Is there a point to getting decent armor while leveling?

Title. While I’m not breaking bank buying a couple of hot upgrades (frost damage mainly), I’m thinking it’s not worth it because I’m literally not doing more damage than the speedrunner in quest gear is doing…

My guide is Jokerd’s fastest leveling guide for Frost AoE. At around 40 his Blizzards are ticking at 70s and 71s in quest greens, but me with seven blues and frost damage armor is ticking at 73s and 74s?

Am I hampering myself with frost damage gear over intellect??

I just wanted to buy some gear to give me an easier time, but is it even worth it?

For blizzard aoe spell damage is pretty worthless.
Its mostly about having enough mana and stam helps as a bit of safety net

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You’re a Mage, so no. You just need some intellect for the mana pool and the stamina to survive a few hits.

For those that face tank, especially Warriors and Rogues, it’s very important.

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I see. Many thanks.

If you’re interested in leveling alts, Mages are by far the best gold makers. You don’t need much gear at all at 60 to farm a lot of gold. So you can fund any alts or anything else you want to spend gold on - even GDKP runs, where you buy raid drops with gold.

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nah. until you start getting into brd and up the gear you get will be replaced. even the gear you get from brd and lbrs and stuff will be replaced too, but only by raid gear. look up your class/spec’s pre raid bis. get the belt with +1% hit from brd. other than that, just equip what you can, no need to buy gear while leveling unless you just dont seem to be lucky with the drops and you end up wearing the same green for like 10 levels

It’s because spells have a coefficient they use to determine how much of your plus spell damage they get.

Blizzard for instance gets 33% of your bonus spell damage.

So say you have 100 spell damage, blizzard would only get 33 damage off of it, but since blizzard hits more than 1 time that same 33 damage is split between the 8 ticks of blizzard and getting +4 damage per tick, which would be the 33 damage it gets.

For leveling just stick to “of the eagle” you just want more int and stamina.

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Not really unless you’re a physical class. You could level naked just fine as a caster.

While leveling, go with stats. If you find some blues with Frost damage or the like, that is bonus points, but for the most part go with things that have INT, and (to a lesser extent) Spirit and Stamina, because more mana regen and HP is always good. But INT is the key for a mage.

Quest gear, or drops you get from running dungeons at level, are fine until you start getting higher leveled. Check your preraid BIS lists, and you can start working towards them as you get towards 60.

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I’ve found while leveling this Rogue that the only thing that has really made a difference is weapons, and luckily there are great weapon upgrades via questing

Wingblade, that sword from the BFD quest, then the Sword of Omen and Vanquisher, then Thrash blade. Beyond that I haven’t really bothered with getting gear and it’s been really fast so far.

Weapon upgrades feel awesome for rogues while leveling. That Wingblade feels like a beast for a bit!

Look, people will tell you that you can play naked while leveling. Which technically you could. But how efficient would it be? If you have a main, send your character like 5g. That will be enough to update green gear say ever 15 levels and make leveling much smoother. This applies to all classes.

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By the way, while Jokerd’s leveling strat was great, it is outdated now.

At level 40 you should solo level in ZF GY killing zombies, until level 54. You will even earn around 40GpH while doing this.

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I’m finding that +dmg is very effective for levelling a warlock with affliction spec. Found numerous suggestions from different websites and my own experience seems to agree. Can easily chain pull 0 to +2 level mobs without down time or getting into danger at all. Wasn’t paying attention and body pulled two at the same time and tanked both with demon armor falling off during the fight and didn’t drop below 50% health and mana. Siphon and drain life combine for double or more HPS of incoming damage from a single target.

Requires a lot of micro-management of abilities though, because mana and health pools are much smaller so you have to juggle them during the fight, which I find more interesting anyway.

That doesn’t really answer the OP’s implied context for a frost mage, but might answer someone who reads the thread more just for the title.

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I don’t worry about getting blue gear or +damage or healing gear until around the BRD dungeon stage of the game. I usually don’t even bother with dungeons until then either (around lvl 54).

My (currently 52) Paladin, for example, has just been using Gorilla (str/int) & Eagle (int/sta) green plate/gear since 40. My (34) Arcane Mage goes for Eagle & Owl greens, & my (38) Affliction Warlock Eagle greens only as much as possible. Works for me.

challenge accepted. You did mean the character not the player right?

Whynotboth.jpg

Level tailoring and make the some good pieces for yourself as you level.

If you are aoe leveling ? You want as much int as possible, spell damage isn’t important for that

You’re a caster… the least gear dependent role in the game. You can be in complete garbage and you’ll do just fine. Just pick sta/int/spi items. Some items have agility, but this is only good for wanding, which mages don’t typically care about since they have infinite water. You don’t need to wand to save mana, just drink the water.