Battle for Azeroth Fresh Level 120 Gearing Guide (BfA 8.2.5)
Welcome to our Level 120 Battle Guide, which will give you a list of objectives to prioritise for gearing up and progressing a new character or alt!
Introduction
The content in this guide will be applicable to all new players, but certain aspects can be skipped depending on what your focus in the endgame is, as well as whether or not this is your first character.
Daily Objectives
Upon hitting Level 120, there are a number of things that you should aim to complete every day, to ensure the fastest possible progression for your character.
Emissaries
Every day, a new reputation emissary will be active. These emissaries require you to complete 4 world quests of the active faction and then hand it in to the faction's quartermaster for a reward and chunk of reputation. You should aim to do these each day, as they are fairly easy and quick to complete, while giving a solid boost to your reputation gain and potentially granting you useful loot or Azerite Power.
These emissaries will be active for 3 days upon becoming active, so you do not have to do them every day. You can instead do all 3 in 1 day, and then not have to complete them until the next set are active. Simply do whatever fits your playing schedule best.
Make sure that you have a Contract active for a faction while doing these emissaries. It can help to cut down the time required for your reputation grinds and they can be purchased on the Auction House for very little gold. A contract will add 10 reputation to your chosen faction for every World Quest you complete.
World Quests
Outside of the emissaries, there may also be some World Quests that are worth completing for the rewards. Ideally, if you have time to do so and you want to get as much reputation as possible, you would complete every World Quest on the map.
This is not a realistic goal for most people, so instead, you should aim to focus on the ones that give you suitable rewards after completing the emissaries. Gear upgrades should be your priority if you have just hit Level 120, followed by Azerite Power, and then the rest.
If you can find gear upgrades within your emissary's zone, then make sure to do them for efficiency.
Mechagon
Mechagon is a special case in terms of World Quests, as it only has 1 World Quest. You should make sure to do this every day, as there is no emissary for the Rustbolt Resistance reputation.
Daily Quests
Patch 8.2 introduced a number of daily quests in the two new zones, Mechagon and Nazjatar, which grant a huge amount of reputation when consistently completed.
Once Patch 8.3 goes live, the relevance of these reputations will drop, but you should still make sure to do these when possible for the numerous rewards you can obtain from both factions and zones, including mounts, Essences and their higher ranks, and recipes.
You will also still need to obtain Revered with both of these factions to unlock flying in Battle for Azeroth, if you have not already.
Mission Table
The Mission Table is an extremely easy objective to complete each day and, depending on your chosen missions, you may even be able to do it multiple times per day.
The table is located on your faction's respective ship in their capital city and, after completing your War Campaign, you will have unlocked a number of followers. You can use these followers each day to complete missions for additional gold, Battle-Scarred Augment Rune, and event-specific currencies for the World Events in Azeroth.
Note that, for some Essences, you will need to complete table missions to unlock higher ranks, and having properly leveled champions can help greatly with this.
Weekly Objectives
Battle for Azeroth has a huge amount of weekly objectives for players to complete, but those you choose to complete will depend on your end-game focus. The ones listed below are focused on gearing up and progressing a new character as fast as possible.
PvE Weekly Objectives
Mythic+
You should aim to complete a Mythic+ each week to ensure that you obtain the weekly cache reward, which includes a piece of gear, some Azerite, and most notably, some Titan Residuum, which you can use to replace your Azerite Armour pieces. These are arguably the most difficult to replace at a decent item level compared to the rest of your gear, as they cannot drop from your Mythic+ runs.
Aim to complete the highest possible level you can, regardless of whether you do it in time or not. You will still get the same end of week rewards from the cache, even if you failed the timer by a huge amount.
If you want to find tips on completing Mythic+ runs as a spec you are not used to, you can check out our Mythic+ class guides below.
Raiding
For a new character, getting into a raid can be extremely difficult, especially if your main has not already obtained the Curve achievement for killing the final boss on Heroic.
At the very least, while you still have a fairly poor item level, we would recommend at the very least clearing all of the LFR wings, and if possible, try to kill the first few bosses on Normal difficulty.
As your gear gets better, you can venture into longer raid runs, eventually clearing the raid, but for your first few weeks, try to make sure that you at the very least clear LFR (until you no longer need any loot from it) and the first few Normal bosses.
You can find more info on the bosses in Eternal Palace below, in our EP guide.
Island Expeditions
You should make sure to cap your Island Expeditions bar each week, to ensure that you receive the Azerite Power reward, as well as the potential for a Titan Residuum treasure mission. At early gearing levels, this can be a huge boost to the Azerite Armour you can buy.
You can find out more information about Expeditions in our guide below.
Weekly Weekend Event
Each week, there is an event for players that highlights a certain aspect of the game, or introduces a new mode. There is always a quest, which can be obtained by going into the dungeon journal, and this sometimes brings with it an excellent reward.
The most important events to focus on are below:
- Mythic Dungeon Event — complete 4 Mythic dungeons to receive a Heroic piece of raid gear.
