World of Warcraft Gearing Up for A Fresh 90 Guide

World of Warcraft Gearing Up for A Fresh 90 Guide by JustinAngel

Hi folks, this guide meant to help you gear your fresh level 90 characters and alts. This post is heavily influenced by the same FAQ for Patch 5.2 which helped me extensively. If you’ve got suggestions to help improve this guide please leave a comment.


To ilvl 496

  • Timeless Armor Tokens: Upon hitting level 90 you should follow the A flash of bronze… quest to get to the Timeless Isle. Install TomTom & Paste and run the following Macro script to add all Timeless Isle Chests as waypoints. Visit every chest you can reach, open it and retrieve ilvl 496 timeless armor tokens. Use all of them with the exception of one Timeless Signet (you’ll see why under ilvl 535). For more information on Timeless Isle chests you can read this detailed guide.

To ilvl 502

  • ToT LFR: Run ToT (Throne Of Thunder) LFR until you have an ilvl 502 weapon, two ilvl 502 trinkets and an ilvl 502 neck to compliment your ilvl 496 armor. Those are the four armor slots you won’t be able to equip with ilvl 496 Timeless Armor. Once you have those, you can stop running ToT LFR. (Note: Timeless Curio andTimeless Lavalliere may drop in the timeless Isle but they have a very low drop rate. )
  • Extra rolls in ToT LFR: With the timeless coins you’ve earned from the Timeless Isle chests buy Mogu Runes of Fate for 1,000 Timeless Coins each from Mistweaver Ai and use them for extra rolls in ToT LFR. UseAskMrRobot.com to help determine which bosses should be the target of your limited extra rolls in ToT LFR. Make sure to leave 1,000 timeless coins untouched to afford buying a Golden Glider (see “ilvl 535” for more on this).
  • Legendary Quest: Accept Wrathion’s legendary quest and get to the point where you’re collecting Sigils. If you’re already running LFR, you might as well get something out of it.

One piece of ilvl 516 gear

  • First Heroic Scenario: The first time you complete a Heroic Scenario successfully you get a Bulging Heroic Cache of Treasures from the Heroic Deeds quest which has a high chance to drop one ilvl 516 gear piece. It’s recommended to do just the first HS as subsequent ones are an unreliable method of gearing up. (More on that under “Heroic Scenarios“)

To ilvl 522

  • Season 15 PvP Gear: If your average ilvl is too low to enter SoO LFR (under ilvl 496) you can get single pieces of ilvl 522 PvP gear by “grinding” Heroic Dungeons for an hour. First, go queue in Dungeon Finder for approximately 5-7 heroic dungeons in a row until you’ve reached ~3,500 Justice Points. Each of those heroic dungeons would yield approximately ~500 Justice Points. You then take those Justice Points to aHorde/Alliance justice vendor and convert them at a 2:1 ratio to Honor Points. Then go to the Alliance/HordeHonor quartermaster and and you should be able to afford a single piece of ilvl 522 gear.
  • When Should I buy Season 15 PvP Gear? It’s not recommended to completely gear up by grinding heroic dungeons and buying PvP gear. Only buy PvP gear for gear slots you haven’t received Timeless Isle tokens for. Start by buying PvP Ring/Neck/Cloak/Wrist gear for 1,250 HP each to get quick average ilvl boosts. Only then if you still haven’t reached an average ilvl 496 continue buying Trinket/Waist/Feet/Hands/Shoulder gear for 1,750 HP and Chest/Head/Legs gear 2,250 HP. Once you’ve reached an average ilvl 496 and can join SoO LFR stop gearing up using Season 15 PvP Gear.

To ilvl 528

  • SoO LFR: Once you hit ilvl 496 start running SoO (Siege Of Ogrimmar) LFR. Bosses in SoO LFR drop ilvl 528 gear. Do all available SoO LFRs once a week. Note that SoO LFRs will gradually become available until all four parts are available on October 22 2013.
  • Warforged Seals: Collect 50 lesser charms by killing mobs on the timeless isle, pet battling or doing dailies. Every week trade those in at the shrine for three warforged seals that’ll give you extra rolls in all SoO Tier 16 difficulties. Use AskMrRobot.com to help determine which bosses you should spend those two weekly extra rolls on.

To ilvl 535

  • Blazing Chest: Back in the timeless isle glide over the broken bridge and run like crazy until you get to theBlazing Chest behind of Ordos Sanctuary. After looting it you’ll get one Burden Of Eternity which you should combine with your unused Timeless Signet. Rings are better candidates for your first Burden of Eternity since there are two rings slots and they are non tier gear.

To ilvl 540

  • SoO Flex: Go to OpenRaid, signup and associate your character with your account. After that search for SoO Flex beginner / learning runs and signup for one that works for you. You’ll need vent/mumble for voice chat. You should also review the FatBossTV or Warcraft Academy guides for SoO ahead of time. Make sure to use AskMrRobot to determine on which boss you should spend your two weekly T16 extra rolls.

