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ARMOR

GETTING STARTER GEAR, PRE-DUNGEON FARMING

HEIRLOOMS

Heirlooms are usually the most basic gear you can get, outside of whatever you get from a starter zone. These can be purchased from various vendors (guild vendors for some, a dedicated heirloom vendor for others, Darkmoon Faire, etc.) and provide little more than a slot filled. They used to be far more powerful, but now their most useful features all require leveling up. On the bright side, buying enough heirlooms will grant you the Chauffeured Mekgineer's Chopper - which can be ridden by level 1 toons. This can help speed your first ten levels along.

DROPS FROM RARES AND TREASURES

Around the game world, there are rare mobs to kill and treasures to collect with gear as drops. While special pieces are noted throughout the guide, most of them are unremarkable. Despite this, they make good pieces to pick up at the start of your journey. You can find a list of rares that drop gear here, and you can find a list of treasure objects here. Good zones to check out are Frostfire Ridge, Shadowmoon Valley, Tiragarde Sound, Zuldazar, the base Legion zones, the base Shadowlands zones, and the base Dragon Isle zones if Adventure Mode is active.

PANDARIA VENDOR GREENS

If you have some gold to spare, go to Trader Jambeezi or Claretta, both located in Pandaria. These two vendors sell Uncommon gear at item level 25. There's nothing special about this gear, but are about the same stats as most Rare and Epic gear (slightly lower for level 11 toons), and may have more stats than your heirlooms. If you want to have a quick start to your adventure, these are a solid option. If you take this option, make sure you also look at all classes gear for more trinket options.

TIMEWALKING VENDOR GEAR

During Classic, Battle for Azeroth, and Legion Timewalking, there are vendors that sell gear usable at low levels, purchased with Timewalking badges. These badges can either be transferred over using warbound currency or earned via doing Timewalking content. This gear is slightly lower item level than what you actually get in Timewalking dungeons, but they make good filler pieces until you get something with more stats. At this moment in time, the other vendors do not show usable gear to lower level characters.

GENERAL GEAR ITEM LEVELS

These are the expected item levels for drops at low levels. They may vary depending on where it's obtained (Dragonflight dungeon gear is generally lower for some reason), but the stat differences at these levels between item levels is often incredibly minor or nonexistent. Exceptions will be noted in their respective sections. You can use the item level sliders on Wowhead if you are playing other levels by adding ?bonus=X to the url of your desired item.

RARITY OF ITEMS

Uncommon*

Rare

Epic

Timewarped

ILVL AT LV10

ILVL AT LV11

ILVL AT LV12

ILVL AT LV13

BONUS MODIFIER

?bonus=6709

?bonus=6710

?bonus=6712

N/A (thx Wowhead)

*This row is related to Uncommon quest rewards. Uncommon gear from the mentioned Pandaria vendor is ilvl 25 regardless of level.

Additionally, BOEs have their own scaling rules. Example: Uncommon BOEs at level 10 are weird - if looted from a lv10 mob, the item level of the gear is ilvl5. If looted on a higher level mob or are a quest reward, they are ilvl25. Epic and rare BOEs have their own weird scaling and level requirements on top of that, and this ironically makes epic BOEs often worse to use than their uncommon counterparts.

WAYS TO FARM GEAR IN DUNGEONS

SOLOING CONTENT

The most straightforward way to farm gear in dungeons is to walk/queue into dungeons by yourself. This can be done without assistance from another account or person, but this often doesn't work in one's favor due to how loot works: the chance for loot to drop is split across five players, even if there's only one person. This means that you can more often than not get no loot from your desired boss if you solo on a walk in, and that other people can get loot you can't use if you queue. Also, if you are aiming to farm loot outside of your drop table...you can't, because you are restricted to your loot table.

PROS 👍➕

Can do it by yourself, at your own pace.
No need for terms, coordination, socializing.

CONS 👎❌

Low chance to actually get what you need.
Takes far longer, especially for fresh toons who might struggle to clear packs.

TWINK TEAMWORK

The next route is to run with other toons of the same or lower level, and have them trade you targeted drops. This scales in effectiveness with the more toons in your party with the desired loot table you want to pull from, which can make gearing significantly faster. However, if you are above level 10, you can only trade away gear considered side-grades or down-grades. This means that your party members must also be sufficiently geared or in at least higher item level pieces. On top of that, this can't be used by Free to Play twinks, and requires either interacting with others or owning multiple paid accounts.

PROS 👍➕

Fastest for farming targeted pieces
Best for small loot tables.

CONS 👎❌

Can run into issues with trading "upgrades".
Requires 2-4 other paid-account toons to be involved with the loot table you need.

