Best Way To Gear Up in Patch 6.2.4
Shopped for so much new gear that my Willy was exhausted.
A little while ago I wrote a post that outlined farming honor in Ashran, and how it was a great way to gear up. The video from that post was pulled down by the creator, and that was too bad. It was a good video.
Now about the title of this post. Judging from the first paragraph, you may be assuming that I’m going to say that the best way to gear up is through PVP. Well yes, kinda, and no.
Before you storm off, telling me that you suck at PVP and this post obviously doesn’t apply to you, just pump the brakes on that and give me a second to explain. Okay, maybe more than a second. I don’t know how fast you read. I’m not psychic. If I was, I’d be writing this from some tropical villa and not in my frosty hovel with the heat cranked, eating toasted praline peanuts damn the calories.
Where was I? Oh yeah, the gear. I said yes, kinda, and no as far as PVP goes. Here’s where I explain that stuff.
YES – you will be spending honor to purchase gear. With honor, you can get iLevel 700 gear. One purchase, and boom! You don’t need to grind apexis crystals for days, trying to get 20000 so you can upgrade to 695 and then have the valor to bump it up two ranks to 705. Granted, that is all very valid and in the end you end up with 705 rather than 700 gear. But this is the easiest way to get some amped gear.
KINDA – You need to farm honor in a PVP zone, specifically Ashran, for this to work. Also, there may be some armor pieces that don’t have the secondary stats you’re looking for. So in some cases, PVP gear might not be the way to go.
NO – I didn’t kill any players, nor engaged them at all, to get any honor. In fact, I can’t really do anything in Ashran because my comp doesn’t process the mass groups of players sitting on top of each other throwing bombs. By the time I catch up, I go from standing in an empty space to dead.
I get my honor three ways: farming fragments from mobs, completing bonus objectives, and finding fragment treasures. I do one circuit around the outskirts of Ashran and can usually return to my base with about 100 fragments. That’s good for 300-400 honor. After a few laps I can buy a piece of gear.
Umren (brofist!) posted a video last summer that outlined some of this, as well as listing TomTom coordinates for the treasures and the route he takes.
I used both the route and the coordinates and let me tell you, this still works. I mix in apexis gear as well, depending on stats and how I’m feeling about farming. But I’ve used the honor gear to upgrade several pieces of timewalking gear, and in some cases, entire outfits.
This has its drawbacks though. Depending on your faction, it can take awhile to queue for Ashran. Sometimes the opposing side will run you over when you’re farming, and when you die you lose half the fragments you had on you at the time. It can be situational, but don’t let a fear of PVP keep you from this. Like I said, most of the honor I farmed came from doing simple PVE stuff in the PVP zone.
Give it a try and let me know how it goes!
WoW Ironman 2016
F*cking Centaurs.
I’ve always been a fan of the WoW Ironman Challenge.
It’s not for the weak of heart, that’s for sure. Level to cap, using only white or grey gear, no spec selected. Oh yeah, and don’t fucking die. Ever.
This may sound easy at first. Honestly, I’d forgotten how squishy characters are when they’re not decked out in heirloom gear. And with no potion use, including healing potions, you have to fight smarter, not harder. You have to pick your battles carefully, making sure you don’t get overwhelmed. Because you may be able to take two creatures at once. But three? Gets dicey. And three can become four very quickly. Plus, you find how limited your healing can be, assuming whatever class you select has the capability to heal.
There’s so much to consider right from the start. Will you pick a class that has pets for tanking, like a Hunter? Does the class have a WTF button to avoid death, like a Hunter? Can it heal, like… okay you see where I’m going with this, and it’s no surprise that many of the Ironmen at 100 are Hunters. They are priests too. Druids as well. Even a Warrior. Not bad.
Even race makes a difference. Night Elves, the class that seems the most popular, can drop out of combat with their own racial invisibility. A handy skill when you’ve bitten off more than you can choke down.
As you see from the image above, I fell short with my Monk. It was a Centaur ambush; I pulled two (including the Named) and ended up with an add that I didn’t see. Health ticked down, and he got the last swing in. It was like a hockey fight, fists filled with jersey, throwing rights and hoping the other guy would drop first. Not this time.
Will I try it again? Maybe. The problem for me is that I have other characters that I’m focusing on, and once I set a goal for a character I tend to try and finish it before moving on. Leveling another character from scratch is tough enough. Time consuming. Without heirlooms, it takes even longer. Add in the lack of good gear, specs, or even the ability to chug a healing pot during a fight and things grind down even more. Smarter play can be slower play. And there are only so many hours in the day that I’m willing and able to commit to World of Warcraft.
Time will tell. A new Ironman may rise up from my ranks once again.
Someday.
Rokk Talk 