Just trying to get some gear to get started, looking up guides on 8.3 and its like reading an MLM compensation chart. Why is this so convoluted? I played WoW since TBC and I can’t make any sense of all this crap. How the heck do I get gear that’s good enough to play the new content? Good grief I can’t believe I have to ask for help on this.
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Do the new content. The questline for 8.3 gives good gear, world quests and emissaries will supplement and scale.
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You need to go to your races capital and look for the slot machine. It will dispense one piece of gear every week after reset.
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WQ’s scale up to 420 (415 for Azerite items), Emissary caches can scale up to 445.
Mythic Dungeons give 430 items, heroic dungeons give 415’s.
Vision rewards range depends on how many objectives you’re completing and how many masks you’re using.
You can pretty easily get into the 450 range without setting foot in LFR or an organized raid, or any rated PvP if you want to.
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First, get the legendary cloak. You’ll also get a pair of 445 bracers along the way. After that, try doing the weekly quest for timewalking. You’ll get 425s dropping and a 445 at the end.
Doing the invasion quests can drop good gear up to 445 as can emissary quests. Those are pretty much the go-to until 445. After that, there’s M5+ and heroic raids.
You can substitute low level M+ dungeons for 430-445 gear if you want too. LFR Ny’alotha gives 430 gear and normal gives 445 gear. Conquest gear is 445 as well, if you like (can stomach) PvP.
Complete the quests, and do the World Quests. Gear rewards will scale up as you get better. When you get the chance, do the Naz quests - you won’t be able to go there until you’re 120. Once you do that, your survivability will increase greatly. You can then start on the N’zoth quests, but those may be a challenge at first. But you’ll start to get better gear.
If you’re looking for instant gratification, this isn’t the best expansion for that. If all you want to do is play, that’s easily doable.
Yeah dude, they completely got away from the basics that people loved about wow.
This entire corruption gear, azurite, whatever else is beyond ridiculous. That’s why you hear people constantly complaining about min/maxing.
The best thing that TBC and Wrath had were pvp gear vendors, and straight forward gearing from raiding, crafting, professions and progression.
They need to get back to that.
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The weekly for timewalking this week should give a 445 (Normal Ny’alotha) item, though it can be higher depending on which boss’s loot table you get an item from. Items from Carapace and N’Zoth are 455, IIRC.
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Whoops, you’re right. I remembered it was normal level, but for some reason thought that was 430. 
Fixed now.
Right now pick up the weekly quest for time walking.
Then do at least 5 dungeons. They drop 425(?) gear and completing the quest gives you a 445 peice. You can also use emblems to buy some gear from the time walking vendor in old dalaran. And don’t be afraid to ask if people need gear that drops. If people dont ask I assume no one needs it.
Unlock your cloak and do the vale/uldum dailies to start doing vision to increase the cloaks ilvl. You want to do this before wq’s because there is a part of this quest line that increases your neck to level 50.
This should get you ilvl up enough to make wq’s viable. Try to complete any caches for equipment. And for the first week or so do as many azerite wq’s as possible.
Do the new zones world boss.
Go into the group finder and start some mythic 0’s to get a mythic+ key and then run it as high as you can. Make sure you grab your weekly rerolls to get more gear.
Try signing up for some nylotha normal raids. If you have a hard time getting into groups you can start one yourself.
Figure out what essences you need and start working on attaining those.
Wow, thank you all for the helpful replies. Sorry about my attitude, just feel very frustrated. I play another game where I can just play only the content I’m interested in and I just get gear for doing whatever I want, so walking into this spaghetti mess is driving me batty.
I’ll get started and refer back to this topic if I lose my way again. Thanks again.
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Warning wall of text ahead.
It’s actually pretty simple. You level up and get some quest reward intro items. Then you move to assaults and you get free gear that you might not be able to use because of corruption, it may also have very bad stats for your desired spec. So far everything seems reasonable.
Then you can try world quest emissaries but if your ilvl is too low you will only get minor upgrades that may or not corrupt mcforge and you may or not be able to equip because you need to level up your cloak first.
Also, you need to grind ap and multiple rep/zones for essences, some of which you may find easy to obtain but may or not be any good for your spec.
Regarding the old tier sets, they’re gone and now it’s azerite armor. You either do m+ or raids or pvp to get these but the optimal traits for your desired spec might not exist or might be available only through rng weekly chests or content you don’t want to do, and you may obtain pieces that you may or not want to actually use.
If you’re not lucky with your rng casino weekly chest, there’s a currency called Titan Residuum you obtain from the weekly m+ cache (or DE’ing or scrapping azerite) in order to purchase a token for a chance at a random piece that you may or not want to use. Be caferul here, they explained that pvp vendors were removed partially because people got lost trying to find them, make sure you research the location of the residuum vendor or you might get lost.
Because of this you might find yourself with 2 or even 3 sets of azerite gear, on top of that you may also find yourself having 2 or 3 sets of different corruptions assuming you leveled your cloak enough, otherwise you can’t use most of said gear.
Keep in mind that all loot has been homogenized, and some gear may not be available from ingame activities you want to do in order to continue doing said activity (I know, sounds weird but the current devs are geniuses and everyone else has no idea or understanding, because loot from “a” content in order to do “a” content makes no sense, according to them).
OK, after all that, you clearly can see this is pretty easy and straight forward and it’s absolutely an easier multi-layered gearing system to understand for new/returning players than the old raid gear-pvp gear dichotomy.
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It’s especially baffling that the very dev who wanted upgrades to be ‘obvious at a glance’ also added a bunch of systems that all but require Google/simming to make any sense of. Very few of these buffs can be ascertained from just looking at them.
It honestly, unironically makes me miss stats like Hit. Sure, having to stack it up just to reach a baseline was kind of boring, but it made immediate sense. “Increases your chance to hit.” - the only thing I really had to look up was the threshold at which I could stop.
While some of these traits and abilities are genuinely interesting, I wish they weren’t tied so intrinsically to the gearing process. Some of them would make wonderful talents.
Doing the intro quest for Nazjatar gives you a 370 weapon. Also the WQ there sometimes offer 385 benthic gear. PLus the intro quest gives you a piece of benthic gear and even upgrades it to I think 400ish. Not sure if you still need to do this or not to unlock the essence slots on your necklace?
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Yeah its required for the essence/cloak unlock.