Pandaria reputation priority

As I'm nearing 90, I think it's probably time to start looking towards collecting some tank gear and preparing myself for endgame content, but I've heard that pandaria is somewhat reputation intensive, is there a particular faction that an aspiring(returning) tank should be leaning towards to collecting gear and/or enchants?

-Shado-Pan Revered will net you a decent helm (ilevel 489) and a chest. There's also a cloak from Shado-Pan (at Honoured), but there's a better cloak option from:

-Shado-Pan Assault Neutral gets you the haste/mastery neck (ilevel 522). I think you hit neutral just for showing up on the island.

-Golden Lotus Revered is a pair of shoulders (parry/hit, ilevel 489). There's a ring at Honoured as well.

-August Celestials Honoured has wrists (ilevel 489) and gloves at Revered. (There are boots too, but they're lower ilevel than the Operation: Shieldwall ones.)

-Operation: Shieldwall has a waist at Revered (which is higher ilevel than the Klaxxi one). There's also feet at Revered and a ring at Honoured.

-Klaxxi has an epic ring once you hit Exalted... but that may take a while to get to. However they do have ilevel 489 legs at Revered.

All that to say it looks like your best bet now is to snag your "free" neck from the isle, then work on Operation: Shieldwall every day. I can't remember if Shado-Pan unlocks after you get to a certain point in Golden Lotus rep... but they'd be worth going for since you'll want a helm.

Hope that helps. I might've forgotten some things.

Go farm warbringers and get get 15 tokens for each faction and profit, lol. You'll have to do the SPA and Operation manually but at least the other four are knocked out in like 2 hours time.

Arnock wrote:is there a particular faction that an aspiring(returning) tank should be leaning towards to collecting gear and/or enchants?

No.

Only 5.0/5.1 faction worth a thing is The Tillers.

Do the Barrens weekly every week. You'll get a random stat 489 suited to your spec.

Knock out the faction rep for the Isle of Thunder and hit honored and buy a 476 belt. Help kill rares on the Isle to get a treasure room key. Run the treasure room to stock up on 5.0 raid bonus rolls.

Run 5 mans and scenarios. Trade in JP for Honor and buy 476 PvP gear.

In 5.4 all 5.0/5.1 gear is going rep free and being converted to JP. 5.2 gear is getting a price reduction of 33% or so.

Nikachelle wrote:I can't remember if Shado-Pan unlocks after you get to a certain point in Golden Lotus rep...

Just for completion, originally you needed Golden Lotus revered to activate Shadopan and Celestials reps, but they have removed the requirement in 5.3

Just don't forget to grab the trinket from Shado-Pan if you manage to get Revered before 5.4, as decent trinkets are hard to come by(for something like 900 VP). Or just grab it for JPs once 5.4 goes live.

If you have a good gold base you might want to get craftables as well (476/496 gloves-chest go for relatively cheap prices, 522 helm/boots may cost a ton however)

Then again, the 522 helm/boots are close to BiS, so if you can afford them, they're really good, and not something you'll replace soon after.

As for rep, the only one that's really interesting is Shado-Pan Assault, as it gives you 522 items. I personally wouldn't bother with any of the other reputations, as your VP is spent better on upgrading 522 items to 530. Shado-Pan Assault doesn't have dailies. It has one weekly quest that gives you some rep, but the bulk of your rep from them comes from the raids.

What you want to do if you get 90:
- Get the full 458 retribution PvP set (Blacksmiths can craft these).
- Get a 450 cloak (Tailors).
- Get a 450 neck, and 2 rings (JCs).
- Get a 463 shield (Blacksmiths).
- Get the Ghost Iron Dragonling (Engineering, you can get this one at 87 already).
(These are all pretty cheap. If you have a bunch of gold, as mentioned, you can buy really nice 522 helm/boots, decent 496 chest and gloves, a craftable 502 weapon, and the inscription trinket.)

Queue for the Arena of Annihilation scenario. This gives you a guaranteed 450 weapon.

Be sure to talk to Wrathion at this point, to start the legendary quest.

Spam 5 man heroic dungeons and loot any Plate Tank/DPS item that you can. If you have any JP, upgrade your 463 items to 471 (for 750 JP per item). If you bought the 522 helm and boots, I recommend upgrading those as well, once you got the VP for them (each can be upgraded twice for 250 VP per upgrade). Keep going until your ilvl is 460+.

Head over to the Isle of Thunder, and kill some rares until the epic key drops. Head for the cave and run the Treasure Trove scenario. This should net you a bunch of Elder Charms. If you looted the Incantation of someone, use that as well, as it nets you 1-3 Elder Charms too.

Que for the first 2 LFR instances. At every boss, use the dungeon journal to see which set (Prot or Ret) drops the most upgrades, and change your loot specialization accordingly. Freely spend your Elder Charms to try and get to 470 from those 2 LFR instances.

If after the first 2 LFR instances, you aren't 470+ yet, run some more 5 man heroic dungeons, and keep upgrading your 463 blues to 471 until you have 470 ilvl.

Que for the 3rd to 5th LFR instance. Again, use the dungeon journal to see which loot specialization to use. Continue running these LFRs until you're 480 ilvl.

Once you're 480 ilvl, you can run the daily heroic scenario for chance of a poorly itemized 516 item, as well as queue for the last four LFRs, which drop 502 items.



