DoByG
The BiS Llama
Dragonflight is here and it introduced a bunch of changes to the F2P (and vet) everyday life.
My name is Doobyg. It may ring a bell if you were at some point BiS obsessed and came by my old guides like How to gear a freak 19 Druid (classic edition) and the Ilvl 32 Items Index Thread. After a long 3-year break in the middle of the biggest changes the bracket has ever seen, I spent the last couple of months trying to catch up with everything. I recently finished gearing my mains (F2P and Vet druids) and decided to finally give the newly (for me) available DH class a try. With the acquired knowledge, going through the whole process from scratch, I managed to gear my new F2P DH to a state that you can consider a realistic BiS in around a week (~2 days /played).
I am writing this guide to document my process and hopefully make the life of all my fellow F2Ps and Vets a bit easier. This will be an updated version of the Shadowlands F2P Baseline Guide by @Asylum and @Chops which really helped me when I came back. I hope my work inspires others to enjoy the game as well. Buckle up, here we go.
* I will be giving examples with Alliance quests/links, but the same thing will be applicable to the Horde alternatives.
Sections:
0. The state of F2P and the 20-29 bracket
1. Class and Race
2. Getting to 20
3. Once you hit 20
4. Gearing
5. Proffessions Rotation
6. Addons, Macros, and Resources
7. Conclusion
Bonus: WOD Farming Guide (WF (ilvl 87) explained!)
0. The state of F2P and the 20-29 bracket
A couple of months before the Dragonflight pre-patch an impactful change was made, we believe intentionally, that removed F2P and Vet characters from the leveling battlegrounds and put them in the xp-off 20-29 bracket. This led to a greatly reduced number of people and long queues. With all the Dragonflight changes going live, 29 twinks became extremely overpowered, compared to a F2P/Vet level 20, and the unbalanced games, combined with the new expansion late-game hype led to even less battleground action, to a point where no pops were seen for days on EU / US. The 20-29 Bracket is slowly recovering, but it will take a huge change (most certainly something designed for the late game, that will unintentionally shake the low-level PVP balance) for it to get close to its old glory.
The activity did not die though. Many F2Ps used the time off PVP to explore the PVE aspect of the game, which has never been more available to us - Expansions, Questing, Achievements, Mounts and Pets farming is at an all-time high with Céle (@Conzil) and Cristii (whonever had now has game time) leading the charge. Even Dungeons speedrunning became a thing, with an official Tour being organised! Some pretty strong gear options, again, better than anything we have had until now are also worth spending time on in order to future-proof your twink as much as possible. Overall, even tho PVP, which was the main thing F2Ps were known for, is in a bad state right now, there is plenty of fish in the sea (but no Great Sea Ray which is unavailable for F2Ps :x)
The same restrictions apply to F2P accounts:
1. Class and Race
F2P accounts have access to all previously introduced classes (excluding Evokers) and all non-allied races (excluding Dracthyr).
The state of the bracket is always changing, so rolling a class that is OP right now does not mean it won't be a C or D-tier character in a couple of months. I have always advocated for choosing the playstyle and letting everything else be fun instead of pushing the most broken thing for a week/month and getting burned out. There are some general class recommendations - having a healing spec, good mobility, the ability to stealth or a pet are all things that increase your chance of survival in both PVP and PVE, and less dying usually means more fun.
Regarding race choice, the differences are smaller than ever before, so you don't need to put too much pressure on that. More info HERE or in your character creation screen, and if you really want to get into the min-maxing, check this cool spreadsheet by @pokspell. A notable exception would be the Night Elf, which makes farming gear (and all PVE-related stuff) a LOT easier, by having the ability to Shadowmeld.
My name is Doobyg. It may ring a bell if you were at some point BiS obsessed and came by my old guides like How to gear a freak 19 Druid (classic edition) and the Ilvl 32 Items Index Thread. After a long 3-year break in the middle of the biggest changes the bracket has ever seen, I spent the last couple of months trying to catch up with everything. I recently finished gearing my mains (F2P and Vet druids) and decided to finally give the newly (for me) available DH class a try. With the acquired knowledge, going through the whole process from scratch, I managed to gear my new F2P DH to a state that you can consider a realistic BiS in around a week (~2 days /played).
