An encouragement to anyone out there with alts you’re grinding to 80, wondering if you’ll bother gearing up at top level: it really is easy these days.
With Analogue and Invariant things were hard. I had a list of BiS from each dungeon, then each heroic dungeon, then Analogue ventured into Naxx or OS once in a blue moon and sometimes got a drop. Analogue was pretty well geared up when Triumph badge gear became readily available; it took her very little time to fill the last few slots and since then she’s slowly but steadily been adding gear improvements from Frost badges, ICC drops, whatever happens her way.
Invariant had about half Triumph gear, half lesser, when I got into a GDKP TOC 25 man run with 8k gold and walked out dripping with epics. For whatever reason, everything that dropped was useful to a mage and nobody else was bidding hardly at all. I got literally a half dozen drops plus a pattern for Bejeweled Wizard Bracers that I used as a license to print money for a while.
So then I get little Divergent up to 80, buy her the made chestpiece and start tanking heroics. Wow. She got drops in the top end heroics pretty fast. I put her away for about two weeks and then the last two days got her out again. Quick rundown:
Patch 3.3.3 dropped, and on our server at least crafting mats dropped too. I picked up the stuff and had the Saronite Swordbreaker wrists (plate tank 245 wrists) made, and bought a Titanium Earthguard Chain for a lot cheaper than I’ve seen it before (actually below the cost of the dragon’s eyes, someone was selling low). I then ran normal HoR once and the shield dropped. Yay! Don’t tell some of the alt tanks in my guild who have been grinding that place for weeks only to lose roles to off-specced dps. And I had enough Triumph badges to buy her pants. So that was four upgrades on Wednesday night.
Thursday we did FoS and PoS on heroic. Got a pair of boots out of FoS, closing out one of my weak spots, Ick’s Rotting Thumb trinket, and finally a weapon to take the place of the Lucky Old Sun. That thing was really ugly and I’m glad to drop it. Spent a few hundred gold on enhancements and bam, all of a sudden she could tank raids. Not ICC, but the rest, sure. I’m hoping to get her into the weekly raid as a tank this week, our server has Patchwerk and it should be easy mode.
So yeah, between badges, made gear, and the new top end heroics, gearing up is easy. If you’re not a tank, buy one for fast queue times and go crazy.
