[wow] Mists of pandaria - Page 100

On October 05 2013 02:49 Ethelis wrote:

No, I don't really get what you mean to be honest. Hasn't it always been this way since I started raiding back in BC? Badge gear as a catch up? Wrath, too? Cata had crafted gear and reputation gear. Mists has crafted, *used to have) reputation up until 5.4, Timeless, valor gear, etc. The most you can really tell about a player anymore based on their gear is how they treat it. Do they gem/enchant it? Is it reforged? Are they meeting their hit / expertise minimums? Is it valor-upgraded? Gear itself outside of the latest/greatest raid gear tells a very short story.

Maybe there's a disconnect here because I don't look at someone's gear to judge them anymore, on account of not having to manually put raids together anymore. The only time I'll inspect someone is if they're fucking up big time or they're doing an impressive enough job that it makes me curious. Healers pulling off sick plays with what I would consider low amounts of health [in an age where the stamina is decided by item level, pretty easy to "feel out" when someone is more or less geared up than you], that's an inspectin'.

I could look at someone in a full set of current tier SoO normal gear today and be like, that's a dedicated raider. Eight weeks from now? How would I know the difference between a dedicated raider and someone who is just persistent enough to put up with pick-up groups? Would it even matter? There's more to a player's story than the armor they wear, I don't think it even begins to tell me much about the player if isn't up to date.

If you looked at my Death Knight when ToT was the current content, you would have rejected him straight away based on his gear I'd bet. That's the same DK topping the damage meter on Lei Shen not because his gear is good, but because he's following the mechanics and killing the Sparks, etc when barely anybody else is. You can't tell I follow the mechanics when my item level is upgraded gear from heroics and a smattering of valor gear. That's the life of a true casual player from my point of view at this point. There is too much content between Heroic Dungeons [463+] and Heroic Raiding [566+] to tell any semblance of a story about a player based on what they are wearing.

So how do you see it?

On October 07 2013 14:48 Agh wrote:


the tl;dr version is that gear has lost its meaningfulness because it is just handed out now. (You can afk/autofollow through a LFG raid and still get loot)



as far as BC was concerned, badge gear was only a viable catch up towards the very end (later patch). Even then, that gear was significantly below the current raid tier gear. So you got that gear to allow you to enter the previous tier, then progress from there to the current tier.
This (imo, at least), was a good model.


It's easier to see who is progressed and putting in the effort when there is a larger gap.

The decrease of this gap (from the implementation in BC to where pandas is at now) is what most people are upset about.



However, if you look at it through the eyes of a veteran(progressed player, pseudo-elitest), nothing has changed because if you aren't wearing the final contents gear (or for now you could say Heroic version of that gear), you're generally considered 'bad'.