As with any expansion, a lot of changes have rolled out in patch 7.0.3, the Legion expansion pre-patch.  For full comprehensive patch notes, you should check out the full patch notes here.  For the quick and dirty summary, here is what you need to know:

Classes
Note: There were also a number of class changes as part of the overhaul, but for those you’ll want to read the official patch notes to get all the details on your particular class. 

• Gnomes can now be hunters.
• The hunter Survival spec is now a melee spec
• The rogue Combat spec was removed and replaced with Outlaw, which is pirate-esque thematically.
• Demonology walocks lost metamorphism and have many new demon-centric spells.

Talents, Specs, & Glyphs

• Specs and talents have been totally reworked, and a lot of spells removed or limited to particular specs.
• Major glyphs were removed.
• Minor glyphs are now applied directly to the spell in your spellbook.
• You can now change your spec or individual talents on the fly.  Changing is free when in a rested area like a city, or can be done with a scribe-crafted reagent when out in the world or in an instance.

Buffs & Stats

• Raid buffs are gone.
• Multistrike was removed.  It was replaced with crit on existing gear.
• Spell power was removed.  It was replaced with intell on existing gear.
• Spirit and Bonus Armor were removed.  Both were replaced with versatility on existing gear.

Gear

• Legacy (pre-Warlords) tier set bonuses no longer work.
• Plate-wearers now start in plate from level 1 (previously mail until 40).
• Mail-wearers now start in mail from level 1 (previously leather until 40).
• Legendary ring chain is now unavailable to pick up fresh.

Transmog

• Transmog gear is now account-wide, with some restrictions.  See this video for details.
• You can now hide your shoulders!
• Hat, cloak, and shoulders are turned off at the transmog NPC rather than in the Interface settings.

Toys

• A ton of things were added the toybox. This includes many engineering items (teleport items, mailbox, blingtron, etc) but they still retain a profession restriction.

PvP

• Honor and Conquest points are gone.
• Gear is now purchased with Marks of Honor which are obtained in BGs, arenas, etc.  Old school PvPers might remember a similar type currency long ago!
• PvP gear is now normalised when in a PvP instance.

General Changes

• All regular mobs are shared tap with up to five players now.
• You now have 12 character slots per server, to make room for the incoming Demon Hunter class
• The gold cap has been increased to 9,999,999 gold.
• Garrison gold missions removed.

User Interface

• Character stat pane has been pared down and now only displays stats relevant to your character.
• New optional resource bar can be displayed under your character
• Max zoom script disabled :sadtrombone:

Now that you’re ready to jump back in the game – renew that sub, dust off your character, and prepare for Legion!

The Warlords of Draenor expansion is underway!

With Highmaul Looking for Raid wing 1 opening today, I thought I’d take a look at the various ways to gear up your characters for those of you looking to advance into raid content. Whether the goal is moving into Mythic, Heroic, Normal or even LFR, progressing your gear at the cap is something many players will want to do. There are a ton of ways to gain gear this expansion including many new ways just introduced through Garrisons.

Questing

Questing in high level areas (Nagrand and level 100 areas) often rewards higher item level blues. Remember that with the new random roll system, you may get lucky and have any of these roll to a superior reward of epic quality! Get started on your end game gearing by working through Nagrand‘s quests.

You can increase your odds for these upgrade rolls by building a War Mill (Horde) or Dwarven Bunker (Alliance) in your Garrison.

Rare Mobs

Draenor is filled to the brink with rare mobs, many of which have a very short respawn timer and have a chance to drop blue gear that might be useful to your character. The item level of the blue gear varies depending on the zone and the level of the mob, so for the best chance at useful upgrades for a level 100 you want to look at rares in Nagrand and level 100 questing areas, which can drop ilvl 615 and 620s.

However, you only have a chance to receive loot the first time you kill a mob on that character, so you basically only get one chance at the loot. If you’re unlucky and it doesn’t drop, camping the respawn for repeat kills will not help you.

Dungeons

One of the simplest avenues for upgrades is to jump into five man dungeons. Normal mode level 100 dungeons award ilvl 615 gear, which will at least prepare you for heroics. Heroic dungeons drop ilvl 630 gear which can roll “warforged” and upgrade to ilvl 636 if you’re lucky. Keep in mind that in order to do heroic dungeons, you will need ilvl 610 and must beat Proving Grounds at at least a Silver level in order to queue in your desire spec.

Challenge Modes

Challenge Modes are a particularly lucrative source of gear, and you only need to finish them – not earn a medal time.  For each Challenge Mode daily you complete, you will receive a Challenger’s Strongbox which contains a random ilvl 640 epic that is appropriate to your spec. The epic is a guaranteed drop in each box and has a chance to roll warforged for a higher item level and a chance at a gem socket or tertiary stat bonus.

Legendary Ring Chain

This expansion’s first legendary is a ring, which starts at ilvl 640 and upgrades multiple times. Everyone who desires to put in the time and effort can work on acquiring one of these rings. The first two steps of it are fairly easy to get, as they only require five man content:

The first ring is item level 640 and requires you to complete the Skyreach dungeon on either normal or heroic and loot an item from the final boss. The second ring is item level 680, and requires you to complete four specific heroics and gather about 5,000 Apexis Crystals.

(further iterations will require raiding)

PvP

If you like PvP, you can hop into Battlegrounds or Ashran to purchase ilvl 620 gear via Honor Points.  If you like more competitive PvP, you can get ilvl 660 via via Conquest Points which can be earned via daily randoms, ranked play, and various dailies/weeklies in Ashran and in Nagrand.

