What am i going to be missing, aside from a ton of ilvl vs my opponents? What is all of this corruption stuff? What’s going on with my amulet? Is this stuff relevant in pvp?
This is more important than item level and is the source of over 50% of your damage and most of your defensives or healing. PvP is unplayable without legendary cloak, corruption and essences. Period.
My friend just came back and he asked the same question and it’s better to mess around in Classic till prepatch when corruption goes away.
You need and i mean need high resistance Legendary cloak for PvP as well as Rank 3 Essences, Gushing wounds, stat amps, sockets etc to even enter Arena. Don’t forget BiS azerite. It would take you months.
Everyone at even low rating has corruption on every slot and gems in every item. Also people tank rating to farm echoes to buy more corruption.
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Realistically it would take you about 2-3 weeks of hardcore grinding to catch up.
You’re still going to get wrecked with high item level and no corruption. The corruption and essences are very time gated. If you haven’t grinded any essences out in 8.2 then you will need to grind that much more. Lucid dreams, breath of the dying, and conflict & strife essences alone will take you 2-3 weeks just from being time gated.
Having high item level is only half of it now. You have several weeks of no lifing it to get caught up.
I personally would skip all the corruption stuff and just hit the storyline content if you’re interested in that at all, and also casually get a few essences for future timewalking/lower level bg queues, and get a decent item level while waiting on prepatch. Also mess around on the ptr prepatch to see which classes feel fun.
I couldn’t imagine trying to bring a fresh account up to speed right now.
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is that grinding going to get me a lego cloak and a the heart powers? I really did quit playing this almost a year ago, and the few arenas i’ve played haven’t been fun. At all. I will be glad when this expansion is over, but since I resubbed a little early, I’m hearing mostly that I’m sol but also I could grind hardcore. Tonight i did get two pieces of corruption gear from random world quests and loot, total of 55 corruption but this eye of corruption is brutal as a dk. I’m not fast, and the thing from beyond is even worse. I can’t imagine that being a thing in pvp. any kind of snare and i’m dead.
just looked at bloodmallet… infinite stars wtf is this garbage? It’s stayed this way for how long?
Grinding hardcore still won’t have you geared by pre patch. Gonna take you over a month because of timegating. The corruptions are on rotation, you can only do so many dailys and visions to get echoes/momentos. You don’t have essences. Gearing up is really a 2 month ordeal of playing everyday. There is no way around it.
Someone did a 1 shot infinite star build was funny but there were so many gimmicks. Heck gushing wounds is 50% of some players damage in Arena then essences are right behind.
I came back in april for 8.3 so since then at least. They finally eased some on timegating to where I could fully gear but still don’t have BiS because Heroic Raiding drops were unkind to me and I hate M+
Right now I am waiting for 3 weeks for the corruption vendor to have the corruption I want just to test a new build. 3 weeks! Just to try a new build. That is some real timegating. I have the gear but still waiting 3 weeks for it to come up.
So even having every resource at my disposal I can’t try new builds at the end of this expansion. Pretty sad.
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Don’t bother renewing your subscription if your intent is to arena in the current season, since you quit over a year ago. Best advice I can give you is to just get ready for shadowlands.
I took a four month break starting in March of this year. It’s taken me three weeks of pretty hardcore grinding, and I’m still pretty behind on corruptions, cloak resistance level, and am missing key weapons (though that last bit is more applicable to DH’s than a hunter).
Pre-patch (and the end of the season) will likely be released mid sept-early October. It’ll easily take you a month to catch up in gear alone, let alone grinding and practicing to achieve any decent rating
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Expect a month 1/2 to be playable.
Cloak levels take probably a week but then you have to farm corruption resistance levels in order to equip amps for your gear and to get the right amps u have to wait for the week your best amp (12percent offstat or gushing) comes out which is on a rotation with the vendor.
