to even get the gear necessary to start off your career in PvE.
If you’re in heirlooms there is a little trick you can do. Now, most heirlooms are better than ilvl 178 greens and even most ilvl 170ish blues. However, they count for a total ilvl of “1” towards the games calculated gear scores. Even though they’re excellent gear for low level instances they are still going to keep you from getting inside.
The trick is to simply equip a green or blue item (either off the AH or from a quest) to allow you to begin queuing. The game bases your ability to join instances by your lifetime highest gear score, so if you equip say a feral staff for a Mage then queue it’ll let you in and you can change back to your heirlooms from there.
If you’re a fresh level 80 in level 70-75 greens then you might be in an even bigger jam. Luckily enough Blacksmithing/Tailoring/Leatherworking can provide you with a plethora of rare quality loot to bump your score up enough to participate in the upper level normal instances.
Word of Warning
Instant queues are nice, but if you’re undergeared then you’re going to be causing a lot of problems. If you’re a tank and you get steamrolled then you’re going to wipe and the group will disband. If you’re a healer and can’t keep people up then they’ll leave. Be sure you’re geared before you head out! It will save you a lot of time from waiting on dungeon cooldowns from failures. Practice in normals if you're just switching over to a new spec for the first time.
A Quick Word on Gear Score
There are a lot of ways to measure your character's "gear score", WoW-Heroes or the GearScore addon for instance. They compare ugg your gear to your spec and give a relative measure of how strong your gear is. It doesn't matter nearly as much as your results and how you play, but it is an excellent tool to give you a rough idea of where you stand. You can get by with a lot less gear if you're smart and conservative with how you play and use your abilities for both heroics and raids.
If you're in a gear, none of it can matter, because a fresh group of 80s or a new 80 can join up with friends and do a lot more with coordination. It's the harsh reality that the dungeon finder imposes higher requirements on easier content. The reason for this is that many players are running their daily heroic every day and do not wish to spend all day working slowly through an instance using CC and coordination. As such, entering the dungeon finder is like a pot luck of attitudes and players, many who won't be tolerate to sub 1,500 DPS, lack of healing, or low HP tanks. If you can get together with friends it becomes a lot easier to get by with a lot less.
Gems and Enchants
Enchant and Gem everything, even low level epics and blues. Use cheaper enchants if it’s not an expensive item. Blue gems work too, until you get 232s, at which point you should use epic gems.
Getting Ready to Raid
Getting the gear needed to raid in 3.3 can be challenging, but it’s not necessarily that difficult. There are four instances that provide enough gear that you won&rsquo,nike shoes;t really have to work too hard on the rest. Trial of the Champion along with The Frozen Halls provide enough offset gear that you won’t have to worry about much. You can manually queue into them each day for a chance at some awesome 219s-232s. Additionally, you will only need 160 Emblems of Triumph to reach four pieces of Tier 9 which can easily be obtained over the course of a few days by running the random heroic over and over again. Assume 4+2 (or 6) badges per instance. On average that would be a piece of loot every 5 to 10 instances (depending on the cost). If you’re lucky that shouldn’t take much time at all (and provide you with A LOT of practice with your class).
The ilvl 245 offset shoulders are only 45 emblems and are available for each class. There are also 25 emblem ilvl 245 ranged slot items like wands, idols, librams, etc. These can help boost your strength by a lot. Not to mention that you can get some of the cheaper pieces of Emblem of Frost gear after a week or two of farming.
You can make 245 bracers and a chest with Crusader Orbs. Each piece will end up costing about 1,000 to 2,wedding dresses,000 gold depending on prices on your server (chest pieces can go MUCH higher upwards to 5,000 or more, and the materials range for instance Spellweave is a lot more than Arctic Fur).
Once you’re over 2,000 or 2,100WoW-heroes gear score you can easily get into some of the pugable raids like VoA where there is a chance to get some additional loot (and badges). Your ultimate goal is to reach a combined score of about 2,200 (for 10 man Trial of the Crusader) or 2,400 (for 25 man ToC or 10 man Icecrown Citadel) WoW-Heroes score or about 4500 or more for ToC and 5500 for ICC from the gear score addon. You can figure out golf equipment your current gear score by visiting WoW Heroes or via one of the many addons available in the game now (one simply called GearScore is the best at the moment). You can also base it off of your stats. Defense capped with more than 35k health? Normal 10s shouldn't be a problem.
