Ah, Timewalking. If you go in Timewalking content without even a single OP item, you are the equivalent of someone going into CN with only 180 ilvl. You are going to struggle.
Fortunately, there are a number of easily obtained (As well as a few not-so-easily obtained) pieces of gear that will significantly boost you in TW dungeons. Here's a quick list of some pieces that can help you significantly.
Neck - Heart of Azeroth. A rank 80 Heart of Azeroth gives you +15% more stamina, a solid mixture of secondaries, and basically the effects of 4 legendaries in a single item. While I'll leave it to you to figure out what powers to use (I use Vision of Perfection as major for all my characters to simplify my keybindings), many of them are extremely powerful in old TW content.
Helm/Shoulder/Chest - Best Azerite pieces. Note that their actual ilvl doesn't matter as much as that they have to be epic. If you lack any Azerite pieces because you sold them, rounding up 3 benthic azerite items will do quite decently. Keep in mind that not only do are the various Azerite traits quite powerful, but they also provide a higher-then-normal amount of primary stat and stamina, along with many pieces providing the normal amount of secondary stats in the form of various traits.
Crafted Legiondary - During actual Legion, these pieces were crap, but with the removal of all of their power, you actually will WANT to make the crafted Legiondary piece of your armor class. In order to make up for their complete lack of offensive powers, Blizzard gave them multiple bonus sockets, which translates to these pieces being BiS for timewalking for their slot. Unfortunately for Cloth Users, their legiondary is a Shoulder, so it's up to you to determine if the bonus sockets are worth more then Azerite traits (I doubt it will be), but for Leather, Plate, and Mail, the pieces are, respectively, Boots, Belt, and Gloves.
SLegendary - Of course we have to include these. While their stat makeup is average, you can attach a socket to some of them via Ve'nari, and the power isn't half bad either. While ppl are still getting their BiS pieces for actual SL content, keep in mind that for TW a 190 ilvl Slegendary works just as well as a 235. Maybe not worth making a Slegendary for TW this month, but 2 months from now? Maybe.
Outside of this, it's basically a hunt for items that either have A) Higher-then-normal stat distribution do to errors with the Squish, or B) Higher-then-normal amount of Gem Slots. Keep in mind that, as you can add a free gemslot to any BfA item with just a bit of grinding, if you have the time you may just want to grab BfA items and then slap a socket on em.
If you ignore mechanics then of course it's hard. There's casters in some dungeons that one shot dps. Instead of letting them cast their 3 sec cast you could interrupt them. There is nothing mechanically difficult about any of the dungeons and raids.if you're wiping it's because you're bad.
Did Ulduar earlier, first boss was really buggy and we had a few wipes, a lot of it was related to the motorbike vehicles and seemingly invisible + persisting burning tar friendly fire. Rest of the raid was easy, you can even do hardmodes. We killed yogg on the first pull despite pretty much fucking up everything and many deaths.
Probably running on a Pentium 4
Totally forget about a rank 15 bfa cloak. Easy to pull out of your bank.
The old bfa set pieces are tough to get back if you were foolish enough to get and trash them (Jaina's BfA set, Vanombite Garb).
There is a sweet ring with 10% increases auto attack in the nightborne legion instances. But Shadowlands finished up a loose part of my set with the Poxstorm sword.
Last edited by Baroclinic; 2020-12-31 at 05:09 AM.
Some good points here. Things to add are:
ICC rep ring/Epic WoD ring. Both give stat procs & are worth equipping over normal rings, with the ICC rep ring even giving main stat & a socket.
Pre Legion Legendaries still work as well. Obviously Shadowmourne will lose value in more recent Timewalking events, but for TBC/Wrath it's pretty amazing. For mages/druids, the staff from Firelands is actually incredible.
