f13.net

IMO, yes.  However, I bought mine using heroic badges I had building up on my raiding DK and argent crusade badges, not WG shards.  WG stuff has resil all over it, which isn't as useful for PvE as those few extra points of stats.

The 20% xp bonus from the shoulders and chest piece makes things go super quick.  Using the tour guide addon I was hitting a the next tier of the guide at only about 40-50% through the previous one.  Since I only play my rogue part time on the weekends, I can't give you a real great estimate of actual hours.  However,  I went from 29 to 70 in about 5 weeks of casually dicking around + battlegrounds. I don't think any play session of said rogue was longer than 3 1/2 hours, except possibly the first weekend I was AV eligible and I catassed for rep, honor and marks.

If your playing a melee class, the heirloom weapons are pretty much cheat codes for the first 50-60 levels.

The Chest and Shoulders are a no-brainer, not only because of the XP but you can slap a +100 Health enchant on the Chest which is pretty darn nice early on.

I'd recommend the weapons just for melee types (or the bow/gun for Hunters).  I'd pick up the caster weapons or gun on a Warrior only if you have a Stone Keeper Shards coming out your butt... which doesn't seem to be the case for you.

The heirloom PvP trinket is a bit of rip-off.  It's got some Resil, but you can buy four characters their Classic trinkets for the same cost (250 for the Heirloom versus 4 x 60 for two Wintergrasp Commendations).

The +2% Health/+2% Mana trinkets didn't seem to have much of an impact on the two characters I've used them on.  That said, one of them was a Warlock (with both) and the other was a Warrior packing an Heirloom 2-Hander with Crusader :awesome_for_real:.

On the Wintergrasp items vs. Heroism/Crusader's items: the differences are minor enough that I wouldn't use the Emblems/Seals if there was anything I was going after on my main (with the exception of the Chest, natch).

The caster weapons are far superior to anything else you can use as a leveling caster, they actually have spellpower on them and they will stay ahead of anything you're likely to get until the 70s. From 1-58 you'll never see a weapon with spellpower on it at all in all likelihood, its a really huge difference.

The trinkets are really nice for their passive effects, the little heal/mana procs are whatever. Keep in mind they're not unique so you can wear two of the haste ones if you want, etc.

The 2% return trinkets are stack-able, it isn't immediately obvious to most folks. IE: You can have two of the same trinket and get 4% return every kill.

I have two of each, one set for my Prot Warrior (walk into half dozen mobs, walk out full life) and one set for my Shadow Priest where the extra mana is just enough to push me into the 'don't need to drink anymore' zone.



One thing about the caster weapons, is you can put a +40 SP enchant on them, which is more SP then you would have for the first 30-40 levels normally.

Heirloom items area awesome :heart:

I have three lowbie alts equiped with the pvp items.

I leveled up the druid with them from level 70-80 and was suitably impressed (I stole the leather gear from my rogue)

I just wish I had the time/desire to level up those three alts as I currently have 3 80's to deal with.

Plus if you get hacked, you can still use them to level an alt because the farmers can't sell them.  Ask me how I know!

Why would you promote that you hacked someone's account?

I'm not even currently playing WoW anymore, but one of the first things I did when I was back in LK was get a set of shoulders + chests for cloth/leather/mail/plate.  Totally worth it.  I think I may have gotten a weapon as well, but I don't remember.

I'm leveling a frost mage aoe kiting with two of the mana one's. Downtime is minimal now.

There is a 5% exp ring heirloom now in 3.3. Dread Pirate Ring (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50255) from the weekly fishing Northrend contest.

Extreme stupid incoming:

Is there a way to mail heirloom items cross server?  I know they set up the mail system so you can send them cross faction, just wondering if there's some way to do it cross realm besides handing it to a character and paying $15 for a server transfer.

Only way is to server transfer.

Blizzard has said it wants to enable cross server transfers in the future, but some technical hurdle is preventing it currently or some such.


Soon™ and all that  :oh_i_see:

I got bored with my DK after he hit 80 with Wrath so I worked on getting chest, shoulder, 2hd axe and trinket heirlooms to make a baby paladin.  I flew through levels all the way up to 70 and then quit for four months due to RL issues.  Last Wednesday I resubbed and played him with full rest bonus which never ran out.  He hit 80 tonight, in 8 days.  Rest bonus + heirloom gear = awesome.

Best part is that I'm 80 and still have all of ZD, Shol, SP and IC zones to quest in.  Not to mention that I've started Argent dailies and dungeon randoms.   

With the heirlooms + quest rewards/misc drops are you able to do the 3.2 dungeons in LFG? I'm doing a pally with the exact same setup (52 atm)

Are you joking?  I got hacked, guy.

No I wasn't joking.  I think you should be banned.

Depends.  It wouldn't even let me queue up for some of them because my gear rating was too low.  It will let me in any Normal dungeon, but some of the Heroics are locked due to gear.  I'm trying to be a tank, but it's obvious that I'm going to have to Ret my way through the ranks for tank gear because people simply run through Heroics now. 

It's that age old issue in WoW.  In order to tank, you need the gear.  But dps can tag along usually and everyone gets by. 

Crafted saronite gear will get you most of the way there really, and it doesn't take a lot in the way of mats.

