Originally Posted by
Idletime
I'm fairly certain ilvl will be at least 480 for the new LFR. Hitting 480 is easily done, especially if you are a casual player that engages in the various dailies and only LFR. You get 489 for basic rep rewards and the new KW dailies are throwing 496 at you. My warrior alt has done LFR a whopping 3 times (MSV), 2 times (HoF) and 4 times in TES and is already sporting 481 and hasn't hit Honored with Dominance yet. My rogue is at 482 with 6 weeks LFR, and my paladin at 479 with 5 weeks. I waited a little while before starting LFR, fearing what I heard that drops were rare in LFR and people never get gear and groups were many times horrible - of course I found out that most people were simply telling fibs, except that last part... players are still pretty bad.
In all honesty, given the level of player aptitude I've seen in TES on many fights, I think a good number of runs should be a prerequisite before allowing people to just herp the next tier of content, and this comes from having to run previous tiers waiting on drops. 472 was required for HoF/TES, so it's not unreasonable to ask casual players to gear up a bit more. Especially since there's so many easy ways to retain the gear now; Reps, LFR, Crafted pieces, BMAH, and even PvP T1 gear.