It's that time to focus on gearing in Season 3 of WoW Dragonflight as we are getting close to the new 10.2 patch. So with this guide, we talk about everything that is changing in 10.2 when it comes to gear, whether it is from the crests, fragments, Great Vault, the Catalyst, Mythic+, the raid, crafting, etc. After reading, you will surely get a good ahead idea about how to gear up to 480+ ilvl fast in the WoW Dragonflight Season 3!

WoW Dragonflight 10.2 Season 3 Gearing Guide: Changes & How To Gear Up

Patch 10.2, as a large seasonal update in WoW Dragonflight, is about to bring a lot of new content and new features, so if you want to know how to gear up quickly in Dragonflight Season 3, we only need to take a look at these gearing-related changes:

Related Read:

WoW Dragonflight 10.2 PvP Tier List - DPS & Healer Ranking for Solo Shuffle in Season 3

WoW Dragonflight 10.2 Season 3 PvP Gearing Guide - 489+ iLvl BiS Fast Gear Up Methods

1. 480-489iLvl Gear in Season 3

In Season 3 of Dragonflight, we can expect to receive items with an item level of 480+ ilvl. This is a significant increase compared to Season 2, where the item levels were only 26 levels higher. However, in Season 3, the item levels will be boosted by 39 levels, which is higher than the usual increment. Technical-Metal-1621 created a helpful chart that showcases the item level comparison between Season 2 and Season 3 for raids, crafting, Mythic+, and the Great Vault. While the raid numbers may start a few levels lower than the actual stats, the chart provides an overall accurate representation of the upcoming item-level distribution. It covers various raid difficulties, M+ keys, Great Vault breakpoints, and Crest level ranges. It's definitely a useful visual aid to understand what to expect in terms of item levels in the upcoming patch 10.2 and Season 3.

Dragonflight 10.2 Season 3 Item Level Chart

2. Fragments Changes

Fragments are being removed in 10.2, we are getting the same values of fragments turned into crests - so in Season 2, you have 15 Aspect fragments and you turn them into an Aspect Crest.  In 10.2, first of all, all of your quests now are in the currency Tab and no longer in your bags, now you get 15 of them, it doesn't actually change anything if you're doing Mythic+ and you're getting 12 Crest Fragments. In 10.2, you're going to be doing Mythic+ and getting 12 quests, it's going to be the same thing just with the removal of the fragments. So the one thing to understand before going forward is that fragments are removed in 10.2 quests, drop in the same quantity of fragments do right now in the 10.1 patch. And that everything else remains the same for example instead of requiring 15 fragments to turn into a Crest to upgrade one piece of gear, in 10.2 you will simply require directly 15 crests, we are basically removing the middleman - the middleman of the fragments, but nothing else is changing.

3. Weekly Cap NERF

What is actually changing though is the Nerf to the amount of crests, you can now get per week, in patch 1.2.0 you can get 150 fragments per week as a cap, so 150 fragments turn into 10 quests which turn into 10 upgrades per week. This is something that has not been relevant in months, this was very important in the first 3 weeks or so 4 weeks or so maybe of the patch, because you wanted to squeeze every possible gear upgrade you could, but then after those first few weeks nobody cared. However, it will be relevant and very important at the release of the patch. The change in patch 10.2 is that now it's only 90 quests as a weekly cap, instead of 150 fragments before. So instead of having 10 upgrades per week, in each and every type of quest in 10.2 you only have 6 upgrades per week, it's a significantly reduced amount of upgrades you can get every week on your gear. This was a point of contention for some players who thought in 10.1 we simply got to max level way too quickly, we simply were able to beef up in item level to get to 455 in just 3 weeks being a bit too fast, so it will definitely be slower how we gear up how fast we gear up it's nerfed, but there are some quality of life improvements.

