You just hit 90 and you’re wondering what to do next? If your intent is to aim for heroics, you’ll probably be undergeared a few item levels if you’ve just been questing the entire time. So this guide is for the person who hasn’t instance grinded their way to level 90 and is wondering how to push their gear a bit higher without doing more instance grinds.
My goal at the moment is to hit ilvl 460. 460 represents that zone where you can enter LFR and kinda hide. There’s a bunch of assholes out there that thing you’re wasting their time by not bringing top DPS into the raid. If you don’t try at all, then they’re right. But if you’re just hitting the minimal requirements to get in, then you’re probably not going to be doing top DPS. However, my philosophy is to ignore those people and focus on just getting through so you can start your way towards collecting better loot.
The main way I handle things once I hit level 90 is to either craft or buy any gear that helps me hit that ilvl 460 mark. I’m going to assume you have no Justice Points accumulated up until now for this guide but enough gold to make the necessary purchases. First, I suggest picking up the 450 PVP set. There’s 8 pieces in total so you’ll probably spend anywhere from 1000-2000 gold at the moment. Also, you might not necessarily be able to find them (like I did).
From there, you can pick up a 450 cloak, up to two 450 rings, a necklace and the Dragonling Trinket (if you haven’t bought it beforehand). Lastly, you can do The Arena of Annihilation scenario quest, for which provides a nice 450 weapon at the end. By now, you should mostly have 450 gear to get you into Heroics.
One thing I would do immediately is attempt to do a Sha of Anger world boss as soon as possible. While you can do it before 90, it’s probably better you just start around 90 (in case they kick you out). Either way, you’ll gain the Claw of Anger from the boss at the minimum so you can immediately get some nice ilvl 476 boots. The nice thing about the Sha of Anger is that the required/recommended number of people allows you to hide a bit, making it a good entry level boss to go after. If you can do Galleon, that’s just an added bonus (but I’m discounting the spawn rates).
Also, start hitting your dailies hard. If you hit 90 say in Townlonge Steppes, definitely finish up Dread Wastes before moving on. Although I do encourage you to get the 8 piece PVP set, Dread Wastes also provides 3 quests which will have 450 PVE rewards (shoulders, belt and boots). You should replace your PVP items with these.
Of course, you may ask why even bother getting the full PVP set items and not just go straight into Dread Wastes? For myself, I found that the mobs had more health and did a fair amount of damage. So I wanted to boost myself in any way possible until I got better geared. It might be a bit of a waste, but you might want to save it in case you plan to do some PVP in the future.
Either way, the reason behind focusing on Dread Wastes is to unlock the Klaxxi daily quests. Certainly, you’ll want to hit the Golden Lotus as soon as you can too but I prefer opening up as much as possible. It’s really up to you in the end, but I’m thinking more logically in the order of things. Alternatively, you can start the dailies then do bits of the Dread Wastes. At any rate, you’ll need this zone asap.
No matter what get on that path to start picking up reputation and valor points. At the start, you won’t have as much opened up in terms of dailies. But once you get going, you can easily cap valor points just with dailies in 4-5 days (depending on how much instance grinding and LFRs you can get into). And start working on accumulating the Charms of Fortune so that when you’re ready to hit your first LFRs, you can do the rerolls.
If you have a larger budget and/or the professions, you could buy out some epics. There’s two epics for the chest and hands. Consider this a time investment if you do make that purchase. Also, you can pick up the ilvl 476 Darkmoon Faire trinket. Lastly, for most classes, you can also find a 463 weapon that a blacksmith or engineer can make. These can be pretty pricey. When I made my Paladin’s axe, it lasted a fair amount of time since I rolled bad on Elegon for a while. Inscriptionists who are spell casters have it luckier as they can create a BoA staff. In my case, once I finish my staff, I can pass it around to others like my mage, warlock and priest. Lastly, for engineers, you can make the 476 engineering helmet.
At any rate, there’s quite a number of options for gearing towards LFR. I did a few Heroics but found a couple to have rude people. When I was with my friend’s guild, it wasn’t as bad but again it was a learning process. I suppose if I put more time commitment into this, I could start hitting Heroics on my druid. If that were the case, I would probably just selectively choose the Heroics to practice on them and get the gear I need.