Yep wanted to know if you could get into purple rain on normal as a tank. Oh well looks like premake a set of

If all you're doing is sub-ToC tanking, I'd wager crafted tempered saronite could get you by.  I've got a lot of it and I'm at 525 defense.  The only real issue is that virtually none of my gear has gem slots, so I'm stuck till I can upgrade.

The only other issue to be (or not to be) concerned with is that the LFD puts you in groups with people that want a knowledgeable, proficient tank.  That won't quite happen in the beginning, so be prepared for some douchbaggery from others.

Oh.  Okay. 

Realistically, you get to be quite knowledgeable after running tons of heroics and watching what the tanks do anyway.  By the time you get enough gear to tank yourself, this really isn't an issue (normally.)

My Paladin is now fully able to tank all the instances that qualify for the random.  Now I'm farming the hell out of them for triumph to cap out my gear that way.  My other spec is healer and I'm ICC25 cabalbe there.  So, getting into randoms isn't a problem what-so-ever!  My issue now is getting placed into hHoR with bad groups.  I can handle the tanking of it, but if the healing and dps aren't spot on, wipe.

For levelling a warrior alt does anyone have any advice about whether 2h Arms, 2h Fury or DW 1H Fury (or DW Arms) produces the best results before level 50 and titan's grip. Heirloom gear isn't an issue, I have all the heirloom items bar a pair of one-handers, but can get them using left over badges now if it might be worth it.

2-h arms is less boring for boring than fury for a while.  At 40 you can get bloodthirst.  You should level as fury from there because glyphed blood thirst and Blood Craze are awesome for leveling/grinding.  Stick with 2-handed fury so you can use Slam to dump rage.

secret ninja option: Go prot, get to level 15, queue up for Ragefire Chasm, don't leave thunder bluff until level 58.

Heh, I've been tanking RFC in my heirloom gear with thunderclap, think I do a decent job. Being #1 for damage done and DPS too is fun.

51DPS at level 16 is good right?  :awesome_for_real:

Thanks for the advice.

Alternatively, you can just stay Arms and MS the shit out of stuff the whole way.  You have to eat every once in a while tho.  But IMO it's more fun/better practice.  Running around with the Arcanite Reaper heirloom was like happy fun time.

I went protection after about 30 levels of snoozing in Arms, and found I kill stuff faster than I did with Arms *and* rarely ever come close to dying, even with 2-3 mobs attacking (more mobs is actually good, more rage).  I've now 68 and enjoying the hell out of it.

2H Fury is a pretty weak build and weapon combo, lower base damage than arms and worse scaling than any form of dual-wield.

EDIT: And dual-wield Arms is a complete joke.

Just level as Protection via questing. I've taken my warrior from 1 to 51 now as protection, a good chunk of that was me just doing laps around the Elite Dragonkin in Dustwallow marsh. Walk into pack of 3 yellow elite mobs, walk out in 40 seconds with full life  :grin:

Protection as a leveling spec is totally mind-boggling to a person who did it at release. It was a horrible way to even think about gaming.

Then again, I didn't even quest during the first expansion because my ass was always in dungeons, so what do I know. I guess at that point they fixed it.

I think they fixed it very recently (wolk).  And then I think they nerfed it even more recently.  Because you know, mages were crying in PvP that they were dying.  And we can't have that.  I'm not entirely sure they really 'get' protection warriors.

Yes.  Leveling as protection then was a joke.  Why even bother?  You couldn't kill anything in under a minute, it was just so painful.  I didn't believe that it was possible until people here specifically told me about it because of my experiences at release.

Everyone claims dungeons are supposedly faster than questing, but I've always found questing to be much more reliable at getting levels than instances.  Not to mention running ST *again* is not something I look forward to, ever.  If you get a good group that can blitz them down fast, sure that can be good.  But when most tanks body pull or don't even understand aggro management, the "healer" is really a shadow priest or moonkin, and DPS doesn't understand a thing about focus fire or tank aggro it can become quite an expensive exercise in repair bills and corpse running.

Dungeons are faster at the beginning of an expansion in the first 2 months when everyone is leveling characters and alts. After that, it's probably not as consistent.

Yea.  It may be faster for a prot warrior to level in instances.  But for everyone else, including other flavors of warriors, it's WAY faster to download tom/tour guide and follow the arrow to the next quest.

I leveled as a Resto Druid during vanilla release, beat that!  :awesome_for_real:



They made Prot Leveling not only possible, but arguably the fastest and best way in WotLK. Shield Specialization and Revenge are just overpowered for the first 30-40 levels and talents like Incite are extremely powerful during those early levels. By the time the luster wears off on those things, you'll get devastate and shield slam so it's all gravy! The only 'oddity' is your best "dps" gear to level up is actually all that random +dodge, +defense plate no one uses at those levels.



The Prot PVP nerfs were both warranted and required. 35-40k HP rogues you couldn't CC or peel  :ye_gods:

Resto shaman 1-60.    :raspberry:  Like druids, we only had one valid talent tree for a LONG time.

You still had windfury sir!

Oh delicious vanilla winfury...  How does I miss you and your curbstomping of the noobs in their own graveyard...

I still remember being taken from 100% to zero in "one" windfury strike. I think it was the first time I felt the need to look at my combat log to figure out what the hell happened.

I remember playing BGs on my priest back in Vanilla and how enhance shamans would just flatten me in the blink of an eye.

