World of Warcraft PvP Gearing Guide

Season 1 has begun in PvP and that means it is time to start grinding out currencies that you will need to get the most powerful gear for your character. These currencies are finite and you do not get a second chance to redo your purchases, so it is important to spend them right as to not fall behind for the first few weeks of the season.

The PvP vendors are located on the southeastern area of Silvermoon.

Here, you can buy conquest PvP gear from Irissa Bloodstar and honor gear from Captain Dawnrunner.

Before getting started, you will want to get roughly 10.000 Honor, as to get Honor pieces with item level 276. You can reduce this grind a bit, by taking up the weekly quests from Zerella, also located in the PvP hub with the vendors. With these weeklies, you will get Honor, Conquest and Bloody Tokens. Bloody Token gear has the same item level as Honor pieces, so you can substitute a few slots this way.

When you are slotted out in Honor pieces, it is time to look to spend your Conquest. But before doing that, you will want to want to craft a few pieces the game gives you for free. By playing the game and participating in PvP activities, you will at random receive the Artisan's Consortium Flyer, which gives you 9x Galactic Gladiator's Heraldry just by turning it in. With this currency, you can potentially craft up to 3 Conquest pieces at the crafting station.

With these crafts, you can apply your Embellishments to your gear, depending on what is recommended for your specialization. Make sure to check out what your character needs for your dedicated PvP guide.

For the most part, Devouring Banding appears to be strongest for DPS and Blessed Pango Charm for healers. The catch is, that Devouring Banding only goes on armor pieces, so if you plan to craft gear with this Embellishments, dedicate it to your cloak and wrist slot. With the remaining Galactic Gladiator's Heraldry, you can craft a ring to better optimize your secondary stat to suit your stat priority.

Healers crafting Blessed Pango Charm can be more free with their choices, and should just craft rings and neck with their Galactic Gladiator's Heraldry.

It is a very good idea to craft at least 1 jewelry slot, as these slots have sockets for free in Midnight, and many, if not all, caster classes will want to socket a Cognitive Heliotrope as soon as possible. Most other will want a Enduring Heliotrope. You will want to bank up on Honor as you play, to buy more Infused Heliotrope for these gems and to buy Galactic Jeweler's Setting to add more gem sockets to your gear pieces.

Finally, we can look to be spending our hard earned Conquest, and there are a few things to consider when doing so. First up, tier pieces have varying power budgets across specializations, but for the most part fill a decent portion of your throughput, so the first thing you will want to check out is how important the 2-set for your specialization is. The Conquest cap starts at 1600, and increases in increments of 800 each week. Tier pieces can only be converted from Head, Shoulders, Chest, Legs and Hands. This is important, because Helm, Chest and Legs cost 875 Conquest while Hands and Shoulder cost 700 Conquest. You can convert a piece of conquest gear into tier pieces, at the Matrix Catalyst located in Silvermoon.

The Catalyst gets 1 charge every other week, starting at 1 on week 1, but by getting 1600 rating in any rated PvP bracket, you earn the achievement Midnight Season 1: Champion of the Dawn, which grants you another charge. This means you can get 2-set on week 1, provided you can get 1600 in a bracket. With a 1600 Conquest budget on the first week, you may want to consider buying a 875 piece and a 700 piece to convert both into Tier Pieces.

To summarize all this excessive information, at the end of week 1 of the season, you should be having:

1. 2 pieces of Conquest gear or Tier Pieces
2. 3 crafted pieces, with 2 of them having Embellishments, and at least one of them being a ring
3. A Cognitive Heliotrope or Enduring Heliotrope in a crafted ring
4. Honor and Bloody Token pieces as remaining filler slots for gear

On the second week of the season, not much happens for your progress on gear, but the decisions you make in regards to which Tier Pieces slots you buy, can impact on you week 4 and week 5. The Conquest limit raises to 2400, allowing you to buy another 700 piece. A full 4-set costs either 3150 Conquest (x2 875 + x2 700) or 3325 Conquest (x3 875 + x1 700). It is important to remember that The Catalyst gains a charge every other week, which means that by week 5 you can get a 4-set as a PvP player If you happen to be a PvE player who raids, you can get Tier Pieces directly from bosses, with a much weaker item level than what Irissa Bloodstar sells you, but she sells Conqueror's Galactic Varnish and Conqueror's Galactic Lacquer, which adds the PvP item level scaling to those PvE pieces for the same Conquest price as if you had bought a raw piece from her. This means that you can potentially have a full Conquest item level 4-set as early as week 3 into the season, depending on which slots you roll.

After having acquired 2500 Conquest, you will completely the achievement Galactic Weapons of Conquest and get a Galactic Gladiator's Weapon Token, which you can turn in for a free Conquest weapon of your choice.

If you simply only do PvP and follow the weekly Conquest increments, you will by week 5 have the same power budgets as those getting a head start, and leaves you at the end with:

1. All 875-cost pieces (head, chest and legs)
2. 3x 700-cost pieces, preferably shoulder and hands plus an additional piece
3. A full Tier Set converted at the Matrix Catalyst
4. A Conquest Weapon
5. 3 crafted pieces, either cloak, wrist and ring or 2x rings and neck, depending on Embellishments
6. A Cognitive Heliotrope or Enduring Heliotrope in a crafted ring
7. Honor and Bloody Token pieces as remaining filler slots for gear

After this point, simply fill out your last few spots and you are all geared up for the season 1 of Midnight.