Flux

If you have been playing WoW for awhile you have probably hit the wall, level 70, the end game. The game may have seemed to come to a grinding halt, or slowed down to a crawl. But some of the most exciting content the game has to offer is ahead, it’s just harder to get to. So how do you continue to improve your character and get in those raids to see it?

It’s all about gear. And not grinding the fun out of it.

Knowing where and how to get better gear are the first steps. So let’s take a look at advanced gear, after level 61, and the two most important questions. When is new gear better and where do I find it? For those who know their gear needs well, check out the summary table below showing where to get gear based on item level.

How can I tell if an item is better?

Deciding which item is best for you depends on specifics including your role in the group. But there are two general measures you can look at. It’s what most people use at a glance, Quality and Level.

Quality is the color; grey, white, green, blue, purple, and orange. Generally the colors on the right are better than the ones on the left and it’s our first general rule. For advanced gear, the lowest purple is better than the best blue. Other players often inspect your character in the game or the armory and glance at the color, ‘counting the purples’, to see if you are able to join them. It’s an easy guide to what you can and can’t do.

Level is how many bonuses an item has. The higher the level the more bonuses. Level is not normally something you can see in the game without a mod but every item has one. This is not what level is required to use an item. And this leads us to our second general rule, the higher the item level for a color, the better the item. For example, the purple’s from The Eye are better than the purple’s from Karazhan, level 128-138 compared to level 115-125.

If you don’t have a way to see level, I recommend you install a mod that shows it in the game or check a website when you find new items. You can compare a new item to one you have at a glance to see if the color and the level is better. I commonly use RatingBuster and WowHead, but there are other equally good ones. For example you can easily find an items level at the armory like Terestian’s Stranglestaff. Having a quick easy way to evaluate an item is invaluable when you aren’t familiar with them. This is especially true when you have to make a quick loot choice and don’t want to hold everyone up.

Remember the two general rules:

• The lowest purple is better than the best blue.
• The higher the item level the better the item, for the same quality.

Keep in mind a lower item level or even lower quality item can be better for a specific purpose than a higher one. It’s a complex topic, so for simplicity let’s look at where we get items using the two general rules of Quality and Level.

Where do you get better items?

If you haven’t before, now is a good time to go over to the armory and take a look at your character. Mouse over one of your items and click on the Find an Upgrade link for that item. You’ll see a table with your item highlighted and a list of other items of simliar or higher quality and level. For each item you can see how its different and more importantly where you go to get it. For example, you should see if the item is craftable, from pvp, or which boss drops it as loot. This is a great resource to start with. There are also several websites that let you search items in their database and find out where they are found in the game.

In general, here are where the best items can be found. The following table can be thought of as a list of where to go starting at the top and working your way down.

Where	Rare	Epic	Artifact	Adjusted
Instance - Hellfire Ramparts	85			69
Instance - Blood Furnace	88			71
Instance - Slave Pens	91			74
Instance - Underbog	94			76
Quests - Level 61 to 65	80-97			79
Instance - Mana Tombs	97			79
Instance - Old Hillsbrad Foothills	103			83
Quests - All, Non-Raid	80-115			93
Reputation - Normal Honored to Friendly	85-115			93
Instance - Auchenai Crypts	100-115			93
Instance - High Level	112-115			93
Dungeon Set 3	115			93
World Drops	80-115	100		100
Reputation - Exceptional Honored to Friendly	91-115	100-105		105
Heroic - Low Instances	115	110		110
Badges - Standard		110		110
Badges - Inferno Set		115		115
Heroic - High Instances	112-115	105-115		115
Crafting	97-115	100-120		120
Raid 40 - Kazzak, Doomwalker		120		120
Tier 4 - Karazhan, Gruul’s Lair, Magtheridon’s		120		120
Honor - Season 1		123		123
Raid 10 - Karazhan		115-125		125
Raid 25 - Magtheridon’s Lair		125		125
Raid 25 - Gruul’s Lair		125		125
Crafting - Using Primal Nether		100-128		128
Tier 5 - Serpentshrine Cavern, The Eye		133		133
Reputation - Normal Exalted to Revered	115	120-136		136
Badges - Patch 2.3		128-136		136
Arena - Merciless Season 2		136		136
Raid 10 - Zul’Aman		128-138		138
Reputation - Exceptional Exalted to Revered		120-141		141
Raid 25 - Serpentshrine Cavern		128-141		141
Raid 25 - The Eye		128-141		141
Crafting - Using Heart of Darkness, BT and Hyjal		130-141		141
Honor	100-115	90-146		146
Crafting - Using Nether Vortex, SSC and The Eye		128-146		146
Badges - Patch 2.4		141-146		146
Arena - Vengeful Season 3		146		146
Tier 6 - Black Temple, Mount Hyjal		146		146
Raid 25 - Battle for Mount Hyjal		141-151		151
Raid 25 - Black Temple		141-151	156	151
Crafting - Using Sunmote, Sunwell		159		159
Arena - Brutal Season 4		159		159
Raid 25 - Sunwell		154-164		164

• Adjusted Values using Hyzenthlei’s Formula, ignoring Artifacts.
• Instance - High Level are Sethekk Halls, Shadow Labs, Steamvault, Shattered Halls, Mechanar, Botanica, Arcatraz, Magisters’ Terrace, and Black Morass.
• Reputation - Exceptional factions are Violet Eye, Scale of the Sands, and Ashtongue Deathsworn
• Reputation - Normal factions do not include Sporeggar, Kurenai, Mag’har
• Ignoring epic gems and other meta effect items like recipes, formulas, quest items, item tokens, spellthread, and mounts.

Note that just by looking at the item level of somebody’s gear you can often tell where they got it. For example, if someone has a level 123 purple, it’s Season 1 Arena gear. Or if someone has 110 purple, it’s from Heroic Instances or Crafting.

This list is essentially quests, reputation, instances, crafting, battlegrounds, and arena. And eventually as you gear up, this boils down raiding and PvP.

This division between raiding and PvP also highlights the two different types of end game gear. Gear that is good for PvP is not necessarily good for raiding and vise versa. For example, Season 3 Arena and Tier 6 gear are exactly the same item level. However, you will get killed in PvP by someone in Season 3 gear if you wore Tier 6 raiding gear. Likewise someone in Season 3 PvP gear is going to have trouble raiding anything past Zul’Aman. To compare PvP and raiding gear, very roughly subtract 26 item levels. For example, using Arena Season 3 for raiding is like having Tier 4 gear. Or using Tier 6 gear for PvP is like having Season 1 Arena gear. So at best PvP gear will get you ready for raids like Karazhan and Zul’Aman, but it is one of the easier ways to get geared for them if you enjoy it.

Summary

There are many options for getting geared up. The best one depends on which activity is most fun for you. In the end, you will probably need to use a combination to see the end game raids. Good luck, and remember that it gets easier and easier to see these areas as more patch items are added and people on your server get geared up.

Tags: loot
Author: aos

This entry was posted by aos on Monday, December 10th, 2007 at 12:00 am and is filed under Games, WoW. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.