The futility of gearing before 80

[Bigfish]

Maybe this is just my observation, but it seems silly to try and gear up before 80, barring the initial jump to Northrend greens over 70 Outland Greens/Blues. I mean, at this point, my characters are all 78-79, and with so many low level quests in Howling Fjord, Borean Tundra, Dragonblight, and Grizly Hills, it seems to me anyone should be able to get the same solo or grouped. With that in mind, what's the point of gear designed for level 74-79? Seems to me the stuff falls so far behind the epic craftables of level 80, you're better off not bothering with gearing until then, and then grinding dailies for gold to run to the AH with.

At 78-79, my stats are far below what a level 80 would have, but pushing them to be what they should be proportionaly seems useless, since it will take more time to gather and enchant the gear than it will to just finish the push to the level cap.

[Tonuss]

I would definitely not worry about gear until 80. The quest/instance items you get until ~78ish should be just fine, and then you can start work on some (all?) of the reputation grind for upgrades, and start running level 80 normal/heroic instances.

I only gem/enchant items pre-80 in order to get skillups or if I feel I need to boost the stats for one of my characters because it had been so long since they had gotten upgrades and are lacking in an area. I did make sure to enchant my shaman with new gems/enchants/etc because she had Kara/arena/ZA gear that would last her past level 75, possibly until 78. Anything that made the grind a bit quicker was good. I made the mistake of gemming/enchanting my hunter's gear at 70, and that was a badly wasted 1,500ish gold. He had replaced most of his stuff by 72/73.

[Greythan]

Great topic and I hope it gets a ton of replies. As a slow leveler, I have been contemplating the same thing. It sure seems that what I need to do is develop a leveling plan NOW as I'm about to leave Howling Fjord (already did BT) and want to maximize rep while leveling to make as much quality 80 gear available when I ding or at least close.

[Hor]

If you're doing pure quest grinding, you shouldn't have to worry about gear at all till 80 imo, just use those quest rewards for all they're worth. The only time I really can see "gearing" before you're max level is if you're determined to do instances as you level. And even then it's questionable for anyone other than the tank, and possibly the healer. In general though, I think it just provides a drain on your available resources before you really need them at higher levels for training and gear.

[TheBigBB]

I would never run an instance just for gear. I put on the best gear I get, but don't chase it. The only exception is at 74 the tank weapon from Zul-Drak from one of the start quests. That weapon will last until 80 easily and be effective until you get an 80 epic.

[elsegundo]

I would never run an instance just for gear. I put on the best gear I get, but don't chase it. The only exception is at 74 the tank weapon from Zul-Drak from one of the start quests. That weapon will last until 80 easily and be effective until you get an 80 epic. but if the gear is a quest reward for completing the instance, then that's also a different story. i wouldnt run instances for gear either. if it drops, it drops. if not, get the quest reward and move on. =]
level 80 isnt that far off.

[Greythan]

but if the gear is a quest reward for completing the instance, then that's also a different story. i wouldnt run instances for gear either. if it drops, it drops. if not, get the quest reward and move on. =]
Partly because I'm struggling with bosses in the first two instances, this has been my approach. The quest instance quest gear has been a HUGE boost to the defensive ability of my paladin. Worth it right there. However, farming for gear? Wouldn't make any sense to me. Farming rested exp, breaking up questing boredom.... fine.

[-silencer-]

Skip the instances & their quests until you hit 80 (or can breeze through the instance.. like Nexus at 78 ). Just work on levels.. the rest (gear/gold/rep/etc) can be more easily done when you're 80. However, it's never too early to start the Sons of Hodir quest chain, as that'll have you doing dailies for 3 weeks for exalted.. which you need for shoulder enchants.

[Hachoo]

I'm not sure what the argument is actually about.. If you just quest to level you'll end up with all blues by the time you hit 80 anyway.

I also disagree with skipping instance quests before 80 - for the multiboxer friendly instances like UK, Nexus, DTK, Gundrak, AN, etc, by all means run them at level to do quests. Besides the fact that you get like 40-45k xp per quest instead of the usual 20-25k, you get gobs of rested xp from fighting elites, practice in the dungeon so you can go right into Heroics at 80 and already know the general strats, and you get some ok drops as well, plus good loot to help level enchanting.

[Khatovar]

My husband and I ran dungeons as soon as they became level appropriate {and before in several cases}. Our second group {the paladins/hunters} we did instances almost exclusively because there was just too much gathering in too many places. We did quests and questlines we felt we had to do, and hid in dungeons the rest of the time.


With that in mind, what's the point of gear designed for level 74-79?

Well, I guess it depends. My hunters came up having blown through Outland, started them shortly before Wrath was released. They literally hit STV with starter greys in some spots. They hit Outland with some gear as low as 23. They hit Northrend at 68 or so still schlepping along in some low-end Outland greens. They never touched an Outland Dungeon {except at 63 to tame a wolfie in Ramps}. They took every bit of gear they came across, dungeon or quest. They would havve been nothing but a detriment to our paladins otherwise.

