How long does it take to get on viable level of gear for a new player/alt?

[Nikeyla]

For new players, the essence grind is so horribly offputting that I wouldn't recommend that anyone join the game.

I thought that I could just have some chill fun before the new expansion and see what improved since the beginning of BFA, which I kinda disliked, but it looks like it wasnt the best idea I had recently, lol. It looks like instead of an improvement, BFA turned into some sort of meme expansion.

[Garymorilix]

Heavily depends on what role and class/spec you play.

Some classes need a variety of essences to match any given content, some only need one page.

If you could provide this info it's be easier for us to tell you an exact date. Without it not so much.
This could also help you avoid doing dailies you don't actually need cuz the essence sucks for your char.

[Gasparde]

Ok, thanks for the info. As I said already, I dont think the ilvl is too hard to get. Im more concerned about the cloak and specific corruption farm, but I guess there is no easy way around this...

My cloak is also at r15 with 62 Corruption Resistance now (catching up is somewhat easier with Visions for Echoes now), luckily we had Twilight Dev 2 this week so at least I got my m+ Corruptions covered (roughly 25k echoes in 2 weeks). Haste/Crit stuff will come soon, so not too worried about that.

Like, it's certainly a lot harder if you're trying to do all of this as a Mage who's trying to force Fire with 20 Masterful Corruptions... but for everyone else about a month to get to ~465 with pretty much all relevant Essences seems about right. Corruptions will also be less of a pain going forward since getting about 10k Echoes per week isn't too hard - so just save up Echoes and spam your gear with all the stat Corruptions at one point and you'll be good.

[Pandragon]

Ok, thanks for the info. As I said already, I dont think the ilvl is too hard to get. Im more concerned about the cloak and specific corruption farm, but I guess there is no easy way around this...

Depending how lucky you are, getting the cloak and stuff is easier than ilvl. My alt Rogue still isn't 470(around 465), and I've been playing him all expansion, because I can't get invited to any M+, any heroic raids I pug die to Wrathion and I can't get him invited to any Mythic raids even though I'm 9/12 on my main.

[Laqweeta]

Hello, I recently resubbed after like almost 2y break. My problem is the insane grind and crazy difference between available gear and the end game gear of ppl I meet. I'd like to know how long it realistically takes to get on viable level of gear to be at least somewhat competitive in the end game (higher m+, raids, pvp).

Right now even if I get m+ or hc raid gear, I can still do like 50% of other ppl's dmg or healing. All I can do after getting home from work are daily quests as my second job, because I cant do anything in pvp against the one shots without versa gear, corrupts, essences. I feel like an anchor my team has to carry when I join m+. Raiding isnt exactly fun when I perform at 50% of others of the same ilvl. Even if I would somehow manage to get all the gear,I still cant use it because I need to farm enough dailies to upgrade my cloak. And obviously I cant do out of instance content because this one is gated by weeks of more daily quests to get reps for flying.
As you probably noticed, I dont enjoy this at all. All of this feels so bad it makes me want to unsub instantly, so Im asking, how long does this garbo state last before I start feeling like my character is somewhat viable? I appreciate any answers!

If you're a healer, very fast. I went from 370 to 455 in less than a week. I'm now just a bit under 2k io. As a DPS, It's going to be slow. There's a lot of geared DPS out there with good ios, people want high ilvl for even a +2.

The neck is going to level extremely fast. If you're lucky and get 2 or 3 3k AP emissaries, well that's already 9 levels. Essence grind is gonna suck, I'm not gonna lie.

[Nikeyla]

If you're a healer, very fast. I went from 370 to 455 in less than a week. I'm now just a bit under 2k io. As a DPS, It's going to be slow. There's a lot of geared DPS out there with good ios, people want high ilvl for even a +2.

The neck is going to level extremely fast. If you're lucky and get 2 or 3 3k AP emissaries, well that's already 9 levels. Essence grind is gonna suck, I'm not gonna lie.

I started as a dps and gave up on that very fast. It was exactly as you say. Everybody has 460+, so why would they take somebody with 0 io and average gear, right? So I switched to hpala and the invites were kinda fast. However it sux for dailies, which is like half of my gameplay atm, since i have no reps, essences, flying etc. I cant say I enjoy pala too much, but I have no choice at this point, lol. Half of the reps done, gear starting to be okayish except the corruptions, essences, cloak and completely not viable for pvp unless I get four times my current versa+ through corruptions and cloak to survive random one shots.

[Tyris Flare]

So laughably untrue its hilarious. 1 month max to be fully geared unless your bad. 1 month doing minimum echoes shit is enough for 8x stat inc

Op your going to get alot of WAH GAME TO GRINDY REEEE replies. Its really not bad. If you have played wow at all in the past 15 years is not much grinding.

