Well, BFA has been out for a month and a half. Here are my observations and suggestions.
It's taking about 10 to 20 hours to level from 110 to 120, depending upon, well, I don't know. Your efficiency coupled with your play style, I suppose. Some folks were 120 within 24 hours of the game going live. It took me longer.
My basic advice for leveling is this: start in one of the three areas and stay there, doing the quest lines, until you hit friendly with the relevant faction. Then move to the next area. This means by the time you're 120, you'll also have reached friendly with the three factions around Boralus, which is a requirement to open World Quests.
If you're not 120, then finish the quest lines. You're going to need them for other reasons.
Note that while you're leveling, you'll also encounter 3-person-recommended quests to kill particular mobs. You can do those when you hit them, or you can wait. It probably doesn't matter. It's not hard to get a group to help you kill the mobs. Just use the group finder.
There are six Alliance factions in all. Three correspond to the zones immediately around Boralus. Of the others, one is called Champions of Azeroth and is related to Magni the Dwarf. He asks you to help heal Azeroth (the planet). The next are the turtles. They have three types of quests that all take place on or near a beach. The WQs are easy, but the number of them is low, so working turtle faction towards exalted takes time. The last is 7th Legion and is represented by everything on Zandalaria, the other island in BFA (where the Horde starts). This turns out to actually be the easiest faction to raise to exalted because you get three entire zones worth of WQs to do instead of just one, so there are a LOT more WQs you can do.
My advice:
The ways to get gear are similar to everything you already know. Don't worry about gear while leveling. Yeah, you'll get some, but just don't worry about it. The gear grind starts once you hit 120.
At 120, your ilevel will be something in the 250 to 280 range. Your first goal is 305, the point where you can queue for heroic instances. Your second goal is 320 (or so), when mythic and warfronts become possible. After that, you just want it as high as you can get it. Not much of a change.
World Quests offer gear that can warforge/titanforge with a base that starts at your current ilevel. That is, when your ilevel is crap, the WQs will help you get better crap. As your ilevel rises, the gear you can get from WQs improves. However... I think a particular WQ drop is fixed when the WQ becomes active. I've had significant ilevel upgrades, and then subsequent WQs don't show as possibly producing better drops. My info is not scientific, and i could be wrong.
So... Your primary way of leveling up your ilevel is going to be from WQs. Use an add on that helps you figured out which ones to do. I use World Quest List. You can see the rewards in a list and pick the WQs that will help you the most. Turtles, champions, and what gear drops based on the slots that are lagging for you.
And remember the gear can titanforge. The base range is 295 to 330.
The next source of gear is from instances.
Each weekly reset, there may be 1 to 3 world bosses available. Gear drops are 355 to 370, but of course, you might not get anything. You can kill each boss once per cycle. The three possible places:
So far, I've gotten one very nice upgrade from a world boss.
I'll have a special section about warfronts, but gear:
-The first time you complete a WF this cycle, assuming you hit the quest giver before you queue, you're guaranteed a 370 drop. Nice, huh? -Each time you complete a WF, you're guaranteed a 340 drop. -I have not gotten any Azerite, but I'm told that can happen, maybe only for the first of those two. I don't know yet. -I haven't had any that warforge/titanforge, but my sample size is small.
Each of the factions discussed earlier has gear available for purchase upon reaching a particular reputation level. They have a 320 cloak at honored, which could be an upgrade. There's a 335 piece at revered, which may still be an upgrade by the time you get there. And at exalted is a 355 piece. See the various emissaries.
On my druid, I made it to exalted with 7th Legion literally just minutes before the warfront opened for the first time. I ran over and bought my shiny new armor, waited seconds, and then could queue for the warfront.
And the 370 piece fit the same slot. Sigh. So I wore it for all of about a half hour. When the WF completed, I traded gear and hit a vendor and actually got a full refund because I'd had it less than an hour. Why couldn't I have gotten something that fit a slot holding one of my last pieces of 330 instead? Ah well.
Inscriptionists can make Contracts. A contract is basically a 7-day buff that survives through death, but you can only have one, and you can accidentally click it off. With the buff, you get 10 reputation with a single faction every time you complete a WQ, on top of whatever you already get.
I use one for the turtles, because that's the one that lags the furthest. Ten rep isn't much, but every bit helps.
Enchanters can, you know, enchant your gear. There are some interesting buffs. Some are straight stat improvements, but some are rather unique. Ask me to link my enchanting if you would like a current list.
Okay, warfronts. As I write this, the Arathi Warfront is open and available for Alliance to queue. Here's how it works.
First off, warfronts are NOT pvp.
One faction controls Arathi. For the first half of the cycle, that was Alliance. That meant we could go to Arathi and complete some pre-warfront quests that were definitely worth doing. In the meantime, Horde could queue for warfront battles.
That lasted a week.
