So you just hit level 80? Welcome to the next phase of your WoW journey! By now, you probably have done many of the Wrath of the Lich King dungeons and should be in some nice blue items right? Well if you want to be a player that gets selected to raid, you will have to do those 5-man dungeons again. However, you will run them in Heroic mode. With Heroic mode, the 5-man Wrath dungeons will now scale to your level 80 character and become more difficult. The way you will run these dungeons is through the newly developed Dungeon Finder.



The Dungeon Finder is one of the best things Blizzard has developed for WoW. No longer will you have to look for a group on your own. Now all you will do is click a button and you will join a queue. I'm sure you have at least done this once, so let's get to how the Dungeon Finder is going to get you geared up.

There is a daily random dungeon finder quest that works similar to daily quests. Once you've ran the random dungeon for the day, you will get two Emblems of Frost as well as Emblems of Triumph.

Emblems of Frost allows you to purchase some really powerful armor and trinkets for your character from vendors in Dalaran. It is the most valuable emblem and is needed for you to get some really nice loot.

The Emblem of Triumph is right underneath the Emblem of Frost in value and is much more easier to acquire than Emblem of Frost. See, with Emblems of Triumph, they drop off of every boss in Wrath heroic dungeons, and if you run more dungeons using the random dungeon finder, you can get even more emblems.

What does this all mean? It means if you want to gear up quickly, you need to run a ton of random dungeons using the dungeon finder. If you are in a guild it will make life easier for you since joining as a group with either a healer or a tank(or both for even faster queue times) you could almost fully gear your new 80 character within a few days.

So what should you buy with these emblems? It's truly up to you. I recommend getting the Kel'Thuzad set from the Argent Tournament zone. The Kel'Thuzad gear uses Emblems of Triumph which makes them super easy to get and offers set bonuses. You can also get your class Tier gear, such as Dark Coven for warlocks:

Kel'Thuzad's Robe of Conquest: Cost: 50 Emblems of Triumph

Dark Coven Robe: Cost: 95 Emblems of Frost

So now you know the easiest and definitely the quickest way to gear up your new 80 character. Run those random dungeons! There are other ways to get emblems, such as doing the weekly raid quest, but you will have to join a raid group to do this. This might be difficult for you since your gear isn't too great, so do the randoms until you are decked out in at least full Emblems of Triumph gear.


To Gear or Not To Gear
Since emblems are not the only one way to gear yourself, how do you know if an item that drops is an upgrade for you? There are a couple of ways to tell; the hard way and the easy way. I will tell you both ways.

The hard way is by looking at the iLevel of the item. In WoW, each item in the game is assigned an iLevel. The higher the iLevel, the better the gear. However, a higher iLevel doesn't necessarily mean it's better for you, hence this method being the hard way. You will have to look at the stats manually and figure out whether or not it is an upgrade for you. Since you are just starting out as a level 80, than many items should be upgrades for you. You must turn on iLevel viewing in the Interface options in WoW.

If using the iLevel method, there some things you should know:

• 232-245 = Emblem of Triumph gear, 10-man Fall of the Lich King raids, post Naxxramus and Ulduar content gear.
• 251-264 = Emblem of Frost gear and some 25-man raids, including Ice Crown Citadel
• 277 = Heroic ICC raiding. Top gear currently in the game.

iLevels are confusing at first, but all you really need to know is that if you have on an iLevel 232 piece of gear, and you see an iLevel 264 gear drop, chances are it's an upgrade. The higher the better!

Now how can we make life easier to be sure that a potential upgrade is really an upgrade? There are addons for your interface which will help out greatly. I will be covering WoW addons in another chapter in more detail, but if you are aready familiar with addons go ahead and check these out:

• RatingBuster: This addon compares statistics on an item when you hover over it with your mouse. Definitely a must-have addon to make your upgrading process a breeze.
• GearScore: Good old GearScore. GearScore has to be the most controversial addon to be released in the last year. GearScore gives each piece of gear you have a score and adds them all up to give you a "GS". If your GearScore, or GS, is at least 5000+, you can potentially raid in end-game content. Anything below 5000 and chances are you need to get your gear up. The reason GearScore is so contraversial is the fact that you are now being judged on your gear and not how good you are. I will go more into detail about GearScore in another post, but for now I recommend going ahead and getting it for your personal use to see how good your gear is currently.

Gearing up at 80 in World of Warcraft can either be a fun experience or an arduous one. Hopefully after you read this it will be more fun! Run those random dungeons as much as you can to get Emblems of Triumph and Emblems of Frost for super fast gearing. Also remember that the higher the iLevel the better the gear, but you should use RatingBuster to see if that particular item is a good upgrade for you.

Stay tuned for the next lesson!