I am writing this guide to document my process and hopefully make the life of all my fellow F2Ps and Vets a bit easier. This will be an updated version of the Shadowlands F2P Baseline Guide by @Asylum and @Chops which really helped me when I came back. I hope my work inspires others to enjoy the game as well. Buckle up, here we go.
* I will be giving examples with Alliance quests/links, but the same thing will be applicable to the Horde alternatives.
Sections:
0. The state of F2P and the 20-29 bracket
1. Class and Race
2. Getting to 20
3. Once you hit 20
4. Gearing
5. Proffessions Rotation
6. Addons, Macros, and Resources
7. Conclusion
Bonus: WOD Farming Guide (WF (ilvl 87) explained!)
0. The state of F2P and the 20-29 bracket
A couple of months before the Dragonflight pre-patch an impactful change was made, we believe intentionally, that removed F2P and Vet characters from the leveling battlegrounds and put them in the xp-off 20-29 bracket. This led to a greatly reduced number of people and long queues. With all the Dragonflight changes going live, 29 twinks became extremely overpowered, compared to a F2P/Vet level 20, and the unbalanced games, combined with the new expansion late-game hype led to even less battleground action, to a point where no pops were seen for days on EU / US. The 20-29 Bracket is slowly recovering, but it will take a huge change (most certainly something designed for the late game, that will unintentionally shake the low-level PVP balance) for it to get close to its old glory.
The activity did not die though. Many F2Ps used the time off PVP to explore the PVE aspect of the game, which has never been more available to us - Expansions, Questing, Achievements, Mounts and Pets farming is at an all-time high with Céle (@Conzil) and Cristii (who
The same restrictions apply to F2P accounts:
* Level 20 XP cap
* 1000 gold cap
* No access to Auction House or Trading (excluding a frowned-upon method that kills all the F2P fun).
* No social interactions like inviting to a group or joining guilds.
* No talking to high-level characters in the /s channel (they won't see the messages). #canttalk
* /whispering to someone only works if they have you added as an in-game friend or if they /whispered you first.
Overall, things are not far off the rules of the Hardcore Challenge (excluding the no-dying clause ofc), which exploded in popularity recently.
Lastly, something important that results in an unintended restriction - accounts without a level 50 on them (99.9 % of F2P accounts, excluding the few remaining DK bug OGs), can not talk to Chromie and use Chromie Time. We can still enter EVERY level 20 scaled dungeon (more than 50 of them nowadays) from all the expansions, but we can't simply queue for them through the dungeon finder. We either walk to the entrance like in the good old days or group up with someone who has access to Chromie and let him queue using the dungeon finder.
As of 10.1.5, F2Ps can now access Chromie and use Chromie Time to progress through different expansions and queue for a bunch of dungeons using the dungeon finder.
* 1000 gold cap
* No access to Auction House or Trading (excluding a frowned-upon method that kills all the F2P fun).
* No social interactions like inviting to a group or joining guilds.
* No talking to high-level characters in the /s channel (they won't see the messages). #canttalk
* /whispering to someone only works if they have you added as an in-game friend or if they /whispered you first.
Overall, things are not far off the rules of the Hardcore Challenge (excluding the no-dying clause ofc), which exploded in popularity recently.
As of 10.1.5, F2Ps can now access Chromie and use Chromie Time to progress through different expansions and queue for a bunch of dungeons using the dungeon finder.
1. Class and Race
F2P accounts have access to all previously introduced classes (excluding Evokers) and all non-allied races (excluding Dracthyr).
The state of the bracket is always changing, so rolling a class that is OP right now does not mean it won't be a C or D-tier character in a couple of months. I have always advocated for choosing the playstyle and letting everything else be fun instead of pushing the most broken thing for a week/month and getting burned out. There are some general class recommendations - having a healing spec, good mobility, the ability to stealth or a pet are all things that increase your chance of survival in both PVP and PVE, and less dying usually means more fun.
Regarding race choice, the differences are smaller than ever before, so you don't need to put too much pressure on that. More info HERE or in your character creation screen, and if you really want to get into the min-maxing, check this cool spreadsheet by @pokspell. A notable exception would be the Night Elf, which makes farming gear (and all PVE-related stuff) a LOT easier, by having the ability to Shadowmeld.
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