wow Dragonflight Season 2 Gear Upgrading Charts

[Stan 4,722]

The new gear upgrading system in Patch 10.1 may seem confusing. Fortunately, community members have created cheat sheets to help you better understand it!

Season 2 begins tomorrow and now would be ideal to review the upgrading system. In Patch 10.1, all PvE gear is upgraded the same way.

You must spend Flightstones and Shadowflame Crests on the upgrades. Some players may find the new system confusing because there are multiple times of gear and crests, so we'd like to highlight some cheatsheets created by the community.

The first one is by ernest314, who created multiple versions because they had trouble understanding the existing "cheat sheets".

The Explainer version is intended for players not familiar with the gear upgrading system.

The other version is for players who already played Patch 10.1 and are familiar with the system.

Another cheat sheet was linked by Reddit user ChiefSach who took a screenshot from IVIV's video.

What do you think about the gear upgrading system in Embers of Neltharion? Let us know your thoughts down in the comments!

[hadonius1 1]

I understand the new system (not super confidently but enough to keep myself sane) BUT seeing these 'cheat sheets' has just made it more confusing for me 😂 I'll just pretend I haven't seen them! 

Edited May 8 by hadonius1
Edit to say I really like the new gear upgrade system!

[Brightamethyst 47]

They made this whole system waaaaaay more complicated than it needs to be.

[Dahaka99 24]

8 minutes ago, Brightamethyst said:

They made this whole system waaaaaay more complicated than it needs to be.

but still better than the valor crap in my opinion.

[Prophet001 403]

This is the best one I've seen imo.

 

I guess crafted gear doesn't get an upgrade track tho?

[SpilledStars 32]

"simpler" no.   "it needs simple parts & fancy parts" if they'd only come in the two types, I think it could have been simpler.

But my guildie just asked "can I make one of these Explorer gear into one of the heftier types of gear if I just have enough Crests"

and it has taken an INSANE amount of digging to discern that answer as probably not?  I don't think so?

So I consider there's three notable categories of player going for this content:

1. Full Storming VOTI raiders & Pushing Keys Mythic+ players.  Initial reaction from my actively Raiding guildie:  the quest gave us some embarrassingly low quest greens for such a high level zone.  "But they're upgradeable" my aunt Fanny; they aren't allowed to be upgraded to a type that can even reach the level matching the gear in that slot which I already own.
2. Late Blooming Learning raiders and low-Keys Mythic players.  I busted my tailfeathers to succeed at having enough Valor to upgrade some gear here or there, and have just been told that all those runs aren't worth anything anymore, because the new gear will upgrade to better very soon with these new "flightstones".  Also, that's not perfectly correct and you need a chart to make sense of it.  Also, I got handed a bunch of quest greens to burn a lot of these flightstones on.   I don't know, If I'm super active on questing and WQs, I am probably going to outpace the gear very soon.  Or so it's claimed, because those are Random.  Bah, it's gonna take til week 7 before I feel healthy again.
3. Late to the Game and hoping this will make me able to reach all the good stuff now.  Hm.  Well, the extra Dragon Glyphs will be nice for farming the Ohn'ahran lowlands.   And it's cool I can upgrade 379's all the way up to 398.  Or it should be.  It might be faster for me to max Renowns on the "normal" dragonlands?  Because those folks already offered me gear at that level.

Category 3 is only a weak assessment in that flightstones seem to drop from every nook and cranny, other than this, they're just as disappointed in the gear iLVL choice of the initial quest series as everyone else.

You asked my opinion, but these are the opinions I'm surrounded by.

edit to add: Category 1 opinion is a little weak because a handful of methods seem to exist to be given a few pieces of higher gear than "explorer" early on.   Three of these are in the form of weekly quests and therefore readily stormable en masse by a batch of raiding friends.  It still feels weird to have to force-upgrade gear up to the level one already is wearing.

My opinion is I'm still sad my druid can't fly in her own flightform.  I'm still sad I have dozens of dragon mounts and can only use 4.  Neither of these are about gear though.

Edited May 8 by SpilledStars

[SpilledStars 32]

The crafted gear is a bit confusing.

Will crafted via crests result in an item with an upgrade track?  Or stuck somewhere random within its numeric range?

[Brightamethyst 47]

Crafted gear already has a built in upgrade track in the form of quality. Want a higher ilevel? Find someone who can recraft it for you.

[SpilledStars 32]

Rumor has it that the new type of Spark can thusly be used on the Lariat.  that sounds yummy