This Weeks Hot Topic: Gear the Good, the Bad, and the Not So Ugly

This weeks the hot topic over on WoW Insider is Gear and whether it is is an outdated mechanic for player progression in WoW.

According to WI staff gear serves 2 main purposes,

1. Form
2. Function

While you can read there arguments for and against gear as well as a suggestion on how to remove statistical elements from gear here.

I tend to be one who thinks gear is fine the way it is now agreeing that gear provides a needed slider to help players that aren't quite as skilled as those in the top 10 guilds in the world ease into content. Where as those against it could argue that the stat benefit provided by new gear is not meaningful as to progression.

Both camps for and against gear mentioned that gear provided the form factor of allowing to build your character the way you see them, especially with the advent of transmogification  Neither camp wanted to see gear go bye bye completely for this very reason.

After the break I will talk about how Gear isn't the problem it is the way gear is delivered in terms of the random number generator system.

I actually have no problem with the way gear is delivered currently I do however have problem that the loot system isn't just a little bit smarter, we saw the same cloth shoulders drop 6 kills in a row (finally broke the streak this week). Well after our 2 cloth wearers got them and so there it was a gear drop being filled up by something that was just getting disenchanted.

If only the system was smart enough to drop something the raid needs more than using pure RNG and having that RNG land on the same item number every time. 

I believe that Blizzard moved in the right direction with the tokens for bonus rolls even if it seems like gold is rewarded more often then not. However I would like to see like them add a new guild perk for level 25 guilds that allows you to complete guild challenges to earn guild tokens to re-roll a certain loot drop.

So lets take the 7 Guild Dungeon runs once you complete that you would not only earn the gold for the guild bank but you  would also earn a token to use on a re-roll for loot on a boss. Since we currently have 3 weekly guild challenges that would equal 3 tokens for loot drop re-rolls from bosses.

This would eliminate even more of those the complaints that the the personal tokens aren't doing enough to expedite gearing.

Next week we should be back to our regularly scheduled Warrior posting.