• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
Arcane Intellect

Arcane Intellect

World of Warcraft guides, addons, and more

  • Home
  • Addon Guides
  • Allied Race Guides
    • Unlocking Every WoW Allied Race in Dragonflight
  • Subscribe on YouTube
  • All Posts

Gear and Stats in World of Warcraft (WoW) for Beginners

August 1, 2020 by Archdruid Andoris Leave a Comment

Part 5 of a guide for new, beginning, or returning players in World of Warcraft Shadowlands.

In the first four parts of this guide for new players, we set up an account, created a character, discussed the user interface, and learned how to move/quest/fight. This guide will continue to build from there are we learn more about gear in World of Warcraft.

Equipping Gear

In the last guide, we completed our first quest and earned a new belt as a reward. Equipping it on our character is as easy as finding it in our bags and then right-clicking on it.

We can confirm that the gear was equipped by pressing ‘C’ on the keyboard or clicking on the Character Info icon in the quick menu. Perfect, it looks like our character is wearing our shiny new Chaser’s Belt.

Screenshot of character gear information in World of Warcraft.
Pressing ‘C’ on your keyboard will open up the character info screen

In this case, we did not have a belt on before so it makes sense to put our new belt on ASAP. Sometimes, however, you may already be wearing a piece of gear in that armor slot. What do you do then?

Well, you want to compare your new piece of gear to what you are already wearing. Fortunately, there is an easy way to do this. If you navigate to the new piece in your bag and hold Shift while hovering over it, it will show the equipped and new pieces side by side.

When comparing the pieces, you want to look at the gear details, particularly the “stats” it has. You can then select the one with higher stats. Which raises another question, what are these stats that you should compare?

Stats on Gear

Each piece of gear you collect in World of Warcraft (with the exception of shirts, low quality or cosmetic items) have stats on them. These stats directly contribute the amount of power your character has. You can see your character’s total stats on the right side of the character info window.

 Now let’s talk a little more about what these stats do. Our new hunter has a few stats but will gain many different stats as she levels. In general, we can break these stats down into three categories: primary, secondary, and tertiary.

Primary Stats (Attributes)

There are two primary stats which every class and spec have in common:

  • Stamina – impacts the amount of HP you have
  • Armor – reduces the amount of physical damage your character takes

Additionally, there are 3 other primary stats which vary based on your current specialization and class.

  • Intellect – increases mana regen and damage dealt by casters
  • Strength – increases damage dealt by swordsman/bruiser specs
  • Agility – increases damage dealt by other specs like hunter, outlaw rogue, etc…
  • Mana regen – how quickly your mana is restored when not at 100%

Secondary Stats

Gear in World of Warcraft also can have secondary stats. These are not specific to a particular class or specialization. However, it is important to note that various specializations have one or two secondary stats which are better for them. The major secondary stats include the following:

  • Critical strike – gives your abilities a chance to hit or heal for more than normal
  • Haste – increases rate of spellcasting
  • Versatility – reduces the amount of damage you take and increases damage done
  • Mastery – Spec dependent stat that increases your power in some way

Tertiary stats

Tertiary stats are the final category of stat enhancements to your character. Unlike primary and secondary stats, these stats are more focused on utility like how fast your character moves. There are three main tertiary stats which include:

  • Leech – returns a portion of the damage you deal or heal to yourself as health
  • Speed – increases your characters rate of movement
  • Avoidance – reduces damage you take

Tank spec specific tertiary stats:

  • Block – chance to reduce incoming damage by amount equal to block
  • Dodge – chance for attack to miss you entirely
  • Parry – chance to reflect attacks and take no damage

Gear Stats and Attributes

In addition to the primary, secondary and tertiary stats, your gear also has its own stats.

  • Item level (iLvl) – Level of the gear, important for end game content
  • Armor type – Depending on your class you can wear mail, plate, cloth or leather (see image below)
  • Ownership – Soulbound means it can only be equipped on your character, binds-when-equipped means it can be traded to other players.
  • Durability – amount of beating your weapon or gear can take before needing repairs. Finding a place to repair is as easy as clicking the magnifying glass by your minimap and toggling Townsfolk -> Repairs on.
  • Weapon damage – damage done by your auto attacks
  • Weapon speed – time between auto attacks
  • Indestructible – makes it so that piece of gear has no durability and does not need repaired.

Armor and Weapon Type

Cheatsheet for the types of armor worn by each class in WoW

The armor type shown for classes is the best choice of armor type. Technically… you can wear a lower, softer armor type but why would you want to be a warrior wearing a cloth robe?