Depends on what your goals are in the game just expect a lot of imbalance while you attempt to play the same game as the ppl who have 70 percent or more stats value than you. Also make sure you don’t equip any actual gear amp upgrades those sit in your bag until you have enough resistance lol.
Pve- u can catch up
PvP - game unplayable competitively for a long while - have to decide if you want to wait for prepatch or actually commit to farming visions/world visions/echos etc
Also if you don’t have neck traits from sinister/noto seasons expect a greater delay as you need to spend echos for it or need to go farm rep dailies
Personally since I’ve returned I have only been able to do a few que sessions where I didn’t feel like I needed to go do chores first in the game
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Took me 3 weeks on this DH to catch up of running a butt load of dungeons, being fed drops from heroic raid, and getting lucky on several drops alone, plus when my gear cycle had finished it was GW week so I got to spend 25k echoes id saved up.
It’s not worth it, especially since this season is kind of awful to boot. It’s not like you’d have anything fun to do, really.
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You dont have to have max level cloak.
If you played 6 hours a day or so grinding keys and arena, depending on your spec you could be semi competitive in a couple weeks.
it isnt worth it… missing max level cloak, corruptions, essences, ilvl.
just wait. I made the mistake of coming back and I am not enjoying it.
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You’ll be missing cloak levels, corruption, essences, ilvl. Personally I think it’s best if you just try to gear up to 450s-460s, which is pretty easy, to just be ready for shadowlands. It’s high enough for bgs and casual content. You could probably push 2kish around that ilvl with a few good essences and still low cloak/few corruptions if you’re decent.
Going for 470+, max cloak, full corruption amps, and all rank 3 essences probably isn’t worth it with prepatch around the corner.
If you’re a R1 skilled player coming in with no cape/corruption, no essences, and bad gear then you’ll probably make it to Combatant before getting rolled by keyboard turners with cape/corruption/essences.
Now for the tl;dr that you’re missing:
- Legendary Cloak that:
1a. Has a semi-timegated system for increasing its item level.
1b. Has a semi-time gated system that locks corruption resistance that is unlocked once cape is maxed level (and is separate from base level for clarification).
1c. Above methods could be farmed through 2s/3s/m+s but will sacrifice the resources you can use to buy corruption that is… - Corruption can either be gained from rng through drops, weekly chests (m+ & arena guaranteed), visions (weeklyish guaranteed), or on a vendor has 8 separate cycles a month (or twice a week).
- If you didn’t play 8.3, you need to farm time-gated essences that will take a month at least.
- No matter what class, I’m pretty sure you’re going to want some of the trinkets from at least the heroic raid no matter the class/spec/role.
- BIS-rolled azerite gear that has a good ilvl.
- BIS stats on gear
6a. This is extremely important if you’re going gushing or stat amp corruption. - Prob forgetting something
btw it took me like roughly 500 2s games and 100 3s games + weekly 15 to get my corruptions & cloak resistance from 50 (base) to 110; and my cloak was already at highest level at the moment, and I felt gimped despite having decent gear and the above selection at the time.
I would pick a class that isn’t high stat dependent like mage locks dk spriest so a 475 chest will be a upgrade regardless those 4 classes just need ilvl and the right corruption to compete this season probably won’t end till October 6th
wait for the prepatch/next expansion m8 save yourself the trouble
dude dont do it
you would not be able to do any meaningful pvp you would get squashed by low rated mongoloids where 50%+ of their damage is passive/procs and if you cant keep pace with your own passive/procs you just get folded. if you came back now you would basically be gearing and getting essences to use for the prepatch only once the prepatch strips away all corruptions. basically farming essences to use for a month of prepatch and farming gear to make leveling faster once shadowlands hits
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Don’t bother prepatch will be out in a couple months and with it disable corruption.
Look at the shadowlands class changes and start leveling what classes you will be interested in playing and get them to 120
looks like pre patch is coming out within a month as its on the current PTR. Id just suggest holding off tbh.
If you just cant wait and really have an itch there is a lot of grinding you will have to do