Blood Pact: Preparing for level 90 raiding with heroic dungeon gear

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill puts so many bullets into one article, she dreamed her warlock could dual-wield pistols like Lord Godfrey.

I make my own list of loot every tier, just so I know what piece to roll on in my guild's raids per raid boss. I make a similar list of possible 5-man heroic loot so I know what to run or what I can look for when a certain dungeon comes up in my random queue.

You can stick to a Wowhead search list if that's your thing. But it's my thing to explain what a database can't -- like whether PvP crafted gear is really viable in PvE now or what two-handed weapons you might find for your felguard in Mists.

Heroic 5-mans

All heroic 5-man gear are ilevel 463 blues, except for a few epic 476 ilevel items.

Since the pre-raid gearing game tends to focus on surmounting the hit cap (15% or 5100 rating minus special racials), warlocks will love Scholomance for all the hit gear it drops. Warlocks will love Scholo anyway because it has all those creepy shadowy goings-on happening.

Weapon types actually matter a little bit because of how racials grant expertise and expertise is equating with spell hit. A brief summary is:

• Wands are oddly not counting as ranged weapons (dwarves & trolls), but as unarmed or fist weapons (orcs). It's unclear whether this is intended or a bug.
• Gnomes gain expertise with daggers and swords.
• Humans gain expertise with swords.
• Worgen, goblins, blood elves, and undead have no weapon expertise racials.

Two small notes regarding weapons:

• Wands are one-handed; you can equip a wand and an offhand.
• The only drop-related offhand around is in Stormstout Brewery.

For the fun factor, here are the weapons your felguards and wrathguards may curse your poor greed rolls for. My personal favorite is the Headreaper, though Ghostheart is a close second.

• (polearm) Ghostheart, Xin the Weaponmaster, Mogu'shan Palace
• (axe) The Gleaming Ravager, Armsmaster Harlan, Scarlet Halls
• (axe) Goresoaked Headreaper, Rattlegore, Scholomance
• (sword) Lightbreaker Greatsword, High Inquisitor Whitemane, Scarlet Monastery
• (sword) Gravetouch Greatsword, Instructor Chillheart, Scholomance

Finally: the loot, ripped straight from the Dungeon Journal itself. I prefer my loot lists to make my dice-rolling decisions easier no matter where in the dungeon I join, so I listed the loot in the order of bosses rather than by slot. Dungeons are alphabetically listed for easy reference.

Gate of the Setting Sun has a lot of haste pieces and a lot of crit pieces.

• Pendant of Precise Timing, Saboteur Kip'tilak
• Bomber's Precision Gloves, Striker Ga'dok
• Vision of the Predator, Striker Ga'dok
• Leggings of the Frenzy, Commander Ri'mok
• Shoulders of Engulfing Winds, Raigonn

Mogu'shan Palace has two pieces for every stat but no repeating combinations.

• Cloak of Cleansing Flame, Gekkan
• Soulbinder Treads, Xin the Weaponmaster
• Firescribe Dagger, Xin the Weaponmaster

Scarlet Halls would like you to have some crit with your gear, unless you loot the epic ring. That's what happens when you roast a mage and take his gear.

• Scarlet Sandals, Armsmaster Harlan
• Temperature-Sensing Necklace, Flameweaver Koegler
• Robes of Koegler, Flameweaver Koegler
• Melted Hypnotic Blade, Flameweaver Koegler
• Vithrak, Gaze of the Deadman, Flamweaver Koegler

Scarlet Monastery has an abundance of mastery and crit pieces with a couple of instances each of hit and haste.

• Forgotten Bloodmage Mantle, Thalnos the Soulrender
• Scorched Earth Cloak, Brother Korloff
• Whitemane's Embroidered Chapeau, High Inquisitor Whitemane
• Greatstaff of Righteousness, High Inquistor Whitemane

Scholomance has four pieces with hit and four pieces with mastery (not all the same pieces!). There's a trinket that you'll likely pass for healers, but it's a chunk of intellect otherwise.

• Anarchist's Pendant, Instructor Chillheart
• Barovian Ritual Hood, Jandice Barov
• Deadwalker Bracers, Rattlegore
• Necromantic Wand, Rattlegore
• Leggings of Unleashed Anguish, Lillian Voss
• Incineration Belt, Darkmaster Gandling
• Headmaster's Will, Darkmaster Gandling

Shado-Pan Monastery has a couple of haste prieces for you.

• Gloves of Enraged Slaughter, Sha of Violence
• Robes of Fevered Dreams, Taran Zhu

Siege of Niuzao Temple only has two haste/mastery offerings, and you have to kill the last boss to get to them. There's a spirit on-use trinket and a spirit staff, but eww, spirit.

• Breezeswept Hood, Wing Leader Ner'onok
• Whisperwind Spaulders, Wing Leader Ner'onok

Stormstout Brewery has haste and mastery, but if you don't like either of those it does have the only offhand item in the 5-man heroics.

• Bracers of Displaced Air, Ook-Ook
• Bottle of Potent Potables, Hoptallus
• Wort Stirring Rod, Yan-Zhu

Temple of the Jade Serpent has nothing to offer but haste and crit -- except that one hit instead of haste piece.

• Girdle of Endemic Anger, Stonestep
• Cape of Entanglement, Liu Flameheart
• Mindbreaker Pendant, Sha of Doubt
• Staff of Trembling Wild, Sha of Doubt

Crafted PvP gear

In times past, PvP gear has been considered subpar if not completely horrible for PvE. Resilience took up part of the stat budget and was not reforgeable. It's still not reforgeable, and neither is PvP Power, but PvP gear now has two secondary stats on it alongside the resilience and power.

PvP gear is partially viable in PvE now. You'll be missing out on PvE-focused set bonuses if you choose to wear PvP gear, but for non-set pieces, it's fair game. The stats are comparable with an equivalent ilevel PvE piece. Look at Contender's Silk Footwraps versus Soulbinder Treads from normal mode Mogu'shan Palace:

• Both have the same Intellect (592).
• There's only 11 less mastery rating on the PvP footdwraps than there is haste rating on the PvE treads.
• There's only 19 more crit rating on the PvP footwraps than on the PvE treads.

For crafted PvP gear, the non-spirit cloth set is Contender's Silk. The entire 8-piece set will take 34 Bolts of Windwool Cloth, or 170 Windwool Cloth. Contender's Silk is comparable stats-wise with normal-mode 5-man gear at ilevel 450.

The Contender's Silk set contains mastery on all pieces and alternates crit on major pieces (head, chest, legs, feet) with hit on more minor pieces (shoulders, wrists, hands, waist). Considering PvP requires less hit than PvE, I'm not surprised. The set bonuses are useless for PvE, as they just increase your PvP Resilience or Power.

Getting ready to level

Maybe it's a bit backwards to start with the heroic 5-man gear list instead of the factions list. What faction should I grind for first? Should I play through certain zones to level through the most reputation before the grind?

I don't know how fast some of you will power through to 90, so I thought I'd leave you the first step to getting ready for raid. Just before the XP bar unlocks for us all over again, I'll visit the reputations and questing lines for warlock gear. The reputation vendors also provide some epic crafting recipes and enchants, so you'll be covered for those.

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Blood Pact is a weekly column detailing DOTs, demons and all the dastardly deeds done by warlocks. We'll coach you in the fine art of staying alive, help pick the best target for Dark Intent, and steer you through tier 13 set bonuses.

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