how i get teh gearz?

[WindupAtheist]

So I'm like 62 now.  I daresay that on this, my fourth foray into WoW, I will finally hit max level.  Okay, so at some point in the future I turn in some quest, and wham, I'm 70.  Time to get gear.  Can someone explain just what the hell you do at this point?  Because nothing I've read or heard makes it sound anything less than totally opaque.

"So tier season 6349Q can be bought for gold if you're above Cuddly reputation with Grognerflok, while PVP blue raid tier set LB69J can be bought for honor points and Marks of Spiffyness, at least until the next patch when they sell it for gold and arena set 49P comes out, but lol that's too much of a grind!  I'll probably just run Zamboozle on Heroic!"

What?

Ret pally.  Not doing anything above 5 man instances.  Perfectly willing to PVP for gear if nobody wants ret pallies in their instance group.  Killed plenty of peeps out in the world on my old server, never done a single battleground ever.

Who the hell do I talk to at level 70 to get moar better weapans?

[Simond]

OK, here we go: You'll have a set of gear (mostly greens) purely from finishing up the questlines/doing tradeskills/playing the AH when you hit 70.

Some gear (pretty much all blues) drops from the normal 5-man instances.

Most TBC groups (Cenerion Expedition et al) have a faction quartermaster that will sell you get for gold, limited by your faction with them (exalted for the best gear, natch). There's a number of 'new' factions with daily quests (Ogri'la, Skyguard, etc) which work in a similar manner but have repeatable quest for faction, cash, etc. instead of instance running.

Heroic instances (tougher, L70-only versions of all of the TBC instances) drop gear but also the bosses drop "Badges of Justice". These are essentially an alternate currency which lets you buy purple gear from specific vendors.

You can also buy PvP gear with honour points & BG tokens (yet another alternate currency).

Arena combat also has gear on vendors, limited by your arena team & personal team rating (which isn't a straight grind unlike honour points - win ten games against low-ranked opponents and lose one against a higher-ranked team and you'll probably lose rating).

[Chimpy]

Who the hell do I talk to at level 70 to get moar better weapans?

For Ret, you will probably be best served with the season1 arena gear, which is all available from the PvP vendors for honor.

What it will entail is spending a lot of time in the battlegrounds (Alterac valley for most of your honor points, all the others for whatever type of marks you need).

Ret does a ton of DPS, and I have done 5 mans where a ret pally put on a shield and tanked just fine, so as long as you learn what  "tha tricks" are, you should be able to do 5 mans pretty easily, and I am sure there is some good ret gear floating around in there, but most DPS plate wearers end up using arena/pvp gear for PvE because it has all the important stats on it and is easier to obtain than the RNG loot from instances.

[Dren]

From reading your other posts, I assume you will be mostly doing all of the 5 man instances with your friends.  Do those on normal until you all feel like you have good sets of blue items.  At that point you may be ready to do 5-man heroics, but it will be difficult.  That is doing those same instances, but harder.  You'll get badges.

The badges are currency for epic items that are on par with 10-man gear from Karazhan.  Some better, some worse.  The upcoming patch will be adding even more choices for badge buying too.

In the future, you'll be able to buy PvP items from the faction vendors with gold.  You'll need a certain level of faction with them, so you might have to do some faction grinding.  It depends on where you are at after you finish doing the normal quests for them.

If you go the PvP route, that's been explained I think.

I tend to do all of this except replace heroics with 10-man Karazhan.  I get 2 badges per boss there and lots of epic lewtz.  Our guild is the right size for this and run it every week.  We even have two teams doing it each week now.  I shun 25 man instances.  I've tried it and do not like it. (Mags, and Gruuls)  If I weren't in this guild, I'd be doing heroics either with the guild or PUGs.

I mix PvP in where I can outside of raiding Karazhan.  I have a mix of lewt from Kara, badge purchases, and PvP.  I get my cash doing dailies.  Most of my dailies are from the bombing runs because they are fun and fast. (I do have an epic flying mount which makes all the difference.)