You know Fordel was in trouble when he had to call in my paladin to "dps" for him for a few quests he just couldn't finish because his damage was so pathetic. It was sort of adorable.

That isn't even a exaggeration, my druid couldn't beat the respawn rate in a lot of places.

You people were/are crazy.  I healed a lot of instances leveling my Druid and Priest up to 60 in ye olden days, but I certainly didn't level as a pure healing spec.

Man, I remember duoing elite quests with my holy paladin and a holy priest. Nothing on the planet could kill us, but if the mob had a heal we were fucked.

Well what was a Druid going to spec in those days, Balance? Feral? They were even worse by every measure.

My druid went 1-60 feral at release!

My warrior has always been protection from his first talent point, too. It wasn't THAT bad.

Your Druid didn't level from RELEASE sir.

I leveled and did up BWL as HotW/Resto before I started up my Priest.  I agree that Feral was hilariously bad, and Balance was worse, but at least I had Claw!  (... except when it sounded like PW:S for a month or so and drove me insane.)

I collected a bunch of melee leather gear to try feral out around level 30 or 40, and I came to the hilariously depressing conclusion that I actually did more DPS just auto attacking with moonfire up in caster form.  :why_so_serious:

Remember, Ingmar, you didn't solo that warrior up at release. We were the awesome warrior/paladin duo of power. It would take 20 years to kill shit but  nothin' could kill us.  :heart:

I've been leveling 60-68 now in instances as prot pally with the shoulder and chest piece. When I'm burnt out of slave pens or AC I only quest. So far the quest's I have done is just the 82ish in hellfire skipping almost all of TBC.  :grin:

Getting 1200-1500exp per kill is just silly (+20% heirloom + rested in a dungeon).

If it works for you, cool.  Questing is faster.  It's why all those guys who write those guides they sell do it.  If they could do it faster in instances, believe me they'd be doing it.

If you have the heirlooms and playing a tank spec where the LFD is instant, leveling is faster there.  Unless you come across a group that can't faceroll the dungeon.

Man, I started up a paladin with heirlooms (both armor pieces, a trinket, and a 2h)

Looooooool. My only complaint is that my seal damage is completely trivial compared to just running up and autoattacking things.

I think tomorrow's goal is to get Crusader on that sword.

Fiery Weapon.  Thank me later.

Why/How is it better ?

Procs way more.  Is more beneficial to a paladin, since he doesn't really need the heal - especially if he's ret with that instant flash heal talent thingey.  Not sure if it still does, but it used to proc on seal of command as well as regular swings.  It used to be pretty much required to level a pally in vanilla, since it was so slow otherwise.  Well, it was slow with it too.

Doesn't Crusader proc a strength buff ?

Yep, 100str for 15secs.  However, it only has a 1ppm rate based on what I can find.  Not very useful for quest mob grinding when you're killing a lot of shit in that one minute.

Fiery is 6pm for 40 damage.  It used to be able to proc off judges, seals and reckoning procs but I don't know if that's still the case.

Unholy is actually vaguely decent now too as far as those things go.

Crusader is really nice at low levels.  It tends to lose it's luster above the late 40's compared to being 15-20.  I've never experimented with unholy or fiery, but my rogue has a life-steal dagger and it's been pretty fun so far.

I was terribly tempted to wait on the badlands ae proc of doom, if it still exists. I loved that thing for all the confusion it caused in instances.

But yeah, I was just defaulting to Crusader for the STR proc more than anything.

Crusader was better for me than any other enchant for paladin. It has a very high proc rate per swing due to the bloodied arcanite reaper having a 3.8 speed. You have about a 6% chance to proc per swing.

Also, paladins are very mana starved until later levels - that free heal means less downtime, especially if you're using concentrate to kill multiple mobs at once.


I've found something that disagrees with me, however, they seem think lifestealing is the best for damage/heal, though again they're assuming long fights which is incorrect since everything dies within 2 autoattack swings:

Does this enchant advice extend to other classes?  I'm considering leveling a shaman with twin heirloom Masses of McGowan.

edit: While we're on the subject, does anyone know what the best free leveling guide is these days? In the past it was Jame, but he apparently quit playing or something. A friend told me his Northrend guide just.... stops.

There's no real need for TBC or northrend guides. Just follow the quest crumbs.

My Paladin has been leveling in instances in the old world. Tank queues are instant. And ret tanking at low levels is hilariously easy. Seal of Command, glyph it, and laugh as you have perma high threat cleave that gives you mana back every 8-10 seconds. I tried lowbie prot for one run, my threat was worse, and my mitigation didn't make a difference. Sigh. It seems like Prot comes into it's own after spiritual guidance and holy shield/captain america skills. Before that, seal of cleave wins.

Jame's guide is still the best.  It goes through Zul'drak from 20 on Horde and from 30 on Alliance.  If you aren't 80 after doing all the zones through Zul'drak, you're doing it wrong ;-)

Unless you're dps, you can just run instances to level.  If you're dps, run instances, and just do all the quests in Howling Fjord/Borean Tundra between instance pops.  You might even have to do some of Grizzly Hills, or Dragon Blight before hitting 80.

I really don't see the need for a guide for either TBC, or WotLK, to be honest.  The quests do a good job of leading you to the next area already, and installing QuestHelper, or a similar mod, will show you where you need to go, so you can do everything all efficient like.

