Returning Player PvP Gear Guide: How to Catch Up Before the Season Ends!

The War Within Season 3 is coming to a close on January 19th at 10 PM PST in NA, and January 20th at 10 PM CET in EU. While this marks the upcoming end for the last season of the expansion, it is also the prime time to push your ratings in PvP and secure your titles, mounts and transmog rewards before the leave the game.

If you are a returning player, or perhaps somebody who has been waiting for this point of the season to push, and are lacking the necessary gear to get started, then this guide will help you get your character in shape quickly.

While you could simply jump straight into a battleground, or just grind arena outright, you would probably not fare very well, as these methods offer extremely slow gearing progressions, while also requiring you to win in order to gain any Conquest currency. A very daunting task if your character lacks the necessary gear to compete with other players, who are likely fully decked out in PvP gear, tier set, enchants, gems and embellishments. However, it is possible to gear up your character in a quick and low-tension way through War Supply Crates, where you may never even have to worry about having your progress halted by better geared players.

War Supply Crate are World PvP objectives that periodically drop throughout all zones related to The War Within. These zones are:

1. Isle of Dorn
2. Ringing Deeps
3. Hallowfall
4. Azj-Kahet
5. Siren Isle
6. Undermine
7. K'aresh

Periodically, a flying machine is spawned in when the NPC Ruffious makes a zone-wide announcement. After a short delay, the flying machine can be spotted on the map, flying in a straight line across the zone until it stops and drops a war crate in a parachute.

Once the crate lands on the ground, both factions can attempt to claim it for everyone in their faction to loot. For this reason, farming these crates should be done in a raid group for easy competition.

When a crate is claimed and looted, it offers the following rewards:

1. 60 Conquest
2. 150 Honor
3. 50 Bloody Tokens
4. A low chance of getting a Vicious Bloodstone

Using this method, it is possible to gear up your character in a few hours, as all three currencies are either necessary or good to have to gear up fast. You need the Honor for Vicious Bloodstone in order to get Vicious Jeweler's Setting, and Bloody Tokens are a great substitute for Conquest pieces you lack, as they are only slightly weaker in power.

When farming crates you have two options, you can either join an existing farming group, or you can form your own. It is recommended to join an existing group, as optimally farming the crates includes having knowledge of sharding and managing their spawn-timers.

Navigate to the PvP menu through the H (default) hotkey, then click on the custom tab and the custom sub-tab. From here, you can search for farming groups, and join up. They often do not require any sort of item level or experience, only that you participate, so do not be shy to sign up.

When not leading the farming group, simply follow the instructions that the leader announces, and follow the chat and map to see where people are going. If you have just returned, and have not played the prior content in The War Within, you may be unable to go to Siren Isle, Undermine, and K'aresh, but these can be unlocked quickly with a short quest chain. If you are locked out from a zone, simply wait until your group goes to the zones that you can go to. Done right, you should have the necessary currencies to get fully geared within just a few hours.

Organizing a farming group is an option, and it is one that carries a lot of responsibility. For starters, make sure you have unlocked Siren Isle, Undermine and K'aresh. Next, you want to get an addon that tracks the spawn timers for the war supply crates. The recommended addon to use is Hated Crate Tracker, which was created and is maintained by Nacho Party; the largest World-PvP community in the world. This addon gives you information in regards to the spawn timers of the crates per zone, and what shard you are currently on.

Sharding is how the servers handle overpopulation, by splitting it into multiple instances that creates a unique layer of the world. This is important, because each layer of sharding also follows its own spawns and timers for world events. As the leader of a farming group, you need to be aware of which shard your group is currently on in a given zone, and check the timers of the addon. There are a number of theories on what affects sharding, like loading screens, multiple zone jumps like using a portal, or traveling between them. If a shard changes, the timer will also change, so keep the updates frequent for your group.

After a few hours of grinding, you should hopefully be sitting on a lot of Conquest, Honor and Bloody Tokens, and are now ready to gear your character and jump into PvP for the end season push. You will want to go use it all at the PvP vendors located in Dornogal.

With Conquest, you will be purchasing the main PvP pieces for your character. You will need 6475 Conquest to get a full set of gear. However, you get close to full power from having 4 pieces of major gear, to form your tier set pieces from the Matrix Catalyst. Not every specilization uses all pieces in a tier set, but it is a good benchmark to go for. Be sure to check what Conquest pieces you want to convert to tier pieces, either through a specilization guide or from Murlok. This is also where Bloody Tokens can help you out, as the PvP pieces you can buy with this currency, are only slightly weaker than Conquest pieces. Use it to substitute gear slots until you can replace it with more powerful gear.

You do not need to worry about Conquest for your weapon, as you get it for free with a token from Astral Weapons of Conquest after accumulating 2500 conquest total on your character. Do not spend your Conquest on rings, cloak or neck. You get Reshii Wraps for free from the main campaign story quest, and it is your best in slot. By playing rated arena or battlegrounds, you get a quest that instantly rewards you x9 Astral Gladiator's Heraldry, which you can use to craft Algari PvP pieces with the same item level as Conquest pieces, which most specilizations use on rings and neck. This is also important because you want embellishments, where most use Elemental Focusing Lens or Energy Redistribution Beacon. Again, be sure to check with your specilization's optimal gear, to ensure this is true for your character as well.

You need a minimum of 5000 Honor for a gem socket. Vicious Bloodstone are an important resource, and you were fortunate to get some during your crate farming, but if you were not, you will need to either spend 2500 Honor per Bloodstone or buy them from the auction house. You need x6 Vicious Bloodstone at minimum, to achieve close to full gear for most specilizations. Crafting your Algari pieces will cost x1 Vicious Bloodstone per piece, and if you use Elemental Focusing Lens, you need at least 1 gem socket to activate its effect.

Good luck to your end-season PvP push.