When I'm bored with this, I hop onto one of my alts and either try to build up their gear or level.  I've slowly been using some of my alts for PvP too.  I like to see the game play from all the different perspectives.

I do this with a consistent 1-2.5 hours per weeknight and 1-10 hours on the weekends (depends on season, which is cabin-fever-catass right now.)

[Arrrgh]

In general there's PvP gear and there's PvE gear.  There's plenty of overlap but it helps to know which you'll be doing the most.

You mention 5 person instances. There's heroic and non heroic. Non heroic has blue gear that's no where near as good as the PVP gear you get from buying stuff with honor and arena points. Heroic 5 person instances have some nice stuff and you can buy nicer stuff with the badges you get as loot in the heroics, but ret paladins aren't much wanted in heroic groups since people usually want as much CC as possible and ranged DPS is easier on the healers.

The PvP blues next patch are decent. You'll have to be honored/revered with various factions though to buy them. Honored is easy. Revered is a bit of a rep grind. YMMV.

[Paelos]

I've never seen a ret pally in any of my groups, but I've heard that they can do good things for groups with solid melee dps.

[Montague]

As was said earlier, just start running Alterac Valley and gather honor and marks. Doing it at your level now I would gather together some healing gear so you could be at least somewhat useful. Do this until you have around 60,000 honor and 100 marks (won't take as long as you might think). Ding 70 and purchase your epic weapon, helm, gauntlets, and rings. Run the other hellhole BG's for the marks and then go back to AV to get the honor for the rest of your gear.

Alternatively, you can level Blacksmithing to 365 and make Thunder, a very nice Ret paladin mace which for a few primal nethers you can upgrade to Deep Thunder, which is an awesome PVP mace.

Trinkets(other than the PVP trinket):

Try to get Hourglass of The Unraveller from Black Morass - http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28034

If you have gold to burn either of these Darkmoon decks are nice:

Darkmoon Card: Crusade - http://www.wowhead.com/?item=31856

Darkmoon Card: Wrath - http://www.wowhead.com/?item=31857

 

[Nebu]

As was said earlier, just start running Alterac Valley and gather honor and marks. Doing it at your level now I would gather together some healing gear so you could be at least somewhat useful. Do this until you have around 60,000 honor and 100 marks (won't take as long as you might think). Ding 70 and purchase your epic weapon, helm, gauntlets, and rings. Run the other hellhole BG's for the marks and then go back to AV to get the honor for the rest of your gear.

When you describe it like that, it sure sounds fun!

[Rasix]

I wish they'd remove the stupid mark requirements. I really don't give a crap about WSG or EOTS unless it's part of PVP daily or the BG weekend.  I'd do EOTS and AB more (WSG I really don't care for), but they're honestly too long and the honor can be pretty terrible if you lose or lose badly.

As is, it's a relatively slow grind when you're not someone that can sit down and grind AV 4+ hours a day.

Also, getting in heroic groups as an offspec is an exercise in futility.

[Zetor]

Meh, my guild runs heroics with MS warrior / dps feral druid / elemental shaman [with another feral druid tanking, and a resto shaman or holy priest healing] a lot... but we overgear most of the heroics we do, and for the ones we don't (hi2u durnholde), we get at least one or two CC classes. I agree, getting a spot in a pug as a non-tank warrior / druid or non-healer shaman is a pain. Shadow priests are very welcome though, and ret pallies definitely pull their weight since the last patch. As a shaman healer, I lurve moonkin and their spell crit aura, I imagine holy pallies would love it even more.

About marks, I agree with Rasix. The new mark turn-in quest in 2.4 is stupid too -- they should've made it a 'vendor' you 'sell' marks to in exchange for honor [make EOTS or WSG marks worth more for all I care], but tying it to one of each mark is stupid. I personally can't stand WSG and pugging EOTS on alliance side is the equivalent of taking a vinegar shower and rolling around in a pit full of fire ants. I imagine it is similar for horde doing AV in battlegroups with 4-hour AV queues.