TBC = Hellfire --> Zangarmarsh --> Nagrand and a few Area 52 quests to ding 68.  I've done that on my last 3 toons.  Goes even faster with Heirloom gear and rested xp.

As Enhancement, I'd probably run Fiery as you can pop yourself a heal every one in a while.

As for guides, early on I just use TourGuide (working version over on GitHub (http://github.com/Zuz666/TourGuide/downloads)) with TomTom (http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info7032-TomTom.html).  Once I get into TBC/Wrath, I really just need LightHeaded (http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info7017-LightHeaded.html) in case I have a question about something and QuestRouterLite (http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info16023-QuestRouterLite.html) to give me a TomTom waypoint and show the Quest POIs on my minimap.

As a warning/laugh: The LFD system's segmentation of older/HUUUUGE instances is slightly borked. Did BRD upper city last night, didn't get a reward, apparently a known issue. But that's now what bugged me: When you enter these segments, it doesn't TELL you what you zoned in for. So I wound up killing bosses because I had absolutely no idea where this segment "ended"

Sigh. Overall though, it makes the older huge instances entirely bearable. But nothing can make BRD less obnoxious, I guess. A+ still to the LFD system for leveling tanks.

Been thinking about using the LFD tool to level my PvP warrior through the early 50s bracket (her career in the 49 bracket is one BG holiday from its end). I've sorta/kinda got some tanking stuff for her, but she is essentially a PvP twink. I have my doubts about this, though. Tanking a PuG through ST doesn't fill me with warm and fuzzy feelings.

I did do Mauradon a couple of times to get to 48 as my basic arms/PvP build. It was a little unnerving to have substantially more hit points than our "tank". And I did tend to pull aggro on massive OP or MS crits. And I did seem to tank almost as well as the "tank" on trash (that habit of constantly hitting glyphed sweeping strikes wasn't a good one in instances...). Guess we'll see. I never did like tanking for strangers back in vanilla and I'm still leery of it today.

Lowbie tanking is pretty trivial. Spec rarely matters, just own a shield and it's all fair.

I've had (from level 10-53 now) one really bad pug healer. Beyond that the horrors of lowbie LFD is "crappy tank" who is really a dps warrior in leather with a 2h that flagged tank to get an instant queue. My last BFD group was thrilled that I had more than 3k health (4.4k, woo, I'm still.. half an 80's crit ;) )

My worst group was simply a priest who would NOT heal me. Absolutely refused. We did ST waiting for the kick timer to expire so we could punt them, because I was essentially just tanking through being overpowered, then healing my own self post pull. Dumbest part? The priest wasn't even DPS specced. Completely holy spec. Wasn't even nuking/smiting/meleeing or anything stupid. Just walking around.

What ?


 :uhrr:

There's an addon called zygor's guide. I used it after completely skipping tbc and wrath. Got to 80 in less than 7 days played without any heirlooms.

It took under a fortnight of light play hours on a freshly levelled DPS class to get shoulder & chest heirloom items - the former from Wintergrasp, the latter from daily dungeons. So, I'm pretty confident that I'll get caster & melee shoulder & chests and three maces before Cataclysm.

I think I said earlier in the thread, you can use the leather shoulders and chest for all melee classes and hunters if you have to.  So get leather first.

I leveled a prot warrior with a leather chest piece just fine.

A month before Cata I plan on grinding out a full set of Warlock gear for my new goblin.

Heirloom items capped at 80.

Likely that the xp bonus will still apply (?)... but stats will not progress.

Not completely unexpected; guess you will have to farm your Tier1 heirlooms then shift to T2 heirlooms.


Originally quoted on MMO Champ

No, I think the new heirlooms will still work the same way.  You'll be able to gift them to level one characters.  It's just that the old ones won't progress with you after you ding 80 and the new ones will.  I'm pretty sure, at least. 

Yea I just assumed you'd need to buy new (1-85) heirlooms with Cataclysm Badges or whatever.

Yes, I guess I should clarify, I meant that out of the gate at level 81, you will suffer stat deficiencies - and since few of us will have whatever the currency they will require us to use to buy the T2 heirlooms, there will be a period where T1 will only be available.

It applies to some of the folks who were implying that they were stockpiling heirlooms for the expansion leveling.  But, yes, it is reasonable to assume that the T2 (once attained) will work for level 1 characters just as the T1's do now.

When people say this, I'm assuming they are going to level up a new Worgen or Goblin from scratch starting release day.  Realistically, by the time you hit 80, you will have given up your heirlooms.

I dunno - I would imagine that you'll keep the XP bonus items to 80 if that aspect still works to 80, and only replace other heirlooms between 68-78 based on what you can get from non-heroic dungeons. You can probably do the post-80 content at a reasonable pace at 78 (maybe earlier for some specs) so that's when you'll likely start replacing non-XP heirlooms.

Hopefully there's a good selection of blue quality weapons early in the post-80 quest content that have stats appropriate for the inevitable new scaling that makes level 80 epics crappy. That's the first heirloom I'll be looking to replace.

