Of farming, shards, badges and marks etc.

[Solon]

Ok, so I have my first team to 80, also my first toons to cap (in any MMO ever). There seems to be too much going on for me to even know that I don't know what I'm doing. I was running through all the instances that I never cleared and realized I need some serious upgrades to my quest reward gear. I went to try Normal ToC. Jousting I found to be mostly simple, once dismounted the champions were a simple tank'n'spank. The warrior tanked my team and the other two spanked me.

That's right, they worked me over about 5 times, after which I tried again a few days later, hoping for a different champion combo. They were different, but still a total loss 5 times. Here is my dilemma: I don't understand the gearing up process at cap, don't have enough gold to be buying AH epics, and don't have much to speak of all the marks, emblems, whatthehelleverflavornewcurrency is big now. I don't even know how I got whatever shards etc. that I do have.

I always got bored with a toon before cap previously, now I find myself inundated with options I don't understand.

TLDR

Does anyone have a guide that explains which is what for why? Maybe a guide to gearing up enough to gear up to do instances to gear up for heroics (yes I feel that far behind)? Preferably for total idiots, I don't know what the difference is between a tier 4 and a t6. I have searched through pages of threads, and either I don't have a clue, or the search doesn't get me.

[Jayne]

I just got to cap myself and having a real blast :)

You'll probably get better tips by the vets here, but I'll just share my own experience.
What I first did was basically just do the normal instances once, to see them (my team are my first 80's) and do all the quests you can for them... I was maybe quite lucky with drops but by the time I had seen all instances I feel pretty OKishly geared, and more than eager to wipe my way in the heroics...
So I went into Drak'Tharon keep since the first boss there is quite boxer friendly and you don't really need to move a lot. Downed him first try but I wiped a bit on the trash, adjusting to healing heroic instances. Then I went to Grun'dark first boss and after a wipe i got him down pretty easily reading the strategies posted on this forum...
Now I'm just doing these two (convienently close by) for badges and trying some other heroics to see if there are other bosses I can kill.

Went in to ToC recently and I got the first boss encounter on farm at least (still need to get the tanking leggings... sigh!)... the others eats me up. But for Crusaders i just Bloodlust and spam heal and when they are down to two it's really a lot easier and you can begin loosen up on healing. Just make sure you kill the champion you find difficult first (rogue & warrior for me)
My team set-up is: Warrior, Ele-Shaman x3 and Resto-Druid.

Cheers!

[thinus]

Welcome to STAGE 2.

You may want to post your group makeup as people could have tips that apply to only certain classes. You will probably need to familiarize yourself with a few gear upgrade tools and web sites that can help you determine upgrades and how and where to find it.

If you can't do heroics yet you will want to limit the upgrades to normal instances and quests first and probably exclude pvp rewards as well.

One of the easily overlooked options is reputation rewards. If you did a lot of questing then you will already have high reputation with some factions and it is just a question of visiting their quartermasters to buy those upgrades.

You can get decent weapons from the Argent Tournament dailies but note that this is a bit of a grind. You first need to do enough dailies with your base faction to become their champion (4 daily quests for 5 days to earn the 25 required items). After you become a champion you need to complete the Black Knight quest line and then do the Champion dailies. After 2 or 3 days doing the new dailies you should have the 25 champion seals required to get the weapons.

A breakdown of the quests, gear and other info here: http://www.wowwiki.com/Argent_Tournament

Note: I specifically list the weapons as it is difficult to get good weapons without a 1800 arena rating.

[Starbuck_Jones]

Im working on my second support group right now. With the upcoming badge change with patch 3.3 I do not plan to set foot in any heroic dungeon with them till it releases. The reason being that I do not intend to farm the same content again.

I dont know where you are quests wise, but I recommend doing all of the icecrown quests and get the dailies unlocked as well as play around with the Argent Tournament. A quick run of dailies can net your group an easy 1500G or more, with todays AH prices, you should easily be able to buy 3-4 crafted epics a day. This will help a lot as you gear for Heroics. Then just badge farm for 2 weeks and walk away with T9 gear and into Icecrown Citadel.

There is a lot of information on the various web sites. Some other goals you might try to go for are things like DEF capped and HIT capped. Also tradeskill bonuses. Nothing like +5% to crit for skinning or an extra 50 sta for mining.

http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/wowwiki/images/d/d3/Emblems.png

[Simulacra]

When I hit 80:
I did dailies to get gold to buy AH epics
Bought faction rewards
Did WG to get WG tokens to buy really nice gear
Did Argent Tuorney to get a nice Tanking weapon
then did heroics for upgrades and badges
doesn't take long mate, maybe a couple of weeks if you take it slow and soon you'll be clearing up in heroics - good luck!

