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/wo...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.

[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.