Then it was our turn. There are two phases. In phase one, we need to gather resources. Near the ship in Boralus, near the Harbor Master, you'll see a bunch of quest givers. There's a guy standing by a table similar to the tables we use for other things. That table is how you queue for warfronts. The guy standing behind it gives you quests.
So... You see him. He gives you a quest to provide resources. Then you go to one of the 10 other people offering quests and find one you can fill. Do that, then turn in the quest with the first guy. Then go to all the others and do as many as you can.
I ended up doing almost all of them, although only about half on the hunter. I ended up hitting the AH to complete several. Prices were high, but while farming some of the drops, I made a ton of cash, so I decided to spend it.
Once enough of us have done enough of the quests, the WF opens for us.
Okay. You're queued. You zone in, and you're on a ship in the air, waiting for the scenario to start. When it does.
Jump off.
You'll parachute to the ground. You need to kill a few mobs and claim a banner similar to claiming banners in some of the battlegrounds. Well, someone in the 20-person raid has to do it. It doesn't have to be you.
Then the force divides. You need to claim the lumber mill and iron mine. And you need to push forward and claim other points on the map. They're pretty obvious.
Icy Veins suggests an organized raid will divide roughly in half. Half the people will attack the opposing forces. The other half gather resources: lumber and iron. So you take the two places, one to the east and one west.
Once you claim the lumber mill, there's a quest giver near the banner. Beside him is an axe. Grab it. You don't use it. Just grab it.
Then you run around collecting lumber. There's a tree about 10 steps from the quest giver. Chop it down. (Just click the tree.) Otherwise you'll find little piles of lumber all over the area. There's only so many, and they don't appear to respawn. It doesn't take that many people to grab the lumber that's readily grabbed.
Iron is unlimited. Capture the mine. Then you get iron from two sources. You can kill enemies inside the mine. Each drop 0 to about 5 iron. And there are iron carts that when you loot have about 25-40 iron. Some people just run around trying to grab carts, but I go through the mine and kill anything that moves while grabbing carts when I see them.
There's also a chest in town. It slowly fills, so you can hit it and grab what's available. There's a chart on your page that shows how much lumber and iron you're holding, and under iron, the +7 means you have 7 iron waiting in your chest.
You can hold a max of 200 iron.
You spend resources for four basic purposes:
Build the buildings needed. They are all in Stormgarde, and you have to build them in order. There's a work table, and when you click it, you can donate iron or lumber in lots of 10. The different buildings need different amounts of each.
Armor and Weapons research. There's a guy standing outside one of the buildings that lets you research these the same way you advance the buildings. I'm not sure what the advantages are.
Making siege engines. We need siege engines to win. They knock down the opposing gates, granting access to the final boss. We can have at most 3 siege engines. They are fully autonomous, so don't try to drive them yourself. Just donate 80 iron and one pops up and begins traveling into position. They can be destroyed if people leave them undefended, although I've only had that happen a few times.
Making troops. There's another guy standing outside the barracks (one of the buildings you make) -- opposite side from the one who lets you do weapons and armor research. You can have 2 personal troops. Cost is 20 to 50 iron. I like having a priestess follow me around, but she's only available after you take one of the later nodes on the map.
Winning involves killing the final boss inside the opposing keep. So overall, it works like this:
Note: You can't lose. You can only take a long time if your raid really sucks. So far, I haven't had a sucky raid.
On the druid, I go Resto and heal for the big pushes. In between, I gather resources, because there never seems to be enough people doing that.
On the hunter, I help capture Stormgarde and the lumber mill. I collect all the lumber I can quickly grab and go use it. Then I run over to the mine. Others will already have captured it, but I remain at the iron mine, gathing resources, and when I get over 100 iron, I head back to Stormgarde and spend them.
Once the siege engines are completed, I use any remaining resources I have to buy a couple of troops to help me, and I help advance the warfront.
These are random notes.
One run I basically captured the lumber mill with just one other guy. That was freaking annoying that we didn't have help.
Note: there will be some sort of mini-boss near each banner. He's kind of hard, but not terrible. You have to kill him before you can claim the banner. Be careful: if you drag him too far from the banner, he resets, and you have to start over on him! Ask me how I know. See my previous comment, by the way. The guy tanking him didn't know this (neither did I), and let himself get pushed further and further from the banner until reset. He was nearly dead. Sigh.
Insufficient healing. I've only had this happen a few times, but it's annoying to slowly die on the hunter. This is why on the hunter I like to have a priestess or two follow me around, but you can only do that latter during the scenario.
The trash mobs can hit hard if you ignore them. As ranged DPS, I intentionally pick off the mobs around the edges. They die fairly quickly, and getting rid of them means my comment about insufficient healing is less of an issue. This is far less of an issue if there are lots of people around, but can really matter if there are only a few of you.