[yaki]

You can get some crazy gear as a new 80 by doing WG whenever it's up, doing AV for honor, and losing 10 arena matches every week (unlocking better if you can actually get a decent rating). This to the point that many heroic drops outside of ToC are largely shard fodder, and that investing in the ability to craft gear for yourself is largely pointless.

[Fuzzyboy]

Mostly repeating what others have already stated, but:

1) do 20-25 dailies and save up gold for the better AH epics (they're pretty cheap at the moment). The daily normal dungeon is good also (gold + emblem).

2) Create an arena team and loose 10 matches per week. You dont have to zone in, just que up and hit the "leave" button once it pops

3) Do WG whenever possible. Nice trinkets (111 SP), and good gear for practically no effort.

4) Do a round of the easier heroic bosses. The first couple of bosses in Gundrak on each side (Ssladran and Moorabi), the first boss in Drak'theron Keep (or however it's spelled), a couple of bosses in Nexus should be doable also. Don't be afraid to try Stratholme also, you may not succeed at first, but once you get the rythm down it's doable. If you do those, that's an easy 6-7 emblems per day.

5) If you don't have any professions yet, level up mining on your tank. The profession bonus is +sta and you make a ton of money off it while levelling up (vanilla and BC ores/metal sell really well). Don't waste money on professions that don't make you any money in a reasonable timeframe (which is all, except gathering professions), the exception being enchanting because you'll need someone to disenchant.

[Solon]

Thanks everyone! I'll keep up with my dailies. AH stuff will come after epic flyers lol. My tank has mining, when I'm bored I could go skill that up some more, and I have enchanting at 400, DE makes some decent cash. I have completed all the quests in Icecrown, though I know I missed some in Scholozar Basin. 5x paladins are very troublesome on the bosses that use AoE attacks and heavy spell casting (they are all immune to Arcane Torrent too), after my dailies I'll definitely be leveling up my shamans to catch up. They (paladins) were so much more interesting before Wrath anyway. I wanted to get the 10% exp shoulders and chests for the shamans before going back to leveling, but that's a huge wall to climb atm without the shamans to help.

[lordmythic]

great questions OP! My team just dinged 80 this weekend and are my first to cap as well. Guildies helped me with some crafted epics and I went to the ah so now at least my tank is at 538 def. I have the same questions as you. Thx all for answering.

[Velassra]

Mostly repeating what others have already stated, but:

1) do 20-25 dailies and save up gold for the better AH epics (they're pretty cheap at the moment). The daily normal dungeon is good also (gold + emblem).

2) Create an arena team and loose 10 matches per week. You dont have to zone in, just que up and hit the "leave" button once it pops

3) Do WG whenever possible. Nice trinkets (111 SP), and good gear for practically no effort.

4) Do a round of the easier heroic bosses. The first couple of bosses in Gundrak on each side (Ssladran and Moorabi), the first boss in Drak'theron Keep (or however it's spelled), a couple of bosses in Nexus should be doable also. Don't be afraid to try Stratholme also, you may not succeed at first, but once you get the rythm down it's doable. If you do those, that's an easy 6-7 emblems per day.

5) If you don't have any professions yet, level up mining on your tank. The profession bonus is +sta and you make a ton of money off it while levelling up (vanilla and BC ores/metal sell really well). Don't waste money on professions that don't make you any money in a reasonable timeframe (which is all, except gathering professions), the exception being enchanting because you'll need someone to disenchant.

"2) Create an arena team and loose 10 matches per week. You dont have to zone in, just que up and hit the "leave" button once it pops"

No shit? That gives you points? I despise Arena, but I'm not against hitting a button for points. (Reminds me of a rat hitting a lever for a little treat...)
Anyway, some helpful info for m too. I have a single boxed 80, but my first team is just approaching 79. Regular instances have been kicking my ass so don't feel bad. Some of the videos out there make it look too easy.

[Seldum]

Great Hints and Tips. Somehow Wow often assumes you know everything, and im glad im not the only one not really knowing what ill do when my team hits lvl 80.... :)

Therefore thanks for all the info.

[Fuzzyboy]

"2) Create an arena team and loose 10 matches per week. You dont have to zone in, just que up and hit the "leave" button once it pops"

No shit? That gives you points? I despise Arena, but I'm not against hitting a button for points. (Reminds me of a rat hitting a lever for a little treat...)
Anyway, some helpful info for m too. I have a single boxed 80, but my first team is just approaching 79. Regular instances have been kicking my ass so don't feel bad. Some of the videos out there make it look too easy.

