Why Gear Matters (Not that Much)

<table border=0><tr><td colspan=2>Stroll through the TwinkInfo bracket forums, and we'll find a consistent number of threads about gearing, including disparaging comments about undergeared newcomers, along with criticism of underskilled players who "crutch on" any manner of gear. Why is gear such a big deal when a good player can do more with mediocre gear than a newbie can do with awesome gear?</td></tr> <tr><td>


First Impressions Last...</p>
When you walk onto a battlefield, players can't immediately pull up your dossier of past PvP experience. They have no way of knowing your background. The one thing they can do is inspect you. Your gear is the first impression you make when you zone in. Experienced players know what to look for. Your gear tells them how much research you did before getting on the field, which instances or raids you successfully ran, and what items you managed to snag from the AH, a friend, or a seller. Every bracket has its "go to" gear pieces for each class that show whether or not you prepared. In other words, your gear gives a first impression of your commitment to play. Do you have enough survivability, or would you struggle two brackets below you with your gear? Did you remember to rack up enough honor for PvP pieces before starting your first XP-off battleground, or did you show up in yesterday's dirty pajamas? Beyond the first impression of your gear at the starting gate (or as part of your first impression on the forums for a character of yours that you link), your armory comes next, and acts like your character's résumé. Make no mistake, everything in your armory gets noticed. Are you hit capped? Did you cap your professions? Which glyphs did you choose? Every aspect of your character shows how much (or how little) you put into your character.</td><td width=379 align=center> </td></tr> <tr><td colspan=2>


...until You Transcend Them.</p>
Players will see a minimal performance difference between a well-geared character versus a best-in-slot, profession-capped character. Stories abound of twinked players takng down characters 20 levels higher than themselves in world PvP, or in a duel -- clearly, it's not about the gear. Likewise, once you show what you can do on the field, teammates care less about your gear. The smaller the bracket, the more your presence makes an impact. If you show up undergeared, say so in battleground chat, and let them know you'll still do the best you can to help the team. Players act much more welcoming to undergeared newcomers if the newcomers preemptively demonstrate in both word and deed that they're team players. In addition, a finished gearset gives you room to experiment with unusual gear choices. If you show up in part trash gear and part experimental gear, you reek of scrub. But if you're close to BiS except for a couple of experimental pieces, your demonstrated knowledge of gearing makes unusual gear choices interesting instead of ignorant.



How far should you gear before your first XP-off battleground?</p>
Don't wait until you perfect your twink before starting games. You and your teammates want you in on the action as soon as possible. That said, show up ready, and that means the following. Make sure you have non-BoA honor gear before you turn off your XP. You can delay professions, unless they provide a clearly BiS item. Get enchantments and gems, even on temporary gear; enchantments that require rep can wait. Bring BiS quest gear unless you have a BoE substitute that comes close in stats. Glyphs can wait unless they provide an essential advantage. It takes time to get to know you (and your performance) as a player, which is why gear matters. The more you're willing to gear up and polish your character, the more you show teammates that you came for some serious fun. If you don't care what others think, then you'll probably have more fun farming scrubs in XP-on or endgame battlegrounds. But if you twink for the chance to play with (and against) a team of players who push the boundaries of PvP, show up for real. Come ready to play.</td></tr></table>



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Very nice to read, really nice.

well put 'rise. if only this post could have a sticky in the official forums too

This is awesome. Great to show the newbies when and why not to come under-geared. Really nicely done, Bwappo.

I agree but I heard Shadowfang makes you good.

I disagree. When you are ready to play your first game you should have any piece that doesn't require hours of farming or is a rare BOE. You should have maxxed professions. You should be fully geared with BOAs, BIS drops (with greater than 10% drop chance), BIS quest gear, as well as be fully enchanted, max professions, glyphs, and an APPROPRIATE talent selection. All of these should be done before entering a Battleground. If you encourage people to do this, they themselves will become disciplined and work to finish their twink before getting into the fun part. This behavior has served me well in my twinking career. Get within 98% BIS and work on the remaining 2% while having fun in BGs; NOT get within 70% BIS and then over the next few months finish it out. The latter is laziness and should not be tolerated or supported.

Thanks for taking the time to write this.



I've done both geared and ungeared play in multiple brackets. While the extra gear may have improved the outcome of a few encounters it is absolutely skills like awareness, teamwork, splitting, training, and general decision making that wins games.



Bring on the fresh blood

@everyone: thank you for the kind words! I've been wanting to talk about this for awhile.



