Just hit 80? Time to respec and go gear hunting.

[allenflame]

First time contributor. Hope you all enjoy.

Ok, this is what I've done for the last couple of weeks for a few of my characters. I started out on my tank, then my mage, and started my priest yesterday. I head over to Best Choices for Patch 3.3.3 of World of Warcraft - WoW Popular - Filter by All, find what the most popular build is for what I want, ex. protection paly, and redo my talents.

Next, you need to figure out where to get your gear. This can differ greatly, depending on how you lvled (instances or quests). My paly was pretty much all quests with probably less than 5 instances ever run (pre dungeon finder), while the priest did instances from 50+. I suggest going to Rawr and downloading Rawr. (Even at 70 you can start using this to start getting geared up.) These guys have put alot of time and knowledge into this great app. It will tell you the best upgrades for all your armor, based on your class and build. Whenever you run it, click on load from armory. Put in your character's name and server. It will import all your data. Next, lets turn off some filters. Goto filters at the top, and uncheck everything except Dungeons and Dungeons (Heroic). Again, if you leveled via quests, you may just want to do Dungeons. If you did do instances to lvl, you may have enough triumph badges, but I'd save them for later. If you have plenty of gold, you can also try crafted and maybe world drop. I spent about 2k gold to get my priest's gear good enough to run most heroics (still can't run Heroic HoR).

Ok, when you start, Rawr shows you only your head upgrades, which is fine. Near the upper middle of the screen, it says slot:gear Head. This lists all your upgrades and a rating on how much better your gear will be. It also breaks down that rating into different categories, depending on your character type. This is nice if you're really lacking in certain pieces of armor, like a lvl 69 ring or such. I prefer to use the direct upgrades screen. Goto Slot, go down to Direct upgrades. This list all the possible upgrades for all your gear, based on your filters. Again, depending on your lvling, and your filters, this could be a relatively short list, or a pretty long list. My priest had a really long list, until I bought a few crafted items, then it shortened up quite a bit. What's nice about this list is you can also export the list to excel. I did this and printed it out, removing the columns I found not important and kept basically, the name of the item, where it was found and what slot. A warning on this. If you're a new 80 tank/healer and want the best upgrade you can get, don't go after the top few pieces immediately. Not saying that some people couldn't do it, and this depends alot on the group as well. Work your way up. DPS usually don't have as big of a problem, but sometimes the group may kick you if you can't keep up decent dps. I suggest if you have a really long list, maybe turn of heroics and try to get some of the better gear from regulars first. Now you can do this two ways. Either queue up for random dungeons (since you need badges) or you can just farm specified dungeons. It's up to you, but I farmed the ones I needed.

Once you work your way through regular and heroic dungeons, it's time to hit the really good stuff, which usually takes more time than the others put together. Go back to your filters, and turn on special currency and maybe tier 7 and 8 raids. Now if you only farmed, you may not have the badges needed, so you can turn it off to keep the list shorter (usually 40-90 badges are needed for items from badges, so if you get enough, turn it back on and find your best upgrade). Depending on your server and your guild, you may be able to run these, and if you're lucky, your guild may drag you through (no such luck for me). Also, keep an eye on the weekly raid events, sometimes the group will run more. Once we had a good group in ICC for weekly, and we went and ran through 3 more bosses. But usually your weekly groups won't do this.

Rawr will also show you the best enchants and gems to put on your items. This tool is probably one of the best out there.

I hope you all enjoyed the guide.

[tekstorm]

Common sense.

I'll shorten the guide for you. Run heroics and buy gear with heroic/frost emblems. Once you have all heroic gear join pug raids for more gear.

Short and sweet. But thanks for trying.

[Silvera]

Common sense.

I'll shorten the guide for you. Run heroics and buy gear with heroic/frost emblems. Once you have all heroic gear join pug raids for more gear.

Short and sweet. But thanks for trying.

Pfft. I know a lot of people who doesn't have a clue what to do. So this guide is helpful.

[allenflame]

yeah, but alot of people have no idea which gear is better. I figured I'd get hit with the "common sense" and it's all good. If this helps one person, I'm satisfied.

[nialnees]

+Rep just because maybe (MAYBE) there will be less wannabe dps players with ~600dps at level 80 randoms.

[Jicre]

Common sense for someone.*
*(House, anyone?)

[Budman2000]

last time i saw that program, it was just for druids. been a while. looks very nice now. thanks for info, also nice to have something thats not an add-on or web dependent to evaluate toons.

[abhorsenjay]

+Rep for trying to contribute. In the future some colors, links and pictures would be nice.

[l4m0r]

Pfft. I know a lot of people who doesn't have a clue what to do. So this guide is helpful.

those people normaly also don't know of sites like mmowned.

[ninjamig112]

most classes have a healer or dps specc use that get a friend to heal or tank waay faster for everyone no wait time (;

[CimSlunt]

Wall of text just crit me for 25k


Nice attempt tho

Try section bits off and formatting it properly with pwetty colors n shiz.