Okay, so with Cataclysm the next big event on the horizon, I’ve started thinking about what heirloom items I’ll need to buy for leveling up a new Worgen druid. It won’t come out for a long time, but it doesn’t hurt to plan up and save items, especially if you want to level up more than one alt. I always plan things months ahead! While heirlooms won’t scale with us from 80 to 85, they will be helpful for all the new druids that will spring up with the expansion. This list is also helpful now for people who may want to do some NE or Tauren leveling over the next few months.
You’ll want to pick up items for: Chest, Shoulders, and Weapon as the priority. The trinkets are nice for casters, and there’s also a ring you can get from fishing. The trinket isn’t as useful (yet) for cats.
- Dread Pirate Ring: From Kalu’ak Fishing Derby. Okay for cat or caster.
Feral (Cat/Bear) PvE heirlooms:
- Stained Shadowcraft Shoulders – Costs 40 Emblems of Heroism OR 60 Champion’s Seals
- Stained Shadowcraft Tunic - 40 Heroism or 60 Champion’s Seals
- Repurposed Lava Dredger - 65 heroism or 95 Champion’s Seals
Caster (moonkin/resto) PvE heirlooms:
- Preened Ironfeather shoulders – 40 Heroism or 60 Champion’s Seals
- Preened Ironfeather Breastplate - 40 Heroism or 60 Champion’s Seals
- Dignified Headmaster’s Charge – 65 Heroism or 95 Champion’s Seals
- Discerning Eye of the Beast - 50 heroism, 75 champion’s seals
There are also PvP heirlooms you can get from Stonekeeper shards that have resilience on them. The vendor for that is Knight Dameron for the alliance, or Stone Guard Mukar for the horde. These have resilence on them, but also give you the XP bonus. These have shoulders & a caster staff. There is also a resilience PvP heirloom trinket, nice for battlegrounds. So, if you want to PvP level, or don’t mind trading some stats for resilence, these are great options for people who have stone keeper shards to burn.
For Turning Triumph/conquest/valor into Heroism, visit your friendly Money Changer NPC in the dalaran sewers.
EDIT: Caster druid leveling can also use the cloth ones: Dreadmist Mantle, and Dreadmist Robe.
8 Comments
Personally, I’d never recommend anyone pick up the Preened Ironfeather chest and shoulders, unless they already have a level 80 priest, warlock and mage. Leather with spirit is only really useful for balance/resto druids, but the cloth can be used for druids as well as the cloth only classes (and in a pinch, for a healing set for a dual spec’d shaman or paladin until you get something better).
Also, in case your readers aren’t aware or didn’t think of it, you can use two of the Dignified Headmaster’s Charge trinkets – and get the mana return bonus from both of them. It’s hard to find good trinkets while leveling for a loooooong time (and the ones you do start picking up in Outlands still aren’t as good as the heirloom ones for the most part).
Hmm. I don’t ever plan to level something besides another druid, so the thought of cloth ones for alt-oholics hadn’t occurred to me.
I’m currently leveling a priest by chain healing instances. He’s wearing the cloth heirloom pieces. It’s working great.
But, I don’t think I’d want any leveling help in Cataclysm. The whole world is going to change. I’d be afraid I’d level too fast and miss a zone. I guess I could do all the quests anyway, even if they are gray. But then I’m not sure the point of getting the XP bonus.
I would go with….
2h heirloom mace with iron counterweight
Heirloom shoulders
Heirloom chest with 100 health
2x heirloom trinkets with haste
Thin Cloth Gloves with 10 haste
Thin Cloth Bracers with 7 stamina
Haliscan Pantaloons with 40 armor
Linen Cloak with 70 armor
That setup above is 32 haste at level 1. That’s 83% haste at levels 1-10. You kill stuff so fast it’s crazy. Yes, 1 haste rating equals 2.6% haste from level 1 to level 10.
Pull with a 0.8 second wrath, beat on them with the mace, and let your trinkets heal you up. You should have zero downtime.
The white items (gloves, bracers, pants, legs) are cloth, just so I can keep mailing them to low level alts.
There are a couple interviews where Blizzard has said that it’s entirely possible that WotLK heirlooms won’t work in Cataclysm. I’m not counting on being able to use them on new characters in the expansion.
Yes they have been vague but it was also more in relation to Heirloom not working beyond 80 or in the new leveling section.
I’m not expecting them to scale from 80 to 85, but I still expect them to be useful for low-levels. They will still want to encourage us to spend the time leveling new class/race combos to experience the new content. If we can’t use heirloom items, less people are going to experience that “new” revamped content.
@Kiliani:
It really depends. Some of us have so many emblems lying around from Heroism days that we already have one of each of the heirlooms.
The PVP heirloom Grand Staff of Jordan is one I particularly recommend for caster classes over the Headmaster’s Charge. Its hit rating give much needed room for a leveling caster to get damage talents instead of hit talents. For balance druids, you don’t get your hit talent until level 35. Even then, with Jordan you could take those two points and spend it in, say, Dreamstate.
I remember at level 16 or so, my warlock gets 5% hit from the staff.
For a warlock, we get so little contribution from spellpower at low levels (and the only stat-to-spellpower conversion we get is for Demonology at level 40, unlike Lunar Guidance at level 30) that all we really care about is hit and the experience boost. I don’t know about balance druids, though.