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First Look At WotLK Gear

Just about everyone who played WoW before BC came out remembers the huge, huge jump in gear quality that came with the Outlands. Nearly every piece of gear that I had on my warrior was replaced by the time I was done questing in HFP, and even my GM sword was replaced around level 65. (Just in case you’re curious, the Mag’hari Fury Brand was the replacement.) Blizzard has said they don’t expect the Wrath gear jump to be quite so big, but I’m curious as to what exactly we can expect.

So, now that we’ve got some good data coming in from the Beta, let’s take a look at some Northrend starting-quest greens and see how they compare to the current gear available.

Melee Weapons

Here’s a selection of weapons available in BC from each of the level Tiers:

And now let’s take a look at some of the Green quest rewards from the starting Northrend zones.

And then here is a Blue drop from one of the bosses in Utgarde Keep, which is the first dungeon that players in Northrend will encounter (the equivalent of Ramparts in HFP).

So just looking at the raw weapon DPS, the starting quest Greens are essentially equal to T4 weapons, and the Blue dungeon drop is better than T5 and just a shade under T6. The exact stats on the weapon will make them more or less valuable to certain classes/specs, but the DPS level is generally a solid indicator of the weapon’s value.

EDIT: I forgot to mention this earlier, but the Arena/PvP gear corresponds with the different tiers. Season 1 is essentially equal to Tier 4, S2 to T5, and so on. If your character is wearing S2 gear, then looking at the T5 weapons will give you a good idea of how long your gear will last in WotLK.

Caster Weapons

Now let’s look at some caster weapons. The best stat to look at here to compare item quality is Spellpower. From BC:

And now some starter quest Greens from Northrend:

And a Blue drop from Utgarde Keep:

So again with the caster weapons, we see that the starter Greens are a bit below T4 in quality, while the Blue drop is in between T5 and T6. Again, some classes/specs will value the other stats differently (such as Spell Hit and Crit), but the spellpower is a pretty solid indicator of the item’s value.

So What’s All This Mean?

From looking at those numbers, it’s possible to make several estimates about the gear coming in WotLK. If you aren’t geared in at least Kara epics when you come to Northrend, expect to replace most to all of your gear fairly quickly. Just about everything you will see from quests will likely be substantial upgrades.

If you are geared in T4 or T5 gear, then you will probably not find too many upgrades from the quests, but the Blues dungeon drops will be at least sidegrades for you (i.e., the DPS/SP will be essentially the same, but the other stats may be more attractive to you).

T6 and SWP geared people will likely not find much at all in the starting zones or dungeons to upgrade to. These people will probably stick with their gear for several levels, and if what we saw in BC repeats itself, upgrades for that gear will start coming around level 75 or so (just as my pre-BC best-in-game-sword was replaced by a quest reward that you can obtain at level 65.)

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 6th, 2008 at 1:35 pm and is filed under Guides and Gameplay, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “First Look At WotLK Gear”

  1. I took a look at the gear from 10 and 25 man raids in wotlk, in some cases sunwell gear was actually better than some the items. I think it is safe to say you may be able to lvl to 80 and begin raiding in your t6/swp gear.

  2. @luke: Yeah, it may well work out that way. I know several of the top raiding guilds on my server are definitely counting on that. We’ll have to see how the class and gear changes affect things once WotLK is out.

  3. If u didnt know…shortly after TBC came out.Gear started losing its stats the higher level u get (For example…66 stam wont count as 66stam,rather maybe 40 if u got a couple levels above the item requirement.)

  4. @Randomguy: I’ve never heard that before and don’t believe that’s true. You may be thinking of things like crit rating which are dependent on your level, but the main attributes like Stam, Str, Int, etc. are always constant.

  5. One thing to consider is the change in requirements and certain coefficients. While some TBC items may seem better in TBC terms, WotLK has brought some changes to stat conversions that will cause players to need to change stat prioritization. TBC items likely won’t have the amount of hit rating required, WotLK has haste on everything and for folks like Hunters, Intellect is even more important in WotLK than it was in TBC. Juts make sure when weighing an item against another to weigh all the stats and how they effect you post xpac as the dagger that was insane in BT may only be pretty nice now due to stat changes.

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