The War Within F2P Baseline Guide

[DoByG]

Updated the "4.4. Rare Mobs, Chests, Professions, Vendor and PVP Creates" section:

The rare mob drops scaling is fixed and in some cases (usually the repeatable once-per-day drops) we can farm Socket / Tertiary Stat. The only slots worth considering are cloaks, weapons and trinkets (no Socket version of those slots is usually available). An exception to this rule are the Dragonflight rare mobs that drop rare necks like the Forgotten Creation, which drops Amnesia. Those scale to the correct ilvl of 84 (instead of the bugged ilvl of 79 like all Dragonflight dungeon drops) and are still eligible for Tiered Medallion Setting x3.

BFA Rares drop once per character rare-quality items (ilvl 84), and as mentioned, they can proc a Socket / Tertiary Stat (with a pretty good chance of ~20 %) in every slot (not only the 5 dungeon socket slots). Think about those as a quest that once per char may grant you a cool upgrade. They are not worth rerolling for, there are repeatable options that provide similar stats, but give them a shot whenever you have the time. A good filter for everything that you can get can be found HERE (by @Stim)

WoD Rares - there are 2 kinds of those:
- Regular rares, that drop once per character rare-quality items (ilvl 84) with a chance to proc an epic ilvl 89 upgrade. Most of those (excluding some trinkets) are not worth much, you can ignore them. A Socket / Tertiary Stat has not been seen and we believe those are not available to us.
- Apexis rares on the other hand work just like a daily quest - you do have a once-per-day chance (not 100 %) to loot an item and it can proc all 3 known upgrades - Socket, Tertiary Stat or Warforge. The "Warforged" proc is visual only - you get the text but no quality, ilvl or stats upgrade happens. The Socket one is the main thing to note here, providing F2Ps with a relatively easy, farmable way to get your last ilvl 84 Socket slots! More details can be found HERE (by @CigNus), but some repeatable rares are missing from this list. All of them can be seen by using this addon - it marks repeatable rares with a purple scull on the map (while regular rares are marked with a white scull)

 

[Jaylen]

BFA Rares drop once per character rare-quality items (ilvl 84)

Am I understanding you correctly that these rares and regular rares in WoD will only ever drop the one item once per character? So once you have the item it will not ever drop again even if you get rid of the original item? are there other expansions that do this as well?

As a side note I was out in Stormheim yesterday and had an epic Indomitable Bearskin Cloak drop at ilvl 89 all the other drops out there were ilvl 84. I also noticed that Wowhead does not scale these properly. Would you consider Legion rares worth farming as well? I have no idea is these are lootable only once like you mentioned for BfA and WoD rares.

 

[DoByG]

1. yes, BFA and regular WOD rares drop once per character, no matter if you have the item or not.
2. Legion rares work in a similar way afaik but they do not proc sockets
3. SL rares drop items once per day (not sure if all rares or just some of them), can proc epic but can't proc socket.

Socket proc > Epic proc in general.

 

[fastersamurai]

As an example here’s my very lucky priestess who got a one time BFA drop ring to socket and a “Daily” WOD cloak to proc.

Fair warning, the cloak took months!

https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/en-us/character/us/draktharon/Ivory

If you really hate yourself, go for Craven Cowards Cloak dropped every day by Gibblette the Cowardly

 

[Xmp]

am i correct that WotLK helm can't proc with socket ? or it also ruled like TBC helms?

 

[tanezumi]

Fella that's new to twinking here, this guide is a godsend! That being said, most of my game knowledge is based in Classic, so my knowledge of Retail stats and mechanics are a bit limited.

Are there any resources out there that can act as an introduction to twinking? Like info about stats, scaling, et cetera.

 

[fastersamurai]

Fella that's new to twinking here, this guide is a godsend! That being said, most of my game knowledge is based in Classic, so my knowledge of Retail stats and mechanics are a bit limited.

Are there any resources out there that can act as an introduction to twinking? Like info about stats, scaling, et cetera.

You already found the best guide on the best site!

 

[tanezumi]

You already found the best guide on the best site!

It's truly great, but what I mean is something along the lines of a numbers breakdown, a la spellpower coefficients in Classic. I'm not super familiar with how primary, secondary and tertiary stats affect things, as well as how ilvl and scaling affect things as well.

Like, I'm down to figure out the numbers myself, but I figure that I might as well ask!

 

[CroyeTchor]

It's truly great, but what I mean is something along the lines of a numbers breakdown, a la spellpower coefficients in Classic. I'm not super familiar with how primary, secondary and tertiary stats affect things, as well as how ilvl and scaling affect things as well.

Like, I'm down to figure out the numbers myself, but I figure that I might as well ask!

