Fun nostalgia: When Burning Crusade first came out, it was shocking - shocking, I say! - for a lot of raiders or those who had worked hard to get epic gear to see how the green items found in Outland were suddenly equal or even better than what they had. We've been through this rodeo four times now, and are about to go through a fifth, so today it's no surprise that it's necessary for there to be something of a gear reset each time there's a new expansion. Admittedly, the hardcore of the hardcore - those who were geared up to go to Naxxramas-40 - actually basically got to the level cap before they needed to replace their whole set. Still, with few exceptions, each expansion will have you, at some point during the leveling process, find yourself ditching your Über Sword of the Demon King or whatever for Reshaad's Dusty Greatsword or whatever.
So what can you expect from for your gear?
Well, most level 90 players fall in at an iLevel of somewhere in the 500s. The raiding-averse will just barely be in that range thanks to Timeless Isle gear and Valor upgrades, while the hardcore of the hardcore will, I believe, be somewhere in the 570-580-ish range. Anyone who has a Legendary cloak is going to skew their average quite a bit upward, as it was intentionally set at a rather ridiculously high iLevel, such that with two upgrades, you can get it to 616.
So what kind of gear do you get in Draenor?
The Tanaan Jungle intro is the first quest chain any player's going to do when they get to Draenor, and the items you get there are, I believe, all at about 505. Much like the Mists quests, the first thing you get is a weapon. The idea here is clearly to level the playing field a bit - if you just hit 90, this will all be useful stuff, but if you're a veteran, you get some very shiny vendor trash. You'll wind up with, I believe, a weapon, helmet, chest piece, pants, and I think shoulders, which should put you in decent shape to start things off in Draenor.
Once you finish that series of quests, things open up quite a bit.
With 10 levels, we're now going to be spending multiple levels in a given zone (general rule of thumb is two per zone, though the Tanaan experience will get you pretty close to 91, so you could theoretically skip out to Gorgrond not long after arriving - though I'd recommend sticking with your faction's starting zone, as Frostfire Ridge is a bit more interesting than Gorgrond, and Shadowmoon Valley may very well be the best zone in Draenor. Sorry Hordies!) What this means is that not every piece of gear from a given zone will be of the same iLevel. You might get a blue item from an early quest that isn't as good as a green item from a later one.
The other complication is that you have a chance to get higher-quality loot from quests. Green items can occasionally become Blue - having a higher iLevel, and blue items can occasionally become Purple Epics. Indeed, even some green items can become Epic as well, though this is pretty rare. The quality changes are really just a boost to the iLevel (and presumably what you get when you disenchant it,) and an epic from one zone could be replaced by an item later on before you hit the cap, but it's still certainly welcome when you get one.
Generally speaking, the iLevel range of items in Draenor as you level up is somewhat similar to the raids of Mists. You'll start by getting low-500s stuff, and by the time you're questing in Nagrand, I believe you'll be seeing greens at the 580-ish level. So it's most likely that even if you're quite hardcore, you probably will be replacing at least some pieces before you hit the level cap.
I don't have the definitive numbers for dungeon loot and such, but epics in Draenor jump up by quite a bit. These seem to start around 625 and get as high as 655 (representing either Normal or Heroic raid quality, but not mythic, if I recall correctly.) So yes, even those legendary cloaks will probably be replaced by either level 100 dungeon blues or heroic dungeon blues. Still, not so bad to get you through the whole leveling process.
I think you're going to see a lot of people still decked out in tier 16 for a while after arriving in Draenor, and if you're close enough to getting the legendary that you might have it before the launch of the expansion, it's probably worth getting. Still, if you're worried about still having only LFR ToT gear and you want to get some SoO stuff - purely for the player power - I wouldn't worry too much about it.
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