Except the cloak catchup is time-gated (since you have to kill Nzoth for the actual catch-up core) and it will literally take you months to get caught up on corruption resist. In the near future it will literally be impossible to catch-up before the SL pre-patch.

If you could just grind vision for extra cores like everything else then I would mostly agree with you.

[Gasparde]

Except the cloak catchup is time-gated (since you have to kill Nzoth for the actual catch-up core) and it will literally take you months to get caught up on corruption resist. In the near future it will literally be impossible to catch-up before the SL pre-patch.

If you could just grind vision for extra cores like everything else then I would mostly agree with you.

Getting your cloak to 15 is gonna take you like 2-3 weeks. At that point you'll be 56 vs people like 86.
That's 1, maybe 2 Corruptions difference, shrinking every week. No one's gonna not take you to a m+10 because of that.

[RobertMugabe]

So laughably untrue its hilarious. 1 month max to be fully geared unless your bad. 1 month doing minimum echoes shit is enough for 8x stat inc

Op your going to get alot of WAH GAME TO GRINDY REEEE replies. Its really not bad. If you have played wow at all in the past 15 years is not much grinding.

It's so grindy even if you're just playing 1 character. I've been playing this game since vanilla.

Can't remember if the game was ever this tedious and boring...

[czarek]

Like 1-3 days depends on drop luck tbh and no need to make cloak +15 imo.

[Laqweeta]

I started as a dps and gave up on that very fast. It was exactly as you say. Everybody has 460+, so why would they take somebody with 0 io and average gear, right? So I switched to hpala and the invites were kinda fast. However it sux for dailies, which is like half of my gameplay atm, since i have no reps, essences, flying etc. I cant say I enjoy pala too much, but I have no choice at this point, lol. Half of the reps done, gear starting to be okayish except the corruptions, essences, cloak and completely not viable for pvp unless I get four times my current versa+ through corruptions and cloak to survive random one shots.

Yeah It's a nightmare :/. The only thing I would suggest is to roll a class that has a heal/dps spec. Get that io on healer, then switch to DPS. Once you get some kind of a decent score though invites should happen a lot more frequently

[ceall]

Since you've been away for 2 years, which was when legion was still current, I would recommend you to NOT trying to be competitive this expansion anymore. Getting your essences for the first time ever is way to time consuming. Rather focus on getting a little headstart for shadowlands.

My advice would be to get carried through a +15 during 2-3 different IDs as well as getting carried through heroic nyalotha twice.
By then your ilvl should be around 460+. Then repeat this for all the characters you're interested in playing come shadowlands. It will give you an easier time leveling through shadowlands content, which is all you can really do.


Personal experience: it took me 2-3 weeks to reach 470 and get all the essences I need for my shadow priest. However, I already had a character with all rank 3 essences unlocked, so I could easily get 2-3 essences per week with the help of echos.
And even with that itemlevel and all the bis essences, I still do comparatively low dps (70k simmed compared to the 105k simmed on my main which is only 5 ilvl above that alt).
I do not know if you still need to have the essences unlocked on another char to get them.

[Tyris Flare]

Getting your cloak to 15 is gonna take you like 2-3 weeks. At that point you'll be 56 vs people like 86.
That's 1, maybe 2 Corruptions difference, shrinking every week. No one's gonna not take you to a m+10 because of that.

The original quote was in regards to topping meters, aka getting high parses. This will be almost impossible without a fully caught-up cloak and gem slots in every item, which is a herculean grind unless you get really lucky (like 2 hours in visions per socket minimum, realistically more).

But yeah, obviously this doesn't matter in 10s or 15s or even most mythic bosses. The bar for beating a lot of that stuff right now is really low. However, the bar for being a top 5% player (or whatever) is absolutely not a "one month" catch-up. It's actually probably longer than ever, given the necessity of perfect corruption/caught-upcloak/all gem slots.

[ThrashMetalFtw]

Getting the iLvl, neck and essences can be done relatively quickly. Couple of weeks to be up there. Ofc, if you don't have a Mythic guild to boost you, you will be behind on iLvl aswell because the only 360+ gear you have access to, is from weekly M+ cache, weekly 5/4 Chest Vision runs and crafted gear.

However, the real bottleneck atm, is Corruptions. Anybody who has played for the entire patch, will be extremely far ahead in this department. They did recently add a vendor for this, but the Corruptions are on a long rotation, and the currency to buy them are also semi time-gated, because the reward/time invested ratio drops extreeeemely low once you have finished your weekly "mandatory" grind for them.


