Introduction

With patch 9.1 only being a few days away, what do you need to do before the new patch hits? There are a few things you are able to do, such as grinding rating for cosmetics, last pushes and preparing for next patch. I will break these down here, giving you an idea of what you could do before 9.1 hits.

Grinding rating

There are multiple different season ranks. These are unranked (0-1399), combatant (1400-1599), challenger (1600-1799), rival (1800-2099), duelist (2100-2399), elite (2400+) and then gladiator (elite plus 50 wins). If you are close to any of these, you can push for the rating, however, I recommend only doing it if you’re close for the cosmetics that come with the ranks. If you’re pushing for gladiator then you get the gladiator mount as well. With each rank comes their respective titles, but, you lose them at the end of the season.

Preparing for next patch

Blizzard have announced in a blue post that honor isn’t going to be reset: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/chains-of-domination-and-season-2-dates-and-information/1007962

This for you, means, if you farm up 15,000 honor on one or all of your chars, when the patch hits you should be able to get a full set of PvP gear, don’t think they’ll be upgradable as I think that comes with renown, but you’ll have some gear, ready to upgrade it as and when it’s possible. The new gear, unlike the current gear will scale up 13 ilvls per item in PvP situations (War mode, arena, bgs) so the honor gear I believe is going to be better than the current elite gear which is 226.

If you are close to obtaining the war spider mount from getting 100% from wins over 1k rating then I would highly recommend trying to finish that off because, when the season ends and the next patch goes live, the progress you’ve made will be reset and you’ll lose all the progress towards that mount, and, you will have to get it from a vicious saddle later on down the line.

Wrapping it up

If you’re close to getting an extra piece of cosmetic items being close to the next rank up, if you like it/want to get a limited time cosmetic item then try to push that rating. Otherwise, I think you should be spending your time farming up honor so you cap at 15k before the patch goes live, so you can get your fresh blues ready for the new season to begin on the 6th July. Also if you’re close, make sure you finish up that war spider mount, otherwise if you want it you’ll have to farm for it later on.