Posts with tag reputation-grind

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore podcast), shows you how.

As you're leveling up, there is going to be plenty to explore and plenty to do. One of the things you're going to notice sooner or later is that there are a bunch of new factions to earn reputation points with. This expansion does two things really when when it comes to reps. First is that reputation isn't quite as hard or tedious as it has been in previous expansions, which is most welcome. Second is that the rewards that each faction has to offer you can be quite awesome for your chosen Warcraft profession.

Shado-Pan clan

The Shado-Pan clan are a very interesting faction as far as the pandaren are concerned. They are much more dark and sinister when compared to the other factions. They resemble more of closely to the ninjas of the old stories than the kung-fu masters. They are considered the most elite warriors of the pandaren dedicated to fighting against the Sha. Players will first encounter them in full at the Shado-pan Monastery, one of the new 5-man dungeons in Mists. Leveling your rep with them nets you some very nice rewards that you can buy with Justice Points and Valor Points.

Reputation is one of those double-edged swords in World of Warcraft. Speaking as someone who played classic WoW, I find it sometimes odd to see the amount of focus put on gaining reputation with various factions. This is largely because I remember the days when grinding out reputation really didn't get you anything at all in the long run. It wasn't until later in the game that Blizzard introduced the concept of gaining reputation with other races for mounts, and the only way to get that reputation was to turn in ridiculous amounts of cloth.

Factions like the Hydraxian Waterlords, the Zandalar, and the Argent Dawn all had their reputations firmly locked hand-in-hand with raiding. But reputations like the Shen'dralar, the Bloodsail ... they had no real purpose at all. When The Burning Crusade was introduced, the idea of factions was reworked. Suddenly you really wanted to gain reputation, because doing so meant you could unlock heroic dungeons or get neat incentives like armor, pets, and tabards.

Reputation design has changed drastically since then. Where once you got a tabard as a reward, now you slap one on and grind dungeons to earn reputation as quickly as you can. Different factions have different rewards, and rewards like shoulder and helm enchants are absolutely required if you want to perform optimally. So ... what was the best of the best?

Each week, WoW Insider's Mathew McCurley brings you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which focuses on the backbone of the WoW gameplay experience: the user interface. Everything from bags to bars, buttons to DPS meters and beyond -- your addons folder will never be the same.

The pre-expansion stretch is a great time to work on those pesky achievements that have been sitting on your to-do list for some time. Now that your raid schedule is a little more relaxed or you are just out doing your own thing, it's time to try something new. One of those tasks that I've given myself is to finally finish up my 50 exalted reputations achievement.

I'm close -- real close. Two reputations to go, in fact, and they aren't even that hard to do. It's all about the time put in and the motivation to do it. After I logged in and opened up my reputations tab, I was astonished at how little the interface had changed in seven years. The basic setup is still intact with a few minor changes.

Factionizer was recommended to me by a reader whose email tersely consisted of just these words: "Factionizer is a great addon, put it on the spotlight." That was the entire message. After checking out the addon, I was suitably impressed not only because there is a definite need for a more robust faction window (if only for awesome in-game lore purposes) but because the addon got me thinking about completing reputation achievements once again.

It's not unusual to see player speculation on what we'll see when Cataclysm arrives, and most of us have our own private wish lists. I'm sure I could come up with my own if I thought about it, but while riding between Kamagua and Moa'ki Harbor last night on the Kalu'ak ferry lazily chatting with people, it occurred to me that one of the things I'd kill to have again is another faction like the Tuskarr.

These guys are, for lack of a better word, awesome. Their emotes are fantastic. They sell an evil penguin pet and a cool fishing item (the Mastercraft Kalu'ak Fishing Pole) that probably won't be replaced for the duration of the expansion. Their ships are giant turtles traveling along beautiful coastline with a vendor on board (seriously, riding these at night = an endless series of Kodak moments). They get my vote as the faction that immerses you most thoroughly in what they need and what they're doing to survive in an increasingly hostile Azeroth, and I'm wondering if, given Northrend's various difficulties, they might be convinced to seek warmer climes just so we don't have to give them up.

Agonizing rep grinds have plagued the game since classic, but the Tuskarr are such a well-realized bunch that even at exalted I love hanging around their villages. What's your favorite faction, and is there anything about them you'd like to see repeated with future reputation grinds?

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft.

Good news, everyone! We have a guest star today on The Queue! Yes, that's right, a very special guest! Well, sort of. I guess she's not that special after all, but our resident Feral Druid guru chimed in to answer a Bear question yesterday, and she answered it better than I ever could. Our first question of the day is hers to handle, then it's back to me. Because you all love me, right?

thon asked...