Our paladins, however, were geared to the teeth in epics from BC. And all the quest reward plate was nothing but DPS plate. Ardath is still wearing the Sunwell breastplate, she was wearing level 71 bracers until 2 days ago. A lot of her gear was the same stuff she'd been wearing for months, the itemization just wasn't there for plate casters and what was there was often a sidegrade at best to what she had. The pallies had pretty much no upgrades between 70 and 80 until they could use crafted gear and get drops from heroics.

Long story short, some people need it, some don't.

[heffner]

Gear up how? No matter what I do I get something. I agree it's of little benefit if you are simply questing, but for instances it helps. If you outlevel the instance, then maybe not as much...but by then, you have all the quest gear anyway.

So, if you mean "don't bother running normal Nexus 50 times to get the drop you want", then I can understand.

Buying or crafting epic gear has always been an option. Really, to eaches own how you want to play the game. Your approach is not a bad path though, but likely not very fun for a lot of people.

[Bigfish]

I'm not making an argument, just an observation. I'm just kind of stuck here scratching my head wondering why they put so much effort in to designing a wide array of green quest rewards for the thousand or so quests in Northrend, when their life expentacy of being equiped is anywhere from 0 to a few hours, where as a lot of 80 gear can and will last a great while.

I guess it really boils down to gear progression and level progression. At this point, a level cap increase really just seems to be more a formality than anything. All it really means is that when an expansion hits, everyone has to add 50 or so hours to get to the new level cap where the "real game" begins again.

As far as gear is concerned though, the system doesn't break down in to levels. It really goes more along the lines of pre-raid, Tier 1, Tier 2, etc. (or in the case of PvP, Pre-arena, Season 1, Season 2, etc).

So the thing is, you don't really achieve a meaningful gear level until you hit the level cap in the first place. If I were going to make an argument somewhere, it would probably be that the level cap on pre-raid gear should be lowered (a lot of that stuff you have to be 80 to equip), or that pre-80 quests should stop filling my inventory with vendor trash.

[Terraelf]

My first crew I leveled to 80 consisted of Pally/Mage/Hunter/Lock/Priest. All of them were in T5 equivalent full PvE epic gear at 70. With exception of a few pieces here and there from group quests or greens from quests that really should have been blue, nearly all of my gear got me to 80 no problem and I didn't start investing any energy changing their gear out for raid prep until then. I did zero dungeons (and still have done barely any as I'm too busy in Naxx-10/25, OS-10/25, VoA 10/25 and EoE-10 instead). In some isolated cases, I'm even choosing to keep the same level 70 epic equipment I had until I get a drop in a raid because the effort and what I gain trying to get a blue drop or get enough rep to buy a replacement just isn't worthwhile.

Now on my second crew, (DK/Rogue/Warrior/Shaman/Druid) who were also T4 or T5 full epic at 70, I changed things a little bit based upon my experience with my first crew. That is, I skipped Zul'Drak (except for the arenas) and Scholazar Basin in it's entirety so that I would be working on Storm Peaks and Icecrown quests from levels 77 to 80. This is because when I started chasing gear from quest rewards to put on my PvE Raid set, I found myself doing a lot of chains in these zones post 80 with my first crew to get to group quests gear (and also unlock Ebon Hold and Sons of Hodir). I figured, might as well kill 2 birds with 1 stone. At this time I'm still in the middle of Ice Crown and except for my DK, everyone is 80. As soon as he dings 80, I'll be turning to gathering materials to craft my own stuff, since I have at least 1 toon with every professions that is at least 430.

So to sum it up, my suggestion is if you have lvl 70 epic gear, it'll get you to 80 and you don't really even need to look much at the gear you get. Don't trash anything (especially blue gear) so that when you hit 80 and you research your gear changes you don't realize you inadvertently sold something you want to use, but if you're doing multiboxing, probability is your lvl 70 gear will get you to the point where you'll care about gear again at 80 with very little pain.

[KvdM]

why they put so much effort in to designing a wide array of green quest rewards for the thousand or so quests in Northrend, when their life expentacy of being equiped is anywhere from 0 to a few hours
Probably a lot less then you would expect. Unimportant items can just as easily be generated by an item generating program. Thinking up a name that matches the quest is probably the most time consuming part of the whole process ;) (note that even the models of the items are reused)

[Bigfish]

Probably a lot less then you would expect. Unimportant items can just as easily be generated by an item generating program. Thinking up a name that matches the quest is probably the most time consuming part of the whole process (note that even the models of the items are reused)

That WOULD explain the absolutely attrocious stat budget on some fo this crap. Good Point.

[Owltoid]

I think one of the least fun things about leveling is knowing the gear you're geting has such a short life expectancy. Level 70-78 gear just doesn't have any appeal and I could usually care less if there is an item reward or pure gold when completing a quest. I agree that an expansion just seems like a time sink for everyone to spend 50+ hours (I wish I could level from 70-80 in that short of time) until the real game begins. Of course, the more work you put into anything the more attachment you feel and the more satisfaction you get seeing them succeed.