Raiding! Your Gear

Welcome back to RAIDING!, where I’m going to talk about how to get started, improve, and master heroics and raiding in general. Prior, I talked about the very basics of what heroics/raids are. Today, we’re to talk about one of the most important factors of doing this end-game content: gear!

(NOTE: these posts typically have links in them that go to other websites that delve into deeper detail than I will, in case you’re curious to learn about the nitty-gritty.)

What Is ‘Gear?’
Gear is what you wear into battle. It’s a universal term we use to describe your weapons, jewelry, trinkets, idols, totems and your armor. To get a rough idea as to the sheer number of items that are equip-able, see THIS link. When you start out at level one in the game, you’re wearing the most basic of gear. As you progress through the game though, you obtain better gear to better handle the new quests/mobs/instances you face.

How Important Is Gear?
Incredibly! Like we talked about in the last post, once you hit 70 there are no more talent/health/mana/rage/energy/ability/whatever upgrades for your character. The only thing you have to upgrade is your gear. Again, we talked about progression in the last post. There are certain levels of content you can only tackle once you have the appropriate gear. You can’t take on the Sunwell wearing what you defeated Karazhan in. (You’d be squished in a heartbeat!)

Raids especially, have boss fights that are called ‘gear checks.’ Basically put, they are bosses that can’t be defeated without a certain level of gear spread-across all of the raid members. A famous example of a gear check boss would be The Curator.

Where Do You Get Gear?
Gear for heroics/raiding can be obtained multiple ways…

  • PvE (Raiding/Heroics)
  • PvP (Battlegrounds/Arena)
  • Crafting (Tailoring/Leatherworking/Engineering/Blacksmithing)
  • Badges of Justice (Also obtained through raiding/heroics/daily quests and random drops)
  • Reputation

Often, gear (excluding things like weapons/trinkets/jewelry and the such), comes in ’sets.’ The sets usually come in 2 or more pieces that, when all worn at the same time, give you extra bonuses in addition to that item’s stats. (In addition, you won’t look like a hobo anymore, YAY!) Let’s talk about the various ways you can get gear…

Raiding Gear
Tier sets from raiding have been around before The Burning Crusade came out. (Sets 1-3 actually came from Molten core, Onyxia, Blackwing Lair and Naxxramas.) This continues in TBC. Sets 4-6 start in Karazhan and end in Sunwell Plateau. From WoWWiki…

  • Tier 4: This set can be traded for tokens of the fallen champion, hero or defender. The Merchants can be found in Shattrath, Scryer’s Tier and Aldor Rise. The tokens for helm and gloves drop in Karazhan, tokens for shoulders and leggings drop in Gruul’s Lair and the chest tokens drop in Magtheridon’s Lair.
  • Tier 5: This set can be traded for tokens of the vanquished champion, hero or defender. The Merchants can be found in Shattrath, Scryer’s Tier and Aldor Rise. Tokens for helm, gloves and leggings drop in Serpentshrine Cavern, tokens for shoulder and chest drop in the Eye.
  • Tier 6: This set can be traded for tokens of the forgotten conqueror, protector or vanquisher. One Merchant can be found in Hyjal Summit, the other can be found in Sun’s Reach Harbor. Tokens for helm and gloves drop in Hyjal Summit, tokens for shoulder, leggings and chest drop in the Black Temple, tokens for the wrist, waist, and feet drop in Sunwell Plateau.

The raiding tier sets better show you how you progress. Technically, you collect an entire ’set’ before you work on the next one. Each next set level is better than the former, which makes you prepared for starting the next tier level.

PvP/Arena Gear
Some people just love to PvP. If that’s your thing, there are sets available just for you. You will typically turn in honor points, marks of honor and/or arena points for the gear. It’s important to note though that much of the items you get are geared-towards PvP specifically. So in other words, they’re made to fight against other players, not characters in an instance/raid.