I've had a lot of heated debate on the current def cap of Druid Bear Tanks. Is there one if specced into Survival of the Fittest? Is it lower than a normal tank class? I'd love to be able to tell them for certain to pipe down!

Each week Arcane Brilliance cooks up a feast for Mages everywhere, just like your mom does. Well...maybe your mom cooks for Druids--I don't know--but my mom always cooked for Mages. Especially at this special time of year, she wanted her little Mages to eat well and give thanks for the bounty they had been given. She taught us to always be grateful for Pyroblast, and Polymorph, but most of all, for Mirror Image. Oh, and she also taught us to kill Warlocks, but that's a whole other story.

So I assume that you're all about sick of leftover turkey at this point (at least, those of you who happen to live in America, I guess), and are ready for a heaping helping of something...Magier. Fear not, for Arcane Brilliance is here to serve a steaming pile of Mage directly to you. If you top it with enough gravy, it tastes pretty good.

Last week we went over some of the new Wrath factions and the rewards they offer for Mages. If you missed that first part, you can find it here. As quite a few of you pointed out in the comments, the stuff from those factions was a bit...underwhelming. Fear not, fellow Mages, the best is yet to come. This week, we'll hit the rest of the new expansion's reputation rewards and highlight those that you'll want to start grinding for now, if you haven't already started.

A lot of us have probably had this problem before: We join a guild, and we like it. It has the right combination of people we like (or can tolerate), interests we share, and or what have you, and we're doing fine. Unfortunately, there is the problem. The tabard sucks. That whole green crying bear on pink background thing is just so tacky, and does not go well with any of our stuff.

Sure, you can replace it with one of the factional tabards, in theory, but not until 70, and not until you grind exalted, and most of those tabards don't look much better anyway. Wouldn't it be nice if you could just go design your own personal tabard at your local town hall instead?

That may be coming. In a thread by Beta tester Talid, Tigole said that the idea of personal tabards was actually pretty cool, and that he'd look into it. Yeah, admittedly, that means personal tabards could be in before Wrath goes live, or it means they could be a year off, or they could still discard the whole thing.

Still, it often seems to this WoW Insider staff member that getting Blizzard to agree to any major type of personal character customization is like pulling teeth, so seeing Tigole act favorably toward this is pretty exciting. It'd be a great gold sink or achievement reward for Wrath.

Some of the best rewards in WoW can only be achieved if you have the appropriate level of reputation with a specific faction. Whether you're a brand new WoW player or a freshly-minted level 70 dipping your first toe into the endgame, you need to educate yourself about reputation (or "rep" as it's usually called). Fortunately, here at WoW Insider, we have a lot of tools that can help you find your way through the rep maze to the piece of loot you desire.

For new players

WoW Rookie: Introduction to Reputation
New players should start with this article to learn what all the terminology means and how rep affects your gameplay.

WoW Rookie: Azeroth Reputations
This article is the next step in understanding rep and how it works for the world of Azeroth. Since you should start worrying about rep long before you hit level 40, this article shows you how to start preparing for getting your first mount -- especially if the one you hunger for is not your toon's racial mount.

Breakfast Topic: Reputation grinding
Here you can see what your fellow players have to say about what it's like to grind rep after level 60.

For new level 70s

Ask WoW Insider: Do you optimize your rep grinds?
Advice from us and other readers on how to streamline your rep grinds in Outland.

Faction frustrations eased in Wrath
A preview of how rep may change in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion.

Rep calculators

Here are a couple of rep calculators we've reviewed.

• Liquidor's rep calculator
• WoW Reputation Calculator

For extra credit

WoW Rookie: Pre-Burning Crusade engame reputations
This is a good primer on how rep worked prior to the release of The Burning Crusade expansion. Rep grinding in Azeroth after level 60 is not overly relevant now, but you may still be curious as to how it worked.

Grinding for reputation is a part of the game. Think of it as leveling up with different factions. Last week we looked at the levels of reputation. This week we'll examine some of the reputations that you encounter in Azeroth.

Each of the major cities represent factions reputations that you can grind up with by completing quests and donating cloth. Increasing your reputation with the cities of your faction gives you the opportunity to purchase their racial mounts and tabards, in addition to discounts from vendors. For example if you play a Human, you can rep up to exalted with Darnasus in order to get a Nightsaber mount. Be warned, though because of scaling restrictions some models may not have access to all racial mounts.