Hey guys, I’ve recently decided to pick WoW back up in preparation for Shadowlands. I have been playing other MMO’s that have felt 100x different to WoW’s classic tab targeting system, so I am trying to get back in my element before Shadowlands drops.
My aimlessness stems from the removal of PvP gear, as my playstyle revolves around gearing up for PvP through PvP, and just honing my skills and testing myself thereafter. I’ve hit 120, but left feeling completely lost on where to begin my journey. Any tips would be greatly appreciated, bare in mind I started in 2009 (on and off player) and I haven’t touched the game since the first week of MoP. Typically, I would spam BG’s to gear up through the honor vendor (which no longer exists), after that, I would turn to arena for conquest gear, and just PvP at any other given time (world or structured).
TLDR: Just hit 120, no pvp gear to work toward or honor vendor. where do I start my endgame journey?
4 Likes
Waiting for shadowlands and when the pvp vendor returns probably. Right now it’s a bit tricky and involves lots of boring tasks some of which is PvE.
Well if you still want to pvp you can work on that. Just start pvp’ing, I would suggest using the group finder to queue up for some non-rated BG’s and arena skirmishes are a good way to start earning Conquest for some easy gear.
You need to do the Assaults and work on your legendary cape. There are exhaustive guides on that at www.wowhead.com.
Once you get some higher ilvl gear from raid and mythic+ you can begin to put corruptions on your gear by buying the ones you need from Mother in the Chamber of the Heart (take the portal from your hub city to Silithus and then the transporter down into the chamber)
https://www.ministryofdefense.net/stepping-into-the-arena-corruption-in-pvp/ will help you understand corruptions in pvp.
That should get you started, pop into your class forum or the pvp forums when you need some more specific Q&A and enjoy your time in Azeroth.
Unless things have changed you have to do the war effort quests to unlock world quests. You need to unlock Naj and Mechagon to complete pathfinder 2 and earn flying. You have to unlock your mythic cloak to participate in the corruption system.
There are warfronts, islands, invasions, dungeons, raids, timewalking, numerous reps to grind, world bosses, and plenty of other time wasters like gathering/crafting.
You like PvP. You have terrible gear. Don’t worry, so do most people in random battlegrounds. Queue up and have fun. Do the epics and brawls to earn more conquest. Turn in conquest for PvP gear.
BFA is an utter mess to get into due to all the systems.
If you have friends, I encourage you to do all the stuff. If you don’t… well play only if you really enjoy the process as opposed to grinding out stuff to get to the mystical endgame. Otherwise, level alts, farm old content.
1 Like
You have to PVE to be able to PVP. BFA is rough on new and returning vets. 
Thanks for the responses and feedback guys, I wasn’t aware of the cloaks and corruption system so I’ll take your advice and aim for those first, as I hear they make up a lot of your damage in PvP! I don’t think I will find myself doing mythics anytime soon, I will research on other ways to get conquest Ilvl gear.
Eagerly awaiting shadowlands! Hopefully it makes us feel a lot more at home with the WoW we know and love 
1 Like
If you are a pvp player just level up your alts and hope Shadowlands is going to be better with the addition of PvP vendors and some unpruning of abilities. Don’t even participate in PvP atm absolutely dreadful.
Honestly we are so close to SL that I’d just wait until then. If you do decide to play now, I would keep expectations low. If you want to pvp and want gear to help you pvp, the fastest ways to get gear would be
1/) raid finder
2) low level mythic dungeons
3.) do your 500 conquest cap over and over. You can do it more than once a week- you can do it until you’re “caught up”. There are plenty of ways to get conquest points without doing pvp. Island expeditions (pvp mode) are the most reliable way and involve very little pvp. You can also do zone assaults and conquest chest air drops daily (google these for more info).
TLDR: when I came back to wow, fastest gear grind was lfr and conquest farming. It involves lots of pve time though.
Bliz has broken down gear and abilities into multiple new grinds
You get no abilities for max level, max level is suppose to be a reward unto itself
You then grind gear largely in nonmatchmade mythic plus dungeons, racing through them to beat timers and get into harder ones for better gear, repeating the dungeons until you loathe them intensely. This is by far the fastest gear route
Next you have to obtain a portion of your abilities through azurite traits on gear, a big slot machine only on certain gear slots
Next you have some ultra massive grinds for more of your abilities called essences, these go to rank 4 but you only need rank 3 - you will question whether it is worth it
Next you need corruption gear, which is more abilities as slot machine gear effects that come with a debuff- it requires you to endlessly grind a few super repetitive activities and level up a cloak that is listed as legendary but has no effects other than letting you deal with the stacking debuff from wearing corruption gear
By this time external gear any grinder abilities account for 40-60% of your damage beyond your gear level
Bliz tied all this stuff into the main power grind so nobody could skip it without being gimped
Pvp is utterly worthless for gear on a time basis and end result basis
On top of all that you ha move some mega quest grinds to unlock various things for these pursuits
there is a new team running wow and subs have collapsed
1 Like
Honestly, the way it is described here, it has never sounded so unappealing as that is everything I hate in a game. Slot machines, repetition on unfortunate content and an abundance of different mechanics that tie into power level. It is the polar opposite of the WoW I used to play, which is really disheartening to hear. I wasn’t aware that conquest no longer caps by the week, I think my course of action going forward will be to just spam bg’s so much that it makes me physically and mentally ill, git gud and then hopefully by then Shadowlands will be on the horizon. I still need to transfer all of my alts over the upcoming weeks as my server is completely dead, so levelling them up should also chew a fair bit of time up!
2 Likes
Hey Shockgasm, I’m also a returning player that nearly only plays PVP, but I kinda knew what I was getting into too. Just resubbed because of free time due to COVID, but I also read all the stuff that needs to go into being PVP viable and decided not to touch my max-level characters.
Instead, I’m leveling my first Horde character and leveling up entirely via BGs. I think it’s pretty fun. If you want any pointers, I made a post and consolidated some info about it here: Leveling Via BGs for Fun PVP
To the best of my knowledge, the only PVP announcements for SL have been the return of PVP vendors, and a new Arena map. And it seems like there will be these covenant (and probably additional systems) grinds. This does not make me optimistic about SL; thankfully I haven’t preordered.
1 Like