Does WOTLK invalidate all lvl 70 gear immediately?

[magwo]

So, does anyone know how good the S2/S3/S4 gear holds up against the quest gear in WOTLK?
How far into WOTLK is level 70 gear still good?

It would be kind of depressing if it was immediately replaced by quest gear on level 71.. all that hard work gone to waste.

[merujo]

if i had to guess....some pieces will hold on till 75-77...
some will serve u still at 80 i think.

[Tizer]

Im told S3 & S4 pieces will hold out until level 75, after that upgrades begin.

[Sarduci]

I'd assume for PVE you'd find upgrades right away for PVP gear. It may not be a better ilvl, but it should be better scaled for your new changes.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Blues have stated that T6 will last you until 77ish. From what I can see, the gear upgrades proceed at about half the pace that the BC upgrades did. They appear to have done more with the 70-80 skills and talents than with gear. We'll see, though.

[Tdog]

Blues have stated that T6 will last you until 77ish. From what I can see, the gear upgrades proceed at about half the pace that the BC upgrades did. They appear to have done more with the 70-80 skills and talents than with gear. We'll see, though.Ditto, the gear upgrade curve will not be as large for BC->WOTLK as it was for Classic->BC. Stamina will not increase as much either as it did in Classic->BC. Don't expect everyone to have 20k+stamina right at 80.

[magwo]

That's nice to know.. it also means that there will be money to be made by disenchanting WOTLK quest rewards until ~76-77.

[TheBigBB]

I've seen some of the 80ish blues in WOTLK firsthand in the beta auction house, and if you have T6 stuff you won't be buying most of that stuff. It's good, but generally the problem with the gear I saw in the AH was that it wasn't balanced well. Like you might see a jaw-dropping DPS plate item, but it'd have no stamina at all, just pure DPS. I think that people who maxed out on BC will be okay to keep their stuff until 80 and begin gearing up in 80 dungeons with a lot of T6 type stuff still on.

The thing to keep in mind with WoW itemization is that high end PVP or PVE gear usually has a mix of stats that can't be replaced simply with higher item level. You won't get high resilience/stam gear from regular quests.

[Mokoi]

season 3 and 4 gear will likely hold up well in PvP too until lvl 80 pvp epics?

[xtobbenx]

I read some where that the better epics of today will hold untill 75 before we will fine better gear, but i cant confirm where i read this... cant remeber...
MMO-Champion.com have a lot of the new items allready logged if you wanna take a look.

[Dominian]

I didnt change much gear from 60->70 on my warlock who had the best gear from BWL and a few pices from naxx/aq 40.. I even remember the warlock from Last Resort called mindel or something dooing high king malugar in Tier 3 so it will be exiting to see..

But since everyone gets a fresh start i assume the same thing will happen in the arena and that they will reset the arena points due to that it will be EXTREMLEY unfair to DeathKnights if people are able to start with 5000 arena points.

[Stabface]

It's pretty simple:
<T4, replaced by L68 BoE greens :)
T4, mostly replaced within the 1st zone. http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=38237 for example is as good as or better than anything you get from T4.
T5, mostly replaced within 3-5 levels. http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=35576 or http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=41181
T6, will be mostly replaced by late 70's, or L80 quest drops. Beta only goes to L77 right now so we don't have a lot of item data yet.

Sunwell drops will certainly be outdone in most cases by the 1st tier raid drops and in some cases by L80 noob blues or epics. Look at the BoE L80 crafted 2H, blows away anything in the game now : http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/news/2008/august/titansteeldestroyer.jpg

Some TBC items will stick around for a while, the niche or particularly well-itemized drops, or things that just don't have a replacement. I remember wearing my T2 belt until L67 or something just because I either missed a quest, chose the wrong quest reward, or didn't get a boss drop. And some things are itemized in an OP'd way so they'll be good practically until the *next* expansion -- example, Styleen's is one of the best tanking trinkets *still* to this day.

[TheBigBB]

It's pretty simple:
<T4, replaced by L68 BoE greens :)
T4, mostly replaced within the 1st zone. http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=38237 for example is as good as or better than anything you get from T4.
T5, mostly replaced within 3-5 levels. http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=35576 or http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=41181
T6, will be mostly replaced by late 70's, or L80 quest drops. Beta only goes to L77 right now so we don't have a lot of item data yet.