To ilvl 553

  • Timeless Isle Celestials: Join a raid group taking down one of the celestials in the Timeless Isle court. Chi-Ji seems to be the preferred easiest fight. Celestials have a chance to drop ilvl 553 gear. Use one of your three weekly Tier16 extra rolls on that fight. Only one celestial per week may drop loot for you; and only one Celestial per week can be targeted by your extra loot roll.
  • SoO Normal: Join a guild and “commit” to a weekly SoO raiding schedule. It’s called progression raiding for a reason. You can pug SoO normal with random strangers and not get very far every week, or you can swim in the joyous pond of predictable SoO loot. Up to you.
  • Ordos: If you’re not a fresh 90 and have the legendary cloak you can enter the Ordos Sanctuary and down Ordos once a week for a chance at ilvl 559 gear. Make sure to use an extra roll from a warforged seal here.

Extras / Grinds

  • Valor point upgrades: You can collect up to 1,000 valour points each week. Determine for yourself what’s the maximum difficulty you’ll do in 5.4 (LFR, Flex, Normal or Heroic) and spend 250 valour points to upgrade gear from that difficulty by 4 ilvls. The limit per item is 1,000 valour points for a 16 ilvls upgrade. Weapons always go first to valour upgrades. If you do plan on grinding valour, do one random Scenario, one random Instance, one Heroic Scenario and one Heroic Instance each day until you reach the weekly maximum of 1,000 valor. The first time you do those each day gives double valour then subsequent runs that day.
  • Shaohao Reputation grind: You can follow the Timeless Isle quest chain and mindlessly grind rep with Shaohao to get another burden of eternity (ilvl 535 gear piece).
  • Timeless Coin grind: Go to the Timeless Isle, do the quests and DPS stuff until you have 70,000 timeless coins. The tentative consensus is that 70,000 timeless coins spent at Kukuru should yield 2-3 Burdens of Eternity on average. There’s an ongoing debate on if you should spend 70K timeless coins at Kukuru or 50K coins to buy a Burden of Eternity from Mistweaver Ai. If you do decide to buy a Burden of Eternity, first buy an ilvl 535 trinket for 50,000 timeless coins and only as your second/third/etc purchase buy Burden of Eternity.
  • Timeless Isle Rare grind: A few “Elite Rare” mobs on the timless isle have an average 2% chance to drop a burden of eternity. If you kill enough of them, you may get additional burdens of eternity and the ilvl 535 gear it represents. Install HandyNotes and HandyNotes Timless Isle Rare Elites to get the locaiton of all rare elites on your map and mini-map.
  • Nalak/Oondasta: Once a week join a raid group on the Isle of Giants and the Isle of Thunder to down Oondasta and Nalak respectively. Each has a chance to drop ilvl 522 gear and/or a mount. Make sure to buy two Mogu Runes of Fate for 1,000 timeless coins each to get an extra roll on Oondasta and Nalak.
  • Legendary quest: Work you way through MSV (Mogu’shan Vaults), HoF, ToES, ToT and SoO LFRs for a chance to one day far off in the future having an ilvl 600 cloak. Since we don’t know how long the current expansion pack will last there’s no way to tell how long it’ll be useful.

You probably don’t want to do…

  • Heroic Scenarios: Once a day you and two others can group up and complete a heroic scenario. Successfully completing a heroic scenario will grant you a small chance of getting one ilvl 516 gear piece. If you run HS every day for a week you’re only likely to get 1-2 pieces of gear.
  • Heroic Instances: Doing one Heroic Dungeon would yield an average of 500~ Justice Points which can be converted to 250~ Honour Points. You can go to your faction’s PvP vendor and trade hours of your life for ilvl 522 gear. That’s silly, don’t do that.
  • Arena Of Annihilation Scenario: You can get a ilvl 450 weapon by completing the Arena of AnnihilationScenario. If you’re that desperate for a weapon, join a ToES LFR (Terrace of Endless Spring) or HoF LFR (Heart of Fear) instead.
  • 502 boots quest: Lorewalker Chao wants to talk to you, send you up a trek on a frozen mountain and havea dead panda give you ilvl 502 boots. All things considering you can keep your ilvl 496 timeless isle boots instead.
  • Normal ToT: Normal ToT is cross-realm in patch 5.4 so you can use OpenRaid to schedule ToT normal raids (ilvl 522 loot). But learning 12 new boss fights is time consuming and if you’re trying to gear up this is definitely not a fast or easy way to do that.
  • Buy gear from the Auction House: Early in patch 5.4 there’s nothing on the auction house that’s as good as gear from SoO LFR. ilvl 476 trinkts, ilvl 522 armor and ilvl 502 weapons are all surpassed by ilvl 528 SoO LFR gear. You still want to buy enchantments, gems, potions and food from the auction house; just not the gear itself. A few weeks into the expansion there will be ilvl 553 pants and belt (LeatherworkingTailoringand Blacksmithing) available on the auction house but those will be priced out of range for reliably gearing up.
  • Buy valor gear: There are Shado-Pan assault vendors that sell ilvl 522 gear for ~750 valor. Don’t buy those. Hoard your valor for gear item upgrades in your maximum SoO raid difficulty. Any piece of ilvl 522 gear you’ll buy from the Shado-Pan assault could be replaced very quickly by a better item from SoO LFR.

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