The Old is the new.

I'm a big fan of all these old-school players returning (or joining XPOff for the first time) and linking their snazzy characters. Welcome to XPOff and Welcome back to WoW, Govern!
 
Rsham is really strong in the 19 bracket with full slither-scale set (fang set except it's mail) and enchants.
You're going to want to use crusader enchants on your weapons, if you have Emil's Brand in your inventory that's best in slot afaik. Brightplate Girdle is also pretty good.
You'll want to replace atleast your neck, shoulders, cloak, chest, wrists, gloves, boots and ring.
Here's a quickstart gear guide for 19s: https://xpoff.com/threads/19-quick-start-gearing-guide-bfa.79275/

I'd keep your LFH, Chausses, Seal and trinkets equipped, no idea how good LFH and Seal is for a warrior but atleast they're cool.

Be sure to not delete any of your old gear and double-check if there's any grandfathered enchants on them before applying new ones if you're going to use your old gear that you find in your bank or whatever.

And be sure to lock your EXP in Stormwind before doing anything if you haven't already!
 
Okay cool! I read the guide, and have some questions. How do I know if old enchants are grandfathered? What spec is a warrior most viable with now without hamstring? When I played hamstring/stance dance was great. Now I can’t do that at all. Can I still overpower a rogue with their 90% dodge? Can they still dodge?

Should I let Govern rest on a shelf or can he do some work? Also...what are item levels?

Lastly, if there’s anyone who wants to show me the ropes I’m willing to learn :)

Thanks for the warm welcome back as well!
 
Okay cool! I read the guide, and have some questions. How do I know if old enchants are grandfathered? What spec is a warrior most viable with now without hamstring? When I played hamstring/stance dance was great. Now I can’t do that at all. Can I still overpower a rogue with their 90% dodge? Can they still dodge?

Should I let Govern rest on a shelf or can he do some work? Also...what are item levels?

Lastly, if there’s anyone who wants to show me the ropes I’m willing to learn :)

Thanks for the warm welcome back as well!

Disclaimer
I returned to the game pretty recently. I may get things wrong, please correct me if that's the case. This is what I have figured out as a returning player and as such, I thought it would be useful to another returning player.

Item Level


Item levels represent the power of an item. See it as an additional stat for the item.

What does the stat do? well that's where things can get a bit complicated.

Instanced pvp (arena & battlegrounds) scales your level up to the max level of your bracket. Eg if you enter a bg at level 20 the game would scale the character up to 29 and give you all the stats that would come with those additional levels.
Instanced pvp used to scale your character like this, but it also used to take into account your item level. The higher the item level, the more stats it would give you when you entered the bg or arena. It doesn't do this any more.

Item level will still have an impact in dungeons however. Say you have a +2 Str ring with 10iLvL and a 2+ ring with 20 iLvL - the 20 iLvL ring will be stronger. How this works? I'm really not too sure. I would be glad for someone to enlighten me on this.

Warrior

Warriors are strong atm. Arms being the best, Fury a close second and Protection trailing off to the back (single target damage of prot lacks).
Double crusader enchanted on a fury warrior can cause huge spikes in damage.
Arms abilities generally deal more damage with less ramp up time that fury needs.

Enchants

Head enchants are no longer a thing.
Everything else can be enchanted, including rings.

The best thing to do is ask someone to link you their enchanting. From there you can use the drop down tools on their enchanting to see 'what they have' and 'what they haven't' learned. Go through each item slot to find the best enchant for your level.
Do this for LW (leg enchant) and Tailoring (Shoulder enchant).

Gear

Gear now scales to your level. If you kill a dungeon boss at level 18, the gear that's dropped will be scaled to 'requires level 18' and the stats will scale to that level too.
If you then go back to the same dungeon at level 20 and kill the same boss. It can drop the same item that now says 'requires level 20' and the stats will be stronger than the 18 lvl required item.

This makes a lot of green items quite valuable as you can often choose to focus on particular stats... in some cases they're BIS.

Heirloom head, legs, back, rings, neck and trinkets have all been added. They're pretty strong and often they allow you to use an enchant that requires a high level being able to send it down to your twink.

Unobtainable Gear

There was some event during the Pre-patch legion that allowed players of all levels to obtain fel gear... I didn't play around this time so I'm not sure of the full details. However, you may see some fel gear around the armory's. It's pretty decent gear. Unfortunately it's now grandfathered and unobtainable.

Your legs are unobtainable atm which is a nice piece of grandfathered gear.

Hope this helps a little

EDIT: YOU CAN WEAR PLATE NOW FROM A LOW LEVEL!
 
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Heya, I used to play in Reckoning battlegroup way back in the day. I’m back to play again and wanted to know how outdated my old twink is.

https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/character/shadowsong/Govern

What are the best items for a 19 warrior? Also, I used to play shaman a lot too, they viable at all?

Always good to see old twinks returning. Even if cyclone > reckoning as far as battlegroups go =P

Okay cool! I read the guide, and have some questions. How do I know if old enchants are grandfathered? What spec is a warrior most viable with now without hamstring? When I played hamstring/stance dance was great. Now I can’t do that at all. Can I still overpower a rogue with their 90% dodge? Can they still dodge?

Should I let Govern rest on a shelf or can he do some work? Also...what are item levels?

Lastly, if there’s anyone who wants to show me the ropes I’m willing to learn :)

Thanks for the warm welcome back as well!