- Timewalking Events — complete 5 Timewalking dungeons to receive a Normal piece of raid gear.
- World Quest Event — complete 20 World Quests to receive 1,000 War Resources. Note that this event also increases the amount of reputation gained for each World Quest completed, so this is a great opportunity to farm reputation.
PvP Weekly Objectives
The objectives in this section are PvP focused, but can still be useful for PvE players looking to gear up.
Conquest Cap
You should aim to cap your Conquest Points, done by obtaining 500 points, every week, as this gives you a chance at an item of 415 item level or higher. If you complete your cap, you will get an item in the weekly cache, which will have an item level according to your ranking in arena or rated battlegrounds.
You only have to complete the cap once per week to get access to the weekly chest, but you can also continue completing the cap if you are "behind". For example, if it is week 7 of the season, and you have never PvPed on this character, you will be able to complete the conquest cap 7 times for 7 pieces of gear in total, as you are just catching up with other players.
You can cap your Conquest through a number of activities, including:
- Any form of rated PvP, including arenas and battlegrounds.
- World PvP Quests, such as Against Overwhelming Odds for Alliance players, or the Call to Arms quests that are available to both factions.
- The Battle for Nazjatar event, which you can find more about in our Nazjatar guide.
- PvP Island Expeditions, which can be extremely efficient, but also very, very challenging for undergeared players. The majority of players doing these have a competent team comp, are very well geared, and will clear the islands much faster than you ever could as a fresh Level 120.
- Unrated PvP, like Arena Skirmishes and battlegrounds, which grant increased Conquest for your first win of the day.
The Battle for Nazjatar
The Battle for Nazjatar has a bonus objective that can be completed once per week, which will give you a large amount of Conquest (100) for an extremely easy activity.
Simply join a group while the battle is active and kill the enemy faction's NPCs or players to gain progress.
You will also gain Conquest each time you win the battle, so you can do it more than once per week, but it becomes less efficient after your first completion of the bonus objective.
World PvP Quests
The World PvP quests that are offered to players can be a great way to be obtain Conquest, as well as gear for Alliance players.
While both factions have access to the Call to Arms quests, which require you to kill enemy players within a specific zone, the Alliance have access to Against Overwhelming Odds, which requires them to kill 25 Horde players in BfA zones. This will give them a piece of item level 415 gear, and is very easy to complete in a group.
Note that these quests cannot be completed in a raid.
Bi-Weekly Brawls
The PvP Brawls are active for 1 week every 2 weeks and can give players a great way to earn some extra conquest and get a piece of PvP gear.
Note that, for some Brawls, such as Comp Stomp, which lets you fight against enemy bots, this is essentially a free win.
Warfronts
Warfronts are somewhat of a special case, as they are not always active when you need them and the most important rewards you receive are independent of the weekly reset. Instead, they function on a "once per rotation" basis, where you can complete the reward quests once each time that Warfront is active.
Patch 8.3 will bring with it the Heroic version of the Darkshore Warfront and, given the current state of their rewards, the focus of players will swap accordingly.
Currently, Arathi is seen as the better Warfront, as it has a Heroic mode that awards a 430 item level piece of gear for completing the "once per rotation" quest. In Patch 8.3, the Heroic Darkshore quest will reward a higher item level piece, so players will be more focused on completing that. As a new player, you should just aim to complete the Warfronts at least once when they are up on Heroic mode, as you can complete both quests in a single Heroic run.
Until Patch 8.3 launches, you should focus on doing a Heroic Arathi run if it is available and, if not, do a single Darkshore run to obtain the quest reward.
If you are unsure of how to complete Warfronts or what is required of you, you can check out our guides on both of the available Warfronts below.
Changelog
- 20 Dec. 2019: Revamped guide for Patch 8.3.
- 27 Feb. 2019: Updated information and made corrections.
- 07 Dec. 2018: Updated Titan Residuum costs based on PTR changes as of 12/6/2018.
- 04 Dec. 2018: Added Warfront and Incursion information, item level information, and updated links to Patch 8.1 raids.
- 15 Oct. 2018: Added Mythic + Dungeon item level table and other relevant information.
- 16 Sep. 2018: Added Azerite amount for Island Expedition quest completion and added world boss that drops 355 item level loot into weekly list of things to do.
- 26 Aug. 2018: Added WANTED! Quest information, text about higher emphasis on emissary caches, and Scouting Reports.
- 16 Aug. 2018: Fixed text regarding the reputation contracts.
- 13 Aug. 2018: Guide added.
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- Season of Discovery Hotfixes: December 4th
- Tier 2 and Tier 1 Set Bonuses Now Fully Switchable in Season of Discovery
- Defying the Mythic+ Odds With Brewmaster: Double Chesting All +10s
- War Within Season 1 Mythic+ DPS Log Rankings, Week 11
- Everything You Need to Know About the Siren Isle Update
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- Classic Timewalking Returns: Reputation Buff, Gear Rewards, and Vendor Highlights