WOW! Thank you for posting this, and thank god for the change. I had already despaired of ever gearing up any of my 85 alts (all 9 of them) with this kind of grind in place.
I upgraded my farm to 8 plots yesterday. Tiller’s rep is not linked to the stuff you find in dirt piles, although I ground enough to become best friends with Ella (for the cat) and the drunk guy (for free advice) at least.
I agree that it was super easy to get my profs from 525-600. I think that’s because they changed the way they “gate” craftables for MoP, though. They make it easy to get to 600, sure, but you can’t craft any of the good stuff until you grind rep anyway. In Cata it was very expensive to get to max, but you could craft the good stuff (dreamcloth, belt buckles, etc) immediately.
I broke 10k achievement points yesterday, too. It’s been quite a productive week. Has anyone else noticed that JC meta recipes drop like hotcakes? I must have 7 of them by now, but I haven’t seen a helm with a meta socket yet. Maybe they drop in heroics?
Yeah, I just took my miner/JC to jade forest for about an hour last night and got 2 met recipes; and I spent most of my time running around mining ghost iron, not killing/questing. Maybe I won’t have to drop major gold on buying super-rare world drop meta recipes this xpac.
Yeah, and the very first one I got in MoP was the caster dps meta. Burning primal diamond I think it’s called? Intellect + 3% crit chance. The cata version of the same cut was SO rare, and stupid expensive.
I cut one and undercut everyone else to post it, but it still hasn’t sold. I got so excited when it dropped because I figured it would be super-rare again. Oh well.
Man, you folks seem to have a lot more time for playing WoW than I do. I’m jealous. BUT I’ve made a promise to my wife (and to myself) that I won’t sit upstairs in front of the computer for hours at a stretch.
I’ve been playing the upgrade, off and on, for about a week now, and my BE Paladin main has just left the Jade Forest level 85 starting zone. Really enjoyed myself there, lots of interesting quests. About half-way to level 87 now.
Haven’t really found any gear upgrades, but she ways already geared with mostly 397 LFR gear. Did get a level 404 2-handed sword for finishing one quest that was a minor upgrade from her level 397 mace. Everything else has been level 384; less than what I was currently wearing.
Haven’t started any of my other level 85s on Pandaria yet; figure I’ll try and get my main there first before adding anyone else to the mix. Plus, it keeps the zones fresh to me if I don’t have several toons running around the same area. They’ll be the ones to enjoy/benefit from the gear upgrades, as most of them haven’t done any raiding.
Oh, and the trouble I alluded to with my monk upthread? I did have a response from Blizzard the next day. A GM responded that he’d gotten my ticket, seen that I wasn’t online, so logged himself into my account and found Old Man Liang right where he was supposed to be. So he logged the monk out right next to Old Man Liang so I could find him when I next logged in.
So I logged in, and, naturally, no Old Man Liang. So, since I didn’t have much invested in the character yet, I just deleted and rerolled him. He’s level 10 now; just finished riding the balloon around the island. We’ll see what’s next.
Yeah, for well gears Cata players, the first couple zones have nothing to offer in the way of upgrades. But be patient, they’re out there. It was a bit tough breaking up set bonuses. But in the end you’re better off.
My guild banged our head against Stone Guards last night. I was the least geared of us at 443. How people had the time to level and start running heroics in a single week is beyond even me. We think we have the mechanics down, it’s just a bit of a gear check for us so weakly geared.
I actually prefer the eq upgrades this way to the way it was done in previous expansions, where those fabulous purples you’d sweated over for months would become obsolete in minutes. My main is still wearing her old shoulders at level 90 (I’ve gotten drops which have a higher ilevel but which aren’t better); the alts will get upgraded more rapidly, simply because they start out with worse stuff.
I discovered the Tillers last night! Shush, I’m going slow and doing Lorewalker as I go plus my mom is visiting this week. Anyway, coming from a farm family, I really wanna kick that head Tiller’s ass for saying I suck and I’m going to give up. I’ll show you, you lazy ass pandouche!
Yes my daily routine is to collect and grow some more plants. Right now it’s juicycrunchy carrots for my Int food. Or do I help out the guild and start saving up for Banquets?
Last night we got The Stone Guards down! And then the game bugged out and we got loot and the bosses respawned. At first we thought it had something to do with the double-kill (when they died, the only one left alive was our priest in spirit form. The one they turn to when they die) But apparently it happened to others too. After a wipe on the respawned boss, they were gone and we were able to proceed to boss #2! Where we wiped a couple of times and then time was up. While I didn’t get any gear from them, after the raid I stuck around to get a bunch of gear. The JP robes, a heroic Belt and that damned Pocketwatch from Coren. No more greens! Now I may actually be able to pump out some real dps.
I know I should be farming rep for someone, I just don’t know who would be best to go after for mages.
Try wowhead’s Mists of Pandaria: Reputation Quick Facts for more information but basically you need all of them to get the JP gear, each faction sells a few pieces each.