If you can't be bothered farming essences for your HoA then there's always this neck from Legion archaeology. Just put a reminder for when it's next up & go grab it
Enchants enchants enchants. If you use pre Legion items pretty much everything can be enchanted with something or another. While my setup is far from ideal as I haven't researched the best scaling enchants & whatnot, there's still a lot to be gained by just enchanting everything. FWIW, I do 6k burst DPS on a pack & about 1.2k-1.5k sustained over the course of a dungeon with a setup like this. I'd probably do more as Fury with Azerite pieces, but heyo, I'll wait until I can craft a Fury legendary.
Go in there with Heart of Azeroth, Azerite armor , and legendary cloak and it will be a easy time.
Ohh, forgot to mention SL legendarys make it easier too.
Last edited by TigTone; 2020-12-31 at 05:38 AM.
Some of them feel as difficult as mythic +8 or mythic +9. Some others not so much.
I do have to disagree with the Archeaolgy neck - By the time that it's actually up, as well as the time that a player would have put farming it up, they could have already acquired several R3 Azerite Essences. You also get the HoA cloak during HoA progression, which, if you didn't play during MoP, is basically the strongest cloak option. Not to mention Azerite pieces.
If you have the WoD ring, it's all well and good (And isn't the pre-legendary version better then the ICC ring?), but it's no longer obtainable (Or progressable), which is quite the shame tbh.
But yea, keep in mind that Azerite traits tend to trump extra gem slots, even the MoP meta gem. I can't speak for every class/spec, but I know that for Druid, all 4 specs BiS pieces are various Azerite gear.
I did a few runs and I didnt notice any particular change of difficulty from the past.
Reading this thread just reminds me how terrible simply scaling gear for a "normal" dungeon/raid experience is. It can be a little challenging but they should make it more about "Fun". Having it be like the pvp brawls that change things up. They could have it like the anima power system from Thorghast.
"Man is his own star. His acts are his angels, good or ill, While his fatal shadows walk silently beside him."-Rhyme of the Primeval Paradine AFC 54
You know a community is bad when moderators lock a thread because "...this isnt the place to talk about it either seeing as it will get trolled..."
I just went 5 timewalks as a healer and had no issue at all, what are you guys talking about? You obviously dont know that WOTLK dungeons were one of the hardest scaling damage wise.
That damn BfA neck though. A passive dot from the neck is the highest damage dealer alone during TW runs for me now.
Didn't they disabled all "borrowed power" items regardless of level now anyway? Your legion artifacts don't get their abilities so what does it matter? You cannot have any borrowed power unless you're 50-60 with heart.
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I had a lot of wipes in PoS but that's because the other players were just trying to mongo it rather than actually interrupt and do mechanics.
The most difficult thing to do is accept that there is nothing wrong with things you don't like and accept that people can like things you don't.
Sorry but how are they hard? Put on your old lego and go to town like I did. Was called disgusting cause of all the orange gear I was running with lol. Though some stuff stopped working now like legion legos.
Nah. Dungeons were a cakewalk until the 3 ICC heroics were added. The only dungeon before that that was remotely challenging was Oculus solely for the fact that people were too lazy to learn what the dragons did.
Mechanically, raids were child's play compared to the plethora of bullshit mechanics they pile into raid encounters nowadays. This is comparing normal Wrath raids to modern heroic raids, of course - modern normal is definitely a bit on the easier side.
I play BDK and I have special gear sets for TW. I went in with 76 ilvl:
Shadowlands legendary (bryandor boots), MoP legendary cape, heart of Azeroth neck, shoulders, head and chest - azerite gear, some old wotlk hands, pants, wrists with sockets and shadowmourne as my weapon. Too bad tier sets from legion, legion artifact or legion legendaries don't work anymore or I would have used all...
Everything melted. Did top dmg as tank, mass pulled everything and pretty much ignored most mechanics.
TW dungeons , especially WoTLK ones, aren't about ilvl, it's about proper gearing.
Last edited by kamuimac; 2020-12-31 at 08:23 AM.