There was a major effort in 3.0 to consolidate gear between certain classes (hunter/shaman, pally/warrior/dk, etc). Is Blizzard happy with how this turned out 4 months later? If so, why don't you remove mp5 from the game, replace the mp5 stat with spirit, and then adjust each class appropriately? It seems like this would make it much easier to balance mana regen, the 5 second rule, and also improve cloth caster itemization (assuming mages finally get a use for spirit, etc).

There just seems like too much gear for cloth users that is a complete waste because it either has mp5, spirit, crit, or hit on it (I think haste is useful to all, maybe not). It not only depends on your class, but highly depends on your spec making it so only one or two specs out of 3 cloth users would ever want an item.

mp5 to me has always felt like a hack fix for classes who chain cast and don't have a spirit regen while in combat stat.

I agree with this sentiment even if it only results in the conversion of mp5 on cloth pieces. Those stats are trash for any cloth wearer. Paladins are more likely to take items with the Crit + mp5 stats on them if they're undergeared.

Most people misunderstand the regen nerf. The buffs to mechanics like Meditation (priests) will mean your inside five second rule mana regeneration will remain unchanged.

MP5 will continue to be overvalued on gear for cloth casters of all types. (It will have value, but 25 MP5 won't be worth the itemization points blizzard uses currently.)

They started gear consolidation so late during beta testing that there was only really so much they could do before it went live. In addition, they needed to leave some "flavor" in the game so that you could look forward to picking up a specific piece of gear and equipping it, rather than just taking a serving of the same plate piece for every plate wearing spec of every plate wearing class...

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Q u o t e:
...rather than just taking a serving of the same plate piece for every plate wearing spec of every plate wearing class...

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Too bad the vast majority of non-tanking plate is terribly itemized. And all the pieces I've seen from 3.1 look to be terribly itemized as well.

Caster plate, spell power unarmed weapons, mp/5 cloth, spirit mail and plate.... yea...

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Too bad the vast majority of non-tanking plate is terribly itemized. And all the pieces I've seen from 3.1 look to be terribly itemized as well.

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What they need to do is make healing spells only castable while wearing cloth. That would help holy pallies, resto shammies and resto druids with itemization...and make the mages/locks scream even more about stolen cloth casting items. Heh.

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Q u o t e:
We are pretty happy with it. There is plenty of room for improvement.

Even with gear consolidation, Ulduar probably has as many items as all of BCs raiding content put together. Even if you divide the number in half to account for 10 vs. 25 player content, Ulduar still has like twice as many items as Black Temple or Sunwell. Perhaps our design makes more sense in that context.

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too many hit pieces and too many haste pieces!

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Q u o t e:
We are pretty happy with it. There is plenty of room for improvement.

Even with gear consolidation, Ulduar probably has as many items as all of BCs raiding content put together. Even if you divide the number in half to account for 10 vs. 25 player content, Ulduar still has like twice as many items as Black Temple or Sunwell. Perhaps our design makes more sense in that context.

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Yet still somehow lacks slow 1h DPS axes :\

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Q u o t e:
We are pretty happy with it. There is plenty of room for improvement.

Even with gear consolidation, Ulduar probably has as many items as all of BCs raiding content put together. Even if you divide the number in half to account for 10 vs. 25 player content, Ulduar still has like twice as many items as Black Temple or Sunwell. Perhaps our design makes more sense in that context.

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Any plans for non-Spirit users? As Elemental, pieces are only for me or useless. I seldom see some leather or cloth I could downrank, and it's very hard to find certain pieces.

Being able to use Restoration gear would be a nice change, as it current has too much Mp5 for being of any use to us.

Hell, I'd even accept needing Spirit if it makes it easier for me to find rings, necklaces, trinkets and weaponry.

Caster leather and mail with hit! Add some! At least to badge vendors if nowhere else

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Caster leather and mail with hit! Add some! At least to badge vendors if nowhere else

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This would be the only place it would be acceptable. Putting those kind of pieces on the boss loot tables would completely break everything Blizz worked for with the consolidation of gear.

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Q u o t e:
We are pretty happy with it. There is plenty of room for improvement.

Even with gear consolidation, Ulduar probably has as many items as all of BCs raiding content put together. Even if you divide the number in half to account for 10 vs. 25 player content, Ulduar still has like twice as many items as Black Temple or Sunwell. Perhaps our design makes more sense in that context.

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Haste and arp for everyone!
<.<

Edit: I understand the need for mediocrely itemized gear at this point in the game, but nearly every dang leather/mail piece just looks so much better for me than the equiv plate (even after factoring in armored to the teeth).

In general consolidation doesn't look bad so far, I just wish we'd gotten things like str dps necks from the start instead of piles of ap/agi everywhere. More specs'd wear them than caster plate, that's for sure.

Gear consolidation--- good idea.

Overlooking class mechanics that don't allow for certain stats to be very beneficial--- being worked on, but ultimately has hope.

Edit: Remember molten core, when you had to kill rag 1.5 years in a row to see a wrath pants drop? (our guild does). The current system is much better, with the token system as a perfect baseline to give your class gear that may be worse designed than a generic peice designed for your armor class. But at least you automatically have SOMETHING.

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Q u o t e:
We are pretty happy with it. There is plenty of room for improvement.

Even with gear consolidation, Ulduar probably has as many items as all of BCs raiding content put together. Even if you divide the number in half to account for 10 vs. 25 player content, Ulduar still has like twice as many items as Black Temple or Sunwell. Perhaps our design makes more sense in that context.

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Any chance at all of going back to gear advancement in terms of looks? Like, in TBC, you could tell someone did a tier instance by the gear. But now in WotLK, you can't tell the difference between someone who's done 25 man normal and hard modes really by looks. I think it's led to a lot of the animosity "hardcores" have had with this raid change in WotLK.

I think to go with this thread:

Why was so much weight put on red gems vs. blue? There's something like 8 stats on red gems vs. 6 for yellow and 4 for blue. It makes the market lean so heavily on scarlet rubies (~80-95g) while forest emeralds go for 5-10g and sky sapphires for 10-15g. It also makes min/maxing boring, since a lot of dps classes max out by just stacking red gems, ignoring socket bonuses except to activate meta gems.

It also encourages people to becomes jewelcrafters so they can boost the profession bonus well beyond that ~64 AP value by taking socket bonuses other classes simply wouldn't get with their dragon's eyes.