Mildly overwhelmed

I just hit 90 and my ilvl is 432. I have 4000 JP left over from Cata and some 500 VP from dailies, scenarios, etc but I need some guidance in what to focus on for gearing up.

-What reps to grind first.
-What should I invest my time into. Should I become a PUGoholic, daily grinder, (what is most effective)
-Are there any "must have" pieces from VP/encounters/quests.


I should also state that my goal is to be geared to raid and looking decent to work my way into a starting raid spot. (LFR'ing in the meantime)

I don't mind any of the methods to getting geared. I am equally having fun doing dailies and mining nodes to make crazy stuff with engineering as I am trying to find the fastest and most stylish way to finish a dungeon.

Speed and being a badass is my goal.

Thanks for any help.

Oh boy!

First, the ilvl requirement breakdown:
- 435 for HC dungeons. (drops 463)
- 460 for LFR MSV. (drops 476)
- 470 for LFR HoF and ToES. (drops 483)
- 480 for LFR ToT. (drops 502)
- 480 for HC scenarios. (drops 516)

Try finding a Sha pug, and loot a quest item from him, which gives you 476 feet. Make sure you pick the boots with Haste, and NOT the avoidance boots. In general, you want to try and kill all four world bosses every week.

Run the scenario Arena of Annihilation for a guaranteed 450 weapon, which should help you to get to the 435 requirement for heroic dungeons (which are far from heroic). If that doesn't get you to 435 yet, either farm normal dungeons until you're 435 (just queue for them manually), or craft some stuff.

Engineers can craft a really nice trinket, called the Ghost Iron Dragonling. The trinket and the sockets together cost 12 cloth and 20 ghost iron bars, and net you 600 each of Hit, Expertise and Haste. It's only 450 ilvl, though.

Tailors can craft you a 450 ilvl back.

Blacksmiths can craft you 458 ilvl head/shoulders/chest/wrists/hands/waist/legs/feet for just a couple of ghost iron bars each. These are PvP items, but ignore that fact. The PvP Power and PvP Resilience on them are free extras, so they're just as good as 458 PvE items. Blacksmiths can also craft a 463 shield. They can also craft 496 chest and hands, which require Blood Spirits, but those shouldn't be too expensive anymore. They can craft 522 head and feet, but these should be quite pricy. Finally, they can craft a 502 weapon, but this one's extremely pricy.

Basically, once you have access to Heroic Dungeons, just literally spam them, and pick up any piece that has Strength on it. Doesn't really matter if it's with Hit, Expertise, Haste, Mastery, Dodge, Parry or Crit. You only really care about their ilvl. Heck, you can pick up some other items and keep them in you bag for the ilvl. Every time you loot a Strength item, after the dungeon, use your justice points to upgrade it from 463 to 471.

Once you're at 460, run LFR MSV (both of them) every week. After running both of them, return to spamming dungeons, until you have 470, at which point you can run LFR HoF+ToES (all three of them) every week. Continue to spam dungeons until every slot is at least 471, or you reached 480 ilvl.

Once you're at 480, make sure to run all 4 ToT LFRs every week (502 items), and the heroic scenario every day (chance on 516 items). Keep killing Nalak and Oondasta every week. Continue gearing up this way until you have a decent ilvl and then start looking for a raiding guild.



You can buy a 522 neck ( http://www.wowhead.com/item=95142 ) from the Shado Pan Assault at 1250 VP. At friendly, you can also buy a 522 trinket ( http://www.wowhead.com/item=94508 ) for 1750 VP. These are both very nice items. Do NOT buy the Tank looking items in their stead. To get to friendly, put Shado Pan Assault as your championing faction, and do the Setting the Trap quest once, and the following Weekly quest every week. You probably want to keep farming rep with them until you're exalted, which will be a little easier once you have access to ToT LFR.

As long as you're below 480 ilvl, you probably want to keep buying as many valor items from SPA as you can. Once you're at 480, focus on upgrading the 522 items to 530 first. If all 522 items are upgraded, buy one more SPA item, and then focus on upgrading that item, etc...

Greater charms cap at 20, and drop all over the place on the Isle of Thunder, especially in the solo treasure hunt scenario that you can access with the epic key. You want to use them first and foremost on Galleon and Sha, and on LFR after. Make sure the bosses have some upgrades for you, when you use them in LFR. You can run the same LFR more than once. You won't get free loot from the later runs, but you can still use your coin for extra chances.

You can trade 50 lesser charms to 3 elder charms once per week (the quest is directly under Shrine of Seven Stars/Two Moons). As long as you're not in a raiding guild, spend these on Nalak (until you have both tier pieces) and Oondasta every week. After that, look for the best 502 item in LFR. You might also save a few if you think you're close to joining a raiding guild, to spend your coins during the raid instead.

I probably forgot some tips and tricks left and right.

Also, next time, Link to your character!

A huge tip to save time with reps and potentially getting upgrades for gold (not to mention saving weeks of dailies) is to do the Warbringers / Warscouts for the 5.0.4 reps. Nine tokens should be enough to get you to at least revered and two of the factions have a quest reward at exalted.

These items are 489 ilvl, but they're a decent step up to filling in gaps.

Do the Barrens quests as soon as you can. The initial chain will give you boots, and the weekly can give you another item each week using the Mojo on the Latent gear.

For your JP convert them to honor in Stormwind/Orgrimmar. Then head up to the Pandaran PvP vendor and buy the 476 pieces with hit/expertise/haste.

If you haven't done it Klaxxi is about the only decent rep to grind from the launch rep at this point as exalted has 463 weapons if you're unlucky like I was and has a good 489 ring reward.

The 5.1 rep isn't worth it at this time, but if you like story it is worth going back to.

The 5.2 rep is good to get to honored. You can snag a 476 belt at honored which should take a few days and you'll get some VP from doing the solo scenarios. Then you can run around the island looking for a trove for a treasure room key.

The 5.3 quests as Kysen said are what you should be doing. Initial quest will give you some good boots. The Latent Pieces are random drops from mobs in the barrens or costs 200 resources to buy from the vendor. It'll make a random stat item tailored to your spec.

Thanks every one! I did not expect such detailed results but I definitely appreciate it.

I had already started doing the Barrens quests not knowing what I was doing.

Thank you again for all the above that definitely cleared things up!