Heirloom Item Question

[crowdx]

Hi all,
so I have just hit lvl 75 with my new team and I am using the shoulders and chest heirloom items while leveling. My question is, when I hit 80 should gettng rid of the heirloom items be low on my list or should they be something that I get rid of asap? I intend to get the team decked out in crafted blues at 80 with some epics (Mace and possibly Merlin's robe on the shammy and priest but not sure if it is worthwhile for the shammy or should I go with a LW crafted item. )
Just curious how other people dealt with the Heirlooms, they are pretty good blues while leveling but I would think they become only average at 80?

[Boylston]

Treat them like any other item (mostly). If there's an upgrade, then retire them and put them away for safekeeping.

You might want to consider hanging on to some lvl 187-200 items even if they're not an upgrade. If I remember correctly, the new LFDungeon system takes iLvl into account and I think the heirlooms are still counting as iLvl 1 items for that purpose. (They may have changed that, however).

[crowdx]

With the LFD, does the iLevel still matter if it is not a random dungeon?

[Boylston]

Yeah, it will tell you that members of your team are not geared well enough to try a specific dungeon.

[crowdx]

At that point I should listen to the LFD tool and go get better gear lol, I always like being overgeared rather than undergeared lol

[Targ]

Treat them like any other item (mostly). If there's an upgrade, then retire them and put them away for safekeeping.

You might want to consider hanging on to some lvl 187-200 items even if they're not an upgrade. If I remember correctly, the new LFDungeon system takes iLvl into account and I think the heirlooms are still counting as iLvl 1 items for that purpose. (They may have changed that, however).

It must have been changed. My newest team is still using heirloom weapons and shoulders, the LFDungeon system after upgrading several other items now lets them into Random Heroic Dungeons.

[crowdx]

How poor was the original gear? A a lot of greens ?
With full blues (possibly except for trinkets) I should be able to do heroics once I ding?

[Smoooth]

I have been able to queue for heroics in mostly greens. If you use the gearscore addon it seems to me about a 2000 gearscore let's you in. I've seen as low as 1400 in a random on some pug. He still had mostly BC greens on.

[crowdx]

Well my Tank already has over 2k GS at level 75, does GS change it's rating at 80?

[Ualaa]

Don't think so.

It is a total of the item levels of all your gear.

I think the slot for the gear has something to do with the gear score.
As in an iLV 200 Breastplate will get you a higher gear score, then say an iLV 200 Bracer.

But, at 75th or 80th, you end up with the same score from the same item level piece that has not been upgraded.

[Maxion]

Note that heirloom items will at all levels have a gearscore that appears to be their level 80 version's score. Not sure if the LGF tool takes stats or level into account for those, but at any given level they are slightly worse than a same level blue due to some stat allocation being put into the xp bonus, so you will probably want to replace them pretty soon after hitting 80. I know I saved some quest blues from Icecrown/Storm Peaks/crafted for it.

[Targ]

I did some experimenting with this last night.
Wargirlb's gear score with Heirlooms was over 3500 but Dungeon Finder tool would not allow access to normal Pit of Saron.

I swapped out the Heirlooms lowering her GS to 3300 and then the Dungeon Finder tool would allow access to normal Pit of Saron.

So it looks to me like the Dungeon Finder is not counting Heirlooms at all while GS does count them.

[Maxion]

Or rather that they are being counted as ilvl 1.
Thanks for testing it though.

[Catamer]

I use the Merlin's robe on my shaman, they are more squishy per say but they do awesome DPS.
using merlin's robe & bejeweled wizards bracer's and you get about 8% more crit ratig ( over whatever I was using before ) as long as they don't steal aggro they do great.

[Ualaa]

I've got the shoulders/chest as both cloth and leather for each account.
Any caster type toon will wear the cloth (caster) BoA's, even if they're a shaman.
And any melee type will wear the leather (melee) BoA's, even if they're a plate toon.

As they level, the relevant stats and more importantly the experience boost outweighs any loss in armor.
With 4/5x a toon, it doesn't really matter, mobs die so quickly.
At the tail end of Hellfire, my 5x Hunters did the Cenarion Expedition quest where you plant a seed and kill the elite; it was the first crossbow upgrades offered by a quest reward.
It turns out they were using level 15 crossbows at this point, because I couldn't be bothered to level bows/guns.
Also turns out, they had not trained since 56th level.
But they had no issues with Hellfire, doing the entire zone (minus a few collections) in a few hours one evening (flying mounts help immensely).