I’ve come back with my main at L45 but all my gear is around iLvL 44 or so and it seems that I should have around iLvL 100-110 gear for that level? Basically not adequate stats for doing anything, even killing a quest mob is painful. I can’t spam dungeons to level because I can’t tank with such crap gear and I have no weapons (or idea) for Windwalker.
Is there a vendor somewhere where I can just buy level appropriate green gear to get going?
Heirloom gear
I have been pet battling all my alts to 60 and then hitting the auction house.
Thank you. Had completely forgotten about heirlooms, it’s been a while … (although I don’t know why they couldn’t have just converted the iLvLs of the gear I logged off in to be level-appropriate…?)
on Tuesday tw vendor will be up look there
They squished the item level of old gear in SL, and then changed the expected item level for each level range in DF without buffing old gear.
Unless you have a massive amount of gold to spend, you aren’t going to be able to buy and upgrade the heirlooms you need.
What is the highest level you got in the past on this account?
Quests give horrible gear now in most zones. I assume that is part of the project of normalizing gear across all expansions that wasn’t finished yet when Dragonflight dropped. I recommend spamming dungeons. At level 45 you get ilvl 137 gear.
how’s your sanity? i’d start going nuts after ~10 fights
You can always try going to the auction house and setting the filter to “Usable” to find the highest ilvl stuff you can equip. Though it might be expensive.
They always mess up scaling.
Big shout-out to the iLvl 32 Dragonwrath in my mage’s inventory.
I have that issue too when leveling now and I have heirloom gear. You don’t get good non-heirloom slot drops hardly. When you do they’re few and far between. I quested through some zones and after 45 levels finally got a bracers upgrade from exile’s reach. XD
Honestly, gear rewards seem to be a lot more common in newer expansion’s zones. I assume this is one of the reasons they funneled people into BfA. Getting gear there isn’t that difficult.
You can level naked. I wouldn’t worry about it.
(I’ve done it. Vendor all your gear and level the character from scratch. Works at every level.)
Honestly? I’d suggest herbing or mining all the way to 70. You’ll make a veritable crap ton of gold selling the mats, and then you can just buy gear. 
If you have any heirlooms, equip whatever you’ve got. Buying them new is likely more gold than you had when you last logged in (inflation over the past several expansions).
Failing that, go forth and quest. Struggle through a few and you’ll get quest rewards that work better than what you have on.
I didn’t do BFA might be why I still had paper towels for armor slots.
It is the appropriate level - 100 is way too high for 45
I would do some dungeons as dps, you will probably get carried a little for the first few but that should give you good gear. And level 45s-59s are weak because the level scaling is bad so the difference isn’t much anyway.
This is an absolute horrific oversight by the team.
Today my level 14 priest had gloves epic upgrade to i70.
My 51 warlock that I shelved has i70.
I mean, what?
Anyways, you can just run LFD and get carried by the <30s. They do all the work anyways. You’ll get some gear and then hit the AH before you go to DF.
Horrific?
I had a level 40 toon untouched in a decade. What once was full epic gear was now complete garbage.
But a few hours later I was level 50 and had plenty of new gear. And is now level 63 or so.
Levelling is simple.