This guide isn’t skill related but it’s rather about convenient way of gearing without help of your friends. I don’t say you will instantly get into every group and get 220+ ilvl but getting there will be easier and what’s also important most of the process will be possible to be done alone and there isn’t much RNG in it. You also won’t need to ask your friends to tank too much rating and drop mmr to get you geared. I’ll spread my guide into few parts, so let’s start:
- Choose your alt
What classes/specs would make the best alt? These classes are either these which use these covenants in the order Necrolords > Kyrian > Night Fae > Venthyr. Someone will ask why? Let me explain. Every covenant has it’s set of gear that you receive from doing you covenant storyline and what I found is that every covenant has different stats on it’s set. Necrolord’s gear is the best entry gear (in most cases) because it has versatility as main stat on every piece. It might not have desired combination of let’s say versatility > haste but at least you’d have enough versalitity to win some games and farm conquest points with desired combination of stats. Specs that prefer Necrolords as their covenant choice are:
- Elemental/Elemental Shaman
- Frost/Unholy DK
- Assassination Rogue
- Restoration Druid
- Mistweaver Monk (this is not 100% true as top MW players are almost evenly split between Necro and Venthyr)
Niche covenant choices for Necrolords that work:
*Arms Warrior (Smexxin made his Warrior Necrolord and his Arms/Ret/H Priest is know to be dominant in the ladder. Necrolords is very potent choice if you play Turbo, TSG or Arms/Ret with your friends. Overall any class that struggles with snares and benefits from mastery would love to play with you. I was theorycrafting a bit about Affliction Warlock).
*Ret/Holy Paladin (after Divine Toll nerfs that weren’t actually that scary many people considered Necro after buffs but Kyrian is definetely better option)
*Demo Warlock (if you want to have fun with gimmick Demon Bolt build with Balespider’s burning core legendary it’s the best covenant for you)
Does it mean that Kyrian, NF and Venthyr shouldn’t be chosen. Not at all. Kyrian has Versatility on most pieces (2 of them don’t if I’m right), NF doesn’t have it on 3 but it’s not dominant stat on most of them and Venthyr literally doesn’t have it on any. I’d avoid Venthyr but if you really want to then this guide is actually for you. A lot of specs related to Venthyr were recently buffed and these are:
- Arms Warrior (the most common choice for Arms)
- Sub Rogue
- BM/Survival Hunter
- Disc/Holy/Shadow Priest
- Enhancement Shaman
- Mistweaver Monk
Niche Venthyr choices are:
- Holy/Retribution Paladin
- Frost/Fire/Arcane Mage
- Restoration Shaman
With NF and Kyrian I leave it as your choice but farming their covenant gear is viable option.
- Farm 15000 honor before you reach lvl 60 (optional)
This point isn’t mandatory and you don’t need to get 15000 to make it work but the whole idea is related with the fact that going into battleground as fresh lvl 60 or even with 168 crafted gear will be frustrating because you won’t really contribute to wins. In 50-59 bracket you will be able to do more and if you are a class like Druid you can solo win them by just carrying flag or just by being solo healer keeping your team alive. This honor you will spend later on trinkets and if you have extra honor to spend for rings and neck because these aren’t included in covenant gear. During honor farming stage you wan’t to play your bis covenant but more about it later.
- Swap your covenant to Necrolord (if you are Venthyr)
You can swap right after farming honor or right before getting level 60 because covenant swapping during Treads of Fate has no penalty and you can swap limitless times every few minutes.
- Get your Renown level to 22 and get all covenant pieces of gear
Very important fact is you should avoid doing LFR or avoiding these progression quests like “aid Venthyr” etc. because you want to use them for quick source of Venthyr renown and keep in mind that every conduit got as Necro will be reset with swap to Venthyr. My advise is just to clear few normal/heroic dungeons between every campaign chapter. They have the biggest chance to give you renown and you will get some anima that you need for later.
- Farm anima to upgrade every piece
This is straight forward just do all possible WQ. It’s of course convenient to farm them while you are doing campaign so you can store some anima already. Just don’t upgrade your covenant perks.
- Swap to Venthyr
If you have all pieces at 197 ilvl you can feel free to swap. I know what you think. You hate PvE, covenant storylines and crap - me too but if it saves me from farming honor as 22 k hp pleb or playing arenas when I’m too instantly removed or carried then I’d take it. More than PvE I hate being carried.
At the end of this whole process you should be 190 ilvl with 22% versa or a bit more. It should be enough to get invited into low CR RBG and Arena groups where you can farm conquest and honor points to replace pieces with stats that aren’t desired. This should make your gearing experience less frustrating and I think it might actually be faster. I just wanted to present this alternative to you.