Crafted Gear

Many crafting professions this expansion can create ilvl 640 epic pieces with random stats. This includes Blacksmithing (plate armor), Leatherworking (mail & leather armor), Tailoring (cloaks & cloth armor), Inscription (weapons, off-hands, trinkets), and Jewelcrafting (rings & necks). Engineers can also make Goggles, but these can only be worn by other Engineers. You are limited to wearing three crafted pieces — combined across all profession crafting — at a time, but having all three can be a huge boost to your item level.

The recipes for these pieces are purchased through the crafter’s Garrision profession building, and each piece require a large amount of materials that are made via daily cooldowns and work orders, which slows the amount of time it takes to acquire enough materials to make these pieces. For this reason, crafted gear can be expensive on the auction house right now. However, since they are BoE, there is nothing to stop you from setting up a Garrison on an appropriate alt and making them for yourself (or begging a kindly guild mate)!

Each profession also makes items to reroll the stats on these items in the event they are not ideal. These pieces can also eventually be upgraded to higher item levels with more costly materials.

Garrison Mission Rewards

When your Garrison followers start reaching item level 615, you will begin to receive missions that reward ilvl 630 loot for successful completion. When your followers hit ilvl 630, they can start bringing you back raid-quality epics.

Garrison Salvage Yard

Build a Salvage Yard in your Garrison. When you’ve upgraded it to level 3, you will start receiving Big Crates of Salvage any time your followers successfully complete a level 100 mission. These boxes have a chance to contain random ilvl 665 epics. The more missions you successfully complete – the better your odds!

Apexis Purchase

You can also purchase ilvl 630 gear using Apexis Crystals. Some of these also require reputation with corresponding factions.

Keep in mind that Apexis Crystals also used to purchase Seals of Fate used in raid bonus rolls and are required for your Legendary Ring quest, so you may find that it is more useful to save these for other purchases.

Molten Core

Until January 5th only, as part of the 10th anniversary of WoW celebration, a scaled up version of Molten Core is available through the Looking through Raid finder. Completion awards a Corehound Mount and an ilvl 640 hat appropriate to your class/spec.

You do need ilvl 615 in order to queue for the special MC raid.

World Bosses

There are also several world bosses in Warlords that drop raid quality loot. Right now, you can look for Tarlna and Drov in Gorgrond, which have ilvl 650 loot tables and give you a chance at loot once a week.

Rukhmar will be added in the future, and will drop ilvl 665.

World Drops & Black Market Auction House

And, of course, if you’re insanely rich, you have a couple more options. You can keep an eye on the BMAH, which can have some raid quality gear available for purchase (this includes Mythic quality!) and there are also BoE world drop epics out in the world which may find their way to the regular auction house for very hefty sums.

Lower raids

And, of course, you can work your way up through raid tiers, starting with Highmaul LFR, through normal, heroic and then Mythic.

The first wing of Highmaul LFR opens today and is pretty quick and painless.

GOOD LUCK GUYS!

The new guild interface has provided a very convenient way to search for crafters among your guildmates. It allows you access everyone’s recipes, whether they are on or offline, and search them in the same way you would search your own professions window to see what you have in a particular level range or look for a specific item.

To do this, first open your guild interface window (default hotkey “J”) and click on the ‘roster’ tab at the bottom.   From there, go to the drop down menu at the top which is defaulted to ‘player status’.  On the drop down, select ‘professions.’

I highly recommend checking the box at the very bottom of the window that says “Show Offline Members.”  Although it is optional, I always use this box to increase my search results. Otherwise you may miss crafters who are online on an alt or someone who plays frequently but may not be on at this time.  I will be able to tell later when I look at the list of crafters if any are online in case I need the item in a hurry.  So unless you belong to a massive guild with hundreds of players online at a given time, always check ‘show offline.’

From the crafters menu, you can expand out a particular profession to see who knows the recipe by clicking the little plus sign in the corner by the profession on this tab.  You will be able to view all the people in the guild with that particular crafting profession (assuming you’ve checked to show ‘offline’).  It will show their crafting level on the right so you can tell who has the appropriate skill level for what you need.  You can click on any of their names — online or offline — to view their individual crafting list.   People are currently online will be lit up and you will be able to see their current location in case they are nearby.

The other option, and the one I prefer in most circumstances, is to search a crafting window that includes a conglomeration of everyone in the guild’s crafting professions, rather than looking up each person individually.  To do this, instead of clicking the plus sign by the profession name, click on ‘view all’ on the right side.  This brings up a window that includes every crafting recipe of that profession that is known by anyone in the guild.

Now, using the popout menu on the right, you can search the recipes for the particular one you are looking for.

Now you would interact with the Profession interface the same way you might search for a recipe if it was your own list.  If you’re not too familiar with using the search box, you should know that there are a lot of ways you can search for particular things:

• Attributes (“attack power”)
• Level Range (“80-85”)
• Name (“Sparkling Chalcedony” or just “Sparkling”)
• Material (“Primal Water”)

You can also use the filter on the right to narrow the list by subcategories.

When you’re all done finding the recipe you need crafted, select the item on the menu that you desire and then hit ‘view crafters’ on the bottom of the window.  A box will pop up to the right that lists everyone in the guild who has that particular recipe.  The people who are currently online will be lit up, but you will also see the offline players (assuming you selected that at the start) so you can tell if perhaps one of them is on an alt or someone you see frequently.

Then it’s just a matter of mailing them the materials or meeting them somewhere when you’re both available.

Happy crafting!