Hi All,
I'm fairly new to WoW; have only been playing since the start of Cata, and I guess I fall into that very casual player category. I'm not comfortable doing dungeons with strangers and am fine with only seeing that content when I'm well overleveled and can solo the instances (or handle them with one or two friends). Now I'm in a guild with 4 like-minded friends & friends of friends, all at lvl 90, and am super excited that I can finally experience some of Pandaria's dungeons now.
I'm not used to paying attention to gear or stats so I don't know how much of a difference proper gear can make (although I'm slowly learning just from personal experience). I also know that ilvl doesn't necessarily correlate to skill level, and I'm certainly not trying to turn our little guild into a "must have ilvl ###" kind of place.
That said, we have a very skilled player, a Death Knight, who's still in quest greens and blues with some Contender's Spirit plate. I have a blacksmith who could make him the Contender's Revenant armor (as well as the purple chest and gloves once my alchemist makes more living steel). Since, as a group, we only have a couple of hours on the weekends to try to do a dungeon, I'm thinking that the better geared we are, the better our chances of success within that time window. We did Shado-Pan Monestary last weekend and tried twice to get past Taran Zhu and then had to call it quits. We're slow; we're casual. Don't mock us! ;-)
Two questions: Will switching the Contender's Spirit plate for Revenant make a noticeable difference for a Blood DK? Also, he's currently using a 2 handed green quest sword. Can DKs use a 2 handed axe, like Master Spiritwork Decimator (or something else that my blacksmith might be able to make)? And any thoughts on how to approach the subject without causing offense? Dude is a seriously nice guy, so I don't want to be, like, "Here, wear this."
Ok, that was three questions. Any and all guidance much appreciated.