The futility of gearing before 80

[heffner]

Gear up how? No matter what I do I get something. I agree it's of little benefit if you are simply questing, but for instances it helps. If you outlevel the instance, then maybe not as much...but by then, you have all the quest gear anyway.

So, if you mean "don't bother running normal Nexus 50 times to get the drop you want", then I can understand.

Buying or crafting epic gear has always been an option. Really, to eaches own how you want to play the game. Your approach is not a bad path though, but likely not very fun for a lot of people.

[Bigfish]

I'm not making an argument, just an observation. I'm just kind of stuck here scratching my head wondering why they put so much effort in to designing a wide array of green quest rewards for the thousand or so quests in Northrend, when their life expentacy of being equiped is anywhere from 0 to a few hours, where as a lot of 80 gear can and will last a great while.

I guess it really boils down to gear progression and level progression. At this point, a level cap increase really just seems to be more a formality than anything. All it really means is that when an expansion hits, everyone has to add 50 or so hours to get to the new level cap where the "real game" begins again.

As far as gear is concerned though, the system doesn't break down in to levels. It really goes more along the lines of pre-raid, Tier 1, Tier 2, etc. (or in the case of PvP, Pre-arena, Season 1, Season 2, etc).

So the thing is, you don't really achieve a meaningful gear level until you hit the level cap in the first place. If I were going to make an argument somewhere, it would probably be that the level cap on pre-raid gear should be lowered (a lot of that stuff you have to be 80 to equip), or that pre-80 quests should stop filling my inventory with vendor trash.

[Terraelf]

My first crew I leveled to 80 consisted of Pally/Mage/Hunter/Lock/Priest. All of them were in T5 equivalent full PvE epic gear at 70. With exception of a few pieces here and there from group quests or greens from quests that really should have been blue, nearly all of my gear got me to 80 no problem and I didn't start investing any energy changing their gear out for raid prep until then. I did zero dungeons (and still have done barely any as I'm too busy in Naxx-10/25, OS-10/25, VoA 10/25 and EoE-10 instead). In some isolated cases, I'm even choosing to keep the same level 70 epic equipment I had until I get a drop in a raid because the effort and what I gain trying to get a blue drop or get enough rep to buy a replacement just isn't worthwhile.

Now on my second crew, (DK/Rogue/Warrior/Shaman/Druid) who were also T4 or T5 full epic at 70, I changed things a little bit based upon my experience with my first crew. That is, I skipped Zul'Drak (except for the arenas) and Scholazar Basin in it's entirety so that I would be working on Storm Peaks and Icecrown quests from levels 77 to 80. This is because when I started chasing gear from quest rewards to put on my PvE Raid set, I found myself doing a lot of chains in these zones post 80 with my first crew to get to group quests gear (and also unlock Ebon Hold and Sons of Hodir). I figured, might as well kill 2 birds with 1 stone. At this time I'm still in the middle of Ice Crown and except for my DK, everyone is 80. As soon as he dings 80, I'll be turning to gathering materials to craft my own stuff, since I have at least 1 toon with every professions that is at least 430.

So to sum it up, my suggestion is if you have lvl 70 epic gear, it'll get you to 80 and you don't really even need to look much at the gear you get. Don't trash anything (especially blue gear) so that when you hit 80 and you research your gear changes you don't realize you inadvertently sold something you want to use, but if you're doing multiboxing, probability is your lvl 70 gear will get you to the point where you'll care about gear again at 80 with very little pain.

[KvdM]

why they put so much effort in to designing a wide array of green quest rewards for the thousand or so quests in Northrend, when their life expentacy of being equiped is anywhere from 0 to a few hours

Probably a lot less then you would expect. Unimportant items can just as easily be generated by an item generating program. Thinking up a name that matches the quest is probably the most time consuming part of the whole process (note that even the models of the items are reused)

[Bigfish]

Probably a lot less then you would expect. Unimportant items can just as easily be generated by an item generating program. Thinking up a name that matches the quest is probably the most time consuming part of the whole process (note that even the models of the items are reused)

That WOULD explain the absolutely attrocious stat budget on some fo this crap. Good Point.

[Owltoid]

I think one of the least fun things about leveling is knowing the gear you're geting has such a short life expectancy. Level 70-78 gear just doesn't have any appeal and I could usually care less if there is an item reward or pure gold when completing a quest. I agree that an expansion just seems like a time sink for everyone to spend 50+ hours (I wish I could level from 70-80 in that short of time) until the real game begins. Of course, the more work you put into anything the more attachment you feel and the more satisfaction you get seeing them succeed.