If the Legion gear makes it in unaltered you don't have to worry about anything because the bracket is ruined. It's still not sinking in to peoples heads the advantage hunters will have. The hardest non-hunter MFer in here will be able to stomach about 1-2 BGs then that will be it for 2 years. Just wait and see. The greasy-nerd level here for hunters is at DEFCON1... nukes are almost in flight, all you can do is pray legion gear is hammerd.
its only stupid in a 1v1 in a bg ya its an advantage but its not unplayable, but if legion does get nerf then the bracket is so much more fucked seeing as health pools will be so low you will get 1 shot by gem gear
It will be equally stupid in a BG when you have 4+ hunters who are doing insane levels of damage and have 50% more range than anyone else. They can literally kite melee completely outside of the range of any gap closers. The only threat to them will be stealth classes, most of which lack the toolkit to actually be a threat.
BC gemmed gear doesn't allow you to stack mastery. Item level 44 Legion dungeon gear does.
If Legion gear is the new meta, every bracket below 49 is going to be hunter vs. hunter.
Edit to add: The only reason I'm willing to invest time into making 19s and 29s in the current state is because I strongly suspect Blizzard will be
forced to nerf the Legion gear, because I know if it stays as-is, I am going to make a bunch of allied race characters, lock their XP long enough to farm a set of Legion blues, and then ROFLSTOMP XP-on BGs until the 49 bracket.
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After I swapped from gem gear to legion gear, I lost about 20 total primary stats and about 10% crit (on a level 10 - haven't tested for 20's) - but gained ridiculous haste, vers, mastery, stamina.
Item level 44 gear is MUCH higher output than BC dungeon gear even with the broken gems, and anyone saying otherwise is simply wrong. It also gives you much more flexibility to stack the best stats for your class, and the absolutely most broken thing in the game is a marksman hunter stacking mastery (which is flat percentage damage increase and an increase in the range of their abilities). They can easily get to 60 yard range, while everyone else is capped to 40 yards, and there's simply nothing anyone can do to counter a hunter with 50% more range who can wreck 80% of your HP in one aimed shot.
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No idea here, can you get to outlands on a low level char as of right now and do anything useful there - rep or anything else, or do you have to wait for SL.
Right now? Now, you'll be squashed by level 60 mobs.
On Tuesday? Yes. Outlands will scale to your level.
I'm not sure if there's anything useful to be gained from rep grinds. Mostly you're going to want to farm dungeons for gear. As it is, right now, you will want to do the legion intro quests to get your artifact and open your class hall, which lets you buy a item level 47 (or 48, not certain) green placeholder weapon. Enchant your artifact while it's ilvl 20, and then start farming Legion dungeons for ilvl 44 gear (including artifact relics which will boost your artifact to item level 48, but make sure you enchant it first, as many enchants won't work on the boosted artifact).
I strongly suspect that legion gear won't last (it really breaks the game, even way more than putting a full set of Cata blues on a level 78 did), so when/if that falls through, you'll want blue gear from normal BC dungeons with sockets and possibly the vendor gear you can buy from G'eras in Shattrath.
as far as i know azerite gear isn't obtainable anymore
This seems to be the case, since the HoA intro quest was flagged as requiring level 50 and token gear also requires level 50. Might be an opportunity for really dedicated people to go get their three pieces of 280 Azerite gear and their HoA before pre-patch to build a 49 twink.