Craft Your Own Gear
Leatherworks, blacksmiths, and tailors especially have the ability to craft their own sets, too. They can create uncommon, rare, and epic body armor. (Epic is leatherworking/tailoring only at this time.) The Imbued Netherweave set, added with a few other items/enhancements, would give you a leg-up in heroics, if not started in Karazhan. Many of the epics, again with additions, would likely get you though the tier-4 raids. Of course, they require expensive/hard to farm materials. Never the less, if you can afford the gold/time, it’s another good way to get gear.

What About These Badges?
Badges of Justice are earned from going into heroic instances, and various raids that were released at The Burning Crusade and afterwards. (Though, you can also earn extras from running daily instance quests.) Think of them kind of like a reward for running instances/raids over and over. Every instance gives out at least 3 badges, with many giving out 4 or more, and raids often giving out 10 or more. They can be turned in for epic/purple items…

So as you can see, badges aren’t anything to sneeze at. Some people spend a lot of time running heroic instances and raids, collecting badges in the process. Let’s say they haven’t been to ZA yet, but want better gear. They could turn in badges to Smith Huathaa, to get tier-5 level gear, without having to go into Black temple at all. (Of course, many of those items require 100 badges, or more!)

Reputation
Lastly, you can get gear through the myriad of factions by earning reputation. For the vast majority though, they aren’t always past Tier-4-Level quality. Never the less, if you’re looking to start heroics or get into Kara for the first time, the, many, factions may have an item for you. Though, keeping in mind, you must be revered to get rare/blue items, exalted to get epic/purple items. (And some of those reputation grinds can be a pain.) There are far too many factions to list, so check out THIS page which lists them all, if you’re interested.

When Do You Upgrade Your Gear?
Simple answer: you never stop. You constantly look for something else to upgrade. Whether it’s a new ring, chest piece, trinket, whatever. Until you’re farming Sunwell on a regular basis, you’ll always have something to upgrade.

That being said, it can get tricky. Gear sets, wherever you get them, often come with extra bonuses built-in if you collect two or more pieces. These bonuses can really get extraordinary, so you sometimes have to be careful to break a set. You’ll need to compare what you gain/loose by changing things up. Mages, for example; is it worth loosing 20 intellect for 5% spell crit chance? Are you over-loaded on intellect/spell crit already? Does the new piece have more sockets? Those are the kinds of questions you ask yourself when looking at a possible upgrade.

A lot of times, you’ll come across a piece of gear that’s good, but not so good where it’s a replacement. In other words, it’s a tough call to make. Sometimes, I myself keep the ‘old’ item, just in case I switch back to it latter, for whatever reason.

Are There Any guides?
So your choices as to where you get your gear are semi-mind-boggling, for sure. When can get tricky, too. Certainly, you can eye-ball items in-game. Of course, if you’re looking at new gear right in front of you, that’s easy. What if you wanted to know what else is out there? Are there guides? You bet there are!

The Armory
Blizzard has it’s own character profiler site, the Armory. It gives you all of the same information you would get about your character in game. (How you spent your talents, professions, and among others, what gear you had on last.) What nifty about this site, is that Blizzard can offer you ‘upgrades’ to what you have, and tell you who you get them from.

Be Imba! & WOW Heroes
Both of these sites are pretty amazing, yet not always accurate. See, they pull your information from the Armory. What’s neat though, is that they look at your gear, any augments to your gear like gems/enchants, your talent build, and tell you, roughly, what kind of end-game content you’re ready for. Going further, they will also suggest to you if you should upgrade not only the gear, but the enhancements as well. (More on enhancements in the next post!) Again, these sites provide a rough estimate of where you might perform best. They aren’t the end-all, be-all.

WoWWiki: Gear Guides
Maybe you just want to browse though? You’re not really ‘looking’ to upgrade anything at the moment, but want to see what’s out there. (Some people actually ‘map-out’ what they want in the future…) Well, there’s a page on WoWWiki that will knock your socks off. THIS page contains just about every listing for every gear guide that’s out there. Want to know all ever single piece of gear from TBC, that’s DPS, and that’s accessories/leather/mail/plate/weapons? (Yup, every word is a link!) It’s an extraordinary listing of every piece of gear you would need.

Fwew! We covered a lot today! Next up, AUGMENT your gear!

July 16 2008 02:25 pm | Raiding!

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