On approach to 80

My main is approaching level 80, which has only taken me about two years of play 🙂 Of course the Flame Festival is going on now which will distract me once I get online again (today doesn’t look great for that, maybe tomorrow?). But as I get to “endgame” I am finally going to be eligible for raids and Wintergrasp and all that stuff which until now has been inaccessible.

The question is, what do I want to do? and how do I start?

I used to run battlegrounds when I first started but tired of the Kobyashi Maru aspect of them. I almost had the achievement for winning every BG once but then they changed it so that all BGs give the same kind of honor point (or is a valor point? I get confused). At any rate I have a good number of those saved up but am not really sure there’s any useful gear if any I could buy that would be useful to me now.

Also, I am trying to run a random dungeon every time i log on (which isn’t always possible) and thus am accumulating the other kind of Points there, too. Again, not really sure how many I need and what they are good for.

In a nutshell, I am a PvE player – I like to quest. I also like to do dungeons, in order to complete the questlines and get the achievements. What I want is better gear, I am very poorly equipped as most of my gear is quest reward stuff and I don’t have much gold to spend at AH.

From this comprehensive guide to PvP gear for the new 4.2 release, most of which is utterly incomprehensible to me, it seems like some PvP gear would be hugely useful for PvE. So, should I try to get some? How? What’s the best way to go about this?

I dont know if I will enjoy raiding, but right now I’m so under-equipped that it’s not even an option. I’d like to at least try it out. But again, no idea where to start.

I need a Newbie Eighty Guide to Gear. Tell me what to do, what the basic due diligence is. Any and all guidance appreciated!

UPDATE – should have mentioned, my main is a human Arms spec warrior, level 78 on Staghelm.

7 thoughts on “On approach to 80”

  1. I can’t recommend gear stats without knowing what class you are. But hit 80, and start doing the cata areas, and you will be temporarily free of your money problems. Just doing all the quests will not only level you to 85, but all the useless quest rewards will vendor for a tidy sum (and if you can disenchant them, even more so). Keep in mind that from 80 to 85 you will see your numbers actually decrease due to stat attrition (at level 80 my bear had almost a 40% crit rate, but when I hit 85 he had 10%).

    From the quest rewards, you will get gear that far surpasses anything you have already, but you will not be able to get exactly what you need until later. Any serious use of time spent getting gear before 85 is strictly a waste of time. Some people like to waste that time, so its up to you.

    But if you want to get further into end game, get to 85, and then start working on gear. Queue for instances, spend your saved honor points, justice points from bosses and use the gear you find on bosses to upgrade with, then once you have seen some serious improvements in your capabilities, start doing heroics. Also, doing dailies for money and reputation gear might be worth it, depending on your play style. Don’t bother getting serious enchants or gems for anything less than 346 ilvl gear.

    After you have almost all 346’s at least (heroic grade loot), and a few rares, you can start fine tuning your performance and get into some raiding once you know your stuff.

    1. I’m a warrior, arms spec, right now I’m lvl 78 and working my way through Northrend, having finished Dragonblight and now am working my way through Grizzly Hills. At one time I was going to “finish” Outland but then got distracted by shiny of Northrend. I’ll probably save Outland for leveling my druid nelf alt later (stuck at about 40).

  2. also, apart from doing dungeons as part of the questline, is there an advantage to queing for randoms right now? or should i stay focused on the questline?

  3. Hmmm. Well, I think its a mixed bag. If you queue for dungeons you might advance past the quests, but cataclysm quests will still give you money and reputation so might be worth doing still. And really, you will be hungry for the justice points from normals, and the valor from heroics. As a dps you will be waiting in queue, so you might as well keep questing while you wait.

  4. If you are in a good guild, I would focus on doing heroics with the guild. You will hopefully have to suffer less bad behavior, and most people enjoy gearing a guildie up, which also teaches you how your guild does things.

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