BIS Gear Crafting Guide for Midnight: Key Minmaxing Tips

Gear Crafting Strategy: Timing and Choice

As we approach the critical phases leading to the new season's release, players are confronting essential choices in gear crafting. With a weekly reset, we're in the second week of restricted content, with limited item levels available. As next week's events introduce normal and heroic raid opportunities, it's crucial to strategize your crafting and upgrades effectively.

Player Approaches to Crafting

There are diverse strategies among players regarding gear crafting and upgrades. Here's a quick breakdown:

Immediate Crafters: Some players are utilizing all available quests immediately. They're crafting items at the current maximum possible level, knowing what their class and spec ultimately require.
Conservative Planners: Others only use low-tier resources, saving more valuable materials for upcoming opportunities. These players are stockpiling to ensure optimal decision-making when more content and better rewards become available.
Class-Specific Considerations: Dual-wielding classes often take a different approach than those needing two-handed weapons, due to the flexibility and cost differences in crafting between these options.

Dual-Wielders vs. Two-Handed Users

Dual-Wielders' Strategy:

For classes like rogues or monks that dual-wield, crafting a main-hand weapon is a viable choice. Crafting at this stage with veteran crests offers immediate power boosts.
A crafted main-hand weapon paired with an embellished armor piece can optimize power heading into raids.

Considerations for Casters:

Crafters might face challenges if they craft a weapon only to have a superior one drop in raids. While dual-wielders can swap slots, casters must be more cautious, as their ability to adapt to new, unexpected loot is limited.

Two-Handed Users' Needs:

Crafting two-handed weapons requires more resources (four sparks) but doesn't delay embellishment crafting. Like dual-wielders, they can craft their enhancements on armor using veteran crests without sparks.

Crafting Table

To help decide your approach, here's a simple breakdown for crafting choices:

Strategy	Dual-Wielders	Two-Handed Users
Sparks Required	2 per weapon	4 for one weapon
Initial Crafting	Main-hand weapon + embellishment	Two-handed weapon + armor embellishment
Flexibility	Can swap weapons if new loot drops	Limited flexibility but steady enhancement

Conclusion

Ultimately, whether you're a dual-wielder or two-handed weapon user, deciding when and what to craft hinges on resource availability, class needs, and the RNG element of loot drops. Balancing these factors is vital for maximizing your character’s effectiveness as new content rolls out.

Crafting Strategies for Two-Handed Users

For two-handed weapon users, making informed decisions about crafting and upgrades can significantly impact your character's performance throughout the season. Navigating these choices involves considering several factors, such as available sparks, loot drops, and item level upgrades.

Optimal Crafting Decisions

Immediate Crafting: Crafting a two-handed weapon early in the season is a straightforward approach. By spending all four sparks, you can create a 285 item level weapon. Although it's slightly below the maximum potential of 289 from mythic sources, this option provides an immediate power spike and allows for embellishment to further enhance the weapon's capabilities.
Looting Heroic Weapons: If you're fortunate enough to loot a heroic weapon earlier in the season, you have an alternative path. Upgrading a heroic weapon using hero track crests to its maximum potential might provide a viable substitute for crafting. This route allows you to reserve your sparks for crafting other pieces, maximizing the effectiveness of the embellishments and contributing to your overall gear progression.

Considerations for Casters

Casters face unique challenges since a two-handed intellect weapon is only available from the last boss in the raid tier, limiting progression opportunities. Casters should pay particular attention to the vault as a potential source for these scarce weapons. Until then, focusing on maximizing other gear pieces with mid track crests can provide a meaningful boost.

Decision-Making for Dual-Wielders

For dual-wielders, there are a few distinct avenues to consider:

Single Weapon Crafting: A practical approach is to craft a single weapon with your sparks and then recraft for a higher item level once you acquire new crests. This approach balances immediate power needs with future upgrade potential.

Double Weapon Crafting: Crafting both weapons with your sparks is another option, though it sacrifices one available embellishment. This decision should hinge on your current weapon quality. For players stuck with lower-level weapons, the item level increase from crafting might outweigh the benefits of an additional embellishment.

Gear Upgrade Strategies

When planning your gear path, remember that fully upgrading hero track gear to six out of six can match the second tier of mythic track pieces. With mythic plus content dropping an abundance of hero gear, upgrading these pieces is a tactical decision. As the season progresses and players acquire more mid-level and mythic raid gear, maintaining versatility through gear upgrades ensures readiness for any potential loot drops.

By carefully weighing the options for crafting, upgrading, and embellishing, players can tailor their strategy to their unique circumstances and the unpredictable nature of loot distribution. These decisions will be critical in staying competitive and maximizing performance in upcoming content.

Maximizing Gear Upgrades

As players navigate through their gear options in the latest season, understanding the intricacies of upgrading is paramount. A mid-track piece obtained at one out of six, such as from the vault or early level mythic bosses, represents an opportunity to use your existing gear effectively. The upgrade path becomes strategic: even after recent changes have fixed drop levels at a consistent one out of six for certain content, players can leverage their current high-level gear for further enhancements.

One of the most efficient tactics is upgrading your hero track piece to six out of six. By having this maximum-level gear, players can seamlessly swap back and enjoy free upgrades from one to two out of six on mid-track items, thanks to the existing item level superiority. The process saves valuable mid-track crests and is repeatable, offering significant resource savings over time.

Benefits of Upgrading Strategy

Free Upgrades: Moving consuming upgrades from one to two out of six becomes free when using maxed-out hero track gear.
Resource Savings: Accumulate savings of up to 100 myth crests by repeating the upgrade process across multiple pieces.
Long-term Planning: A full reset worth of myth track crests saved offers strategic flexibility.
This strategy is less relevant when transitioning from champion to hero track gear due to differing drop levels in the mythic plus and raid environments, as mythic plus 10-plus drops by default at a three out of six level. Similarly, only early raid bosses yield hero track items starting at one out of six, hence prioritizing hero to mid-track upgrades is often more advantageous. To stay informed, players may lean on resources like Lagos's guide, available both as a document and in-game add-on. These tools help in navigating the complex gearing processes as the expansion timeline progresses through the phased releases leading into the new season. In conclusion, with another weekly reset upon us, these strategies aim to ease the decision-making process regarding gear. By understanding and applying these upgrade savings techniques, players can better manage their gearing progression, ensuring readiness for the challenges of the latest content.