The Dilemma Of Choosing Gear
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pixiestixy on Friday, March 13, 2009 - 18 Comments Tags: Addons, Addons, DPS, armor, blue, boe, bop, enhancements, equip, equipment, gear, green, sockets, spec, stats, weapons
pixiestixy on Friday, March 13, 2009 - 18 Comments Tags: Addons, Addons, DPS, armor, blue, boe, bop, enhancements, equip, equipment, gear, green, sockets, spec, stats, weapons 
Choosing gear used to be so simple. When you roll a new character, you start out with the crappiest of the crap. At first, it’s just a matter of picking whatever has the highest armor rating. Couldn’t be easier. Then you add in stats to consider. Would you rather have agility or intelligence? Is your character more suited to armor of the bear or of the tiger? Are you mainly PvE or PvP? The choice becomes slightly more difficult, but usually is still pretty clear-cut as long as you have a certain spec in mind. My main character is a rogue, so I almost always went for the agility, with stamina as my second-favored stat (<3 “of the monkey” armor).Then come item enhancements. Being a leatherworker, for me the choice was between using an armor kit or getting a guildmate to enchant my gear with increased stats. Again, I usually went for the agility whenever possible.
But then I hit the high-50s, and things got more complicated. Blue armor was no longer always better than green armor. The stat bonuses started getting better. Many items offer bonuses to more than just one or two stats. And now there are sockets to consider, along with bonuses for actually filling the sockets. Or, bonuses for having multiple items in a set. And in addition to just stat bonuses, there also are pluses to attack power, crit rating, resilience rating, dodge rating, resistances etc. Too many choices! Of course, one helpful trick is to equip back and forth between the gear you’re choosing from, and see how the stats that matter to you change. Or, if it’s a bind on equip item, you can use an add-on specific to your spec (I use GearDPS) to see how the gear will work for you. Sometimes you have to choose between one great stat and another great stat. A straight-up plus to agility isn’t always my best choice anymore, not when so many other enhancements may increase both agility and a combo of other needed stats.
How does one cope, especially when making the shift to questing in Outland, then Northrend, where much, much better equipment is given as quest rewards (and it drops pretty frequently, too)? In the early 60s, I often found myself carrying around gear that, as it was, wasn’t quite as good as what I had equipped. But if I was able to get it enchanted, it would be a little bit better. Then I would find an even better item before I had the chance to enchant the second one. Or I would hold on to gear that I thought was awesome, but that I wasn't high enough level to equip yet. But once I reached the right level to equip it, my gear already had surpassed that mark. Now that I'm in Northrend, it’s getting even more complicated.
So, I became more stingy with my gear. For BoP gear that's a quest reward and already obsolete, I'll just choose whichever item sells for the highest amount (yay, Auctioneer addon). For me, I can't justify equipping BoE gear if I’m going to find something better in a half-level anyways. Instead, auction it! Or give it to a guildy to disenchant. Do those few extra tenths-of-a-chance to crit really make a difference when I can level quickly without it? Is it even worth keeping spare sets of gear for different uses when you’re leveling up so quickly that it becomes obsolete before you can use it? At least until I hit 80, my guess is no.
So how do you go about choosing whether to use gear that may be replaced quickly? Do you go ahead and equip it and make use of it while you can? Do you just go for the money? Or is there a happy medium?
Reader Comments (18)
I'm still rolling in level 40 gear on some of my characters on the basis that they were done via Refer-a-friend xp bonus, so my friend and I missed out on many areas when levelling.
So basically, around the players at some of my character's levels, they have double the health of my character and they're just using outland greens, whereas my level 60 or so hunter is still wearing fenrus's hide :P
I take gear if it's better than what I've got on, or there's an attainable set that has nice set bonuses.
If it's not an upgrade, I'll take the plate/mail or highest DPS weapon to sell.
However, at the end of the day, I still get my questing done and I can still top damage counters in PUGS with this really weak gear due to my play style. I'd only worry about gear when I reach the level cap, tbh.
I use wowheads item comparison page to build a item set I can save and compare items with it quickly. It's great how you can check to see just how much better a item is than what you've got, and what spec it's biased for.
Also ratingsbuster is immesurably useful. I also take the highest armor items if I don't need the cloth upgrade for my priest =)
boys im playing an ele shammy but i dont like it so much in pvp mage kill it so fast also in fact that i crit 12 with lava burst every 8 sec a good skiled fire mage beat me at dps.i reali whant to grow up my mage any sugestion if its a good ideea or isnt please?:D thanks for the great show ur doing
ah the joys of debatable gear. I remember getting overwhelmed by figuring out which get to upgrade and which to sell back in the first days of wow. At that point i figured, i had better decide what spec i was gonna play and what i needed most outta gear to do it. In the leveling process i've found i level faster the better gear i have. (it makes sense, the better quality gear=better performance etc). Now, boe i generally just treat as AH material always (gold will always trreat me better than a level 75 boe). Anyways i always make goals of hitting the base of whatever stats i need for my toon at his respective level and as long as the gear helps me achieve that, then it's getting equipped.
Since I play a paladin I just choose the best plate that can help whatever spec I am at the moment. So I keep most of my gear in a bag untill I find another piece that is better than the last. Go talent switch and having a well rounded character lol. =)
A few tips:
1: Checking dungeon loot tables really help if you need upgrade, especially when in a guild, they can do gear runs.
