Monday, May 7, 2007

Alternate armor?

This one is mostly aimed at the hybrid classes. Rogues, Mages, Warlocks, and Hunters need not really bother reading.

How many of you, specifically to those in the upper levels, get multiple sets of armor? I ask about those in the upper levels, because there is little in the way of gear variety in the lower levels. Once you get to the 50s and 60s, you can start getting gear with +healing, or +spell damage, or whatever.

I ask, because it seems that despite many classes being hybrids, people want one perfect set of armor. You know, a little bit of healing here, a little bit of defense here, a little bit of spell damage here. There's an old saying that goes something along the lines "If you try to excel at all things, you will find yourself unable to do any of them."

This line of thought came to mind in reference to the crappy warrior I partied with in Sethekk Halls last night with. Around half way through the instance, we were still both trying to tank, so I turned to him and (being the manipulative dick I can be) said "Hey, since I'm prot specced all I can really do is tank. You can DPS decently at least. Why not start DPSing, and leave the tanking to me." While all I really cared about was making him stop tanking, the fact that I could make him stop while not insulting him was a perk (alienating your allies is never a good move). He agreed, and at this point I expected him to whip out a 2hander or put away his shield in favor of an off-hand weapon for dual wielding. This was not to be. He continued to smash his way through with sword and board. This led me to believe he... didn't have a 2H or another weapon to dual wield with. Having a DPS oriented weapon should be the most basic thing to do, IMO.

This also brought to mind another. He's a ret Pally, and love him to death, but it seemed to me that he was aiming for having one perfect set of armor... I remember him asking me if he should get the Red Lawbringer or the Righteous armor D3 set. I said that he should, as a ret pally, aim for Red Lawbringer. It was definitely made with them in mind. He then commented that Righteous would be good, since he needs to tank sometimes. I gave him a funny look, and asked why he didn't just get both? One for when he was needed to tank, and one for when he was smashing faces. And looking at his armor, it seemed obvious that he was trying to do too many things with one set of armor. He had some +healing in some slots, and +damage in others, and quite a few pieces of warrior plate.

In the end, it's firmly my belief that for certain circumstances we need different entire sets of armor. I plan on getting one full set for tanking and one full set for healing. Since I'm pretty decent at soloing in my current tanking gear, I'm not sure I need to get a soloing set, but I might work towards picking up a few pieces (like the Red Lawbringer pieces) if I really start to lose my ability to solo in tanking gear (current tanking gear is a mix of +spell damage plate and warrior D1 repaint).

1 comment:

Michael Johnson said...

I've been collecting a healing set for my paladin since a Lvl 35 Mail helm with +35 healing dropped for me in STV. It's been a very casual thing, stuffing things in the bank when they drop and no-one else rolls on 'em. Or when I find things for cheap on the AH, or when guildies craft stuff for skill-ups. Oh, and quest rewards in the Outlands are great for specialty sets.

It started as just a helm and two jewel-crafting rings, but now I've got around +300 healing without really spending significant time or money on them.

It's pretty damned easy to put together a reasonable set of 'specialty' gear, one just needs to remember that you don't need a full 11-piece set, just cherry-pick a few bits here and there, and you can off-heal or off-tank pretty well. Rings/neck and your cloak are GREAT for this kinda thing.