Yeah - like 340-something per week, it's pretty neat :-) It used to be that you had to zone in and get killed in order to get your 10 losses, but for some reason they changed it. I think I read somewhere it was related to que-dodging, but whatever, it works great for gearing up also.

[Fizzler]

Most folks forget to mention that Gundrak Heroic has 3 very easy bosses. Right after you kill the boss that turns into a Rhino or big ass cow what ever that is a door opens up in the room that takes you to the big Murlock looking boss. 3 easy pulls to get to him and a very simple tank and spank kill.

Hall of Lightning is super easy for me but does take a while for a full clear.

If you have a paladin tank run regular Hall of Lightning for the tank trinket on the last boss that helps. Once I was able to get 15-25 tokens I purchased my totems, librams which made life much easier.

AV honor and WG tokens helped fill in a few gaps. Focus on getting your tank and healer geared up first.

[Gadzooks]

Thanks everyone! I'll keep up with my dailies. AH stuff will come after epic flyers lol. My tank has mining, when I'm bored I could go skill that up some more, and I have enchanting at 400, DE makes some decent cash. I have completed all the quests in Icecrown, though I know I missed some in Scholozar Basin. 5x paladins are very troublesome on the bosses that use AoE attacks and heavy spell casting (they are all immune to Arcane Torrent too), after my dailies I'll definitely be leveling up my shamans to catch up. They (paladins) were so much more interesting before Wrath anyway. I wanted to get the 10% exp shoulders and chests for the shamans before going back to leveling, but that's a huge wall to climb atm without the shamans to help.

Epic flying should be very, very, very low on your list if your intention is gearing up for Heroics - you are truly putting the cart before the horse. When you have all the badge gear you want, Heroics and ToC are money farms, you'll make the epic mount money fast.

Questing at 80 is a no-brainer, even going back to the Tundra or Fjord. It's easy money, you can knock out insane amounts of quests in an hour. There's good weapon rewards in two places - Ampitheater of Anguish in Drak will get you a decent blue, and Tirion's Gambit in Icecrown gets you an even better blue. The ampitheater can be done any time, Tirion's requires a quest chain.

Then we have dailies. There's massive cash waiting for you there. Combine that with mining and blacksmithing, and you can make VERY decent tanking and DPS and healing plate from Saronite, and Saronite is dirt cheap to buy, and easy to mine. I can do a few circuits of Storm Peaks, Icecrown and Sholozar and get several stacks of Saronite. I get so much of it I make 75 level gear to disenchant for the dust. Seriously, my pally was the cheapest to gear up for entry level Heroic gear because of the Saronite gear.

If you really push blacksmithing, you can level it and then make the Titansteel weapons, which are quite good for Heroics. They go for about 800-1k on my server, which is nothing with the amount of money to be made from dailies.

Then, spend your money on gems, enchants, belt buckles, and other goodies, and you should be able to take out the easier bosses no problem. Moorabi is tank and spank with one or two healing spots where he AOE's the team (A holy pally can heal through it NO problem), and the boulder giant guy in the Nexus is fairly easy, a tank and spank and healing through the ice spikes that come up through the floor. The first boss of HK is tricky, but not that hard, and if you can get past the initial trash packs, the first boss of DTK is a pushover. You can also try the Violet Hold, and if you get the boulder puppy first, you get an easy badge.

Keep in mind that the tactics of Heroics is vastly different from what you needed to do for questing, it's honestly two different games. You need your DPS on auto while you heal your tank while your tank kites and maintains aggro. It's a lot of work at first. Even the trash in Heroics are going to be a problem for you at first. (Halls of Stone and Lightining) Heroics are designed differently than the rest of the game, you HAVE to have a tank and healer.

It might be better that you hit the wall in ToC - if you're in quest gear, I don't think you'd have gotten past jousting, anyway - they hit pretty hard in there. Start lower - HK and Gundrak are the easiest, along with parts of Nexus. Moorabi is THE easiest boss to get, it's a free badge every day, and he takes maybe two minutes to get to, it's literally two pulls of two and three. I farm him so much I use him to test changes on now, because I know the fight so well. Tank, spank, heal the AOE, tank and spank, he's either dead, or one more AOE heal, and he's down.

