Only if you raid...
One can usually trace back through life and find significant mistakes you made. Do you dwell upon them or do you simply accept them and move along? For me that is a tough decision as my mindset likes to dwell on things, turning problems over and over and having lengthy mental conversations with the people who caused those decisions. So right now I'm talking to Stigg and wondering why in the name of all that is sacred he had to link to that post back on wow.incgamers.net. Because that led me to another post, this one, that brought back all the memories of Astross and raiding gear.
I'm kidding Stigg, just in-case there was any doubt. It's too early in the morning for this deadly mien of seriousness. It does however beg the question - why are serious raiders so jealous of everybody else's gear? The vague impression forming is that those raiders do not want anybody else to have access to good gear, because they have to raid to get their epic gear. And this, to me at least, is an asinine viewpoint. Why would what somebody else does impact upon your game? Moreover, why would you be jealous of a selection of pixels and virtual numbers? This is simply a repeat of the "Clothies are forced into tailoring" thread, with another raider proclaiming that somebody else can get better gear than they have earned currently and that it is immensely unfair towards them.
They're not pausing to consider that a single point of gear acquisition, raiding, would be beyond the majority of casual players. So to me it seems that Blizzard has finally given casual players who form perhaps the largest single demographic within the game the ability to deck themselves out in epic equivalent gear. Battling in the Arena still takes a significant slice of time, leveling tailoring still takes a significant slice of time. But it is time that can be scheduled into a casual budget without dedicating two or three hours to a few instance runs. Or, heaven forfend, the time investment required for a hardcore raiding guild.
So my friends, I'd like to know what you think. Where are you placed on this issue?
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Honestly, I don't give a crabs ass about other players gear. Sure, I might WANT some of it, but I don't really see why a player having spent untold hours and gold leveling tailoring shouldn't be allowed to GAIN something from it.
Kudos to Blizzard for adding multiple roads to epic-dom...
Oo, new comment "container"! Neat! Anywho...
To understand the logic of people like Astross, you need to go back to Pre-TBC and Pre-honor nerf (IMO).
Back then ONLY raiders had epics, only PVPers that spent literally 18 hours a day inside the BGs had epics. IF you had 2 epics you were held up on a silver platter for your server....everybody wanted to be you, and you wanted to show off to everybody (mainly by just sitting around Org or IF decked out). Now with TBC out, if you don't have atleast 1 or maybe 2 epics within the week you ding 70, you "obviously" don't care at all about your character.
So, first off, not everybody realizes that epics may not be greater than blues. Even pre-tbc I passed up quite a few epix because my blues were better.
Now then, getting into the whole Tailoring -vs- Tier gear. Kara is an incredibly easy instance. It can simply be PUGed without much trouble (except for optional bosses). Getting tier 4, although it may take several weeks, is easily obtainable. Would I rate it on the same level as Tailored gear? yes. You may not top out the damage meters as you could with tailored, but you will definatly hold your own and people won't pass you up for anything if your sitting in tier 4.
The reason DPS raiders are getting upset with their tailored counterparts is for exactly that reason. they could have ran Kara for 10 months now, every week, but if they aren't tailored epixed out, then they WONT top the dps meters. Similarily, if you are tailoring epixd out, then there is no way in hell you will survive Illhoof's chains (1500 dmg per second) unless you have kara gear stats.
Do I personally care what other people are wearing? Not so much, except for other mages. That way, if they are beating me on damage meters (and not on death meters), then i can look towards getting their gear in the future.
I thank Blizz for giving the oppurtunity for non-raiders to get awesome gear. Pre-TBC and Pre-Honor nerf, if you weren't into end-game raiding, then once you hit 60, the game was over. Literally, there was nothing for you to do. Now, you can get every piece of your gear in epix even if you don't touch a raid.
And one last note on Astross, something that was brought up many times in that discussion. Since he was an end game raider, he would be touching tier 5/6...in which case his tailored gear would be replaced. What he SHOULD have done was picked up enchanting, as that is the ONLY profession that gives an "unfair" (as I am sure he would put it) advantage over the other proffesions.
So why the focus on topping the damage meters then? Is it simply not a case of doing your job and making sure your group gets through whatever they're doing? Seriously curious, because I've never been into a raiding scene or have had to compete for raid slots, etc. so I have no real understanding of how that side of the game works.
For a few reasons. "Topping" the damage meters isn't necessarily important. But, as a DPS class, your SOLE job is to do as much damage as possible, which means if somebody in your class is doing more damage then you, you ARE subpar to them. Of course, pulling aggro and/or dying is something else yuo need to be careful of, but if you know how to play your class, you shouldn't be dying at all.
Granted I am not a warlock....but....imagine if all the DPS casters in my raid group were Yukfoo. We would blow through instances much quicker and have much less problem downing bosses.
And, a LOT of bosses have enrage timers or death timers. If a boss enrages and you can't kill it quick enough, then your tank WILL die, regardless of how awesome your healers are. Similarily, if a boss doesn't die in a set amount of time, he wipes the group.
Take the Curator for example. Every 90 seconds or so, he evocates, and damage is increased against him by 200%. Before I had tailored epics, I dealt about 3,000 damage to him. Now that I am geared very well, I am hitting him for upwards of 12,000. I had a pyroblast crit him for 23,000. If you don't get him killed within (I think) 5 evocates, he wipes the party.
Netherspite, after 9 minutes enrages and deals 400% damage. Your tank dies, and similarily wipes the party, if you can't kill him in 9 minutes. Also, there is a beam that if you stand in gives you 1% extra damage per tick. If you can't hit hard to begin with, an extra 30% extra damage won't mean much.
That's a whole new level of play, thank you Stigg. You can tell that I don't do that type of content.
I've always thought the Clothies are forced into tailoring debate is wrongly named, as the real issue is that mage and warlock T4 is almost obsolete.
This is because the tailoring gear is both more powerful and - for hardcore raiders with plenty of time - much easier to obtain. Since your only job is to do as much damage as possible, picking up tailoring for the epics makes you a more valuable raid member, which can lead to certain guilds forcing casters to become tailors.
Do I think anything needs to be nerfed / buffed? No, because as has been said in the topic, raiders will progress past T4 and the tailor epics. I do think this is a real issue though and one that Blizzard should keep in mind when designing new items.