New Server Heirlooms by Jamie

Having recently rerolled on a new realm I really missed having access to my heirlooms. This was a great guest post and i am super happy to host it on my blog.

Follow Jamie on twitter @sjamielynn

Over to you Jamie.

~~~~~~~~~~

Howdy folks! Jamie here.

I recently started on a new server, Shannon's server, Steamweedle Cartel, and was very upset about not having all my awesome Bind-on-Account pieces. (Should be renamed Bind-on-Server >.<) So I thought of this awesome idea of how to acquire heirlooms, which I shall now share with all of you.

     STEP ONE, you will need to already have a level 80 character (or above) on another server somewhere. You will also need to have Wrath of the Lich King expansion for World of Warcraft, but that should be a given, especially if you already have a level 80 character somewhere. ^_- Another thing to note though, just in case, is if you already have a high level character (above level 55 would be considered "high level" in this situation) on the server you are looking to get heirlooms on, you can skip step two and step three, and go straight to step four, if you're looking to use this method anyway. :)

     STEP TWO, create a Death Knight. Any DK, make it special and pretty/handsome and awesome ;) You'll be using this toon a lot for a while. This endeavor will take you a good amount of time to complete, so you might as well enjoy the character you're making :)

Also, once you log in, you should find a level 19 or higher guild. Normally when starting on a new server, like in my case, you're joining up with other friends so look to see if they can hook you up, but also when you log in you get spammed by a few people to join their guild. Accept any of them that are level 19 or higher. The reason for this is two-fold.

     First off, at level 6, guilds gain the perk Fast Track (Rank 2), which increases experience gained from monsters and quest completion by 10%. This will help you level up faster, which is always good. ^_^ 

     Second reason, at level 19, guilds gain the perk Honorable Mention (Rank 2), which increases Honor points gained by 10%. This will help you greatly once you're on to step four. 

    STEP THREE, start leveling your DK. You will need to get out of the DK starting area. It shouldn't take you more than about 2 hours. I recommend for this idea to go Blood spec. It will increase your survivability by doing it this way, making farming HK easier.



You should be around level 57 or 58 when you leave this area and head to Stormwind or Orgrimmar.




Here are my recommendations for your talent tree when doing this. Because you're leaving at level 57 or 58, the first picture is how many points you'll be able to spend up to that point. The second picture is how I complete out the DK tree for Blood, with PvP in mind.

     STEP FOUR, At this point, you will be entering Battlegrounds. YaY! You should queue up for one of two Battlegrounds. Either a) select Random Battleground or b) select which ever battleground has the Call to Arms in parentheses next to it. Please note, the Call to Arms is only from Friday at server reset to Tuesday at server reset. It's a nice chunk of time, 4 days, but it means the other 3 days have no Call to Arms.

     Choosing one of these two options will optimize the amount of Honor you will be gaining from doing Battlegrounds. This is because if you win, you'll get a bonus of 90 Honor points and even if you lose, you'll still get a bonus of 15 Honor points. Losing bonus isn't much but it's still something extra, making it worth it if you pick Random Battleground or the Call to Arms. Also, something to make note of with the random battleground/CtA rewards is the higher level you are the more you get. On my 85, the bonus is 270 Honor points for a win (plus 100 Conquest points, but that's something entirely different, lol just a bonus ;) ) and 45 Honor points for a loss. Another thing, if you PvP a lot, and there is a specific battleground that you are good at, it could be worth picking that one instead of random or the CtA if you are confident in your ability to get Honor Kills and such. This option becomes less viable as you gain levels because the 270 bonus at 85 would be hard to make up for unless you're uber awesome epic good. ;)

Edlan Halsing is the NPC who can exchange your HP -> JP.