2: Asking friends or guild members if they can craft upgrades for you. (Or if you can craft yourself, checking your professions)
3: Do all quests. You never know what gear you can get, (unless of course you checked beforehand).
4: Sites to help see which exact gear you need to improve. For instance, maxdps.com helps me on my Ret pally. (No sponsorships were paid in that statement)
Regardless of BoP or BoE I try and pick the best for me, if it turns out to be roughly the same stats as what I currently have, AH it or vendor it. Running around Northrend atm I've only picked up one or two bits that were better than whats currently equipped (AH or guild run)
Also, if its BoE and there's only a slight increase in the stats versus what you're currently wearing, why bother equipping it, the way the quest rewards are setup ensures (well, this is what it seems like to me) that you'll always get somewhat deceint gear to continue leveling, the really cool stuff is from instances, or pvp rewards, pvp scares the bejeasus out of me....
I always wondered what stats were best for a certain class so i looked it up and read what stats were best for what class and spec. there is also the addon rating buster that helps a bit in picking new gear
I use a mod called Rating Buster. It compares various stats and makes gear itemization a lot easier to figure out.
I use a few addons to assist with this subject and I am going to start using GearDPS when I get home from work!
I use AtlasLoot and Atlas to quickly choose future gear. I never run instances without planning out the following:
1. My Gear Wish List
2. How Many times I need to run either Normal or Heroic to get to Exalted with a faction.
3. Quest Completion
4. I generally choose a couple lower level instances to farm x number of times a week to keep the cash flow with Enchanting....Its amazing the money you can make from a couple of Strat Runs. Yay Righteous Orbs!
I also use EquipCompare. It allows you to view both an item in your bags to what you are currently wearing in that slot so you can compare the numbers.
Since most of my toons and guild mates can make most of the enchants, glyphs, armor kits etc I use across my toons as can I, I use ProfessionsBook for myself and Guild Craft so I can easily see what people in the Guild can make compared to what I can make.
Aside from those, I then use Auctioneer to streamline my questing process.
TankTotals is an updated addon similar to TankingPoints. Except its updated.
Finally, I prefer to use a mod that allows me to turn on and turn off any mods I have while IN-Game instead of logging out and logging in all the time. I use Addon Control Panel to do this with a simple check or uncheck and a /reloadui all done by pushing buttons.
Ratingbuster from curse.com
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/rating-buster.aspx
nuff said.
How do I choose?
Read above post by moko
- nuff said
Ratingbuster is awesome...wrks on any class...dnt need anything else to help on what to go for
When it comes to choosing gear, I pretty much narrow it down to a) does it look pretty balanced; b) is a gain in one area worth the loss in another; c) do I drastically need to improve an area; and d) does it look good. (Ok, ok, I was kidding about the last one. Mostly.)
When it comes to addons, I highly recommend Equip Compare and Ratings Buster, as -- let's face it -- not everyone is an Einstein.
On most of my characters while leveling, I don't really fret about gear choices unless one is clearly superior to the other. I don't need to figure out if 20 health is worth giving up for a tiny bit more mana regen for the 15 minutes I'll be level 34. I can plow through the solo content without bothering to do the math. If the two items are already soulbound and neither is clearly better than the other, I may equip the one worth less cash to a vendor or even *gasp* choose my gear based on looks WHILE I LEVEL.
At max level, I make lists of the gear that's available to me and that are best in slot for my needs. If I enter an instance or raid, with the exception of truly random world drops, I already know if the gear that can drop is something I should be rolling on, and if it'll be good for my off-set should nobody else want it.
Having read this I truly miss the good old days, or hours, of switching grey gear for white and for white gear with higher armor. Getting all green gear for the first time made me a proud man indeed.
When it comes to choosing gear while leveling, my approach is one of a very casual gamer; if it looks good on me, I'm equipping it. I don't pay much attention to stats until I reach the level cap unless it beat my old gear by some great margin. Of course I wouldn't be caught dead wearing intellect and spirit gear on my rogue either.
Maybe it's because I recently rolled a female BE that my gear choice has been less strict. Vanity is my primary objective after all. Especially when it comes to the gap between expansions. Is trading off my fashionable epic set worth it for some slightly superior blues?
The only things I found that made a difference on gear in Northrend had been the amount of +stam and armor that completely blew away Outland epics, but they didn't really do much to help me with leveling anyway. So I kept my pretty Kara set and found out I could've gotten to 80 with no problem. I still kept the blues with better stats from quests/dungeons that I though would look nice together, but I didn't replace my 70s until I got a total makeover. Perhaps that's just how I prefer my character to be - aesthetically pleasing.
I assume things will be different when I hit 80 when gear selection will be just like end game BC again, since raid gear not only has nice stats, it also looks sexy.
i think the hardest issue with gear was in my 60's to 70 where Outland carried alot of sockets and potential pretty rep rewards that although very appealing turn out to be huge sink holes in terms of money and time.
quest rewards and dungeons will supply the majority of you gear and the rest can be found at the auction house.
for the auction house i usually i buy and sell at around 3-4x the vendor price of an item with some exceptions. a weapon you know from research will last you 5 levels is worth a little more but in any case don't break the bank on 79 levels of transition gear.
save money for mount training not the auction house.
I have a question. I´m not sure if its only on my server or everywhere else. Since there are very nice rewards from doing quests and you don't spend a lot of time before reaching another level, I been having a really hard time to auction all the 70-79 greens and blues BOEs. At the end i usually vendor or DE them. Anyone else having the same problem?