Just a head's up for folks, but Unholy Weapon is as of a couple patches ago ~2x as good as Fiery; same proc rate, just over twice the damage (Shadow) on average, and a minor damage debuff  (the debuff makes it a binary resist effect; so if you stack as much hit as possible, it becomes even better, iirc).  Still a fucked-up appearance on many weapons, though; the twin skulls spin off-kilter on several heirloom models (from personal experience: 1h mace and 2h axe are fucked up; Thrash Blade, daggers, and 1h sword are fine).

Also, in the same patch, Icebreaker and Lifeward got buffed to all hell; again, ~5 procs/minute just like fiery, only ~250 damage on IB, and ~350 healing on Lifeward.

I've seen my GF's un-twinked 72 Druid literally killing 20-30+ rhinos in Borean solo as Bear... and ending each said slaughter at full health (each swipe hit can proc LW... yeah, it's that broken; a twinked 60 bear could prolly solo Rampart trash fairly easily).  Just get any level 60+ non-sword 2her, a Lifeward scroll, and go to town.  I would also recommend Lifeward for anyone leveling a 60+ DPS Warrior solo.

Haven't been on WoW much in the last ~4 months, though, so maybe (hopefully?) Swipe-procs were nerfed.

Another of my endless re-noob questions - someone mentioned that the leather chest works for other classes, but how high/long are they useful? I have a 71? Rogue, a 62ish pally and then a 41 hunter I probably/may never level.

It'll take the rogue to 80, if you stick to PvE. The hunter to 40 easily, but would probably get you to TBC without any real issues. There are some seriously good mail quest rewards early on there, but it could fill any gaps in blues as you level up. The paladin...I wouldn't go there. The itemization is just kinda bad for warrior/pally. What makes any of these chests attractive in the PvE game is the +experience bonus. However, it's really substandard for the plate classes in terms of performance.

Personally, I'd just ante up for the plate BoA chest and rock on.

Oh I mean all three of those are Alts - I have an 80 Mage I  am gearing up now but am also looking into which heirloom items to get later on - after I get my mammoth (tonight?)

Honestly you could rock the leather chest on your hunter to 80. It's got the right stats, just the wrong armor type, but if you're getting hit as a hunter you'r doing it wrong. I wouldn't put it on a pally, however.

Thanks. Though I just remembered that (like everyone else) I also have a DK.
Since I have no intent of ever playing a warrior the plate wasn't really somewhere I wanted to spend points, but the dk makes it a real option

Err.  You won't replace the leather chest until 80 no matter what on any of those.  It's got 5% extra xp.  If you take it off for a quest reward, you're a fool.  I really doubt there is a quest reward that is better aside from that, even.  The agility isn't really great for a Pally, but fuck it.  It still converts to melee crit.  Unless you have extra badges and want to get the specialized heirloom chest for each type, or only ever plan on leveling one alt, get the leather.  And before you get a different armor class chest, get the leather shoulders.  I leveled a hunter with them, and it works very nicely.

If you are really serious about the most bang for your buck, get the cloth shoulders.  I've seen pallys and warriors in BGs with them.  Put the pvp shoulder enchant on it and that will turn on at lvl 70 to get some of the stats out of it.  I've not seen anyone go full on with the robe as well, but for sheer speed of leveling, that might be worth it.  Shoulders are easy to get though.  200 WG shards for the ones with resilience. 

Its worth getting a set for each armor type in my opinion, especially if you don't raid, its not like the badges are really useful for getting a bit better gear when you don't need it anyway.  Getting the chest and shoulders for every armor type was something I did pretty much as soon as I had a reasonable set of epics on my main.  Then again, I'm a little crazy sometimes.

This.

I've seen a lot of people with inappropriate BoA armor types in BGs, too. Presumably, it's for the xp bonus, but to me it's an HK bonus, since they're invariably easy kills. Just sayin'...

Yup.  I've got the sets for plate, cloth, and melee leather (those were the alts being leveled) and it's been pretty awesome.

Nod. Point taken. I guess it's going to be which to get first. I got the Alliance Mammoth last night, but then I realised that it's probably identical to the one the guy who sells them is sitting on, which in turn is almost identical to the mammoth I already have with Gnimo and Hakmut that can carry other people, so I just sold it back.

I'm sitting on about 355 tokens atm. I've gotten the wife to commit to playing for at least an hour each on the Druid alts, Blood Elf clothie alts and DK alts on the weekend, so she can decide which alts we're going to go for first and which armour sets. I figure that's the best way to work it out. I can quest-level my rogue the last 9 levels without much hassle, I'm sure. It'll depend on which character she likes since duoing is a hell of a lot more fun than soloing, and I've got enough extra alts sitting around unwashed that I'll always be able to get double-use out of any items. (and then just go for the next sets as I continue to catass Heroics).

She's got a BE Lock and alliance DK and Druid, as well as her 80 mage.
I've got a BE Priest and alliance DK, Druid I play/duo with her, then solo-alt Lock, Pally, Rogue all to pull double-use from the 3 armour types. And my 80 mage to do the farming.

How well does Heirloom cloth work for druids in the teens-20s? I'd imagine it's decent for awhile? - And how are the (cloth) shoulders that got mentioned as awesome for PVE levelling? I get the feeling she's going to choose the BElfs.