1 point of Stamina increases you HP by 6 points.
1 point of Int increases you Spell power by one.
1 point of Agi/Str increases you Attack power by one.
Agi also grants you dodge while Strength gives you parry.
Agi and Strength also grant some spell power for hybrid classes.

You only benefit from your primary stat (Int/Agi/Str) -as you'll see they don't even appear anymore) so no more Strenght on Shamans ^^

For secondaries 1% of crit requires 4.53 points of crit (or 1 crit grants an extra 0.22% chance to crit).
1% of haste requires 4.27 points (or 1 haste grants 0.23% haste).
1% of versatility (1% damage/healing increase and 0.5 damage reduction) requires 5.05 points (or 1 vers grants 0.2 haste).
For mastery it depends on the class/spec and I don't have a mastery breakdown although it could be useful to make one.

For tertiaries, speed cap is fairly easy now with SL gems. From memory it's around 110 points of speed to reach 49% speed increase so with 8 SL gems and a speed proc you're all set.
Leech scales poorly since its recent nerf, for example my Warrior has 18 leech rating which grants him an extra 2.72% leech. Can be worth it but I'm not sure how much you'd need with diminishing returns.
Avoidance scales better than leech (also nerfed though). It just isn't a very valuable stat. On my Shaman I have 9 avoidance which translates to taking 2.55% less damage from AoE attacks. Still nice to have.

For Dodge, the most you'll get is from Agi for classes that use it but you have some of it on rare (good) pieces of gear like https://www.wowhead.com/item=29337/the-exarchs-protector?bonus=6710 . The rating isn't that good but since we have a baseline chance to dodge (even for non-Agi classes) it's decent. My Rogue has 19 dodge rating which translate to an extra 3.91%

More or less the same story for parry except not everyone can parry baseline. Str users get some from their primary while Prot Warriors get 1 point rating for every point of crit they have. For some numbers 30 parry is 6.18% chance to parry, 14 parry is 2.88% and on my Warr I currently have 85 rating which gives me an extra 17.50% chance to parry but these numbers don't seem to take into consideration any diminishing returns which is quite strange. So I'd say don't take these numbers for granted, it's most likely much less.
For another calc when I put myself in Arms spec (thus forgetting the parry talent) I fall to 12.75% parry from 25.24 in Prot which would give my 85 rating a rough parry increase of 12.5% which seems much more likely since it feels like it includes diminishing returns.
All that said there aren't that many pieces with parry, let alone good ones and the most parry you'll get on non-Prot will most likely be from socket bonuses -very negligeable-.

If I missed something please tell me and if I'm not feeling too lazy I might work on that mastery breakdown some other time.

 

[DoByG]

I noticed something pretty strange after investigating the WoD rares yesterday. For whatever reason, looks like the offhand slot may not be able to proc socket, nor the bugged "warforged" text. Every other Apexis slot item has those options on Wowhead, with the exception of the 2 daily available off hands. I know, I know, Wowhead is not always right, but this is consistent with my farming test (200 Tor'goroth kills, ~80 off-hand drops), which I did right before TWW pre-patch, where I saw 0 sockets and 0 "warforged" upgrades but a few terts. Every other set piece (main set, offset, weapons, bows and shields) has the option available and we have seen those proc sockets.

Maybe the socket procs were always there for WoD rares and I just tested on a bigger scale on 1 of the only 2 rares that are an exception to the rule. This would make more sense than the theory we had by now - WoD socket procs being unavailable through DF and suddenly back working as of TWW>

 

[Katmandu]

but this is consistent with my farming test (200 Tor'goroth kills,

I will add another 500 Tor'goroth kills to your total without getting a socket upgrade. I'm convinced it does not exist.

 

[DoByG]

I will add another 500 Tor'goroth kills to your total without getting a socket upgrade. I'm convinced it does not exist.

It's really strange why offhand is the only slot that can proc socket. Sheilds can, bows can, offhand can't. I am sure you never got a "warforged" text proc as well, right?

 

[EKJMNY45]

2. Single stat gems:
- For whatever reason, 2 specific epic gems scale better than anything else in the bracket - 4 @ lvl 20 / 5 @ lvl 29. Delicate Ornate Ruby and Brilliant Ornate Ruby are sold for 1 Mark of Honor, which is not a bad trade for a BiS gem. You can get 5x Mark of Honor from Orboreal Distinguishment for 2000 Honor from Seltherex or Purveyor Zo'kuul.
.

do they actually scale to +5 in instanced pvp?

 

[DoByG]

do they actually scale to +5 in instanced pvp?

Not any more. Now only 4 at both 20 and 29. Updated, thanks!
- Also, fixed wrong values for Superior Strength (still had the old DF values listed for this one).
- Added information that Nightmare Tear's tooltip outside BG is wrong (says 3 but gives 2 stats).
- Most notably - The installed speed cap has changed, now up to 171 (was 162).