The mark concept itself is ok, but don't make people do BGs they hate kthx.


-- Z.

[Threash]

The badges are currency for epic items that are on par with 10-man gear from Karazhan.  Some better, some worse.  The upcoming patch will be adding even more choices for badge buying too.

Hmm, wrong.  Current badge rewards are scc/tk level, the old karazhan level rewards are still there but it would be silly to waste badges on those.  Next patch theres going to be BT level badge rewards.  Basically what this means is you can get gear as good as the current top raid dungeon by doing 5 mans when the higher tier dungeon comes out.

[Montague]

As was said earlier, just start running Alterac Valley and gather honor and marks. Doing it at your level now I would gather together some healing gear so you could be at least somewhat useful. Do this until you have around 60,000 honor and 100 marks (won't take as long as you might think). Ding 70 and purchase your epic weapon, helm, gauntlets, and rings. Run the other hellhole BG's for the marks and then go back to AV to get the honor for the rest of your gear.

When you describe it like that, it sure sounds fun!

Heh.

Agree about the marks, but honestly if you didn't need AB, EOTS, and WSG marks for gear NOBODY Alliance side would run them. Blizzard has to do something to lead the sheep to slaughter get them to play.

[Koyasha]

For the heroic stuff, you won't be able to just jump right into it, you'll need to have a decent level of gear before you're useful there.  I mostly play critical classes so far (tank and priest) though, so that's considerably reduced if you're not the tank or healer, but still important.  That means you'll need to either do some pvp or regular 5-mans before you jump into heroics.

On another note that has been mentioned in other threads...don't stay in Outland too long if you haven't finished every Azeroth quest you can get your hands on that still gives exp.  The more of those you do the less grind for money you have when you hit 70, because the more Outland quests you'll still have left to do when you do hit 70.

Also, for gear research, there is little better than Atlas + AtlasLoot, especially with Atlasloot's relatively new wishlist feature.  You can look up exactly what drops where, what you can get through pvp rewards, factions, badges, and so on, and add it to your wishlist so you know where you need to go to get what you want.  Another addon called RatingBuster is great for showing you at a glance what the practical effects of that item are going to be, as it takes the stats on the item and gives you information about how they will affect your stats when you replace one of yours.  It takes into account the removal of your current item when it does this, thus showing exactly how much of an upgrade the item will be.  It can be very helpful in deciding whether you want to roll on a particular piece of gear or not, since you won't have to try to do all the calculations in your head about how much you're actually going to gain.

[Phred]

OK, here we go: You'll have a set of gear (mostly greens) purely from finishing up the questlines/doing tradeskills/playing the AH when you hit 70.

Some gear (pretty much all blues) drops from the normal 5-man instances.

Most TBC groups (Cenerion Expedition et al) have a faction quartermaster that will sell you get for gold, limited by your faction with them (exalted for the best gear, natch). There's a number of 'new' factions with daily quests (Ogri'la, Skyguard, etc) which work in a similar manner but have repeatable quest for faction, cash, etc. instead of instance running.

Heroic instances (tougher, L70-only versions of all of the TBC instances) drop gear but also the bosses drop "Badges of Justice". These are essentially an alternate currency which lets you buy purple gear from specific vendors.

Sadly, having done all these methods of obtaining gear, I really at this point, can't see the point in bothering with anything other than the pvp gear. As an example, for a hunter, all the range weapons available on the faction vendors are capped around 61-63 dps. For a little bit more work, you can get a 82 dps crossbow from pvp? I ask you, what is the point of the faction vendors in this case? Other than the Ogri'la crossbow, the only other weapons are from faction vendors that require quite a few trips through instances to build up. The same holds true for druids. Cenarion expedition has a nice feral 2h hammer, but it's pretty well made completely redundant by the pvp 2h. You could argue that the 100 armor on the cenarion weapon makes it better for tanking I guess. I busted my ass factioning up with aldor to get my rogue the 1h sword from their vendor but the pvp weapon is 10 more dps and dps is really all that matters with weapons.