It'll be a ton of catassing to get 3 sets of armour as well as weapons, though. Especially since I'll have to do the majority of the catassing on her character as well. At least it's just 2 armour pieces (chest/shoulders) for Hierlooms, right? Right?  :grin:

Oh yeah - I saw the post about them only being good till 80 - well TBH, if people are going to be replacing Tier 9s or whatever from quests in the first zone of Cata, then it won't matter much if the Hierlooms don't work for the last 5 levels. That's the way I see it, anyway.

The cloth would work fine on druids as long as the druid is resto or balance; spellpower is less than useful for ferals, however. Besides the armor and weapons, there are also Heirloom trinkets.

Keep in mind that Cataclysm will incentivize you to wear your own armor type through some extra stat bonuses so it will probably be more worth your time to stick to the right kind of armor.

Nod. By the time cata rolls around I hope to have the 3 sets and a few appropriate weapons. It's just a matter of which to get first.

Remember though that the heirloom items you have will only work up to level 80 in cata, after that you need to buy the new 1-85 heirlooms that cata will have. In addition to which there are another another 2 heirloom types in cata - head item which gives 10% and back item which gives 5% xp , oh and not forgetting the guild xp bonus which hits 10%. They sure want you to level fast, anyone would think cata doesn't have enough content or something.

i believe they are also adding Heirloom Legs (and possibly an heirloom ring as well).

So, they just want you to basically cruise through leveling with a full set of heirloom gear at some point?  :oh_i_see:

There's already a ring, I think you have to win the fishing contest to get it though.

Yes, there is a 5% xp fishing contest ring.

In beta, you can get Heirloom Capes and Hats.

sorry, meant to say "another" heirloom ring.

And i believe someone datamined Heirloom pants, not sure though.

Sure, but in Cata everyone will be replacing T17 their raid gear with green quest drops as soon as they zone into Hellfire Peninsula, so the Heirloom stuff won't be that big a deal, the way I see it.

 :oh_i_see:

That is unfortunate.   I'm not the fence about cataclysm to begin with, but this feels pretty crappy.  I'm going back to school this semester and if I play WoW at all its going to be extremely casually/rarely.  I was kinda planning on getting that extra little boost from heirlooms as I leveled in Cata if I got it.   :heartbreak:

Doesn't bother me, why would I want to skip content on the first guy anyway? Heirlooms are there to speed you up on the ones you do after you've already seen it all once.

I thought the same thing. Handing people heirlooms from past content that let you speed through later content didn't seem to make any sense.

Because I don't care about leveling content, I care about playing with my guild mates, who, are going to quickly out level me with the amount of play time I'm going to have, and heirlooms would've helped me to reach max level to do dungeons with them that much sooner.

It's 5 levels, I wouldn't worry too much.

It's probably 30 hours of normal playtime max to get those 5 levels. Add in rested xp and you probably would be done playing 5 hours a week for a month.

Only on your second pass through.  They wipe rested XP with each expansion.

In theory. For some reason Sjofn always seems to have a full bar on release day while I have nothing!

That's not a consideration for Draegan who just said he's only going to be playing occasionally.

It's 'cause I'm a girl.

I know you can add any of the sub-60/pre-BC enchants to the heirloom gear and still have them be tradable.

What about the bow/gun?

Can you add a Heartseeker Scope to the Charmed Ancient Bone Bow or Upgraded Dwarven Hand Cannon and still have the thing be tradable?

Yep. However, the enchant won't become "active" unless the character using it fits the enchant's level requirements.

I'm not entirely sure about this, but I don't believe there's anything past the original scopes that can go on a BoA bow/gun. I'd have to check on my engineer, but I'm thinking there isn't anything for ranged weapons. Maybe the +1 to +3 damage scopes.

I have the gun and there is something on it beyond the +1 and +3 scopes.  I want to say I have a heartseeker on it.  But the ever correct WoWhead comments note that you need to be 70 for the enchant to activate.

I am thinking of getting the Heriloom Lava Dredger for my soon to be Worgen Druid alt, and am kind of undecided which enchant would be better to put on it.

Choice comes down to Lifestealing, fiery or Crusader.

Lifestealing seems to be the best bet, just cause i get the most benefit out of it in both bear and cat.

Fiery is next, just from a pure damage standpoint.

Crusader is also a good option, but since half the proc is probably going to be totally wasted as a cat (cats dont get ANYTHING from strength in Cata from what i remeber).

Anyone got any thoughts to add to help me make a good decision?

I always did Firey because that 40 damage is uber early on and still useful into the 60's.  I could never find enough mobs in tight enough packs to justify lifestealing when the trinket health proc worked just fine for continuous killing.

I used Crusader on my BAR with my pally.  I don't think I casted a heal spell until Outlands.  The heal on it is enough to go from mob to mob without stopping. 

Unholy is also no longer terrible and worth thinking about, especially if you don't have an enchanter and have to scrounge for scrolls or whatever.  They added damage to it at some point so it is similar to fiery.

I used lifestealing on a rogue for the off-hand, but that was pretty much it.  It does... slightly help.  But the trinket is much more reliable and gives more health.

I'm thinking I'm pairing fiery with either Crusader for my rogue. (I was thinking Crusader/Lifestealing). Rogues don't get much from str, but the +damage and the self-heals seem nice.

