What activities should I do to gear alts in WoD?

So you want to find a fast & efficient way to gear alts in WoD, while we wait for Legion to drop, right? The fastest way to gear your alt depends on what you are willing to do (and what your friends are willing to carry you through). Atls are supposed to be fun, so let’s find you the most fun (and efficient) ways to gear your alt! Did you know you can even get PvP gear without ever PvP’ing? It’s true! Below I show you how to use gear filters to find the most appropriate gear for your desired activities 🙂

So what’s the best way to find the right gear?

The magic is in the gear filters… a lot of power lies behind that little blue circular PLUS sign! After loading your character, click on any item to bring up the gear list for that slot. Then click the blue “+” button just above the gear list, on the left, to open the filters menu (shown below).

Set the filters to the WoD activities you are willing to do to gear up your alt. Mr. Robot will then remove any of the gear that isn’t relevant to you. A few notes & tips, current for WoD patch 6.2.3:

• A: Set the raid difficulty to the levels you’ll be doing to gear up your alt (not where you intend to be after gearing up). If you don’t want to do LFRs, then either uncheck the raids you won’t be doing at all, or set it to normal (or whatever your friends will carry you through).
• B: Don’t forget world bosses!
• C: Set the part of the legendary ring progress you’re on, or will be getting soon
• D: Old Apexis Crystal items can now be bought with gold. 1000 Gold buys you 630 iLevel and it goes up to 20,000 gold for iLevel 675. The vendors are found in Warspear and their names all start with dawn-seeker. World of Moudi has a guide on this (and Baleful items).
• E: Crafted items start at level 640 and can be upgraded to stage 4 ‘cheaply’ with items made by each item’s crafting profession. Truesteel Essence is the example for Blacksmiths, which costs 15 Savage Blood among other items. Mighty Essence upgrades to level 5 and uses 30 Felblight. Savage Essence upgrades to level 6 and uses 60 Felblight. World of Moudi has a nice guide for crafted upgrades and obtaining Felblight.
  NOTE: Recall that the secondary stats on crafted items are random. You can reroll them with an item made by each profession, and they are cheap (Blacksmithing, Leatherworking, Tailoring, Jewelcrafting). So if you might have the item for a while and you’re upgrading it, a few rerolls might be worth it.
• F: BoE gear is for stuff that can be bought off the AH. The filters let you select item levels that are associated with each instance. So maybe you don’t want to buy HFC drops, but you are willing to buy Highmaul BoE drops. Select that here.
• G: Mythic dungeon items start at 695 but have a chance to have a higher iLevel. The higher the iLevel, the lower the chance. So for planning purposes, you might want to select the lowest iLevel, if you don’t want to count on higher iLevel items dropping.
• H: Baleful items can drop from mobs in Tanaan Jungle, with a higher chance from rare in Tanaan and are BoP. You can also buy them from a vendor (Ravenspeaker Thelnaas in Tanaan) with Apexis crystals (BoP) for 5,000 Apexis Crystals (10,000 for weapons). You can get BoA Baleful tokens from shipyard missions and “Call to Arms” (see super tips below for mor info). Baleful items have a base item level of 650, but there’s a chance they proc to a higher ilevel when opened. You can upgrade any Baleful item to 695 with an Empowered Apexis Fragment. You can buy this from the same vendor for 20,000 Apexis crystals and it also has a 10-15% drop rate from “Call to Arms” satchels (the reward from queuing for dungeons/raids for the underrepresented role like tanks/healers).
  Note: The secondary stats on these items are random, and cannot be rerolled. The only way to get an item with better stats is to get more of the Baleful tokens from mobs or the vendor.
  Super tip #1: The Empowered Apexis Fragment is BoA, so you can farm Apexis Crystals on your main, buy the fragments, and send them to your alt.
  Super tip #2: You can also get Baleful gear tokens from shipyard missions, which are actually BoA. So you can send it to any alt that wears the armory type specified.
  Super tip #3 comes from @TheSlickRock on Twitter: You can also get BoA Baleful tokens when doing “Call to Arms” on your main – and people have reported that each satchel tends to contain several BoA Baleful Tokens. Call to Arms is the extra reward you get from queuing for dungeons and raids on the much-needed role (like tanks / healers). However, “Call to Arms” can double up on rewards if you run them on your alt instead of your main, because you can also collect legendary ring requirements at the same time.
• More info! The Grumpy Elf has a fantastic guide aimed at people somewhat unfamiliar with all of the in’s & out’s of Baleful items. Also, the first 2 super tips are credited to him.
• I: Miscellaneous other stuff
• PvP options even if you hate it! Thanks to @Volstatsz and @Uabtodd on twitter, I learned that you can get a lot of good gear from PvP, even without PvPing. You can buy Champion’s Honor tokens on the AH which give you 1,000 honor and 1,000 conquest points. A spot check on a few realms makes it look like the average price for a Honor token is 10,000 gold. Items cost 1,250 – 3,500 Honor or Conquest points from vendors in Ashran (Marshal Karsh(A)/Warlord Noktyn(H) and Marshal Gabriel(A)/General Aevd(H).  Remember, the PvP gear for Warlords has the same stat allocation as PvE gear, so you aren’t losing anything.
  –And if you like to PvP, this is an excellent way to gear up, especially if you take advantage of a bonus weekend. Thanks to FloppyFox on reddit, for reminding us that PvP gear cannot be upgraded with Valor.
• Also, boosted characters automatically get a 640 gear set and level 3 garrison. Thanks for the tip, @Elkagorasa.

