Among other things they’ve completely changed the UI and it’s all kind of a headache right now. My main and alts used to be like over 90 now they’re all 40ish and the gear doesn’t seem to scale to level and I have no idea how to play the classes anymore and Blizzard isn’t being particularly helpful. Anyone have a good comprehensive guide (not tips) for returning players? Thanks.
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So, with Dragonflight, they rescaled what ilvl gear was meant for each character level. (This was to smooth out the gear progression from 1-60 as before it was pretty flat to 50 and then shot up.)
However, they didn’t bump up the ilvl of any older gear your character happened to be wearing, which means your poor level 50 is in like level 20 gear.
So, what are the quickest ways to get get some better gear for those characters?
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The best option is going to be heirloom gear if you’ve got it. (And if you don’t, it’s a pretty solid gold investment, especially if you have lots of alts. I’d prioritize weapons.)
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There are vendors in MoP that sell pretty cheap ilvl 84 gear. This is the fastest discount option, and probably the best non-heirloom option for characters below level 45.
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Turn off Chromie Time and do quests in the highest level expansion you get an overlevel bonus for. The overlevel bonus will make up for the crappy gear you have, but the quest rewards will still be decent upgrades. At level 45, you can do WoD content, and the rewards will have ilvls in the mid-90s. Level 50+ characters can do Legion.
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You can run old raids that you outlevel. I haven’t done a lot of testing, but WoD LFR was doable at level 46 at ilvl 38 (although it was slow) and dropped gear at around ilvl 120 if I’m remembering correctly.
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You can run the raid once per week, then wait. Terrible solution, honestly.
Blizzard dropped the ball so hard on this one.
As for answering OP’s question, pick an expac from Chromie and quest. It’s going to be boring, it’s going to be overly time consuming, it’s better than the alternatives.
Seems to be how Activision wants WoW, we all know Blizzard isn’t steering the money ship anymore.
Weird. It’s almost as if there was a reason I listed it last among a whole bunch of options to gear up characters affected by the Dragonflight ilvl changes. It’s still useful for people to know that it is possible at low gear levels, as it might be a favored option for people looking to collect transmog and pets from that content anyhow.
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Thank you. I really appreciate the help. I don’t have the gold for the heirlooms, so I’m gonna try the vendors in MoP and turning off the Chromie thing. I didn’t even know that was something they did, but hopefully that’ll make it easier for me. Thanks again!
I recently came back having left in about 2006 and at the time, transferring my geared up characters to my son’s account. Needless to say, I am still a bit overwhelmed.
I did turn on PVP at level 20 when questing characters up through all the expansion stories I missed and the gear was really fine for leveling. I seemed to get better rewards and XP with PVP on. I only got camped once, and he got bored real quick.
Also, if a person missed the pre-expansion gear for Dragonflight, which I did on most of my alts, once you get to about level 56 or so with an alt who hasn’t done the initial storyline quests for LoD, they just give you pretty nice gear doing the scripted intro quests (all blue, fair iLVL) That plus what you get in the intro to dragonflight up until about level 63 is way better than I expected (but still no match for the easy-to-get blue gear in the pre-expansion event).
Thanks for the guidance! I came here looking for this exact same reason. Now Jampo will become a happy panda, at least until we unlock the high mountain Tauren.
Even happier when posting from the right character…
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after 7 years i just started playing again,this is just bad…
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my sub runs out in a month,i will wait a year or so and look at this game again…
Did you check out the gear vendors in MoP Iduzu linked to?
One of the biggest crap factors ive also noticed for returning the players is that basic rotations that took only 3 buttons take about 10 to 15 buttons now to perform the same damage.
Remember just casting frostbolt and ice lance? Welcome to wow 2023, gotta press 10 more buttons to do the same damage.