mists-of-pandaria-gear
Latest
Lichborne: Heroic dungeon gear for death knights
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. In the past, dungeons have been seen as a stepping stone to raids. If you stopped there, so be it, but the goal was generally to get past them and get on to bigger things. With challenge modes now in game, it may be that 5-man groups will be seen as a pinnacle of end game activity. With that in mind, getting the good gear out of these dungeons may be more important than ever. This week, we'll take a look at heroic dungeon drops. For the most part, in comparing these pieces, we will be focused on getting parry and dodge for tanks, critical strike and haste for unholy and two-hand frost, and haste and mastery for dual wield frost. Note, of course, that you still want to get 7.5% hit and expertise each as DPS, so that may override other gear choices at time. Note that Scenarios will also have a chance to drop an item level 463 item, so if you do Scenarios, keep an eye out for those. However, since they are all items with randomly generated prefixes, it's difficult to preview them in a gear list, so just know they exist.
Arena of Annihilation provides a quick and easy blue weapon at level 90
Ever since Nagrand, the latest version of Ring of Blood has been a great rite of passage. Once you're close to max level, you beg, wheedle, or cajole 4 friends, strangers, or even enemies to join you in fighting a series of elite mobs, with the final reward being a blue weapon that will serve you well until you get something better from a heroic dungeon. Luckily, this tradition continues in Mists, and it's even easier to get started. Once you're 90, head to Kun-lai Summit and the Temple of the White Tiger. Gurgthock will be standing next to a gong just outside the temple proper, and he'll give you a quest to enter the Arena of Annihilation, with the reward being the choice of a couple weapons tailor made for your class. Once you get the quest, what you'll want to do is queue for the Arena of Annihilation scenario. Open the Dungeon Finder Interface (The hotkey should be "I" by default) and choose the Scenarios option. Choose Specific Scenarios from the drop down menu, check the box next to Arena of Annihilation, make sure no other boxes are checked, and hit Find Group. Within moments, you'll be in the Scenario and well on your way to your weapon. Once you defeat the final boss, Wodin the Troll-Servant will be waiting right there in the scenario to reward you. The weapon will be a nice, solid rare weapon of ilvl 450. It's not as good as a heroic dungeon drop, but if you just dinged 90, it's bound to be better than the quest green you're likely using, and it'll help boost your item level so you can run heroics that much faster. It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
Hotfix removes reputation requirements for justice point gear
One of the most controversial decisions in Mists of Pandaria was the idea of putting JP and VP gear behind reputation gates, making you grind to honored with specific factions depending on what you wanted to buy. Blizzard has just put a hotfix in place that removes this requirement for justice point gear. You can now visit quartermasters as soon as you like and buy whatever JP gear you can afford, regardless of your reputation. This should allow new level 90 characters to hop into heroic dungeons much more readily. The full announcement is behind the break, along with a quick guide to finding the reputation quartermasters to grab your gear. You can also visit Commander Lo Ping at Niuzao Temple to buy all JP gear at once.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Gearing up in Mists of Pandaria Part 1
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host. We all know this one's going to take a while. Every expansion brings with it the gear reset - without it, we'd just keep wearing our previous gear, and there'd be little point to running dungeons. Whether you're decked out in Heroic Dragon Soul gear or haven't quite hit level 85 yet, there's going to be a whole new gearing cycle, repeated with every patch. We remember it from the original game, from The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm and we'll soon get to know it again in Mists of Pandaria. There have been a few changes this time around - the reputation gear has been changed so that there's justice and valor point gear on each faction vendor, for instance. There are no level 90 dungeons, instead going straight to heroics as soon as you hit level 90. Therefore, there's gear you'll collect as you run dungeons, and gear you'll collect when you hit level 90 and start collecting the heroic dungeon versions of that gear. There's also a few epic pieces sprinkled through the dungeons. This week, we're going to talk about gearing up through dungeon running. Going from 85 through 90, dungeons remain a viable way to get gear to make leveling easier, even though I suspect attempting to level purely through dungeons will be extremely onerous. I wouldn't recommend it. We'll list each dungeon's drops both on normal (for when you're getting to 90) and heroic (once you're there).
One gear set for PvE and PvP in Mists of Pandaria?
This has been coming up quite a lot following Ghostcrawler's recent Coffee with the Devs (where's my vanilla latte, devs?), and I thought it was something worthy of a moment's thought. I'm assuming here that all gear is equal in stats according to ilevel and it can all have PvP power/defense, or none of it can. EDIT: I want to make it clear that this is purely hypothetical, and imagined! Blizzard aren't doing this. I'm wondering what's stopping them. Now, I understand that back in the halcyon days before The Burning Crusade, resilience didn't exist in its current form. Please note, however, that this isn't meant to be a discussion on that period of WoW. So what would be the positive and negative aspects of such a system? One area where I see a bit of a struggle emerging is as follows: How do you get this gear? How does it scale? Where does the best gear come from? If I were a dev (with or without my coffee), I'd have to say that one's a tricky one. I suppose you could let people earn points from both PvE and PvP and have them spend those points, similar to valor or conquest now, except both are taken to the same vendor. You could still have lower tiers of gear available for honor or justice equivalents that are easier to reach.
