If all you’re doing is offering to *try *if the assigned tank turns out to totally blow, I don’t think you need to worry about it too much (assuming you’re comfortable with tanking mechanics, both in general and for a Paladin of your level in specific). Just throw on the gear and see what happens–being sure to warn everybody that you don’t know how well it will go, of course. Worst-case scenario, you just end up requeuing for a new tank anyway.
You could go for the belt and bracers off Heroic Tyrannus and Devourer of Souls respectively, but it should be relatively easy to get the drops in ICC10, even in pugs. ICC has the added benefit of Frost emblems, and the tier 10 bonuses for shamans are very good.
As noted above, bank em and wait for 80. I was wearing my level 70 PVP gear all the way until I turned 80 (with maybe a piece or two of dungeon blues thrown in…item level 200 stuff), and it was fine for questing or running normal dungeons as a mage. It really doesn’t take very long to get a decent set of level 80 gear, whether you want PVE or PVP. While not ideal, you can combine the two types of gear to get something level-appropriate and purple in every slot—and then build a complete set for each as badges/honor/arena points are earned.
Also, unless you’re a tank, or maybe a healer, you can pretty much start running heroics as soon as you have a couple of pieces of level 80 gear. Most groups I’ve found in the RDF are way over-geared for all but the hardest heroics, so there’s a bit of room to carry lower-performing new 80s. Hell, folks have been carrying me without complaint since I was only able to put out around 1200 DPS on a good day. Think I have only been removed from one group, and I’m running multiple heroics every night. Don’t remember the last time I ran any non-heroic dungeon at level 80, but it was probably a day or two after I dinged 80.
As for badge accumulation rates–the first random heroic of the day gives two emblems of frost, and emblems of triumph for each boss. After that, it’s 2 triumph for dungeon completion, + 1 for each boss. So you’re looking at 5-7 badges for each dungeon. Wait times for DPS seem to average around 15 minutes, sometimes as short as 11 minutes, rarely as long as 20 minutes. Most runs seem to take about 20-30 minutes. So if you do three dungeons a day, you’ll be picking up one piece of badge gear every couple of days–plus whatever you get for PVP gear as well.
Stone Keeper shards are easy to accumulate. You get about 30-40 from weekly quests in WG, plus several per boss in dungeons as long as your side controls WG. On Elune, we pretty much always control WG.
For pricing purposes–heirloom weapons cost about 300-350 shards, I think. The War Mammoth mount costs about 300.
T9 gear (triumph emblem-PVE) costs 30 badges for legs, hands, and 50 for chest/shoulder/wrist (I think). I know it is 30/50, just don’t remember which pieces are cheap.
T10 gear (frost emblem-PVE) costs 60/95 depending on slot, I think. I don’t have any of that stuff yet. I will be getting a belt later this week, but **SfG ** explained that the belt is not considered part of the T10 “set”. Unless I hook up with a raiding guild, it will likely be late September/early october before I get my second piece of Frost badge gear, and that will be something from the T10 set…probably legs, since I can upgrade that slot from my PVP legs without losing my 4-piece T9 bonus until the piece after that…and then I’ll be getting two piece T10 bonus, which is pretty sweet.
Or you could get lucky like me last week and win the roll for Sanctified T-10 Gloves. My first real win in many many many months.
I would recommend not getting the legs or gloves until later, since there’s a chance you’ll get either of those as random drops from VOA, if you run VOA fairly regularly.
By the way, just out of curiosity, do mages have 2 sets of armor or only one? I’ve always been on double-purpose toons (tank/dps or heals/dps), so I’ve always had two different sets of badge gear to buy up.
I’ve only seen the one.
Cool deal. I’m on most evenings. I’m two bosses in Old Kingdom from having the achievement for killing all the heroic bosses.
And thanks again to all the folks that have helped me. I may never be a Kingslayer, but I am getting better. Posted 3193 dps on Cyanigosa tonight. That’s about double what I was doing before getting advice here.
We do PVE gear and PVP gear, but that’s about as fancy as we get. Probably because our role is the same, regardless of spec. They don’t teach healing in mage school.
I noticed tonight that there are non-set pieces of badge gear for the same slots as the set pieces. Why would someone be willing to pass up the 2/4 piece bonuses to wear the “non-branded” gear?
Exactly.
I’ve only seen pure-DPS people with two sets of eq if it was PvE/PvP or something very specific, like saving a greed-won mismatched piece for “max iLvl” (say if you were a hunter and had won some high-level shaman shoulders: definitely not the right fit). We used to have a warlock in the guild who tried to roll on pretty much any piece of cloth claiming that what she needed for destro was what the healers needed but that got stopped fast under the Thee Shallt Not Hog Drops rule.