     STEP FIVE, to convert or not to convert. This is a question you need to ask yourself. You can buy two different types of Heirlooms: PvP gear or PvE gear. If you're mainly a PvPer or don't really care that much about your stats or what not as you're leveling, then grabbing the PvP gear will be more beneficial. If you do care about having the PvE gear, then grab the PvE gear. The downfall to the PvE gear is you lose out on the conversion. It takes 375 HP to get 250 JP, which comes out to you needing 1.5 HP for every 1 JP you need.


So let's look at these numbers a little bit now. At level 57 or 58, you enter a battleground by random/CtA queueing. I did this at level 58 on my DK. The queue came up with Alterac Valley. I didn't try to go for the win, I tried going for Honor Kills and such.

Alliance won this Battleground, so I got the extra 90 Honor. As you can see I didn't do super well. I died 12 times, and only got 157 Honorable Kills, with 4 Killing Blows. Not super good. I ended up with 197 Honor. Note: The window said I should have received 241 Honor. I spoke to a GM about this and it is an error that Blizzard is aware of. The amount you receive is the correct amount, even if the pop-up table says more or less. In the adding of the bonus or what not, sometimes the number get jumbled up. /shrug That's all I know on the situation, kinda sucks to see that it says you got X amount but you only actually got Y.

Here is a quick breakdown of the Justice Heirlooms so you know how much HP you need to grind to get each piece of gear.

• All Shoulder and Chest pieces are 2175 JP - 3263 HP needed.
• Weapons are between 2175 JP and 3500 JP, depending on 1H, 2H ranged, type, etc - 3263-5250 HP needed.
• Trinkets are 2725 JP - 4088 HP needed.

***Math Time***
Moving on from this, I'm going to go into details about getting Justice Heirlooms, because that is the gear that I go for. To get one shoulder or chest piece in Justice Heirlooms you need 3263 Honor. With using 197 as Honor per BG, you'll need to do 17 BGs, which will get you 3349 Honor. (16 only gets you 3152 Honor.) For the most expensive Justice Heirloom, let's take the Two-Handed Staff, you need 5250 Honor. Using 197 again, you'll need to do 27 BGs, which will result in 5319. (26 only gets you 5122 Honor.) For trinkets you need 4088 Honor. With 197 yet again, you'll need 21 BGs, which will result in 4137. (20 only gets you 3940 Honor.) Now, 17 - 27 BGs seems like a ton to do. So now let's look at how long it takes. The AV I was in took 32 minutes. Round that to 30 minutes and it takes eight and a half hours to finish 17 BGs, 13 and a half hours for 27 BGs. If you do about two hours worth of BGs, it will take you just over 4 days to get each of the cheaper pieces and 7 days to get the most expensive ones that are weapons.


TL;DR
Each shoulder and chest piece will take 17 BGs, or 8.5 hours.
Each weapon will take between 17 to 27 BGs, or 8.5 to  13.5 hours.
Each trinket will take 21 BGs, or 10.5 hours.


With using the same mathematics, here is the results for Honor Heirlooms:
Each shoulder and chest piece will take 10 BGs, or 5 hours.
Each weapon will take between 10 to 18 BGs, or 5 to 9 hours.
Each trinket will take 14 BGs, or 7 hours.


NOTE: These numbers are all for wins. If you lose every BG here is what the numbers look like for Justice Heirlooms:

Each shoulder and chest piece will take 27 BGs, or 13.5 hours.

Each weapon will take between 27 to 43 BGs, or 13.5 to 21.5 hours.

Each trinket will take 34 BGs, or 17 hours.

For Honor Heirlooms: 

Each shoulder and chest piece will take 18 BGs, or 9 hours.

Each weapon will take between 18 to 29 BGs, or 9 to 14.5 hours.

Each trinket will take 23 BGs, or 11.5 hours.

You're wins and loses will very and have no guarantee either way which means for a chest piece it will take between 8.5 hours and 13.5 hours, averaging out to about 11 hours per piece. Another thing to keep in mind is that all weapons and trinkets do NOT have an experience bonus on them. So with this in mind, you only need the shoulder and chest pieces. Therefore, it should take you about 9 to 14 days, depending on win/lose ratio, to get the Justice shoulder and chest piece for your new character, and only 5 to 9 days to get the Honor shoulder and chest piece.


All in all, it will take a little bit to get these pieces, but it should be worth it in the end. :) 20% extra experience is nice. ^_-


That is all for now, folks, stay tuned for more posts from me in the weeks to come! :D

~~~~~~~~~~