Just got to max level with my fire mage in the last week, however it now feels like when I play dungeons other players (also at max level) are always doing more damage than me, no matter what I do.
Playing timewalking dungeons my damage feels like it is “normal” though.
Is this an ilvl (I’m at 288), azerite level (I’m at 7) or something? Or am I just playing wrong?
The majority of people are like 150 ilvls higher than you, so yes 
Thanks. Do you have any suggestions about how to boost my ilvl, other than lots of dungeons?
Probably Nazjatar for benthic gear, starts at ilvl 380 which you can upgrade all the way to 425.
You could also try Warfront, I think the Darkshore one is up atm which gives you a one time quest for ilvl 400(?).
That looks like lots of questing. I glad I have a plan to get it now 
Aim for benthic gear from nazjatar to put you at about 385 ilvl then run m+ or raids to gear up more from there (maybe you can join a friendly community for these or a guild). From my limited understanding of fire mages they are gear dependant. i.e. they need the correct gear to excel.
The Nazjatar quest chain is quite short and will grant you several 385 items at the end of it.
Your neck level should be 35+ since that is basically the base-level after doing a handful of quests now. Do that (pick up the quest on the boat to go to Nazjatar until you went to the heart of forge and back ^^), it’ll help a lot.
It’ll unlock all the important azerite traits on your head/shoulder/chest and additionally it unlocks essences at the same time (which also deal quite some damage).
I seem to have got Zandalar and Nazjatar confused. Looking it up it seems I need to unlock world quests first before I get to Nazjatar (this is my first 120 character).
So, unless I’ve got it wrong, I have to complete the main quest chains in the 3 areas on Zandalar first to get the friendly rep to unlock world quests.
Thanks for your help
World quests should unlock shortly after 120 via a quest with Nathanos on the boat in Zandalars harbour.
As far as i remember (on the alts i’ve levelled after this hunter) as soon as you hit 120 no matter which zones you’ve completed you’ll do a short quest which will open up WQ.
Also for your neck level speak to Magni in sithilus/the heart chamber and i believe he can boost your neck level to 35.
Thanks everyone. I’m finally at ilvl 388.
For anyone else looking I did:
Great to see you’re progressing! As a new player the sort of overlayed systems that come into play at max level (ilvl, essences, azerite) are frankly quite daunting, especially since each one wasn’t really brought in all at once, so getting hit with it all at 120 is a lot.
As you can see by checking the armouries of some of the people replying to this thread there is a lot more gear progression available. But frankly I’d advise you not to rush, you’re still a long long way behind what most would even consider average or even poorly geared, and that’s fine.
Getting comfortable with some of the fundamentals of how your class works, and an understanding of what sorts of items you’ll want, and what you don’t want (Beyond just item level. Hint that trinket) is going to serve you better going into the next patch and obviously the expansion after that next year.
If you do, however, want to properly get into the harder group content of the game (Raiding, Mythic+ Dungeons) then you’ve got a lot of work ahead of you.
Yeah. I was under the misleading impression that getting to 120 would let me engage in everything, having underpowered items and lots to grind definitely wasn’t in my plan.
I’ve got to “milestone 1” now, as I’m not hard-locked out of content from my ilvl now (actually, given how much is in WoW, I probably just haven’t seen the content I’m locked out of yet…)
Playing quests to unlock another allied race (the Vulpera, just getting the reqs ready for next patch), is what I’m targetting at the moment. That and getting a healer/tank alt to 120, although I might just get kicked for not being “good enough” in dungeons at that point, so I’m not sure if that will end up being satisfying 
. From what I can tell I’m best off if I’ve unlocked access to various items before an alt gets there so it can skip some steps when advancing, that’s just a background task for now.
It does leave me feeling a long way behind ‘everyone else’.
It feels a lot further than it is, frankly, the issue is as a new player you have so much more you want to try / do / experience, and you don’t have the knowhow of people who’ve played / understand how the game works to be able to “Just do things efficiently”.
Myself personally I quit the game for a while and came back several weeks into the current patch, I was able to get my character kitted out to a point where I was topping dps in heroic raids / M+ keys in about 2-3 weeks. It can be done, but it requires you to know what you’re doing, know what’s good for you, and have a clear and efficient understanding of how to get it. Right now you certainly don’t have that, and that’s fine. New patches tend to be somewhat of a full reset in terms of people’s relevant gear progression, it’s a good chance to start on the right foot, and prepping in your own time / getting better at your class is a great place to be right now going into a January patch.
That’s better than what I thought - I had assumed I would need to wait for the next expansion for a reset/catchup point.
For now I’ll carry on questing (with the odd dungeons) and upgrading my heart bit by bit
To give you an idea. The maximum item level possible for an item right now is 455 (Azerite 445 + 5 from the central trait). In visions that is rising to 475. With 460 being available from heroic raids.
You’re very much behind the curve at 388, as we’ve said, but in 2-3 weeks doing the right things you could be potentially 420 or so with decent azerite traits and most of your relevant essences (And a neck level of 65 or more). We could double or even triple that time and you’d still reasonably prepared for moving into the next patch.
Also kinda important question of what sorts of content do you envision yourself enjoying in WoW? Knowing what you want out of it kind of helps work out what exactly you might need to put into it, and perhaps more importantly, how relevant being efficient with your time is to you getting what you want out of the game.
Being able to do Mythic+ would be ideal. I’m not sure how it compares to doing dungeons, but they’ve always worked out as fun.
Just played a dungeon (heroic, via group finder) - my damage has improved a lot and assuming I get matched with similar people again, I’ll always deal the most damage 
, which isn’t really want, as it will get boring quickly, besides the rewards don’t seem to be that great.
Yeah, heroic dungeons, and generally anything you can sit in a queue for, won’t give you great rewards,
M+ is like greater rifts in diablo, its a constantly scaling system which makes dungeons harder and harder with better rewards. I would again say you’ve got a ways to go until you can really feel or experience that.
As far as the numbers thing goes. The Gear : Damage ratio is very much not linear, to pluck some numbers from my recent memory I’m ending couple minute single target raid boss fights around 57k dps, and in dungeons I can go as high as 150k on some trash packs / pulls, averaging 50-60k for a whole run depending on the dungeon.
As you get more geared, and more tools to play with / make decisions about, as well as into pools of increasing more skilled / experienced players (For more content) you’ll definitely start seeing just how much people can push their characters, especially during more complex encounters where you also have to do mechanics to survive.
OK. So what’s the next step for me to work towards making Mythic+?
The three major major things that stick out to me atm are.
1: Neck level / essences. Having 2 essence slots and a fair amount of neck level, as well as two spec appropriate essences to put in it (I have no idea what fire mage uses, sorry)
2: 3 415+ azerite pieces with 2 tiers of major traits. Benthic and emissary cache are the two most obvious sources for this, but again I dont know what traits you actually want as fire. I do however know that timewalking gear in slots that could otherwise have azerite is absolutely terrible, your helm case and point.
3: general ilvl being nearer the 400+ mark, again benthic is a great source of this. And finally having two dps trinkets (Your compendium of swilring tides is for healers, there’s a compendium of storms that is for dps but otherwise basically the same.)