Honestly, it’s mainly a matter of the gear more than anything else, and it certainly isn’t the first time early expansion has had a sharp jump in the item level curve going from one to the next.
Going off the item levels from LFR/Normal Amirdrassil, do keep in mind that the vast majority of folks that were active at the end of Dragonflight were likely 450+ at the end of the expansion. The pre-expansion event was dropping gear as high as 480 which would have actually been on par with MYTHIC gear. I myself was partly Heroic geared on my main with my main stable of alts either in the pre-expansion gear, or LFR geared. For folks like me? Yeah, leveling through the early part of TWW was like sleepwalking. Recently however, I did take a fresh alt into TWW with full heirlooms.
Holy hell…
Yeah, if you’ve got a sub 400 item level coming into TWW due to leveling a fresh character, it’s an entirely different story. I honestly feel like the early leveling is tuned towards a character that’s about 420-430 item level, and even then that might be a little on the low side. Realistically speaking, no one is going to be hitting that during the leveling process from 1-69.
Same thing actually happened in DF. My SL geared characters had zero issues upon starting while the lesser played or fresh alts ran into a figurative brick wall when they hit 60. I think the key issue is the fact that they want to set an item level that doesn’t completely invalidate old raid gear the moment you step foot into the new content for the first time, but at the same time they need to set it high enough to be a challenge to a fresh player while also feeling like they are getting meaningful rewards and power boosts from quests, world drops, etc.
The OTHER issue however is that leveling is just so damn fast now that I honestly cannot comprehend the fact that there are folks with more money than sense that constantly drop $60 for a leveling boost in a game where you can actually do the current 1-70 grind in about 10-15 hours. If a player was actually sitting at level 70 for a bit BEFORE heading into the current expansion, they’d actually get the chance to get gear better suited for early TWW. Realistically however? Yeah, no one that has the expansion is going to run around in old content for a day or two just to be better geared for the early part of TWW, especially considering that if you absolutely need to get geared, you can likely find low level crafted TWW gear to get started with.
Only other advice I can give past that is this: a new expansion always a major gear reset. Top end Heroic/Mythic raiders are going to have the early advantage, but for the most part we’re all on equal footing by the middle levels prior to capping. Regardless of item level, never walk into a new expansion thinking you’re going to pull an entire room in a dungeon like you were at the end of the previous expansion. In fact, I strongly feel this mindset helped contribute to the early issues with Cata all those years ago and the subsequent nerfing that essentially gave way to the game as we know it now, but that’s a debate for another time.
Try to go slow and steady, watch your pulls, and while I generally never recommend buying gear from the AH as it is replaced so damn fast while leveling, if you’ve got sub 400 pieces coming into TWW, you might not really have much choice on the matter. As another option, perhaps consider delves at Tier 1?
Also, don’t forget about the ENTIRE toolkit your class has. This post covered that very well:
People ALWAYS seem to either forget or ignore all of their skills and defensive options while leveling. USE THEM! I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve actually seen people playing classes that I know for a fact have an interrupt ability, yet they’ll take multiple large hits to the face and die to damage that was 100% avoidable.
It’s also good practice for instances. I don’t run my priest often, but when I do nothing annoys me more than having to heal avoidable damage because people are either too lazy to cancel out a mob’s incoming spell, or they completely ignored the interrupt in their talent tree.
Don’t be that person.
You really haven’t leveled a frost mage, have you?
Riddle me this: if it isn’t a proper solo class, then how did I get my own frost mage from 70-80 with just two deaths due to my own carelessness in delves?
I can’t speak for fire/arcane, but the class is MORE than fine for solo play. Hell, out of all the classes I’ve leveled thus far in TWW (DK, mage, hunter, rogue, warrior, priest, and soon a monk), I’d say the mage was actually the most fun despite not being one of my primary classes.