Editorial - Is Epic Gear too Easy to Get?

[Messiah]

Byron "Messiah" Mudry reminisces about the time when epic gear was hard to get, and meant something? Now it seems like everyone and their dog has a full epic set. With the proliferation of epics on every player out there epics have lost their flare. In the last Blizzcast Blizzard came pretty close to admitting that the current system is a bit too easy, and gave some hints on how it is going to be corrected in the Wrath of the Lich King. However players may not be happy with the changes. Are we all too addicted to our free epics?

Depending who you talk to the ease of getting any specific kind of gear varies. Traditionally though it is viewed that reputation and crafted gear is the easiest, followed by PvP gear as you never have to win anything (other than for the certain pieces that need a arena rating). Next up in the heroic and badge gear, and then raid gear being the most difficult to get.

You can read all about in in this weeks Editorial - Is Epic Gear to Easy to Get?.

[Mikes]

I think the people who are upset aren't miffed a epics in general, but at the gladiator and badge epics. Which is the quick way of me summing up your editorial, Messiah, but I'm with you on it.

Epic tiered gear should really be a badge of hnour. They should say 'look, look where I've been!' to the people passing you in Shatt.

If I had my way (first of all the Norwegians would be dealt with, but that's another story), the badge gear would be dialed back a bit. IMO it should be a way for people to help get themsleves geared for starting to raid.

Secondly, I'd keep the gladiator gear, but make it only usuable in cities and in the arena. Sure, it's aimed at PvP and not PvE, but some classes basically now have a free ride into raiding level stats through sitting through BGs. I know this because my DPS feral druid is sat i the full S1 gear and blows through the Kara mins.

[DarkFact]

While I know my former hardcore raider self would agree with the fact badge gear is TOO good, from a more laid-back perspective I have now I can say that badge gear (the newest one, which seems to be the whole problem and a main point of attack from this editorial's point of view) is okay in my eyes.

I don't think it's THAT easy to go out and farm 100 badges of justice for an item, 150 for a weapon(set). It takes about 4-5 days of hardcore farming heroics with a group (4-6 heroics per day which is what, 10~ hours) and/or Karazhan (22 badges in 3-6 hours depending on your group per week)

It's not an easy feat, the only problem is people are not given enough options to advance past the badge gear if they don't want to 25-man, hence they'll run the heroics and karazhan/zul'aman daily and max out their power in 2-3 months.

Which is not that bad, since in dkp-based guilds and such loot rotation would still be 2-3 weeks (or more) per item upgrade obtained, and badge gear doesn't cover all slots, so you're still left with the task of making yourself acceptable in all the other non-badge slots or continue pouring time into it to get G'eras's other equipment slots.

All in all, I feel it 'fair', to an extent, that if someone dumps ~30-35 hours of their time into a dungeon crawl, they should come out with something of great quality for their efforts, which would be '1' item, then 30-35 more for another, and so on.

That's just me, though, and god knows I've geared up my rogue around all the badge gear for the most part due to the extreme competition and everyone wanting 25-mans

edit: oh, as for the PvP stuff, same deal, if someone, even if they lost, is investing incredible amounts of time for their gear, then by all means they should be rewarded with something.

[Miralyn]

Good points all around - there is another aspect to the badge gear that has not been mentioned but those of us with offspecs - my elemental shaman for example - do not get a lot of good gear either from the regular 5-mans or even in the 25-mans. Most of the gear is directed at restoration shamans.

Thus a lot of my gear was badge earned and at 60 for the belt and boots each it took 5 weeks of raiding KZ alone to have it happen. The 100 and 150 badge items would take 5 and 7 weeks respectively to get and are on par with Tier 5 and a lot of cases Tier 6.

I like the badge rewards because you can only run KZ once a week and if you get a run where the gear is completely what you don't need (i.e. I bring my rogue but it is all healing drops) then you can get something after a couple runs. I think this helps - either Blizzard needs to work out a system where you can get more consistent drops or such.

Now the downside is getting a regular run of an instance is impossible because everyone wants badges. I'd love my mage or priest to run a regular Sha'tar instance so he can get Honored and get the key but no one seems to want to run it. I think this is one of the drawbacks.

I like the ideas they are coming up with in Wrath (as Mikes likes to call it). I think they had a lot of good ideas in TBC and are refining them and making them better for the new expansion. I think the badges are a good thing, especially for offspecs, but in raiding SSC and TK sometimes people have passed over gear because "the badge gear I have is better".

[tustardtimmy]

I don't have a problem with the newest set of badge gear because, as Darkfact said, it takes a LOT of effort to get the badges for the gear. Somebody would have to be seriously dedicated to get it in a short period of time.

I think pvp gear should only be used in pvp situations, it really irritates me to see somebody who just dinged 70 wearing level 65 greens and have 3/5 S1 gladiator's armour.

I was a raider pre-TBC and having decent epics would set you apart, it was a symbol of what you'd achieved with your guild. IMHO even giving gladiator the same skin as T4,5,6 has cheapened what that kind of gear stood for. Now its like "Is he in T6 or just a pvper?" Even having T1 in pre-TBC made me proud (this was quite a while before the expansion) because it made me proud to think that my guild was above many others on my server.

I don't want to be seen as somebody who liked my epics 'cause they gave me an ego boost, they signified the progress you made. Everybody else would be running around in their scholo/strat gear and a minority of guilds would be clearing places like MC/BWL.