Alright. So theres a LOT to catch up on. I'll try to cover a lot of it.

Grandfathered enchants are pretty rare. Your helm and legs have them. The other big ones that I know of are agility to cloak and spellpower to bracers, neither of which will apply to you.

Arms warrior is pretty reliable damage, though without hamstring, it is easily kited. Playing with a healer and/or someone who can slow will greatly increase your time on target. Fury warrior is fun as it can dual wield 2hers with double crusader procs. It lacks some key moves at 19, so there will be plenty of times where you charge in, bloodthirst, and sit there auto attacking to gain rage and hope for crusader procs. Same kiting liabilities without a slow. Both are solid enough to twink, though won't be top tier competitive. Tanks now take 30% extra damage in pvp, so are more or less unplayable. Prot did ok damage a few expacs ago and sometimes has interesting stun options - but ultimately is non-viable.

Rogues no longer have crazy dodge. Overpower is now a level 20 arms spell IIRC.

Item levels are a number system for rating the general "level" of a piece of gear. Lots of gear now scales and can drop at different levels. Doing a dungeon at 15 and 19 can drop the same item, but it'll be stronger for the level 19 since it scales to that level. At endgame, doing a lower normal or LFR version of a raid will drop lower ilvl versions of the same gear that heroic/mythic does (tho if you're just coming back you likely won't know how that works...). In short, ilvl is a useful metric for figuring out what level a piece of gear is intended for. Lots of gear will have a primary stat (strength) and stam along with some secondaries. As ilvl go up, the primary stat and stam and total secondaries generally go up. The secondaries can change and have differing amounts, so a higher ilvl item isn't necessarily an upgrade. Weapon damage also tends to go up with item level, so classes that use physical damage (aka warriors) generally prefer a higher ilvl weapon mainhand as most skills scale from that weapon damage.

Last expansion there was a garbage template system where your instanced pvp stats were completely determined by your ilvl. So a white "joke" ring that had an ilvl of 60 was way better than an actual blue ring with good stats where the ilvl was 24. This is no longer the case, but you'll see it referenced someplaces - you can safely ignore it.

I wouldn't retire your warrior. I'd keep him at 19. Make sure to turn off exp if you haven't already. Don't throw anything away, since a lot of old gear is no longer obtainable. Its fairly easy to gear up a twink to "pretty good" levels and then you can see if you want to really spend the time to grind the full BiS stuff.

As for gear...low level warriors can now wield plate, and plate is the only thing that gives strength. So a lot of your mail items are going to be more or less useless, as agility is not longer useful for warriors. Heirlooms and dungeon drops are going to be the easiest sources of plate. Hit shift-J to see the dungeon journal, and you can click on a dungeon and then the chest tab to see what drops (scaled to your level). So take a look at WC, Deadmines, RFC, and SFK and see what drops. The guide should help a bunch there. If you decide to go for BiS, you'll want to max engineering and then do a lot of random BGs to get BG crates, which have a low (10%?) chance to drop a rare piece of gear, which can be BiS with the right secondaries (which are random).

Your hat is unfortunately no longer BiS. That being said, I'd keep it equipped until you get max level engineering.

Your currently equipped neck, cloak, bracers, gloves, boots, and shadowfang now have agility. RIP. The BiS neck is the heirloom piece. Bracers can be found as dungeon drops, or eventually a BG crate rare for BiS. You can find some solid cloaks in dungeons. Theres also a BoE cloak that has 6str/3haste which might be a full offensive option. Gloves can be found from dungeons. Theres a nice +7 stam enchant that can only be applied to BoE gloves, but I don't think there are any low level BoE plate gloves. Boots can be found in dungeons, or eventually a BG crate rare.

Your belt is plate, but is ilvl 21. You can get an ilvl 23 version of the same belt now by running WC. You can also get a belt from the dungeon satchels you get from completing a random dungeon.

Your shoulders are good as an heirloom. There are a few different heirlooms that can have crit or haste or both depending on the slot. You'll eventually want to pick one and enchant it with a high level toon, who can then mail it to your twink.

You can find chests from dungeons or use the heirloom (BoA) chest for now. Eventually you can get a BG crate rare.

Seal of Wrynn is cool. So keep that (and look at putting a +1 verse enchant on it). Your second ring should probably be a Demon Band if you can get it. Otherwise your current tumultous ring is fine. To really be BiS, you can run double Demon Band - but I'd keep using the old school Seal of Wrynn just because its grandfathered.

AGM is no longer obtainable at 19 - so its grandfathered! Your insignia is also grandfathered, but its not as useful. Your other trinket will be one of the other heirloom options. Theres an heirloom insignia, as well as a few other options. Returning Champion is a good one that gives stam and verse and an on-use for extra health, which you can obtain by opening the AGM chest one more time. Thats what I would aim for (and its a BoA, so can be used on ANY future toons).

For weapons, I'm going to assume you're going to play either Arms or Fury. Check your bank for any 2h options you have. Anything ilvl 24 or above is probably grandfathered and may be BiS. Emil's Brand (ilvl 32) is the most common, although I think theres a mace as well. You can buy executioner's sword from vendors for cheap - which is otherwise going to be good for now mainhand and offhand. You can also use heirlooms. Eventually the mainhand will be replaced by a BG crate weapon.


Hope that helps. Feel free to ask any other questions you have and we'll get you up to speed.
 

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