Leveling should give you some good mid-game gear

[Funkykittié-ravencrest]

I disagree that going to the AH should be the first thing a new player does. I really do.

Don’t worry, I already got my questioned answered

[Punyelf-draenor (Punyelf)]

It’s not the first thing I did either. I did the content available then bought a few cheap items from the AH to boost my level enough to get into LFR.

I didn’t want to do heroics because dungeon spam was how I levelled, I didn’t want to waste a lot of time when I could spend a minimal amount of gold that I made doing the open world content after I dinged.

New players are perfectly capable of using the AH.

[Grovi-silvermoon]

I feel like theres enough catchup gear at max level, but i do like the idea of consuming gear to boost your character’s performance while leveling!

[Alewín-argent-dawn]

@Funkykittié-ravencrest

questing gear is so bad that you can’t even que to a normal dungeon - they probably should just make questing gear be scaled up with the patch cycles to keep up to speed

This is basically the root of it. DF levelling gear was appropriate to start 10.0 - it is no appropriate to start 10.1.

The smart thing would be inflate the ilvl of quest rewards linearly from 60-70, such that when you first arrive on the isles you get exactly what you did on launch day; but by the time you’re half way through you’re ahead of the original curve. Reaching 70 by questing should definitely prepare you for normal dungeon entry.

And yes, I too have had the “Right, dinged 70. Best go to the AH, maybe have an alt craft me some things” moment. Only the basic crafted items are now rather low level… Although it’s possible you can work order a Titan Matrix V from an enchanting friend/alt (using their materials not yours, because you are fresh 70 and don’t have any mettle) then work order an item at I think 395? But that’s a convoluted process and assumes you have access to a friend/alt with enchanting, that is advanced enough to have materials to spare.

Although I’ve been watching the sparks absolutely pile up on a neglected character I picked up for the first time in S2 just 3 days ago. Started at ilvl 388, thus was qualified for LFR, and having run that and 4 low keys, now has 3 sparks available; all of which will craft straight to 424 and be immediate upgrades without any crests.

There is some kind of system in here that works, but there’s a couple of annoying gaps (mostly getting to LFR ilvl being impossible without the AH) that need plugging.