[Solon]

There is a reason I posted here, this community is great, thanks all. I will make a little alteration to my earlier comment. I have completed all the non instance quests I could find in Northrend (instead of Icecrown lol), except I missed a few in Sholazar Basin. The whole Oracles vs Rageclaw just ticked me off, and I quit them. Oh, and one quest where I was supposed to control some troll in Zul Drak.

I was going to purchase faster flying to speed up my dailys. I guess the speed increase can wait.

I don't intend to push blacksmithing at this point, as I feel Cataclysm will have tons of lowbies gathering lower level mats, at which time I will consider leveling some professions.

As far as ToC jousting, just as all the vehicle combat, I found to be too easy. One simple spammable macro for any vehicle combat that assists and follows your leader while simultaneously clicking your favorite vehicle action buttons means 1 finger I win in most cases. The jousting, even in quest gear, is simple, boring, and I win, IMO.

[TheBigBB]

Heroics, for the most, part aren't particularly tough if you do them right, even with spotty gear, but you sometimes need to blow your cooldowns, and be prepared to do some serious healing. You also should read up on and think up solutions to bosses which require moving around. Just for reference, my guys in mostly epics have to blow every cooldown and heal nonstop through many parts of the bosses in Heroic ToC.

I recommend having your tank played like you'd play a normal character using a different row from the DPS; same with the healer. My right hand moves the mouse and hits healing keys on the numpad while the left hand hits DPS and movement keys with the index/middle/ring finger, and the thumb hits tanking keys across the Z-M row. Most people don't do it my way, but I figure I'd suggest it to you, since the only heroic I don't do now is the occulus.

[heffner]

What I did was do 20-25 dailies each day for a while. It takes about 1 to 1.5 hours. Might be faster now with the tournament dailies (i.e., more quests in the same zone, Icecrown). This should get you an epic or two per day (500g to 1.5k gold) from the AH. My first purchases were the crafted epic weapons and armor (Titansteel, Spellweave, Revenant's). Some of the [cheaper] dropped BOE epics might not be as common now since Nax and Ulduar are likely not being run as often as in the past (esp Naxx). However, they are likely to be pretty cheap if you do manage to find them.

The tournament daily emblems also offer some decent gear as do the rep vendors. Rep is easy to get from dailies and later from running heroics.

After I got a few epic pieces I then started running the heroics for the epic drops and emblems. Started with Gundrak, Drak, COS and VH. I still wiped a lot as I learned the bosses and how to play my team. Don't let those videos fool you, we can't all be like Hachoo and Niley!!

I still mostly do these same instances when I do heroics for badges (which is not that often for me and my gear is currently sufferring because of it).

Later I did TOC heroic and normal until my head exploded as most of the drops were upgrades.

TOC normal is probably not the best to start with.

I always make a ranked list of gear for all of my toons. I suggest doing this [or finding some on the net] if you haven't already. Setting these goals helps organize your thoughts and direction in the game (assuming this is part of why you play, which it may not be).

I did not level up professions until much later when I was bored and there was a lull in the game (pre 3.2 for me). This worked for me, but going back to level gathering professions wasn't all that fun - but not horrible. Also, doing professions on all my toons at the same time was beneficial as they feed into each other. Especially things like enchanting where you can just DE your crafted gear for mats to help level up.

As for Tier armor. I will try to explain it.

It all started back in Vanilla WoW where every class had a set of armor available to them from the most difficult encounters at that time. This set consisted of five to eight pieces of armor and was generally the best in slot items for your class. When you obtain and wear 2/3 or more pieces of the tier armor set you also get bonuses to your class, things that increase DPS etc. Dungeon set 1 was the very first set that was available as drops in instances like Scholomance and Stratholme (which used to be 10 man raid zones, later reduced to 5 man), although technically this differs from the Tier sets. Tier set 1 was from the first big raid instance in Vanilla wow, Molten Core. Tier 2 and 3 were also from pre-BC raid zones (Molten Core, Onyxia's Lair and Blackwing Lair). Tier sets 4 to 6 were from Burning Crusade raid zones. There was also a dungeon set in BC from 5-man instances. Tier sets 7+ are from WoTLK. In WoTLK things got even more complicated by having even more sets depending whether the drops were from the 10 or 25 man versions of the zones (e.g., Tier 7.1 and 7.5).

Blizzard simply kept to this formula and each big patch and expansion offered a new set of class armor (and even for the different talent specs within a class, so three different armor sets for some classes). The way you obtain the actual pieces has changed over the years. It started with the exact armor piece dropping from the boss [or trash], but now the boss drops a token for a specific armor type (e.g., plate chest for all plate wearers instead of a plate chest specific for a paladin) that a player can turn in for their armor piece. In addition, bosses drop emblems which are also turned in for Tier (and non-Tier) armor pieces. Everyone gets an emblem from a boss kill, so everyone in the raid benefits.

