Timewalking gear sets in World of Warcraft

Question

For the newly introduced timewalking dungeons, your gear scales down to ilvl 95 gear. My question is - if you do the lower level quests that the dungeons have in them and/or loot the gear that actually comes out of the dungeon - is it typically better than your scaled down gear? Should I be creating a timewalking gear set - or just leave my high ilvl pve gear set on and let it be scaled? What is more beneficial?

Answer 1

The most beneficial items for Timewalking are going to be raid items, current and old, that have the most gem sockets. This is, of course, outside of old tier sets that provide some broken bonus or something else ridiculous for that level of content.

Essentially, you'll stack said items, put the best gems you can in to them, and from there you have to look at your weapons and trinkets.

Example: Shadowmourne's AoE damage proc can be procced almost instantly while also using the Pandaria legendary cloak, due to the rapid hits it generates.

Any trinket with a silly effect, like a powerful cleave or guardian or something (Deathbringer's Will is a good example here) is also recommended.

A warning, though: I use the Pandaria cloak in them, and pull off of the tank frequently. You need to let them establish enough threat, especially on group pulls, before your dive in and the cloak procs almost instantly.

Answer 2

The gear from the quests is the same as if you had walked into the dungeon in heroic mode, so unless your at level 71 they wont be likely to offer an upgrade to the existing gear that you have.

The gear that drops from the bosses is a special type of gear that scales up to the level you are at when it drops, I have found that it's often an upgrade to what I have.

Answer 3

The dungeons themselves are not so difficult as to warrant a separate gear set. Scaled down gear will work fine.

The drops in the dungeons scale up (660, 675 warforged). They are unlikely to replace your current raid tier gear, but if you have a fresh 100 they may be a gearing option.

Answer 4

If the older Raid Tiers still perform like they were supposed to, then I think that gear is gonna be awesome.

I've always kept two pieces of T5 hunter gear on my hunters. The two piece set bonus is 15% of my damage done to direct healing on my pet. And that healing generates no threat. Using the T5 (Rift Stalker Set) bonus was part of my toolbox of things I would use to solo content with.

There is a problem using the older Tier gear though. As you level the benefit drops in two ways. First and obvious way is you are getting very little stat bonus from it, and would be better off in current level green gear and doing more damage (and this was before the Stats squish, I haven't really done the number on same gear after the stats squish, but I'd bet it still holds true).

The second problem is that Blizz has Tier Sets do less for you as you level away from level requirement. For instance, the AoC Trinket (Assurance of Consequence) at level gives an awesome reduction to almost all of your cool downs. Making this one of the all time favorite trinkets ever. But at level 100, the reduction to your CDs arent worth the loss in DPS resulted in using it.

But there is hope. Once out gear is scaled down to the TW dungeon, AND we are scaled down to it as well, then the trinkets and gear effects might be viable again. If so, look for a lot of TW gungeoneers wearing 3 or 4 sets of different Raid Tier gear at the same time. Im currently gathering some older Tier sets for multiple 2 pc bonuses at the same time.

I have already used my T5 2 pc bonus for my pet in a TW dungeon, and only once did I need to pop mend pet. I could see a steady stream of non stop healing going to my pet from my damage. I was doing about 4,000 DPS, which converts to 600 HPS on my pet.

The other Tier bonuses Im currently looking at are a 5% damage boost to all damage, a 15% damage boost to certain main abilities, and a 10% focus recharge gain. I haven't had time to test anything but the T5 set. But Next TW weekend I'll have all my hunters using their new TW sets, and see just how far I can stretch it.

One thing makes me sad, I cant solo queue for TW dungeons.