Posts with tag the-earthen-ring

There are eight new reputation factions in Cataclysm. Six of those reputations are available to the Alliance or Horde, respectively. Each of those factions offers different items or gear to adventurers who work their way through the reputations. Many offer epic gear to players who have achieved exalted reputation.

You can pick up well over 1,000 reputation by wearing each faction's tabard into a level 85 dungeon; heroic dungeons grant a little more, of course. Some factions have daily quests that will help you fly through the ranks even faster. But the tough part can be deciding which reputations to work on first.

Let's take a tour of those factions and see what kind of epics or notable gear is offered by each. If you see something that's especially appropriate to your class or role, that's probably a good hint that you should start there.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host.

Well, what do they say about plans and contact with the enemy? This week, I'd fully intended to write a Cataclysm 101 guide for prot warriors, but then Cataclysm actually happened and I immediately spent the time as fury. Since I'm going to start working on leveling my prot warrior soon as I get the fury to 85 (which I should have done by the time you read this) the protection 101 will be next week. This week, as I've been flitting around trying to decide which factions to grind rep with for which rewards, I've decided to share all that musing with you.

Also I've been kind of running around like a chicken going 'woah' a lot, but you probably didn't need to know that. Yes, I was in the beta. I was in the beta on a four year old computer. Playing the expansion on a new machine has even my jaded warrior heart all aflutter. So far, I've kept my T10 pieces for the 2 set bonuses, which are boring but compelling (the two piece is now just all physical damage increased by 5%, while the four piece is all damage, period) but with Deepholm gear dropping I expect I'll be dumping set fairly soon. I've more or less replaced almost all my non set gear with blues and greens.

So here's a sampling of the factions I'm looking at and the gear and arcanums they offer.