The Tier sets are essentially the end gear that people tend to aim for and usually requires raiding. WoTLK has introduced a lot of high end non-Tier set gear and Tier sets; and alternate ways of actually obtaining the best gear without raiding. However, you cannot get the complete Tier set without actually raiding, as BOP drops are required for many of the pieces.

Currently you can collect the Conquest and Triumph emblems from 5-man heroic instances (Triumph drops only in the heroic daily dungeon). Conquest emblems purchase some of the Tier 8.5 armor pieces, while Triumph emblems purchase Tier 9 armor pieces. You cannot get all pieces using emblems, some you can only get from raiding as token drops. However, you can purchase non-set items by turning in emblems that are also quite good but you forego the 4 piece bonus of the set. For reference, people who are raiding Ulduar will get Conquest emblems while those who raid the Coliseum will get Triumph emblems.

So, as a non-raider you can get some Tier 8.5 (iLevel 226) and Tier 9 (iLevel 232) pieces as well as some nice non-set armor pieces to fill in the gaps from collecting and turning in emblems. In addition, the raiders have access to Tier 9.25 (iLevel 245) and Tier 9.5 (iLevel 258) armor sets as all items in these sets require drops from the raid zone.

Patch 3.2 also introduced (I think it was in 3.2?) dropped recipes in the raid zones to craft some high end pieces. Many best in slot (BIS) items are these crafted pieces. I believe all the crafted pieces are BOE and go for 5k to 10k on the AH.

Patch 3.3 will change things again. Emblems of Triumph will drop from all 5-man heroic bosses (not just the daily dungeon) and will introduce emblems of Frost for the next Tier sets. Emblems of Frost will drop from the 5-man heroic daily as well the new raiding zones.

Hope this information is correct as I don't currently raid. Please feel free to correct me if I posted incorrect information.

This is a good read if you want more info: http://www.wowwiki.com/Armor_set

[Meshuggenah]

Farm the argent dailys.

When you have enough gold, buy crusader orbs and crafting cooldowns for your tank. Ask in trade chat and tip someone 50G to craft you the 245 chest/bracers and 226 belt/feet.

Once your tank is reasonably well geared, focus on your healer with the same items. It shouldn't take you long to farm enough gold for these pieces (crusader orbs go for ~250G on my server now). These 4 pieces of gear will make a huge difference and are better than anything you will get outside of a raid environment.

Some tips.. Ignore armor type when gearing your shamans. Most mail is bad because it wastes a lot of itemization on MP5. Wear cloth or leather if necessary. Sash of Ancient Power for example, is much better than any leather or cloth belt that level. Infact, it's better than most 232 or 245 belts for a shaman. Get hit capped, then focus on spell power and haste.

Also, if you're running a 4 shaman group, do not gear your "Healer" as resto. Use Ele pieces, gem and enchant for DPS, not for resto. The only reason to properly gear for resto is if you plan on raid healing with that character. In a heroic, all that matters is spellpower and a well geared tank. You will never have mana problems. The time/effort you spend acquiring the resto gear will have been wasted, especially if you spend triumphs on it. This way, you can simply respec your healer as another Ele DPS when you want to try DPSing VoA/Ony. When you're capped out of heroics (meaning you have full tier9, all the relevent drops and conquest off-pieces) you won't even need a resto shaman at all. I 4x DPS heroics now because my tank simply doesn't need a healer when most heroic boss fights last less than 20 seconds. In fights where I do need heals, Ele gear is fine.

[Shodokan]

A BIG tip is to go CLEAR storm peaks and icecrown of quests. Use the money to gear up your tank. You should pull in about 15k gold doing these two zones because of the 5 characters.

15k gold should get you all the required pieces to gear your tank, and start on your journey.

You could also use say 5k of that to pay for a spot in an ulduar 25 on your tank to get gear. (this is what i use to do on my single toons right when TOC came out)

From t9 you get 212 hit... so you need about 60 hit from elsewhere... the sash of ancient power + 1 more hit item will put you at cap. (you need 289)

The ultimate goal for PVE is as follows once you hit hitcap

SP>Haste>Crit


So lets say your team is in 5 piece t9... you will want to make sure that you get haste/sp/crit on the rest of your gear. If you can get gear to take out 1 piece of hit gear i would do so (chest) and replace it with merlin's robes. Bracers will be bejeweled...

You should break 4k dps at this point with ease.