You can also buy PvP gear with honour points & BG tokens (yet another alternate currency).

Arena combat also has gear on vendors, limited by your arena team & personal team rating (which isn't a straight grind unlike honour points - win ten games against low-ranked opponents and lose one against a higher-ranked team and you'll probably lose rating).

[Tale]

Just wait till the next expansion comes along and you can get better gear from levelling 71-80 than anyone got in two years of raiding and pvp at 70.

[WindupAtheist]

Just wait till the next expansion comes along and you can get better gear from levelling 71-80 than anyone got in two years of raiding and pvp at 70.

This shouldn't even be in green.

Anyway, thanks all for the info.  Much clearer now.

[Dren]

Agree about the marks, but honestly if you didn't need AB, EOTS, and WSG marks for gear NOBODY Alliance side would run them. Blizzard has to do something to lead the sheep to slaughter get them to play.

I also agree on the marks, but I don't understand the rest of your statement.  Are you saying all alliance would then run AV? 

My server must be an anamoly because basically all alliance assumes AV a loss and waste of time except the need the marks for an item.  I run EOTS constantly and ignore most of the others, especially AV.  EOTS is quick and typically a win for us (my battlegroup anyway.)  I'm talking from a PUG perspective too.  In premades, EOTS is the BG of choice because a 4 cap with flag caps is like a 4-5 minutes win. 

AB is at least 10 minutes even if you dominate.  I enjoy those games, but I am always pissed that certain classes have a clear advantage to getting in and capturing a flag over all others.  You can sit there and dominate the enemy at a flag, killing them over and over, but if you just can't cap that flag, it doesn't matter.  I like the EOTS approach of using your presence there as a factor of win/lose, not whether you can sit there for 30 seconds "using" a flag without being hit/harmed.

WSG instances can last for fricking EVER!  They can be absolutely some of the best PvP fun evar, or they can be the most boring back and forth contest evar.  WSG is a total crapshoot.

To make up for my lack of AV marks, I'm going to use Arena points for those items.  I'd much rather see them use purely honor for armor/weapons/trinkets/etc.  They can use the marks for getting the consumables.  That's what I've been burning my EOTS marks for once I get near 100, which is nearly constantly now.  That has been actually really nice.  I constantly have mana and heal potions available to me now.

[Jayce]

Koyasha highlighted a good point - you'll probably have quests left over when you hit 70.  It's worthwhile both for entertainment (some of the quests are quirky/fun) and they all give nice gold.

Another thing I haven't seen mentioned is getting gear crafted.  I tend to prefer the farm & craft method, because it lets me play exactly as much as I want.  It's pretty much a solo activity though, unless you make agreements with your pals to farm up the mats communally.

One thing that you'll have to do for all this that you don't have to do with simple questing is to go check out wowhead or thottbot or something, and find out what you want.  There is an ocean of gear out there, and knowing what you're looking for helps.

[Montague]

Agree about the marks, but honestly if you didn't need AB, EOTS, and WSG marks for gear NOBODY Alliance side would run them. Blizzard has to do something to lead the sheep to slaughter get them to play.

I also agree on the marks, but I don't understand the rest of your statement.  Are you saying all alliance would then run AV? 

My server must be an anamoly because basically all alliance assumes AV a loss and waste of time except the need the marks for an item.  I run EOTS constantly and ignore most of the others, especially AV.  EOTS is quick and typically a win for us (my battlegroup anyway.)  I'm talking from a PUG perspective too.  In premades, EOTS is the BG of choice because a 4 cap with flag caps is like a 4-5 minutes win. 