For reference, I came back to the game 2 weeks ago. Was at 440 iLvl (quit raiding on Za'Qul Mythic progress in EP), now 462 after doing all my weekly "mandatory" stuff. Nya'Lotha HC clear twice, 5/4 Mask Visions, Crafted gear, M+ cache once and some more M+, but not much beyond that. My iLvl would still be exactly the same if I played 24/7, but I would have had access to some better corruptions if went hard on the M+ grind. Technically I could have done PvP aswell, but fuck that.

[Daedius]

All my characters are Horde, save for one alt Alliance Mage [for collecting stuff on Alliance side] that I recently hit 120 with. It took only two weeks from hitting 120 to already be 463.

[agentsi]

So laughably untrue its hilarious. 1 month max to be fully geared unless your bad. 1 month doing minimum echoes shit is enough for 8x stat inc

Op your going to get alot of WAH GAME TO GRINDY REEEE replies. Its really not bad. If you have played wow at all in the past 15 years is not much grinding.

He is correct, 100%. You grinding for a month, while others have grinded for 5 months, you can't really catch up. The neck goes on forever. So even if you get neck to 90, most of those folks are 95-100ish. Not to mention if you're a dps, and you need very SPECIFIC corruption pieces, if the vendor doesn't have them for a month they won't be around. And to top it off, its going to take 3-4 weeks just to get your cloak to 15. While others have 80 max corruption resist at the moment, that person will still be stuck at 50. Allowing other players to still have better dps options available to them.

I get it if you want to be a cheeky jerk, but at least give the person correction information. Instead of being rude and lying to them.

[Tojara]

Just do M+ as often as you can when you have groups available. Otherwise finish your assaults, grab the essences you need and proceed to work on cloak upgrades.

Essences might suck if you just can't buy them off the vendor, but there are plenty that are easily accessible with minimal time investment. If it's a time allocation problem, just go for the essences that produce the most bang for your buck, even if that means taking a second or third string essence. Realistically, most of your power is going to be tied to corruption and gear, so doing activities that provide both of those things (arena, visions, M+) is the best use of your time. Again, if you find yourself in a situation where you don't have a group available, just do vast amount of content that can augment your character by yourself.

This becomes magnitudes harder if you come back and have to pug your way through keys and/or raiding. Some people can hit 465 iLvL in a single week if they put a lot of time into it, but obviously that means they have access to groups and they have more time on their hands.

I don't think essences are that bad and I take no issue with acquiring them the first time. I do think that certain essences that are fairly time gated like conflict and strife are bad at this point though, but even if it's one of your best minor essences, I highly doubt that there isn't an alternative out there that isn't that much worse. The above post citing neck levels is pretty fucking retarded though if I'm being honest. AP at this point is virtually free and doing all of the other shit people have detailed in this thread is going to propel you far past the point of relative usefulness on the neck. You're going to get 80 neck level insanely fast and the scaling of essences with each individual neck level in addition to the +2 iLvL on neck isn't enough to make a large difference. I promise you the difference between somebody with and 85 neck and a 95 isn't massive, it's minuscule at best and you have the advantage of 'grinding' AP when it's most efficient, where those before you did it in a far less efficient time.

If you just focus on dailies in the new zones and spend your echoes on extra vessels, you can literally get your cape to max level in a week, or two weeks if you want it to be somewhat 'reasonable'. You're going to be behind corruption resistance wise however, but will slowly catch up if you can full clear visions and do any version of N'zoth (except LFR) every single week. Why Blizzard doesn't allow you to accelerate the corruption resistance catch up beyond R15 cloak is beyond me.

TLDR; M+ when you can. Upgrade your cloak and acquire echoes in any way possible when your group options are limited. Don't fret about essences, especially if they're heavily time gated you can just settle for second string ones. Your time is better spent elsewhere if your true goal is to get as geared as you possibly can.

[Moonsorrow]

If it is an alt with a main that has the essences unlocked this can be done rather quickly if you have people that can help you carry. A fresh character with no essences and not friends to carry is currently having a hard time, even without cloak leveling.

On the other hand, Mythic +15 and beyond is the 5man equivalent of mythic raiding even if you read differently here. People here give you the impression that a +15 is m+ beginner level. So it does not happen over night as well as finding a raidspot in a mythic raid guild.

For HC both, bis corruption and bis essences are not necessary.

With regard to PvP corruption seems to be a problem, but I don't PvP and therefore I don't care.

[devilzxlin]

how long it takes?
it depends on what role and class/spec you play. if you have a lot resouces and gold,you can level very fast

[OFiveNine]

Leveled my DH wednesday last week (EU RESET DAY)

Rank 8 Cloak (Achieved Today)
461 ilvl (Pugged this week no guildie help)
Fuck all corruptions

Can't really comment on essences since I just did arena to get 30k to buy all the essences i wanted