Raiding is pointless right now.

[Svpernova09]

Same exact thing was said pre Wrath, Pre BC, nothing new here. As blues have said, MMOs are a changing world>

Moral of the story: Do what you find fun.

[Dramoth]

I levelled my hunter and paladin to 80 without swapping out any of their epic lvl 70 gear.

I didnt see the point of it as most of the green stuff I was getting was crap compared to their epics and the blues were about the same.

So I am just going to keep gearing up all my toons, Do the 5 level rush and start gearing up again when they have all hit cap.

[Tonuss]

Not going to go into too much detail because of the NDA. But you remember how greens in BC were as good if not better than most END GAME raiding items from vanilla? Yeah it's much worse this time around.

So unless you are doing heroics for money or something there really is no point in gearing. Do what you think is fun but with beta seriously right around the corner (new alpha build last night) and live happening shortly after that... yeah.

I don't think that people gear up with the expansion in mind. Having a set of ilvl 251-277 gear on Day One is a nice convenience, but that's it. In any case, I figure that the largest group of players will be hitting the expac in gear that is in the ilvl 187-232 range. New gear and upgrades are part of what keeps a lot of players interested, so it's probably a good idea to obsolete the "old" gear quickly, even if it means a huge gear gap.

[Velassra]

Intersting about the gear.....

I'd be more interested in hearing what the instances are like....CC, multiple individual movements/tasks simultaneously, vehicles.

[Lyonheart]

According to a friend who heard it from a friend who ( i know, that sounds like a song) is a Bliz Dev, the goal for gear is like this .Anything under item level 251 will get replaced by 85 with a mix of greens and blues from quests/drops. 251 raiding gear will have most pieces replaced by quest blues and blues dropped, but not all replaced. 264 might have an item or two replaced. 277+ will not get replaced until T11.

I guess we will have to see. 8)

[kadaan]

According to a friend who heard it from a friend who ( i know, that sounds like a song) is a Bliz Dev, the goal for gear is like this .Anything under item level 251 will get replaced by 85 with a mix of greens and blues from quests/drops. 251 raiding gear will have most pieces replaced by quest blues and blues dropped, but not all replaced. 264 might have an item or two replaced. 277+ will not get replaced until T11.

I guess we will have to see. 8)

There are already many leaked screenshots of the loot. When I said 277 epics will be replaced by entry level cata blue items, I wasn't just guessing .

[MiRai]

There are already many leaked screenshots of the loot. When I said 277 epics will be replaced by entry level cata blue items, I wasn't just guessing .

I saw those leaked screen shots too. Then the new beta build came out the other day and a lot of those items have changed because they're still tweaking everything. I won't deny that they want a full gear wipe going into Cataclysm, though.

But really...
...what's the big surprise to everyone else?

[Ualaa]

Well.. they're supposed to be changing all of the current gear, to the new stats. So theoretically, a post-change iLV264 hunter piece will be about as good for an 80th hunter as a current 264 piece is for an 80th hunter, in the same slot.

It's interesting if the early stuff from quests or instances is that much better then 264 gear.

[Myc]

Thanks

for some heads up Sho.
I agree that raiding shouldn't be for the gear but this is nice to know that I don't have any point in spending my gold on stuff I don't 'really' need or wont get good use out of.

[Stabface]

Well, in TBC we had, roughly speaking :

ilvl 115-125 Kara/Gruul/Mag (T4)
ilvl 128-138 SSC/TK gear (T5)
ilvl 141-151 Hyjal/BT gear (T6)
ilvl 154-159 Sunwell gear, KJ had 164's

In WotLK we got :

Borean Tundra / Howling Fjord quests give ilvl 138 green/blue
Grizzly Hills ilvl 154 green/blue, upgrades to some T4
Stormpeaks / Icecrown 174 green/blue, upgrades to some T5
normal L80 dungeon drops 187 blues, crafted 187-200 blues, upgrade some T6
heroic L80 dungeon drops 200 blue/epic, crafted 200 epics = first real upgrades to Sunwell gear here


I feel the bulk of people had around T4 level gear, so you kind of went through the first few zones and didn't upgrade much, but by the time you hit 80 you pretty much replaced everything. It was not worth replacing full T6 for a lot of classes unless you got multiple 200 blues/epics. But really you were on pretty even footing if you were a brand new 80 and did some normal instances/rep grind/crafted items then you had the same level gear as someone who did a ton of raiding in TBC and didn't have much upgrades until heroics/raids.


Now, WotLK raid instances are ICC ilvl 251-277/284. ToTC 232-258, Ulduar 219-239 and Naxx 200-226. And the 5-mans give you 232/245. A common level for gear even for people who play casually would probably be around ilvl 232 so long as they know where to find the vendors.

So what should ilvls in Cataclysm be?