What professions do you have? Some high level recipes, like the i476 Tailoring robes and gloves, are behind a rep grind, Tailors (and Leatherworkers) need Golden Lotus Honored to buy the recipes.
Great site, thanks! I have alchemy/herbalism. And while the haste buff spell is nice, I think I would do better to drop it for something like inscription or JC for the stat buffs you can get. I feel like I should get another alt up to 600 in herbalism first to feed my alchemy before giving it up.
“Players no longer require Honored reputation with Mists of Pandaria factions to purchase gear with Justice Points.”
Caught myself by surprise last night: I was playing my level 70 dwarf hunter on Lightbringer, doing some Brewfest stuff. He helped fend off the Black Iron party crashers, grabbed the resulting daily quest, and when he turned it in, WHOOSH my vanity guild, “Order of the Rik” hit Guild Level 6. Yay, 10% XP increase!
You still need rep for the valor gear, so… it’s a fairly small quality of life change that’ll let you queue for heroics a few days sooner. You’ll still have to grind the rep on alts if you want epics, until other sources of epic gear are made available. And right now, it’s so early in the expansion that this probably won’t happen for a long time. In Cata, they didn’t add epic gear for casuals until ZA/ZG were implemented. I don’t know of any craftable epics right now at all. The only way to get them are through rep grinding to spend your valor, or from raid bosses.
And currently the iLvl Requirements for LFR is 463 which is the level of gear that comes out of heroics. (meaning you have to every piece coming out of heroics to get into LFR) You can cheat a little bit with a couple 470 pieces from Coren or hitting revered with a faction and picking up enough VP to buy a 489 piece. But still, this coming tuesday when LFR opens, only the folks that have been rep-farming the past couple weeks will be allowed in. I’m up to 455 now, but I don’t think I’ll be ready for Tuesday. Well maybe. It’ll help if I can get a couple of the available purple pieces from heroics, because I don’t think I’ll rep up with anyone to Revered. At least not this weekend.
Thanks for the link, martu. That’s a very nice change. I’m still dreading Golden Lotus rep for alts, although a bit less now. Even with the change, though, there is absolutely no chance that more than 1 or 2 alts of mine will get enough rep to spend their vp. It’s a big transition to go from purchasing valor gear on any character with the points to having it gated so severely. Maybe by the time I’m ready to gear up some alts (which could be several months to a year from now), they’ll open up the vp gear to everybody.
I honestly don’t anticipate wanting to play my alts within the next few months anyway, though. My monk just has so much to offer. I’ve always been a career altoholic, but now? I want to play monk exclusively, all the time. And that is really unusual for me. I don’t think it’s just the new-expansion shine, although that’s certainly a component. The class in general, and the healing style in particular, is just so neato. I’ve never felt THIS attached to a character before. Part of that is also because pandas = wuv!
Yeah, the extra brewfest trinket I won on a greed roll is helping cheese ilevel just a little. From just doing rep dailies and a few heroics, I’m up to about 1200 vp and 1600 jp now. I’d like to max my jp over the weekend, but we’ll see how many pugs I can stomach. A couple guildies finally hit 90, so hopefully we can chain heroic runs. That will help. Unfortunately, leather healers are victims of poor quest item/boss drop itemization. ANY piece of leather that comes with intellect and lacks spirit is a total waste of gear. Reforging cannot provide enough of a stat to make 450 blues without spirit an upgrade over 437 greens with spirit. And those pieces comprise about half of the leather int gear I’ve stumbled across thus far.
I’m not big on pvp, but does anyone know what item level the honor gear is? Not the craftables, which I know are 450, but the stuff you can buy in Org/SW. That might be another tappable resource, if any of it is 463 or higher. PVP gear is actually ok for PVE now, since it includes all the base PVE stats plus pvp power/resil. Supposedly its ilevel will be slightly lower to compensate for that, but it’s still a good way to ensure that PVPers who set foot into heroics won’t do a quarter of everyone else’s DPS.
My gnomepriest hates Shado-Pan Monastery with a burning passion. BURNING. The stairs on the last fight… argh.
I was pulling my hair out over keeping people alive (If it’s purple, move the fuck out of it, people) while being pingponged to death because DPS were tunneling on the boss. It took three or four attempts of shuffling DPS, but we finally got him down… with three melee dps. To clarify, this is a fight that has absolute gobs of purple bad and adds in said bad that need to be deeped down, preferably from range. Gurble.
One thing that did make it better was the tank /yelling, “FOR HEALERNAME!” on the last go right before we smacked Zhu’s ass down.
Still haven’t figured out the best places to use Spirit Shell yet, though.
The few times we’ve wiped there, it’s been because People In A Hurry did not clear the orbs and the fight took place in the belvedere, so we kept running out of LoS (both of the healer, and of whichever orb us ranged were trying to shoot at). Fighting in the open area (which is made psychologically easier by clearing the orbs, even though it’s not strictly necessary) avoids the problem. But apparently there’s a mindset that Clearing Is For Wusses - in Blackrock Caverns, I’ve seen more wipes from trying and failing to avoid one group of trash than from any bosses.