LEGACY LOOT

Finally, there is Legacy Loot. This is enabled by having a toon who is 11+ levels higher than the maximum level requirement of the dungeon walk in with you. This toon can either walk out or wait at the entrance. It can also help clear trash, but will need to log off before bosses. Legacy Loot gives 100% chance to loot two pieces of gear from the entire loot table. This is both a blessing and a curse, as you run the risk of looting things you absolutely do not need for attempts on end. Fortunately, you only need one high level toon to help you, and the high level's armor type is completely irrelevant to what loot you get.

PROS 👍➕

Only requires one additional toon.
Best for large loot tables.

CONS 👎❌

Doesn't work for timewalking dungeons.
Needs a high level who can leave or log off when needed, or else they'll get loot too.

RESETTING INSTANCES WITHOUT LEAVING

Generally, to reset an instance, you simply walk out and hit "Reset Instances". However, what if it was an dungeon you don't want to leave? What if you want to reappear at a certain spot, to skip certain bosses? Well, fortunately it's simple....

RESETTING TO BEGINNING OF AN INSTANCE

Have two members of your party: the farmer toon, and a helper toon. The helper toon can be a high level if you want to farm with legacy loot.
Have the farmer toon clear the instance. It's easier if the helper can wait outside the instance, but if they are going to trade gear to the farmer, they can follow along and also help gear.
Once the instance is cleared to the desired point, make the helper the party lead. The farmer needs to log off.
While outside the instance, the helper needs to reset the instance. After it is reset, the farmer will log back in.
The farmer should now be in a fresh instance.
If you want the helper inside the instance, make the farmer party lead. Then, the helper can just walk in. This won't work for instances you can't normally walk into.

RESETTING TO A SPECIFIC POINT IN AN INSTANCE

Follow Step 1 and Step 2 of the left-hand explanation.
Before logging off, the farmer needs to use a toy that will stun them. Winter Veil Disguise Kit is the best for this, but Stasis Sand also works.
Have the farmer log off while stunned, with the helper as pary lead.
While outside the instance, the helper needs to reset the instance. After it is reset, the farmer will log back in.
The farmer should now be in a fresh instance, except now positioned exactly where they want to be instead of at the beginning.

This works because you can't move when you're stunned (obviously), and thus when the instance tries to move you to the beginning, it is unable to move your character. This is good if you are looking to skip roleplay or trash before specific bosses (i.e. if you're only farming Kul'tharok).

HITTING THE HOURLY INSTANCE LOCKOUT

If you hit the instance lockout, it might say "World Server Down" and prevent your re-login. If this happens, just wait for the hourly lockout to end and do something else on a different toon. It may also just port you to your hearthstone location instead, so be wary about your lockouts.

THE ARMOR TYPES

Why isn't there a specific list of what gear I should get for [insert class/spec here]?

Short answer is there's no gear simulation for level 10+ so there's no way to determine a "true BIS" for each of the 39 specs.

Long answer is, when people are provided a list of things without explanation on why they're good, they won't understand why they're getting the pieces they're getting, or how to get them, or what to do if the piece is no longer viable or obtainable. Sometimes what is the true absolute best option is not an option that works for most people. Maybe it's hard to obtain solo or otherwise, or maybe it requires an exploit that most people won't want to do. Would an alternative need to be provided? How many alternatives are necessary? The fact that we can't test a surefire list of options in Simulationcraft doesn't help either - attempting to run a level 10 through those programs does not give an accurate result since the majority of our gear/enchant options aren't stored in the data, and since we're not max level, our rotation is obviously different from an 80's.

Additionally, the meta changes rather rapidly - the gear you would use for Timewalking could be very different from the one for normal content, and if gearing strategy changes, all of those lists would need to be changed. This website is managed by a single person, and there would be a lot of repetition across said lists - which means repetitive fixes. Should there be gear lists for classes bad for twinking, or only the popular ones? It can be inconvenient to reference information mentioned on other pages (like stat priorities) and use that knowledge to make decisions for yourself on what gems and armor to use, but it's good to understand why you're doing something before you do it.

By the way, please don't rely on BinkyGPT to summarize the information on this page for you. The human brain is one of the most complex structures in the known universe. You should exercise it, instead of relying on artificial intelligence (and hoping it gives you correct information). I think Google prevents this page from being directly readable by anything but Gemini anyways...

GO TO PLATE ARMOR

GO TO MAIL ARMOR

GO TO LEATHER ARMOR

GO TO CLOTH ARMOR

Since we are working with low levels, the armor type bonus does not apply to gearing for most classes. This means that some of the suggestions given are for different armor types than what your class normally wears. This does change what can be transmogrified though, so take note if you have a dream transmog in mind. These suggestions come accompanied with hyperlinks, so please click on the name of the item if you want to know more.

(If you're curious, gear specialization bonuses only matters at low level for Evokers...and Warlocks due to an oversight.)

If a suggestion comes accompanied with the comment "Additional Socket", it means that the ideal form of that item is one that has dropped with an additional socket. These pieces do not normally come with that extra socket, so it's a boon when it does.

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