I’ve seen a bunch of long-winded explanations that didn’t really help, so I thought I’d give it a try. Here we go:
The new system is just like valor except with 4 ranks and affects all items, not just M+.
Yup, that’s it. Valor_1 and valor_1 items drop from trivial activities like LFR and quests. Valor_2 and valor_2 items are normal raids/low keys/rares. Valor_3 is higher keys and heroic raids. Valor_4 is the “highest” keys (16-20) and mythic raids. Whatever content you are doing generally will drop both the items and the “valor” needed to upgrade them. There is some overlap between the highest valor_1 items and the lowest valor_2 ones, and so forth.
The one addition is the Flightstones that are infinitely farmable and thus not really of concern as generally speaking the crests should be the limiting reagent.
EDIT:What does this mean for you? Not much. It just means run whatever you’re going to run and you’ll get items to upgrade and the stuff to upgrade them.
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So for someone coming in that hasn’t played since a few weeks after launch, what’s the gearing steps? Meaning the ilvl for normal dungeons going into LFR, ilvl from there up to Heroic raid and lower mythics, etc? I’m assuming gearing is essentially the same progression path it always has been, normal/LFR into Heroic/lower mythics into higher mythics/Mythic raid?
Just do the quests from 10.0.7 onward. There’s a lot of free loot. Technically, season 2 hasn’t started yet but at that point, you’re going to see a lot of the same gear progression.
On a massive plus side, the ilvl gap between 10.0 and 10.1 is considerably closer than it was in BFA and Shadowlands. There’s hope yet.
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Yeah I have a lot of the main quest lines to finish, just trying to wrap my head around everything I’ve missed with gearing. I have always had a bad habit of planning ahead when I really should just roll with the flow.
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This looks really complicated, but it’s basically the same it has always been. Except for upgrading. Each item just has an upgrade path now. An LFR item is a “Veteran” item, for example. Except for certain very rare items, like Sarkareth’s cloak, which are actually “Champion” items.
M+ dungeon loot might be on a “lower” upgrade path depending on what key level you’re doing, but that’s really the only negative compared to last season.
Yeah all the charts like the one you see above drastically overcomplicate it. You run LFR, you get gear and crests to upgrade that gear to a maximum of a little higher ilevel than what drops baseline in the next level (normal). Do normal now and you get gear and crests to upgrade to slightly higher than the baseline (unupgraded) heroic gear.
The best part about this system is you don’t need to worry about wasting crests like you did valor since once you get a slot to an ilevel, that slot will not cost crests unless you upgrade above that ilevel.
So yeah, the short answer is just play at whatever level you play at and you’ll get gear and crests that will take you to the next level, repeat until mythic raids and 20 keys.
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Ok so there are specific gear sets or specific gear/ilvl from certain content rather that you upgrade. And there is an upgrade gear progression path we follow like the gear progression path we’ve always had?
Like you don’t waste the upgrade currency on just nay piece of gear, you use it on specific pieces acquired from the usual group content?
Ok cool, this is exactly what I was trying to understand. So you don’t waste upgrade currency on any random piece of gear you get, you save it to spend on the gear you get from the usual group content we’ve always done and the upgrade progresses you to the next level of difficulty content.
You can use the upgrade currency on anything. Every item uses Flightstones to upgrade, but they also need a Crest. But which Crest they need depends on where the item came from. Open World gear might only need a Whelping crest or no crest at all, but Normal raid gear would need a Drake Crest for the first four upgrades, and then a Wyrm Crest for the rest.
There’s also a system where if you have already an item in that slot with higher item level, you don’t need the Crests anymore and the Flightstone cost is reduced by 50%.
So if you’re spending Whelpling Crests, don’t worry about it. Better quality gear won’t even use Whelpling Crests, because it’s probably Champion or Hero gear.
Same with Flightstones. You can only have 2000 Flightstones at a time, and you can always get more.
Ok, I’m just worried about wasting the crests and w.e the other currencies are ya know?
You can get up to 10 of each Crest per week, and Whelpling and eventually Drake Crests won’t really be all that useful to you if you start running M+ keys above 10 or so, or do any raiding. So spend away, imo.