Gear is a fundamental part of all forms of PVP, especially now with the removal of all scaling. Here’s a breakdown of the new gearing system to help you get the best gear and learn the fastest way to gear up.
Step 1: Purchase 151 BoE items
How to jump into pvp quickly once you’ve hit level 60? First is to give yourself a head start by purchasing a gear from the auction house. No need to buy 190 BoEs in exchange for a big amount of gold. On the AH, there are eye level 151 BoE items for only a hundred gold each. Purchasing these are optional but recommended, for after leveling you will hit 151 eye level which is a great spot to be in immediately. If you lack a small amount of gold or you don’t see a need for a head start and just jump into pvp, you can skip this step and jump straight into farming honor.
Step 2: Honor Farm
Whether you are at 151 eye level or not, you can jump straight into the honor farm wherein the bulk of the gearing process takes place. The fastest and easiest way to do so is to play BGs, with the fastest honor doing random BGs preferably inside of a pre-made. If you are in the horde side, queues are longer so you can talk to Sergeant Wilson to enter mercenary mode allowing you to queue as if you are an alliance thus reducing your queues substantially.
There is a quest you can pick up at the honor vendor called observing battle which will give you a little extra honor. Reason behind doing battlegrounds is the purchasable honor gear, this starts at eye level 158 and can be upgraded seven times capped behind renown. The highest eye level you can get to is 171 due to the renown requirement. To upgrade a pvp item, you can talk to the facilitator of conflicts next to the honor vendor in Oribos. Each upgrade costs a predetermined amount of honor. Alternatively, you can receive the same gear from dungeons. Normal dungeons reward 158 gear and heroics reward 171. It is recommended though to skip dungeons and heroics. Also, once a week, you can kill one of the four world bosses which rewards 207 eye level gear. There is also wrath of the jailer event inside the mod, where you can clear once a week for a chance at eye level 183.
Step 3: Mythic Dungeons
This can be completed easily with 150 eye level. Otherwise, most PUGs are looking for at least 165 eye level which you can get from step two. Step three is doing mythic zeroes. There are 8 mythic zero dungeons of which each boss has a chance at dropping you 184 eye level gear. This is the highest level you can get and also the fastest way to get gear excluding BoEs. It will be this way until the arena season starts on December 8, 2020 for NA and December 9, 2020 for EU.
As with any PVE step in this guide, you must know that this is optional. It will give you gear faster but if you prefer to sit in battlegrounds, then there should be no problem. This is because if you have a full set of eye level 171 gear, you can upgrade most of your pieces to eye level 184 if you have saved up 15k honor on the day the season begins. Thanks to the renowned cap being raised to level 9, giving you the ability to upgrade your honor gear two more times. Meaning, you can jump into rated pvp with equal gear to anybody who’s done mythic zeroes. For the tryhards, if you want the best gear ready for the season start and as fast as possible, it is recommended to complete mythic zeros and then fill the gaps with honor gear. Doing the dungeons first will allow you to avoid any duplicate items. Note that you want to make sure you have a medallion and emblem ready to go if you have gone with a more pve focused gearing route.
Step 4: High item level gear
At this point, if you only want to play pvp then you can just stick to that. If you are at least seven weeks into expansion, with a renowned level of 22 and above, you can upgrade your honor gear to rank seven which ends up at 194 eye level (just a little lower than a heroic raider). With the release of the arena season, we will be able to gain conquest which is used to purchase conquest gear. As there was no rated pvp enabled on the beta, we can only speculate to work with here but we do know that you will get a set conquest cap each week. You can use this conquest to buy unrated gear. Amount of conquest you can get on a weekly basis is still unconfirmed. However, unrated gear begins at 200 eye level and to upgrade this gear, you need to reach certain rating thresholds.
With the theory going from previous seasons, we can assume that the conquest gears’ eye level will look something like:
- You will be able to instantly upgrade to eye level 213 in the same week the arena is released if you reach the rating requirement. A week after, once mythic castle Nathria is released, you can upgrade your conquest pieces to that of a mythic raid drop if you reach the rating requirement.
If you are a tryhard and want to optimize your gearing progression in the fastest way possible, you can still gain an edge from venturing into pve. This is because you will be limited on how many conquest items you can buy per per week doing solely pvp. You can complete the heroic and normal castle Nathria raid with the latter rewarding eye level 200 gear equal to that of an unrated conquest piece heroic rewarding 213 equal to what we predict of the rival. Alternatively, mythic plus will provide means to get gear although much weaker than previous expansions. You can still get to 210 eye level gear from mythic 15s but slower than that of heroic Nathria. If you are able to venture into mythic raiding with a guild this can be a great way to get some 226 eye level pieces fast on the 15th or 16th of December for your respective regions. Note that the final two bosses dropped the highest eye level pieces in the game at 233. If you can get your hands on these, then they will be an upgrade due to the pure main stat. This isn’t something to make or break your rating goals, these are just helpful information to get the best possible gear available in the fastest way. If you want to stick to purely pvp, you will eventually be on an equal footing gear-wise with players doing a mixture of both pve and pvp although they will have a small advantage early on.
NEW systems introduced
- To obtain some legendary patterns for your chosen class you could still be forced to enter either into dungeons or raids to pick up the pattern. And the same goes for conduits, although there are a select few from the conquest vendor, certain conduits do come from either the raid or dungeons.
- One of the most important systems to improve your gear is the great vault. A great vault is similar to that of a mythic plus or pvp weekly caches in BFA. This is an improved version, you can have a selection of up to nine pieces of gear to choose from which you can unlock by either defeating:
- castle Nathria bosses which reward items based on the raid difficulty
- mythic dungeons which reward items based on the dungeon difficulty completed and pvp gear which again skills with your highest rated bracket for that week
If your aim is to maximize your gear early on, you should look to either push your rating in pvp, complete a high mythic dungeon or kill three bosses on either heroic or mythic difficulty. Although there is a lot of pve involved in this guide, eventually the best in slot gear will be from pvp. If you are not the 0.1 percent pushing for the maximum gear as soon as possible to gain as much of an advantage as you possibly can it really does not matter.
Video chapters:
0:00 – Intro
1:01 – Step 1: Purchase 151 BoE items
1:32 – Step 2: Honor farm
3:26 – Step 3: Mythic dungeons
5:00 – Step 4: High item level gear
8:02 – Miscellaneous