4. Looting Crests (QoL BUFF)

First of all, fragments drop from a certain type of content, for example, aspect fragments dropping from plus 16 and higher Mythic+ keys and Mythic raid, and once you reach the weekly cap, they stop dropping. So if you capped at the raid of the Season 150 aspect fragments, then you simply have to wait for the reset to get any more. In the 10.2 patch, there is a backward compatibility, in the sense that if you are doing Mythic+ 20s to get aspect quests and then cap your weekly Aspect Crests limit, you will start instead looting worm crests from the same Mythic+ key without having to change difficulty or lowering your Mythic+ key you will be getting Wyrm Crest. If you cap Wyrm Crest as well, you go down to Drake Crests and then you go down to Whelpling Crests. The same goes for any other type of content you already capped your aspect crest for the week. And now you're going to M+ raid, if you kill bosses, you will be looting worm crests. So this makes it so that whichever type of content you do, you will always be dropping quests, even if you have capped the crest that comes from that particular content, Blizzard will simply go and look at the second highest available quest that you can loot and give you that one instead. That is quite a good quality of life addition.

5. Upgrading Crests (QoL BUFF)

There is also another quality of life change you are already aware of. We are assuming you can convert a higher-level Crest into a lower-level one at a 1:1 ratio, so you can take all of your aspect crests right now and turn them into worms if you want to. In patch 10.2, there is also the change the other way around you can convert a lower-level Crest into a higher-level Crest, we were very excited about this change as a possible way to revive vitalize, and revamp the Open World Events and World Quest activities. Because now even try hards even Mythic+ players or Raiders might have wanted to go in the open world for example to collect weling crests or Drake crests, since now those can be upgraded all the way up to an Aspect Crest. However, this has been made less relevant, as we just pointed out by the fact that even if you cap your main crest your aspect Crest from high-level Mythic+ Keys, you will still be dropping the lower ones anyways, and then also the fact that the conversion rate of this upgrade is 6 to. It's not exchanging 1 Wyrm Crest for one Aspect Crest, it's changing 6 Wyrm Crest for 1 Aspect Crest. In 10.2, 90 lower crests for 15 higher crests, unless you are a goldfish, your memory should come back up to what we talked about before, the weekly cap of quests is now 90. This means that if you want to have one quest of a higher level, you have to spend all of your weekly allowance on the lower level crest. So if you cap Aspect Crests and Wyrm Crests, you can take all of the Wyrm Crests you have collected and turn them into 15 extra crests of a higher level of Aspect Crests. That's the change in 10.2, to slightly increase the cap.

6. ILVL Needed to Upgrade Crests

Now to be able to do this upgrading of quests you need to reach certain item level break points, not overall item level but item level in every piece of gear.  To upgrade lower crest to higher crests in Season 3 you need:

• Going from Whelpling crest to Drake crest requires all of your gear to be at least 450 item level in Season 3 which is the equivalent of 411 in Season 2;

• Going from Drake crest to Wyrm crest requires all of your gear to be 463 item level in Season 3 which is the equivalent of 424 in Season 2;

• Going from Wyrm crest to Aspect crest requires you to be 476 item level in all of your gear in Season 3 which is the equivalent of 437 in Season 2.

So only once you have reached those breakpoints, you can start upgrading the Relevant Crest. This will be again quite important in the first couple of weeks to be able to reach that particular break point to start upgrading your gear with those crests and to exchange the crest to the higher ones, but then after a few weeks of course it won't become nearly as important.

7. Crafting Changes

There has also been a significant change to the crafted gear. This was even worse a few weeks ago crafted gear was even weaker, Blizzard buffed the crafted gear in 10.2.

In Season 2:

• Crafted Items are 447 iLvl

• Myth Track M+/Raid Loot is 447 iLvl

• Myth Track has 3 Levels: 441-> 444 -> 447

In Season 3:

• Crated Items are 486 iLvl

• Myth Track M+/Raid Loot is 489iLvl

• Myth Track has 4 Levels: 480 -> 483 -> 486 -> 489

In Season 2, crafted items are 447 item level, the myth track in 10.1 is the one you get from the Vault from the Mythic+ Vault, and the base loot from Mythic raid bosses which also caps out at 447ilvl. That's because the myth track has three levels: 441, 444, 447, and it's the equivalent of crafted gear which is why at the end of Season 2 it's possible and likely that many players have almost all of their gear crafted to 447ilvl since it's just very strong. Unless you have a way to get 450s juicy from the latest bosses of Mythic rating, you might as well craft every piece of gear because they are the strongest right now. In the 10.2 patch, this has been nerfed - crafted items are 486 item level which is still the equivalent of 447 but the myth track you get from the Mythic+ Vault Loot and the base item level of Mythic rate bosses is 489 in Season 3. That's because the myth track in Season 3 has four levels: 480, 483, 486, 489. This means that later on once you start trying to min-max and get your top-level gear, crafted gear is no longer the default strongest, this will put also some annoyance in whether or not you want to start using more crafted items like rings with the guaranteed socket or good stats. That's the main change to make crafted gear weaker in patch 10.2. And we have been lucky because this crafted gear was supposed to be even weaker just a few days ago.

8. Enchanted Crest

There is a very slight very minor quality of life change in the sense that right now in the 10.1 to craft one Enchanted crest for the crafting you need four crests, so you need 60 fragments. In the 10.2 patch, the 60 fragments are the same for the highest item level Crest the Aspect Crest those are still 60 crests required which is the equivalent of 4 crests in Season 2. The lower-level crests that you can use for crafting have had their price discounted which if you think about it makes sense: Aspect Crest has the highest item level and it costs way more, why would you have to spend the same amount of crest for items that can be crafted at a much lower level? So the crafting with the enchanted crest for Whelpling, Drake, and Wyrm will be discounted compared to the one for the Aspect Crest crafting, which is ultimately still what most players will want to craft the Aspect craft item rather than the lower ones, but it's still good to know that the lower level ones now are cheaper to get.

9. Catalyst Change

We also have a change to the Catalyst. It's been confirmed once more 10.1 as well as 10.0 as well and Shadowlands, the Catalyst came out after 6 weeks - one charge per week, but only at the beginning of week 6. In Patch 10.2, it's a massive change because now the Catalyst is active from week 1, as the season starts you immediately have the option to get one tier piece but you will get 1 charge every 2 weeks instead of 1 charge per week. This is the simple graph to show you for how long the 10.2 change will be better than the normal  - the standard version of The Catalyst, which is roughly the first 3 months. This is also very good because the Catalyst is obviously very important in the first few weeks, in the first couple of months even. But after that, it starts losing its value, this is a particularly good chance for non-Raiders. If you consider that you still have the meta-achievement, the one to reach a certain PVP rating or Mythic+ rating or ahead of the curve, to gain one tier token guaranteed of your choice, you only need 3 Catalyst charges in Season 3. The older version in Season 2 would have given you 3 Catalyst charges on week 8, the new version in Season 3 is going to give you 3 Catalyst charges on week 5. In week 5 of Aberrus or Vault of the incarnates, the Catalyst wasn't even open to begin with, that's how much faster non-Raiders especially will be able to get their four-piece set bonus in 10.2, basically 5 weeks, that is a very good change for the next season.

9. Raid Loot Changes

The last bit of change is that raid-related rare items are extra Loot on top of regular loot in Season 3. So if a boss is giving you four items and then procs the extra loot rare piece of gear, it will give you four items plus one, so the rare item is not eating up one gear slot from the boss, it's going to be an extra. Also, there is only going to be one tier piece per boss, instead of a random chance of one to three, so this will actually be cutting away quite a decent amount of possibility of tier pieces from the raid compared to Season 2 by quite a bit. But with the Catalyst open, from week one is much less of a problem. Lastly, easier ways for your raid roster to swap around and guarantee multiple Vault options because in 10.1 the amount of raid bosses needed for the Vault options in the raid is 3-5-7, in 10.2 they will be 2-4-7 meaning a much easier time being able to get multiple great Vault options especially important at the start of the Raid during progress for example, that's a good change as well for raiding.

So with these rare items done, these are all of the changes related to gear whether it is from crafting, Mythic+, raiding, great Vault, Catalyst, or what have you that will happen in 10.2. It's going to be quite a bit to get used to losing your fragments to only start thinking about quests, to start dividing quests by 15, to make a comparison in your head with what you had in season 1 and season 2. But overall the gearing will be slightly slower if perhaps slightly more optimized. So these are so far the changes coming in 10.2 related to character power, so hoping that the informational guide helped some players.