Another part of pre-TBC which made the gear earned from 40-mans so much more important was imo the fact that you'd had to gather such a large number of people to get it. I really miss that, I can't stop comparing KZ to UBRS in my head.

Basically, I think the fact that Blizzard in making gladiator gear available for honour points has taken away any challenge associated with epic gear. In one day I managed to get 12k honour and enough tokens to get a S1 weapon. If i'd kept that up for a week I would've been almost fully epic-geared. So yes I think epic gear IS too easy to get. Hopefully WoTLK will remedy this problem. Unless Blizzard plan to make legendary items readily available from the WoTLK 25mans.

[Fredthefro]

in my eyes gear is gear, it doesnt really matter how you got it , you had to work for it in someway......i have noticed however that a player that shows up in one of our weekly kara raids in full pvp gear tends to do either ace or sh**e theres no middle ground, so i think the stigma ppl have with ppl having badge of pvp gear is that they preform poorly in a raid or pve setting as they lack real world experience

[DarkFact]

PvP gear has been mentioned that it will be toned down bigtime when it comes to usefulness in raids/pve settings in Wrath. That said, I've had my fair share of people message me saying "Geared - 4/5 or 5/5 epics" and upon seeing them all I see is PvP gear.

PvP gear already doesn't shine as much as it should since it doesn't have the raw damage you need to beat most content. If people get into the (annoying) habit of armory-lookups when grabbing their people for their PuG raids/groups, then you can make a difference by encouraging some PvE gear obtention.

Yes, I do hate bringing PvP-geared people to my runs. Last time I did a rogue showed up with 2x merciless pummelers, 1 merciless and rest normal gladiator armor, and all the trinkets/rings from the pvp vendors. He killed 10 monsters in Shadow Labyrinth (while ignoring the focus target), said "LOL this is Shadow Labyrinth eh? what does PvE think about PVP?", ran in, got killed, left group.

Truly, atleast have the decency to sit through an instance, and for me it takes seeing a blue or a purple from a boss in an instance and not from grinding Alterac Valley to get into my formed groups now :/

Basically, PvP gear -should- be harder to obtain and the proposed resilience nerf (only affect PvP and not PvE) as well as a few more damage tone-downs for the base-level honor gear will do the system wonders in my opinion.

[Miralyn]

I don't want to be seen as somebody who liked my epics 'cause they gave me an ego boost, they signified the progress you made.

Tustard I agree wholeheartedly about the same skins - it used to be a badge of honor to have that gear and now I agree you see someone and you cannot tell if it is PVP or PVE gear.

While some PVP items are very good - the weapons especially - one thing a lot of them do not have is hit rating and especially as a caster in a PVE raid where bosses are level 73 mobs if you cannot hit them your DPS suffers. So all those great stats mean nothing if you cannot hit the mob effectively.

Now I will say this for rogues - I want my rogue to be combat swords but finding a good offhand sword is next to impossible...at least epic wise . I can get a good main hand through SSO but have to use a dagger in my OH and to me they could help out a little bit there. Combat swords has the highest sustained DPS in a raid and I would like my rogue to be there. Granted her "cap" is going to be KZ and maybe Gruuls but still.

My guild is in Hyjal and we got Az'galor down and now are looking at Archimonde. The guild leaders have requested we get the Medallion of the Alliance (the one with the 2 minute CD) as it helps greatly in that fight. A couple people were not happy that they had to PVP to get a trinket to help in a PVE fight and I can see where they are coming from. I love my elemental shaman but in a BG she just gets her rear end handed to her. It's only 8k honor (and I have about 5300) but I can see where their frustration lies. It seems more and more the two continue to meet and impact one another and it can be quite frustrating.

[Hordesbane]

Okay let me state up front this is not intended to be offensive to anyone.
That having been said a I the only one who gets a picture in their head of their Grandfather telling them how in his day they had to walk 5 miles to school, uphill, in the snow? I can understand the frustration of seeing someone in PVP gear sporting the same look you have in raid gear. But then again I imagine some of the major arena junkies don't like that your raid gear looks the same as their arena gear. As for badge and created epics being too easy to get I ask only one question. What do you consider to be a casual player? I think of myself as a casual player. My definition would be someone who like me plays 6-8 hours a week. In that amount of time I can assure you that it is not "too easy" to get epics. (Even PVP epics) I dinged my first lvl 70 (Warlock) 2 weeks ago. I have one epic (Frozen shadow weave shoulders). I saved every primal water I could find between (60-70) and as much gold as I could so I could make them at 70 (still had to buy 5 primal waters). At my current rate it will take me about 5 months to get all the primals and cloth needed to make the other 2 pieces. (Shadow cloth having a 4 day CD I make 2 pieces a week) Other than anything I happen to pick up from PVP (got invited to a friends 5v5 arena team) those are likely to be my only epics. As for my Epic flyer... well lets just say that is not likely to happen before wrath is out.

[tustardtimmy]

Yeah I agree Mira, there are certain situations when it's pretty damn useful to use some pvp gear. I don't have a real problem with the weapons, because they're decent weapons although they lack ideal pve stats. The raw dps on them is roughly the same as early pve epic weapons.

One thing that really ticks me off I have to say is if you try to pug Kara and half your dps turns up in S1 gear and expect to do sufficient dps in a pve environment lacking most of the necessary stats.

Anyways, sandwich time!