Sunwell drops will certainly be outdone in most cases by the 1st tier raid drops and in some cases by L80 noob blues or epics. Look at the BoE L80 crafted 2H, blows away anything in the game now : http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/news/2008/august/titansteeldestroyer.jpg

Some TBC items will stick around for a while, the niche or particularly well-itemized drops, or things that just don't have a replacement. I remember wearing my T2 belt until L67 or something just because I either missed a quest, chose the wrong quest reward, or didn't get a boss drop. And some things are itemized in an OP'd way so they'll be good practically until the *next* expansion -- example, Styleen's is one of the best tanking trinkets *still* to this day. Yeah the blacksmithing weapons tend to be the only really good thing about the tradeskill, so I expect those to be very useful and much better than what we have now for a level 80 epic, although I am surprised that this one is BOE!

[kadaan]

Don't forget it's also by slot. Some slots (such as weapons) will find upgrades frequently. Other slots you may find yourself using the same level 70 item into level 80 raids.

With BC I switched my main to my mage, and only cleared BWL with it, yet still had two items last me all the way to 70 (Grand Marshal's Spellblade and the caster dps pants from Ossirian in AQ20.) Half my gear lasted till the mid 60's. I expect Wrath to be the same, getting a few upgrades from T4/T5 right away but still using a few pieces till close to 80.

[Stabface]

Hmm, it's a good example :) Leggings of the Black Blizzard is basically a "old world T5" level drop, if you consider MC/ZG at T1 = Kara/Mag/Gruul at T4.... BWL/AQ20 at T2 = SSC/TK at T5 ... and AQ40/Naxx at T3 = BT/Sunwell T6 ?
I believe the earliest upgrade / replacement is http://www.wowhead.com/?item=24359, give up some damage but the 2% hit is worth more than the crit, and the other stats definitely make it better. Following that there are some SMV/Netherstorm quest rewards and crafted stuff that's close or better, or BoE greens like http://www.wowhead.com/?item=24690 of the Invoker would be better?


Also I'll assume you mean the L60 Grand Marshal's Mageblade (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=23451) as the Spellblade is the blue L70 pvp item?
In that case a definite upgrade comes at L66 from Old Hillsbrad http://www.wowhead.com/?item=27431 or again some SMV/Netherstorm rewards.

[BobGnarly]

For reference, I have mage that is pretty much decked out in s2/s3/honor pvp gear that just recently got in the beta.

The first piece of quest gear I saw for me (dps caster) was a cloak. It was hands down worse than my cloak ('http://www.wowhead.com/?item=33304'), but not too far off.

The next thing I found was a blue dagger that, paired with an equivalently good offhand would have been a definite pve upgrade to my s2 staff. This was within about 1 hr of zoning into Northrend, btw.

My take is that you're going for find upgrades pretty fast, first 3-4 levels or so on average. This reminds me very much of BC, and made me realize decide to totally forget gearing up any of my chars at this point and just work on getting chars/teams to 70, instead.

[noir]

I'm in the beta. KZ gear is good till level 72 or so. You can get S2-equivalent weapons for PvE at level 70. You will find upgrades to BT-level gear at 77.

[kadaan]

Hmm, it's a good example :) Leggings of the Black Blizzard is basically a "old world T5" level drop, if you consider MC/ZG at T1 = Kara/Mag/Gruul at T4.... BWL/AQ20 at T2 = SSC/TK at T5 ... and AQ40/Naxx at T3 = BT/Sunwell T6 ?
I believe the earliest upgrade / replacement is http://www.wowhead.com/?item=24359, give up some damage but the 2% hit is worth more than the crit, and the other stats definitely make it better. Following that there are some SMV/Netherstorm quest rewards and crafted stuff that's close or better, or BoE greens like http://www.wowhead.com/?item=24690 of the Invoker would be better?


Also I'll assume you mean the L60 Grand Marshal's Mageblade (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=23451) as the Spellblade is the blue L70 pvp item?
In that case a definite upgrade comes at L66 from Old Hillsbrad http://www.wowhead.com/?item=27431 or again some SMV/Netherstorm rewards.2% hit is NOT with more than the crit for leveling. You don't need hit till you start raiding and fighting npcs 3 levels higher than you. I believe I replaced it when I hit 70 with Spellstrike Pants. Also, having 30spellpower on the mageblade meant that the hillsbrad dagger wasn't an upgrade unless I spent all the money to enchant it. I ended up replacing it with the sword off murmur.

Then there's also the outlying items that are still awesome at 70, such as DFT, or Neltharion's Tear: both level 60 BWL trinkets that are better than the level 70 41badge trinkets.