Somewhere in between there, you can do the Lorewalker Cho quests, that will eventually end you up in the barrens. By doing the weekly quest here, you receive an orb, which allows you to imbue a latent helm/shoulder/chest/gloves/belt/legs/boots into an appropriate 489 ilvl item. You'll also get a decent amount of Lesser Charms in the barrens.

Be sure to farm 50 Lesser Charms per week, and hand them in below the Shrine of Seven Stars/Two Moons for 3 Mogu Charms.

Also, there'll be groups up for Sha / Galleon / Nalak / Oondasta. Be sure to use an Elder Charm (from the Isle of Thunder) on both Sha and Galleon, as they can drop 496 gear. Nalak and Oondasta require Mogu Charms (from the weekly quest that requires you to turn in 50 Lesser Charms), and I think it's worth it to spend your Mogu Charms on this as well.

Finally, you can use OpenRaid to join raids to MSV/HoF/ToES normal, which might give you a bit of a gear boost.

Extra note, finishing the lorewalker cho questline rewards with ilvl 502 boots. Also killing sha of fear drops a quest item (you need to loot itmanually) that rewards 476 boots

Getting the daily rep on the island (Kirin Tor Offensive for Alliance, Sunreaver Onslaught for Horde) gives a 476 belt for gold instead of valor. The rest of the faction gear in Pandaria needs valor to purchase.

That's getting changed in 5.4 though so he might want to just spend his VP now on 522 and get the remaining missing points later.

Thels has an awesome reply there.

The only thing I'd add is the 476 honour gear. Running Tol Barad and Wintergrasp at least weekly for the quests, and more often if you like, is a very time efficient way of getting 476 gear that will fill out a few slots and help you meet the various LFR ilevel requirements. I also find converting JP from 5 mans to honour a better use of that currency than upgrading 463 gear to 471. That will change in 5.4, but for now, 476 PVP gear is a great failsafe option.

As others have said, rep grinds are not worth bothering with now, except SPA which will happen from running LFR anyway, and Tillers, to support your professions.

SPA rep getting a change too in next patch, as all the items will be available at friendly/honored, which takes maybe 2 weeks or 3 to earn (you get friendly within the first full LFR run).

Tiller rep is good to champion. You get 300 rep from your first daily hc, 200 from first random scenario, and 200 from first heroic scenario (yes, they are separate)

@Fenrir Whate exactly is meant by farming warbringers?

@Everyone else, didn't 5.3 only drop a few weeks ago? How soon are they expecting 5.4 to hit?

And why would I be wanting to farm ret PVP gear for tanking?

Because ret has haste on it (I assume anyway) and the pvp stats won't actually affect you (doesn't detract from ilevel).

Farming warbringers are the dinosaur guys that drop mounts as well as tokens that increase rep with the older MoP factions. They appear in about four zones, roughly every thirty minutes. That being said... I wouldn't do this as a new level 90. Even with full ToT raid gear, as a tank, they were not only time consuming but also rather painful (you can't really let your mind go afk while you kill them because they have a few moves that will take your health down pretty quickly).

The Warscouts aren't too bad to kill, there are two of them for each Warbringer, and they each drop 1 rep token guaranteed (plus chance at loot bag).

Arnock wrote:@Fenrir Whate exactly is meant by farming warbringers?

As said, they drop tokens that increase rep with specific old factions by 1000 per use. Could be nice in a group, as half the people won't care about these, but they might be tricky to solo. They're not soulbound, so you will have people with full rep needing on them to send them to alts.

Arnock wrote:@Everyone else, didn't 5.3 only drop a few weeks ago? How soon are they expecting 5.4 to hit?

6 months between major patches. 5.2 came out in march, so 5.4 should hit in september.

Arnock wrote:And why would I be wanting to farm ret PVP gear for tanking?

ilvl, really. The PvP stats are extra, so a 458 PvP item is as good for PvE as a 458 PvE item. There is a craftable 458 pvp ret set. There is a craftable tank set, but that one's only 450. Hence you want to take the pvp ret set.

It really doesn't matter what gear you're wearing in 5 mans and LFR. You just want the highest possible ilvl gear to unlock ToT LFR and HC SCenario. Once you got to 480 should you start to worry about what stats your gear bring, and even then, major ilvl upgrades are still major ilvl upgrades. For example, you would really want to take, say, 496 int/spirit/crit over 463 str/haste/mastery, just for the truck of extra stamina and armor you get from it.

econ21: Perhaps for the cheapest items only. Upgrading 463 to 471 costs 750 JP (93.75 JP per ilvl). The cheapest honor items cost 1250 HP, which costs you 1875 JP. Let's assume you're still stuck with a 450 item in those slots (since it's mostly rings and cloaks that are so cheap). Then it's 26 ilvls, so it's 72.12 JP per ilvl.

That's indeed cheaper. However, if you already have a 463 item or even a 458 item in those slots, it really ain't a benefit. If you buy a 476 item by converting JP, and the next dungeon an item for that slot drops, you would've been better off upgrading a 463 item instead.

It's a little different if you're actually interested in farming the Honor directly, but I would recommend against converting JP to Honor to buy 476 items. Upgrading 463 items will go smoother.