I believe the Zandalari hostile NPC’s (I know this sounds weird, yes) have a chance to drop MoP rep tokens. They have certain spawn points and drop the dinosaur mounts (Triceratops thingies?).
At Revered you should be able to buy a token that doubles the rep you get for that faction.
And yes, lots of dailies as well. MoP was the time of the dailies sadly.
Championing for a faction (activating the star) only works when you queue for a dungeon, not when you run into them, so it’s virtually useless.
You can farm each Pandaria faction by doing their dailies. You receive a average between 1500-2000 rep/day from each faction.
For example now i am progressing with Order of the Cloud Serpents (Jade Forest), the Anglers (the fishing reputation) and with the Tillers (the farm) simultaneously. I do all their dailies in about 15-20 min, most of time is wasted during flying to each zone than questing. I choosed only 3 out of all, so that i can farm fast and easy and also focus on current expansion. After i finish with theese 3, i go with others simultaneously. Its very easy and fast with minimal effort.
The only “problematic” faction is : Emperor Shao Shao. Its considered a “vanity” faction and it can be only farmed by killing certain mobs in Timeless Isle. I will leave it last and farm 15 min a day.
If you manage/split your time good, in time you can grow all factions without much effort. But if you focus to grow it fast, it will get frustrating and booring.
As OP wants the Shado-Pan helmet for transmog, I’d say he’s best of doing those dailies and then farming for rep tokens from the Zandalari NPC’s. While RNG is part of this method, it’s still faster than including other factions when you get no benefit out of them.
No problem. I’d say that is your best bet. Unless MoP Timewalking is around the corner. During MoP Timewalking, you can buy faction rep tokens with the Timewalking badges. Pretty easy to hit exalted like that.
I’m not sure at this moment. They used to be unlocked by hitting Golden Lotus - Revered, but that may have changed when MoP was over.
Not entirely sure honestly. Best just check it out. That said, there are quite a few Shado-Pan quests in Townlong Steppes that gets you somewhere around honored as well.
Cuts down token farming and daily farming time, if you’re up for it.
Here’s how you do it and might get a mount at the same time: Make trial characters on empty RP realms, and go around killing zandalari warscouts/warbringers. They drop account-wide rep tokens that give A TON of rep, yeah not all of them are shado-pan, but you can get so many of them quickly that in a couple days of doing this (depends on how much you do this) you should be exalted on your main.
Google where those two mobs spawn and that’s it. This is the second fastest method, fastest should be timewalking. I got exalted with almost every Pandaria rep back in MoP without even trying to do that by farming the mounts only. Oh yeah, the warbringers drop 3 different kind of mounts as well.