If you find a lot of PUGs as toxic as me, then you’ll know the gearing dilemma that comes with every expansion. I’ve been really lucky in Dragonflight in that the cross-faction / cross-realm play has allowed me to experience a lot of dungeon content with friends, but the Dungeon RNG has not been with me, and in trying to get ready for raids I was really struggling to get gear. And when we were told last week that the recommended ilevel for our raid group was going to be 365, I had a mild panic.
And whilst I did do a lot of Mythic 0 last week, my one chance at loot per week did not help me too much. However, I managed to get to item level 380 in just over a week, and wanted to share my strategy of how to do it if you want to minimise PUGs or group content, because whilst it might take you a little longer than me, what worked for me could work for you.
The Strategy
A lot of Blizzard systems will upgrade loot as you progress. You’ve probably seen World Quests rewards go up in ilevel as you do. I’m sure someone somewhere has an accurate description of how this works, but a small takeaway I got was that it depends on your ‘in bag’ item level.
I’m not sure if this only applies to equipable items or not, but even so, we’ve all had items drop that are equipable but not useful to the spec we are levelling (such as two one handed maces for a blood DK). Ordinarily you’d vendor or disenchant these items. I didn’t. I kept them in my bags (even the stuff I couldn’t equip) for as long as possible and only vendored when I had a similar item at a higher ilevel drop.
I also did things in a set order to maximise my chances of upgrades. This might all be superstition and hogwash (so take it with a pinch of salt), but this worked for me.
World Quests
I left equipment world quests for as long as possible. For me, they acted as a good gauge as to whether Blizzard systems now thought I’d progressed enough to get better rewards. Only when I knew I’d not get another chance to do them, did I do the quests.
Super Rares
There are a number of rares that reward upgrade gear up to item level 385, but it depends on your ilevel (so if you are 350, you might only get 356). However, it was super helpful and got me multiple solid upgrades daily.
You can find details of the rares and the loot they drop here:
https://www.wowhead.com/news/defeat-super-rares-each-day-for-up-to-385-item-level-gear-330298
Most of the rares are around the Obsidian Citadel, and whilst there is one in Thaldrassus and another in the Azure Span, I didn’t always do these. I did, however, try to do the ones around the Obsidian Citadel every day.
I began by flying around in circles waiting for them to spawn, but then I realised (a little later) you could find them in the group finder under custom and searching for the rare name. Now maybe my gear was already high enough for people to want to invite me, but I found I could get into a group super quickly, and didn’t need to interact with anyone.
A word of caution though. If it’s listed, the rare is already spawned and being fought, so be in the area before you queue as you might literally have seconds to get a hit in before it’s downed. Adding a AOE to your dragonflying toolbar is really helpful so you can just swoop down, press the ability and get a hit.
You can only get loot from each of these rares once a day.
They do also drop items you can’t equip but as I mentioned I kept these in my bags.
Fixed Rewards
Wrathion / Sabellion offer a 389 neck at ‘friend’ renown. It only costs 150 Dragon Isle supplies but it is a grind. They also offer a 398 cloak at ‘True Friend’.
Likewise the Cobalt Assembly offers rings (one for tank, DPS and healing) when you get to 4/5.
These are both HUGE grinds and a pain in the ass, but they make an equally huge difference. I could persuade friends to come do them for a time which made the grind a lot easier as we could chat on discord as we did it, but as soulless as it was attimes, it was worth it for the huge upgrades.
Just remember that when you hit level 2, there’s a skillmaster by the quartermaster who has an ability tree (a bit like the Island Expedition or Legion Hill skill tree) that allows you to get 30% more rep. Be sure to do this as the rep requirements go up with each level.
You can also combine the Wrathion grind (and I say Wrathion as he is the easier of the two dragon reps to grind) with the Super rares in the area. I killed that bloody spider in the basement what felt like a hundred times, but for 250 rep a time, I would have done a hundred more!
I made keys when I could and remembered to hand in rings. Because of the super rares, it made it a little more fun than the Cobalt Assembly but given this gives you two really good items, it was worth those times I questioned my sanity.
This also has more players than the cobalt assembly so it’s easier to go in there solo. Just be aware the majority of mobs are elites that can be hard for some classes to solo, and watch for mobs that are ‘tagged-out’ and grey as you’ll get no reward for your kills of these.
The factions also have rewards you can buy at certain levels of Renown. I think you can buy some 376 boots from the centaurs at Renown 11, and some gloves with the Dragonscale Expedition at 12. The best way I found to grind rep was to do the side quests I hadn’t done. I’d been pretty diligent when levelling but there were ones I’d somehow missed so I looked at my sojourner achievements (just press ‘y’ and search your achievements for ‘sojourner’), saw what was missing and then used WoWhead to find where those quest chains started
Weeklies
This is how I shot up something like 10 ilevels in a day, and a strategy that worked for me.
I left all the weeklies until Monday. I’d done my 3000 rep for the Accord weekly by Thursday but I did not turn it in. Instead, I waited until I had levelled up as much as I could via other means and then did the following:
- Handed in the Accord Quest
- Seige of Dragonbane Keep
- Trial of Elements
- Trial of the Flood
- Community Feast
- Grand Hunt
All of these seemed to have a better chance of rewarding me an upgrade so I waited until I had done everything else to try and push me further. Maybe I was lucky, but it worked, and friends kept asking me how I was getting gear so fast.
The world boss is now up so that’s an additional weekly to add to your list.
Result
Whereas a week before I was panicking about getting 365 ilevel in time for raid night, I ended up going into the vault of the incarnates, just shy of 380. And yes, I did get help and one of two pieces from M0, but the majority of the work came from targeting those fixed upgrades and daily super rares, whilst leaving my weeklies and world quests as late as possible.
Going Forward
Other than maybe getting a few more 382 (and then 385) pieces from super rares, I’m pretty much limited to Mythic Plus and raids now, so my progression will slow down. That’s fine as I’ve worked really hard this past week trying to be ready for raid and honestly, I was surprised how well my strategy worked.
Now I can focus on Mythic+ and doing all the other things I want to get done in Dragonflight.