AB is at least 10 minutes even if you dominate.  I enjoy those games, but I am always pissed that certain classes have a clear advantage to getting in and capturing a flag over all others.  You can sit there and dominate the enemy at a flag, killing them over and over, but if you just can't cap that flag, it doesn't matter.  I like the EOTS approach of using your presence there as a factor of win/lose, not whether you can sit there for 30 seconds "using" a flag without being hit/harmed.

WSG instances can last for fricking EVER!  They can be absolutely some of the best PvP fun evar, or they can be the most boring back and forth contest evar.  WSG is a total crapshoot.

To make up for my lack of AV marks, I'm going to use Arena points for those items.  I'd much rather see them use purely honor for armor/weapons/trinkets/etc.  They can use the marks for getting the consumables.  That's what I've been burning my EOTS marks for once I get near 100, which is nearly constantly now.  That has been actually really nice.  I constantly have mana and heal potions available to me now.

On my BG (Whirlwind) Alliance wins AV around 60-70% of the time. EOTS is a crapshoot but probably 60-40 Horde. Horde dominate AB and WSG. Alliance win because Horde turtling at IB and Galv generally doesn't work. We tend to play pretty good defense and a few times on a Horde turtle we've just pushed back their offense, take SHGY and IBGY and bleed them dry of reinforcements as they come up from FW.

WSG and AB are just trainwrecks. You have Alliance noobs hanging on to the flags as if they're badass or something while Horde just cut us to pieces. AB is only slightly better, as Horde take their triangle and bash our faces in while Alliance run around willy nilly. Also as a rule Horde are much better geared in WSG and AB in our battlegroup - I've seen Horde with titles and 5-5 Vengeful gear running around killing everything in sight, meanwhile we have noobs in greens.

[Fabricated]

Just wait till the next expansion comes along and you can get better gear from levelling 71-80 than anyone got in two years of raiding and pvp at 70.

This shouldn't even be in green.

Anyway, thanks all for the info.  Much clearer now.

You'll like the next patch if you're a loladin. Ret pally gear is being reworked to be more effective.

[WindupAtheist]

If it doesn't start getting less boring than Zangarmarsh, I won't make 70 after all.

[Phred]

If it doesn't start getting less boring than Zangarmarsh, I won't make 70 after all.

Thought you said you were in the high 60's now? Wtf you doing in Zangarmarsh? Grinding? At least everywhere in Zangarmarsh is a straight line run from every other place, unlike BEM, Netherstorm or SMV. If you are still at the 61-63 range and you are finding the marsh boring, it could likely be the ramped up exp requirements. If so, ya you will unlikely make it past 66. Zangarmarsh is just a repeat of the same zone design formula they use everywhere in BC so I doubt it's specific to it.

[Driakos]

Go to Terrokar or Nagrand, they are more fun.

[Fordel]

Did you save the little mushroom people yet?


Have you no heart? 

[Tale]

So I'm like 62 now.

Thought you said you were in the high 60's now?

Pay attention.

[Typhon]

If it doesn't start getting less boring than Zangarmarsh, I won't make 70 after all.

[...] Zangarmarsh is just a repeat of the same zone design formula they use everywhere in BC so I doubt it's specific to it. [...]

I also found Zangarmarsh to be very tedious.  Terrorkar and Nagrand were more fun.  I cannot put my finger on exactly why I thought that to be the case.

[WindupAtheist]

Finished Zangarmarsh, going to move into Terrokar next.  Zangarmarsh just felt really disconnected from anything.  I went from fighting the BURNING MOTHERFUCKING LEGION in Hellfire, to investigating fungal rot in mushroom men on behalf of some eco-hippy elves who are more concerned with hugging trees than with the fact that DEMONS FROM HELL ARE INVADING THE FUCKING WORLD.

