PATCH 11.2 AND SEASON 3 NOW LIVE, CHANGES TO BANK, BIS RINGS, ETC.

TIMEWALKING IN 11.1.7

The Changes Made

For more detailed information, please refer to the spreadsheet kindly put together by Vaesin here. The sheet largely pertains to fury warriors but the principles discussed below are on display, and could be applied to other levels and classes.

Timewalking dungeons now feature a dynamic scaling feature where enemy damage and HP has a linear, positive correlation with your primary stat. In other words, more primary stat = harder dungeon. If you have trinkets or other enchantments that give a proc of primary stat, that will also influence enemy damage and HP. It is unknown if that is intentional or not. The new "meta" (for those who only care about doing Timewalking) is to reduce the amount of primary stat as much as possible (ex. 11 Fury goal is ~57 strength but will vary for other classes), while increasing your amount of secondaries. As a note, you don't HAVE to gear like this, it's only if you are driven to finish dungeons as fast as possible.

How should I gear, then?

You have three prevailing options, in order of lowest effort to highest effort. These also might require more time or gold spent.

🦥MINIMAL EFFORT

Timewarped gear in all slots EXCEPT socketed neck and rings.
Use Shadowlands gems in neck/ring gem socket spots.
Basically, what you might already be using.
Lower primary stat compared to using primary stat gems in TBC/WOTLK socket gear, more armor and stamina.
Still not as low as you can go.

💪AVERAGE EFFORT

TBC/WOTLK socketed gear, socketed neck and ring, timewarped weapon.
SL gems AND instead of primary stat gems, use secondary stat gems instead.
You might have a set of this already, would either need to refarm pieces or replace existing gems.
Even lower primary stat compared to Timewarped gear, still not lowest.

🤓HIGH EFFORT

TBC/WOTLK socketed gear of the wrong primary stat, socketed neck and ring.
Timewarped weapon of wrong primary stat.
SL gems AND instead of primary stat gems, use secondary stat gems instead.
Will require a lot of either legacy loot or trading, and takes up more inventory space.
You can also get wrong primary stat timewarped gear traded from other classes.

High Effort Gearing

Most people are going to want to make more trouble for themselves than needed, and if that's you, keep reading to learn more about the minmaxy method of TW gearing.

What classes are optimal with High Effort gearing?

Assuming you take the high effort road, this of course impacts what classes are "optimal" for fast clearing and beating the system. You can ignore the below list if you just plan to do minimal or average effort routes.

MOST OPTIMAL

Strength (Plate) Users ⚔️🔆💀
- Since Plate wearers can wear any gear type, they can wear whatever they farm.
- Warriors in particular have the most diversity to what weapons they can use. Agility staves seem to be the best option.
Melee Agility Specs 😈🐻🔪
- Agility enjoyers can wear cloth to avoid gaining agility.
- This does mean they can only wear cloth, as mail and leather gear usually has agility as well.
- They can use strength or intellect timewarped weapons.

LESS OPTIMAL

Evokers 🐉
- Evokers have armor specialty, which means they would need to wear agility-only leather gear to minimize intellect.
- They're still overpowered, which makes up for the difficulty in gearing.
Intellect Non-Cloth Specs 🐕‍🦺🐈
- Intellect users that don't wear cloth can also wear agility-only gear - which are usually hard to come by and inferior.
- Can use str/agil timewarped weapons.
Ranged-weapon Hunters 🔫
- No timewarped non-agil bows/guns, non-agil bows/guns are usually bad.

LEAST OPTIMAL

Cloth-only wearers 🧙🙏🦹
- Cloth wearers can only wear cloth, which means their only option is cloth without intellect.
- Most cloth has intellect.
- Their option is Vanilla BOEs without intellect or wearing really low ilvl gear.
- Warlocks have armor specialty due to an oversight, which means they would want to wear at least one cosmetic piece.
- If you're trying to minmax timewalking to this degree, the cloth wearers are not suggested for this brand of degeneracy.

Any other suggestions regarding this route?

I have not fully tested this build, but at level 13, you can purchase ilvl55 Uncommon BOEs from the Auction House. These are only slightly lower stats than the gear looted in Timewalking by a level 13. Hypothetically then, the absolutely easiest way to gear for min-max Timewalking would be to use socketed ilvl55 Uncommon BOE gear of the wrong primary-stat on a level 13 twink. You would still want to use Timewarped weapons, and these pieces would need to be either farmed on level 17 toons or purchased from the Auction House, but this has potential to reduce much of the gear time.