As for the non-set pieces, there’s blind people like yours truly, who had bought several low-badges non-set pieces before discovering that the other ones were available from a vendor I never visited (d’oh); by the time I figured that one out, I was already in the process of working on the Frost-badge set, it’s simply not worth it to pay for the low-level set any more. And the off-set pieces mean that you can choose one to be the “number five” or three off-sets if the 4-piece bonus doesn’t make sense for your build; individually, those pieces often are better than the set pieces.
Grats to all.
One thing I have noticed regarding levelling in Northrend (discussion here a few days ago) is that it seems to speed up after level 74. Now I’m not sure if this is because one’s levelling perception changes or in fact the quests get easier to do together but now in my second toon I am at 76 and feel like I’m levelling at speed again.
DPS is a pain for using the RDF it took me 1hr 10mins to get into a dungeon last night though it was worth the wait as I picked up a very impressive looking staff from the Dredd in Drak’Tharon. I also remembered to do both quests in there first time round, I had to go back 3 times on my pally as I kept forgetting to do them. One tip – it’s easy to go back at the end of the run and complete the finding quests (where you have to rescue someone from a cocoon who then gives you another quest.) while solo. Again my lock topped the DPS charts I was putting out 1.5k while the next best, a Blood DK, was putting out 1.1k. I should hit 77 tonight then I can start the tournament (I want that ‘of Gnomeregan’ title) and will be only 1 level away from competing in Wintergrasp.
The non-set pieces are a bit better than the set pieces (higher ilevel); if you know you’re not going to get the set bonus anyway (or if you already have 4 set pieces and are filling the fifth slot), it can be worth it. For instance, on my shadow priest, I just got the third piece of T10 gear. I already had a level-251 shoulder piece that had dropped in Icecrown, so I would have had one lonely piece of T9 gear for the 2-3 weeks until I got my last piece of T10. I dropped a buncha Triumph badges on the non-tier head piece instead.
Although I haven’t mentioned it in a few weeks, my 70 pally tank and my healer friend both still have “guild runs” each Wednesday night at 9:00 on Cairne. Although I don’t think there are many in the guild right now who are around that level, anyone is free to join us. Since we hit Northrend we’ve just been queuing with the RDF each week which so far has put us in UK every time, but we could also end up in Nexus at this level.
I would strongly disagree with this. The minimum DPS requirement for Heroics is 1500. If you can’t put out at least that much (and it’s not hard if you have the right spec and rotation, even with just the gear you have access to as a fresh 80), **you shouldn’t be running Heroics as DPS yet. Period. **Otherwise you’re counting on the rest of the group to carry your ass through. That’s fine if it’s friends, but not if you’re grouping with randoms. What if you get assigned to a group where everybody else had the same bright idea as you?
Imposing on strangers like that is, quite frankly, just plain rude. Just because they *may *be able to carry you through doesn’t mean they should have to.
AFAIK, there is only one tier set for each role of each class. So, pure DPS classes only have one set of gear. Two-way hybrids have two (e.g., Fury and Arms share a set, as do Discipline and Holy). And three- and four-way hybrids have three. They design the set bonuses in such a way that they’re useful for multiple specs (e.g., they’ll proc off or benefit several different abilities).
Note, however, that different specs will often have different stat priorities and, as such, will choose different pieces outside of their tier items and/or gem and chant differently.
1.) The tier items you can buy with just badges are lower-level than the non-tier items you can buy with the same badges. For instance, you buy the 251 T10 (ICC10-equivalent), but 264 non-tier (ICC25 or H-ICC10 equiv.).
2.) Depending on which pieces of upgraded tier you have and what other badge items are available, you may wish to swap out various slots. There are five tier pieces but only two- and four-piece bonuses; which piece is left out will vary from class to class and player to player.
3.) Four-piece bonuses aren’t always worth it. Sometimes, breaking a set bonus will give you more DPS, HPS, or TTL or TPS.* This is especially true for the lowest level of each tier piece. (For ICC, there are three levels of T10: 251, 264, and 277. 251 is purchased with badges. 264 is bought with an existing 251 piece plus a token that drops off of wing-end bosses in H-ICC10 and normal ICC25. 277 is bought with an existing 264 piece plus a token that drops off a wing-end boss in H-ICC25.)
*Damage per second, heals per second, or time to live or threat per second.
Then we’ll have to disagree. Pretty much every random heroic I’ve done has had one dps falling below the 1500 dps mark. There’s also usually somebody topping 5k, so it balances out. As long as the person isn’t causing problems, and the overall dps is adequate for the dungeon, I don’t have a problem with it. Groups always have the option to kick someone, and many of them do. I’ve seen tanks with barely 3k gear score in there…they get punted early and often…usually before I even vote, and I rarely vote to kick someone unless they’re just annoying.
But you don’t know that the 5k person will be in the group before you get there. You’re counting on pure luck to assign you to a group where everyone else isn’t undergeared like you.