Call to Arms: a 4-for-1 source to gear up alts in WoD

The tips above that mention using “Call to Arms” to gear up warrants a summary. “Call to Arms” is the quest you get when queuing for Dungeons and raids as an underrepresented role (like healers/tanks). The reward satchel usually contains:

• Several BoA Baleful tokens (level 650 gear or higher)
• 10-15% chance for an Empowered Apexis Fragment to upgrade a Baleful item to 695
• Gold

And if you are queuing for raids, you can make progress on your legendary ring requirements at the same time. So while the Baleful items and the Apexis Fragments are both BoA, allowing you to farm these on your main to funnel to your alt… doing it on your alt has its rewards too 🙂

There are more filters that I didn’t highlight that will help to gear your alt. When you are done, click the green Apply button.

Then when you click on any piece of gear, you’ll see a ranked list of items you can get with your (limited) alt activities.

Save time with the Upgrade Finder

This is premium. For $1 a month, you unlock all of Mr. Robot’s premium features, including all gear lists in the Upgrade Finder. Not a bad price for the time you’ll save, in my opinion, but I’m pretty sure I’m biased 😉  As a 3-person company we do appreciate each premium account, but we still encourage you to give the free trial a shot first to make sure you like it. NO credit card is ever asked for during a free trial, that’s just shady, so we don’t do that.

How to upgrade your alt with the upgrade finder:

The filtered lists that I reviewed above give you a ranked gear list for every activity you’re willing to do. But if you find yourself scanning through that list, looking for a few specific gear sources, then try the Upgrade Finder. Mr. Robot creates a list of the best gear for your character, for each activity you’re willing to do… or about to do. My personal favorite is to find out what dungeons to run.

Load your character, then click the green arrow to open the menu. Select the Upgrade Finder option.

Next, select your activity! Mythic dungeons? Currencies (like Apexis Crystals or Timewarped gear)? Crafted items (you can even select the stage you want). And so on.

Here’s what I see for my character when selecting Mythic Dungeons. The Zone score factors in how many upgrades you can get from that zone, and how good each upgrade is. Alternatively,  the “Best Score” column shows the score for the top ranked item in each dungeon. Upper Blackrock Spire has the best zone score (with a few others being almost as good). And Bloodmaul Slagmines is the worst, so I’d skip that one, and try to find groups for the better ones instead. Note: To see all of the items that will drop (not just the best upgrade), click the ‘view all’ link to the far right of each row.

I then took a look at the 650 Baleful Gear (Apexis) and saw the upgrades were small. But when comparing to the 695 list, there are some very nice upgrades. So I think my main will farm some of the Empowered Apexis Fragments to send to my alt (I also have to hope I get ones with good secondary stats).

Now, off to farming!!! See you around Tanaan Jungle or maybe in some LFR’s 😉