This mirrors what I have put away for my anticipated worgen druid: lava dredger and armor pieces. Armor is obvious--+100hps to chest. The 'dredger, not so much. Crusader is probably the best bet, but I went with the +AGI one. The others are meant more for 1handers. The 'dredger is a pretty fast 2h, but I felt the agility was the best compromise for a feral type. +9 to damage would have been another good one, but they're damned hard to find and I haven't seen one for many a month--and no one in the guild seemed to have it.

Try finding the +30 spellpower one. The one from MC, with the 1% drop rate off of bosses. Luckily, someone on my server always has four or five scrolls up for about 90 gold a piece, but the enchant sells for 8000 or so.

I used unholy for my last guy, but he had healing of his own (paladin). Crusader would probably still be a better choice for something like an arms warrior.

Trinket? What trinket?

edit -
Just looked them up. God dammit. I don't think I have it in me to grind out another 400 marks to get 2 of each for both my wife's account and my own. I was just going to get the Dal Rend Sacred Charge for each if I happened to get enough tokens before they change the currencies.
 :uhrr: :ye_gods:

http://www.wowhead.com/item=42991/swift-hand-of-justice

There's also:

http://www.wowhead.com/item=42992

Also note that neither are unique and their procs do stack, so if you use two swift hands you'll heal twice.

I used this because it's a pretty purple. :drillf:

You'll be slaughtering everything even without the enchant.  I doubt you'll go wrong with any of them.

I wouldnt think the speed on the dredger would matter as a feral.  Wouldnt the proc rate be based on your cat / bear claw speed? which is fixed based on whichever form you are in and not the swing speed of the weapon (modified by haste of course).

Also, wouldnt +9 damage be useless as a feral enchant since you are not actually hitting the enemies with your physical weapon? Or have they changed the feral attack mechanics enough in Cata that it would somehow stack into your feral attacks?

Yeah the speed is irrelevant.

I put Unholy on my first weapon, kindasorta by accident. I've been putting Lifestealing onto the other since, as it came rather recommended. I thought I'd finally ground out my final heirlooms yesterday when I got my wife her Shammy chest and the Bone bow. Depending on when they implement the currency changes, I'll see if I can get a trinket for each of us each week, though I'm concerned that they will patch the changes in tonight, which will lilkely be an end to it, assuming the prices get bumped up as Ingmar said...

Ah, I thought it had been mentioned but maybe it wasn't here - they announced they were going to up the conversion rate for badges->points, so it shouldn't be as bad as it was when I first checked out the PTR.

I did see that, but I inferred from one of your recent posts that the conversion rate would still be markedly less value than things are currently going for?

Hm, no, I don't think so. I might have misstated something. I *think* MMO Champion has a calculator with the most recent values in it, if you want to mess around with that. Might have to do some digging to find the prices.

They are playing around with the conversion rates, but in the end, the conversion rate is largely irrilivent (other then for finding out how much extra gold you are going to find in your mailbox, and seeing if you will hit the soft cap when the converson happens).

Word has it that the final prices on all items under the new point system should be a direct comparison to what their old value in badges was.  Curretnly, the conversion rate to actual cost numbers on the PTR is all kinds of messed up, but when it goes live, if an item costs 50 badges, it's point cost should be 50x (where x is the conversion rate from badges to points).

Nah, it's cool. I'll get what I can this week and that will probably be the end of it. Once the 4.0 patch hits, it'll put fast/easy/competent heroics and badges to an immediate stop from what I hear.

I have a warrior with 180 Champion seals who isn't an Exalted Champion, so I don't have access to the Argent Crusade vendor (and thus no access to the heirloom items on the vendor).

I still need draenei and night elf faction, about halfway through last bar until exalted with either.  I'm doing the trials dailies and choosing the faction scrolls instead of the gold bags.  This shit is tediuos!  Does anyone know a quicker way to faction up Draenei and Elf for a dwarf?

Quest through the Draenei or Nelf starting areas? Turn in stacks of runecloth?

The tournament is the fastest way, save possibly speed runs through the starter areas.

Starter Area Speed runs, Tournament Dailies + playing defense in AV and doing the turn-ins was how I did it on my DK.

Runecloth is slow, but you can farm a shit-ton of it in Strat, so call it "mount farming" and take the rep as a bonus.

I thought the faction rewards were nerfed along with the experience for doing gray quests.  Is that not true?  Might be worth it for something different to do beside the trials dailies.  Gold would be worse though.  Hmmmmm!

Thanks for the suggestions.

They changed rep gains back to full in 3.1 IIRC.  Might have been 3.0 but it's been a while now.

Nope, the opposite actually - gray quests *used* to give bad faction at release, they eventually changed it later (after I had done most of them  :angryfist:) so they give full value.

EDIT: I always regret not checking what the new post is when I get that SOMEONE POSTED warning.

Runecloth, and/or speedgrinding through newbie quests on a fast mount.

Newbie quests.  You can crank them out extremely fast on anyone capable of doing the Tournament.  (The Draenei area is fast for a newbie, even.)  If you have anything left do a few Strat runs and turn in the cloth.

I actually find it fun to go back and do the newb quests.  Typically, I find the ones I skipped because they were too hard or I didn't go far enough into the questline before I lvl'ed and moved on.  Blowing through the newb instances for quest turn-ins nearly always uncovers a quest or item I never saw before.  Good stuff.

The did do something to nerf main line faction sometime in the past year or so.  Once you cap out on a faction, it used to be, right after they reinstated full faction gain for grey quests that the full faction reward would be split among the rest in spill over.  Now it caps at about 30% for spill over. 