Hypothetical. If you’re not still in school, imagine you’re back there. You’ve been assigned a group project. Is it okay for you to slack off and not do your part, counting on the rest of the group to do everything you were supposed to but didn’t? Let’s say the rest of the group does a bang-up job and the project gets an A. Do you deserve to share that grade?
If you don’t think that’s appropriate or fair, why do you think it’s okay in WoW?
It’s your job, whether tank, healer, or DPS, to make sure that you are adequately prepared for a role before you volunteer to fill it. There are myriad ways you can do this in WoW. And that means that when you hit 80, it’s your job to make sure you can perform to the minimum requirement before starting Heroics. If that means you have to run a few more regular dungeons, or buy a few pieces of BOE gear, or save up some badges, then that’s what you do. You don’t impose on people you don’t know to carry your underperforming self through an instance you’re not qualified to run.
Honestly, I’d rather run through a dungeon with an underperformer than with an asshat. If the group has multiple underperformers and can’t get through the content, then the performers have to take a hard look at whether they’re capable of handling things and either disband or kick one or more members (or maybe, if they’re feeling generous, try to help the slackers improve). But most of the time when I run heroics (usually as the tank) I’m blowing through as fast as the healer’s mana can handle, and I’ve had healers comment that they hardly ever have to heal me anyway, so I don’t mind helping out some low performers as long as they’re pleasant and try.
Now, if they’re going to stand around AFK, put themselves on follow and do nothing, make really bonehead mistakes (like pulling extra mobs because they forget to keep their pet under control) or make offensive comments, then they’re outta there. But I don’t necessarily consider somebody worthy of the boot (especially if they’re DPS) because they’re underperforming. Healers and tanks I’m a bit less understanding about, but DPS…eh…I can keep this up all day. 
IMO, an underperformer **IS **an asshat. They’re insisting that *they’re *entitled to come in completely undergeared because *you *did the hard work to get geared up already–without actually knowing that the group won’t be full of people just like them. I don’t demand a lot–just the *bare minimum *of DPS required to actually complete the instance assuming everyone is at the same level. 1500 is not hard to reach at all, and I don’t give a shit about your gearscore. All I want is performance up to the level the encounter requires.
Unless you clear it with a group ahead of time, I think you should always consider what to sign up for based on the assumption that everyone else will have the same level of gear as you.
While I agree with you in general (but, perhaps ironically, have no problem with undergeared DPS in my RDF groups when I tank), I don’t think this is as random as you think. There has been some discussion from the blues that the RDF does consider gear level and attempt to balance the group with some high GS and some low. This has been my experience as well (my high DPS hunter almost always has at least one low DPS, and while tanking I’ve almost never got all three DPS undergeared - maybe once).
But even with that said, and considering the 5% RDF buff, I think the initial comment is pretty correct. Once you get a 200-level weapon, and maybe a few lvl-80 pieces (not hard at all if you run the daily while leveling in NR - hell, 2-piece T9 isn’t out of the question the day you hit 80), you’ll have no trouble hitting 1500 anyways.
Now we’re getting into the realm of taking WoW far too seriously. It’s a game, not a job. There are no Dungeon Police issuing tickets for people that don’t meet some arbitrary standard that is no longer particularly relevant. Everybody wants to advance/improve. The way to do that is running heroics. Heroics really aren’t all that hard and don’t demand that everybody be a peak performer. Ya get carried a bit when you’re lower geared, ya pay it back by carrying others once you get geared. It’s not a big deal. The min/max fanatics can stick to guild groups if they’re hard wired into the whole “you must be this tall to ride” thing. Randoms are open to anybody, and it’s pot luck. Sometimes you hit a rocking group and mow down everything in record time. Sometimes, you get a group that just doesn’t gel for whatever reason. When that happens, either people get booted, or the group disbands and you queue up again.
I do think, though, that unless things change from the way they are in the current Cataclysm beta, there are going to be a lot of people in for some painful paradigm shifts come release time. I don’t know whether Blizz will be brave enough to make it stick, but the current dungeons (or at least the one I went though, and I’ve heard the others are similar) are very unforgiving to underperforming players (although they’re even more unforgiving for just plain bad players who don’t get the concept of “you can’t just AoE everything down indiscriminately anymore!”) Blizz has made things far too easy in Wrath, to the point where it’s entirely possible for a fresh 80 to be decked out in a full set of purples in a week if they’re insane enough to chain-run heroics. Whether you agree with this philosophy or not (make the game more casual-friendly, make objectives much easier to achieve), it’s changing somewhat in Cataclysm. I predict that what will get kicked from groups then won’t be so much low DPSers, as idiots who don’t know how to crowd-control (a lost art during Wrath), who don’t pay attention to the kill order, and who try to blow their way through by dropping AoEs on every trash pack. A mage or hunter who’s mastered sheeping or chain-trapping will be sought after, even if they have lackluster DPS, while the hotshot warlock whose unwavering strategy is to hit Seed of Corruption on every group of more than two mobs is going to have a harder time not getting tossed from randoms.