[Dren]

Finished Zangarmarsh, going to move into Terrokar next.  Zangarmarsh just felt really disconnected from anything.  I went from fighting the BURNING MOTHERFUCKING LEGION in Hellfire, to investigating fungal rot in mushroom men on behalf of some eco-hippy elves who are more concerned with hugging trees than with the fact that DEMONS FROM HELL ARE INVADING THE FUCKING WORLD.

You know, I get this same disconnect from other regions of outworld and even some in Azeroth.  There are zones that are completely devastated by wars of the past.  We are still fighting those same beings that caused said devastation.  Yet, you go into zones that seem to be untouched by the wars and you have silly bickering between ogres, elves, whatever.  Or, as said above, the fungal giants are getting sick!  We must help them even though they attack me everytime I come close!  I should look through their poo.  Yeah, that's the ticket.

Nevermind the fact that once you do all these seeming stupid tasks, nothing changes.  I guess I can accept that shattering of my disbelief, I'm used to it in MMO's.  But this going from one extreme of all out war to petty issues within the general populace just feels strange.

[Tale]

I also found Zangarmarsh to be very tedious.  Terrorkar and Nagrand were more fun.  I cannot put my finger on exactly why I thought that to be the case.

Nagrand is just fucking epic.

[Arrrgh]

In case you're considering a respec at 70 I'll offend some paladins of various builds with the following generalizations.

Prot paladin-you're wanted for PVE if your gear is tankly enough. No one wants you in PVP.

Ret paladin-you do ok in PVP if you have a really high damage 2hander. No one wants you in PVE.

Heal paladin-you're wanted in both PVP and PVE and you can do both in the same outfit using the same talent build.

[Dren]

In case you're considering a respec at 70 I'll offend some paladins of various builds with the following generalizations.

Prot paladin-you're wanted for PVE if your gear is tankly enough. No one wants you in PVP.

Ret paladin-you do ok in PVP if you have a really high damage 2hander. No one wants you in PVE.

Heal paladin-you're wanted in both PVP and PVE and you can do both in the same outfit using the same talent build.

Exactly why I'm a Healadin.  I disagree somewhat on Ret. Paladin not wanted for PvE at all.  They can serve a decent multi-purpose role, just not the best at any one thing.

Also, in the PvE tank role, you are still limited.  If you come up against anything that saps mana, you're doomed.  Also, positioning is more critical since they have to use consecration a lot.  You do have a benefit Druid-Tanks don't have.  You can become uncrushable.  That's a must have in the higher level raids.

[Valmorian]

Ret paladin-you do ok in PVP if you have a really high damage 2hander. No one wants you in PVE.

With the Ret tree changes, this isn't QUITE as true as it once was.  There's some utility in having at least one Ret Spec Paladin in a PvE group, especially if you have other paladins.

[Morfiend]

Ret paladin-you do ok in PVP if you have a really high damage 2hander. No one wants you in PVE.

With the Ret tree changes, this isn't QUITE as true as it once was.  There's some utility in having at least one Ret Spec Paladin in a PvE group, especially if you have other paladins.

For raiding they are considered "passable" mostly because they can do OK damage, but more for keeping other judgements up. They are still not very wanted in 5 man instances though.

[Valmorian]

For raiding they are considered "passable" mostly because they can do OK damage, but more for keeping other judgements up. They are still not very wanted in 5 man instances though.

More to the pity of those who disregard them.  In 5 mans (bar for heroic perhaps) they are still quite effective.  I've never regretted having a Ret paladin in a 5 man if they knew what they were doing.

[Typhon]

In a similar vein to the original post:  I just re-upped, and this time I'd like to get the speedy-crow-form for my main.  Cash is the biggest issue.  I've already done all of the non-instance quest from the BC zones.  Which seems to imply that I'll need to do some cash grinding.

It's been awhile since I was subbed and I don't know what "daily quests" are (other then it's a quest you can do once per day), although I seem to recall reading that they are good for cash.  Cany anyone recommend a decent (not too grindy) source of cash?

Druid is an alchemist (transformation speicalist), if that helps.