So in the last week I ground out the 400 badges needed to buy 2 of each trinket for both my wife and I, while also going to work and such. I think I killed part of my soul doing it, though.  :uhrr:

Thanks all for suggesting the newb quests, worked really well, was pretty painless.

Prices of BOAs under the justice point system is at an all time high.

If I don't remember wrongly, a BOA 2hander used to cost like 65 emblems while a T9 chest piece cost like 60. Under the current justice point system the 2hander BOA cost 3500 justice points, which is more than enough to buy an entire 5 piece set of T9; alternatively that 3500 is 3/4 the points needed to buy an entire set of T10 (4690 for all 5).

Instead of 10-12 random heroics runs to get that BOA 2hander, now it will take 30-35.

They're priced with the income from level 85 dungeons in mind I think.

Correct.

Anyone bother telling them we can't run level 85 dungeons yet?

I suppose there's a slight chance that they will adjust the costs in tonight's downtime. What wuth the expansion being 2 months away (and wotlk heirlooms apparently only working until 80) Otherwise my semi-new semi-plan to grind out a pair of MacGowans' in the next week or two just ain't gonna happen. I'm not real interested in running dungeons for the next 2 months to buy stuff that I'll replace off green drops from boars the moment I step into Hellfire Peninsula Searing Gorge again.

You won't replace those with greens, maybe a blue item for all of a level.

Yeah, I'm being a bit extreme, but the point is that all the crap I'm wearing will probably be replaced by Christmas, so I see little point in spending the next 2 months upgrading gear so I can replace it all 2-3 weeks later with the ame levelling stuff that I'll be replacing my existing stuff with.

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=19926.msg850741#msg850741

I think I mentioned this in a different thread but anyone thinking of leveling a DK should know that you can runeforge heirlooms now.

Can other characters benefit from the runeforged enchants?

Runeforging has "Requires: Runeforging 300" on everything, so nope!

So I presume they didn't drop the costs last night, then?

OK, so a pair of these were recommended for an (Enh?) shaman
http://www.wowwiki.com/Venerable_Mass_of_McGowan

What about these?
http://www.wowwiki.com/Sharpened_Scarlet_Kris

Essentially the same stats and DPS. Though a faster weapon. I understand Shammies can use daggers. I've read some stuff suggesting that slower 1-handers were better in the past. What about now (as Alt-hairlooms?) Especially since I have a pair of these.

As an enhance shaman you really want slow/slow. For levelling it probably won't make too much difference, and the time you loose due to having imperfect weapons will still be less than the time taken to grind out two heirloom weapons with 2.6 speed.

Current rule for shaman is Slow / Slow,

Some reasons being:
- Windfury (preferred main hand Weapon Imbue) has an internal cooldown, and a weapon that is too fast can potentially lose chances to actually proc WF on hits
- Flametongue (your preferred offhand weapon imbue) damage is based off of the Weapon's base speed so slower weapons get bigger flametongue hits
- Shaman get a decent mele haste boost from Flurry, which has a fairly substantial uptime with decent crit
- Also, as shown with the two Heirloom items you linked, they have the same "DPS" number, but their top end damage is wildly different (436 for the maces vs 234 for the Dagger) and Enhance instant attacks use those numbers when hitting, so a pair of slow weapons is going to hit a lot harder when you LavaLash someone then a pair of fast ones.

That may change in the future, if they ever decide to do more tweaking to shaman weapon imbues, but currently, rule is slower = better.

Slow/slow is where it's at for enhance. The Mass of McGowan is ideal for leveling an enhance shaman. Enchant them with crusader or +5 to damage and enjoy.

At low levels, daggers will get you along OK, but performance really is miles better with the maces, especially when you hit TBC.

Daggers have a lower attack power co-efficient (http://www.wowwiki.com/Normalization) for instant strikes and lower average damage, so you're be losing quite a bit of damage on your instant strikes.  Plus they've got resilience as a third stat, so you're losing damage there too.

The caster main hands actually strike harder than the dagger, but not by much.

AP / 14 * [Normalization Factor] + Weapon Damage = Instant Attack Damage


1. Every viable one-hander actually suffers this, the CD is 3 seconds, and the non-deterministic nature of flurry haste fucks up everything.
2. Auto-attack flametongue DPS is not effected, only instant attack flametongue DPS, which is pretty marginal.
3. Flurry haste is not effected, only the up-time (and it's a PITA trying to calculate it).  30% haste is a 30% DPS increase, regardless of the weapon.
4. Top end damage is irrelevant and can be deceptive if the range is irregularly wide (in this case the ranges are similarly wide), calculate with (Weapon DPS * Weapon Speed) instead.
5. Maelstrom weapon might favour faster weapons still.

Use the daggers if you really want to, but don't hesitate to trade them for a dungeon blue.  You might also try the caster hammer if you actually own one currently.  Or go elemental, it's less retarded leveling one now.

The mats on that contain two golden pearls, which sell for 150g each on my server (also 4 large brills and 6 greater eternal essence).

Another alternative is the cheaper Healing Power enchant for 29 spellpower.  The formula is as rare as the other but the mats are much cheaper.  4 essence of water, 4 large brills and 4 greater eternals.