In addition to your class determining armor type, it also impacts what type of weapons you can use. Since there are many weapons, and it would be overwhelming to list all possible combinations, we will look at where you can find the list of usable weapons for your class. First, open the Spellbook & Abilities menu by clicking on it or pressing the ‘P’ key. Next, navigate to the book icon tab on the right side of the window. Finally, find the ‘Weapon Skills’ icon and hover over it. It should look like the following:

Screenshot of weapon skills popup in WoW
The weapons you can use are shown in your Spellbook

Gear and Item quality (rarity)

In addition to stats, gear in World of Warcraft also has a color coded indicator which represents its quality. Additionally, the color code applies to items in the game as well.

Higher quality items or gear are generally more difficult to obtain but come with extra stats or special abilities that make them worth seeking out. These colors are displayed when hovering over an item or piece of gear in your bag. A list of the quality names, associated colors, and a cheat sheet are found below:

  • Poor (Gray) – Generally worthless gear or item, good for selling to a NPC vendor which buys items.
  • White (Common) – Has some value, early level gear, reagents required for various recipes.
  • Green (Uncommon) – More difficult to obtain than white items but still pretty easy to find.
  • Blue (Rare) – Slightly stronger version of green items, pets are typically blue items.
  • Purple (Epic) – Will comprise most of your gear at higher levels, hard to find early on.
  • Orange (Legendary) – Extremely powerful items, usually a limit on how many can be equipped at one time.
  • Light gold (Artifact) – Only applies to a few items: weapons in the Legion expansion and Heart of Azeroth necklace in Battle for Azeroth.
  • Light blue (Heirlooms) – After reaching the maximum level you can buy this type of gear which can be used by your lower level characters (called alts) and grants bonuses like additional XP.
Cheatsheet of quality of gear in World of Warcraft
The color the of gear when hovering over it tells you about its quality

Great, we now know how to equip and evaluate gear on a basic level. Since you will change gear so frequently while leveling, we will save a discussion on gear optimization for a future guide. In the next part, we will talk more about items.

If you have already feel comfortable with items, feel free to jump ahead to whatever guide looks the most helpful below:

  1. Ultimate Guide Intro
  2. Creating Your Character
  3. The WoW User Interface
  4. Questing, Combat, and Movement
  5. You are here
  6. Items in World of Warcraft
  7. Professions in World of Warcraft
  8. Dungeons and Raids in World of Warcraft
  9. Player vs. Player (PvP) in World of Warcraft
  10. World of Warcraft (WoW) AddOns (for Beginners 2021)

Filed Under: new-player-guide Tagged With: beginner, guide

Tags

addon addons addon spotlight allied race allied races battle for azeroth beginner bfa burning crusade classic currency dragonflight dungeon dungeons flying gear guide guild legion leveling m+ mists of pandaria mounts mythic+ mythic plus nameplates new player opinion patch 9.1.5 patch 9.2 pve raids retail rotation shadowlands timewalking torghast user interface warlords of draenor world of warcraft wotlk wotlk classic wow wow token zereth mortis
Avatar photo

About Archdruid Andoris

I'm glad you found me! I am a veteran World of Warcraft player who has played off-and-on since the game first released in 2004. I have been a guild master for several guilds with the focus of helping new players learn how to play the game and try new activities like dungeons and raids. I hope the guides and information on this site help you on your journey thorough Azeroth!

If you have any thoughts or questions on the article, feel free to leave a comment. An e-mail is not required (I just use it to catch spam bots).

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Search

More to See

Is the Zygor Addon Worth It? Zygor Guides vs. Azeroth Auto Pilot Test

How To Unlock Northrend Flying in WotLK Classic [2023]

How To Get to Northrend in WotLK Classic [2023]

21 Best Addons for WotLK Classic [2023]

Rune Helper: World of Warcraft (WoW) AddOn Spotlight

Tazavesh, The Veiled Market Dungeon Guide – Entrance, Bosses & FAQs

Grimrail Depot Dungeon Guide – Entrance, Bosses & FAQs

Iron Docks Dungeon Guide – Entrance, Bosses & FAQs

Return to Karazhan Dungeon Guide – Entrance, Bosses & FAQs

Operation: Mechagon Dungeon Guide – Entrance, Bosses & FAQs

Footer

World of Warcraft, Warcraft, and Blizzard Entertainment are trademarks or registered trademarks of Blizzard Entertainment.

Recent

  • The Azure Vault Quick Dungeon Guide [2023] – Entrance & Bosses
  • Algeth’ar Academy Dungeon Guide [2023] – Entrance, Bosses & Tips
  • Tier Sets in World of Warcraft: Dragonflight
  • Ruby Life Pools Dungeon Guide [2023] – Entrance, Bosses & Tips
  • Court of Stars Dungeon Guide [2023] – Entrance, Bosses & FAQs

Search

OTHER LINKS

Privacy Policy

Contact Us

Copyright © 2023 · Magazine Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in