@TGS: thanks for putting up with my perfectionist formatting. Next time, I'll try to remember to include the paragraph separators.



@tiah/dont: While I personally subscribe to your approach in gearing up a new twink, I think that's too high a standard for most starting players in PuG XP-off games. Even 70% BiS typically means 85% of BiS stats without professions, and for PuGs, player skill makes a far greater impact than that last 15-20%. Likewise, a well-geared noob is still a noob -- they just take 20% longer to die. But we're talking a fresh entry into a bracket. After several weeks, a regularly-playing twink should be pretty close to done.

I just disagree because the people that are fully skilled will follow my route and become fully geared before queueing instead of queue with 70% BIS. Thus the 70% BISers are perhaps even 35% as far as skill/gear effectiveness.

It depends to be honest. Some brackets like 80s require way too much PvP in order to get the gear (unless you go full cata, and you become a squishy mofo). If I can get everything before entering a twink game, I do. Although I was tearing it up in XP-off with a 47 warlock in the old days when I could self-heal like crazy. I still had about 75% of the stats that I would normally have and was able to perform and be of use to my team. Yes being 49 and fully geared would have made a difference, but I was still able to have a solid impact on the BG.



But I do agree that people who play a lot of twink BGs and are anal min/maxers will get as much gear as they can before entering a BG.

I agree with the sentiment, however I can't subscribe to it myself. I would be absolutely mortified if I went into a BG with my druid if she was in anything less than perfect gear, I just have a phobia of it. New twinks I can do but I don't like it to see like I'm spending too long gearing them up, so I like to have relatively near BiS before I enter.



The phobia of being in sub BiS gear is silly I know

True, Dont, fully skilled players (heck, even decent partially skilled players) will indeed follow your route. And I would argue that they create much more than a 35% skill/gear effectiveness gap; those players remain few and far between. That's a blog post for another day.



Taitaih, you make a good point that I left out -- different brackets definitely carry different walk-on gearing requirements. A bracket like 70-74 lets you walk on with a half-assed gearset and have the potential to make somewhat of a difference, while you can appear in 49s these days with full BiS and still get nullified.

I find this to be very true, I decided to make a 19 hunter, and yes I know there are too many of them but Through the years I have played all classes at 19 and I decided to make a hunter since I rarely played one before. Iv been doing countless dungeons and all the quests for my gear in the past few days, today I finally stepped into a bg just to see how it was. I was the best geared player there. And I still lack my agm's, my satchel cloak, and my professions maxed. ( so far I have 15 cloaks and 6 belts in my bags, all of the wrong type lolol)



Now that I have done one xp-off bg, you wont see me in another until im finished.

And don't forget to bring enough gum for everyone, noob.

Bespoke good post. Of course Sam has to put his two cents in. Remember he's always right.

Well that is what the comments section is for. Right Paul?

Enjoyed the read, cheers

Very nice article. I agree with your overall stance on what you said. As far as all the talk about BiS. I'd rather have a team that knows how to play objectively than a bunch of BiS players that like to sit mid in WSG and try to farm kills.

I remember when I first started twinking in the 20-29 Bracket with my hunter. Because XP Off wasn't implimented by then and because I didn't think to make the char a twink until around lvl 28, I was really limited in my options for gathering certain gear... so I decided to abuse the living hell out of Aimed Shot/Shadowmeld until that was nerfed... I then realized that I was a one-trick pony to try to make up for my gear disadvantage. As a result, I looked at the gear I had by that time plus what gear I still could get without leveling out of the bracket and determined I would never be a top tier DPS/Burst Hunter so I looked into other options. For a time, I settled on equiping my MP5 gear which I had an abundance of at the time and talenting into SV to provide support rather than big numbers. I believe I initially threw my extra points into the attack range talent at this time.



I was looked upon as a noob twink during this time on the BG forum because I failed to do the proper research before I put myself in a rather bad situation gear wise, but likewise gained a measure of respect from my horde opponents because I became aware of my severe disadvantage gear-wise in the conventional twinking wisdom and chose to make the best of my situation with an alternate approach to talents and gearing that actually provided a great deal of benefit for my team since even the Druids had a hard time breaking away from me while the Horde Team's O had a hard time keeping up with our own FCer if I was running escort.



Until BoAs became available, I was no where near "BiS" for the majority of my slots, and hard core twinks gave me shit for it for quite some time until I earned respect through a consistantly strong performance as a Flag Escort and a Flag Chaser. I also built a notorious reputation for abusing Shadow Meld to high hell especially when assisting O.



And that was what it was like before I tried out my melee-range combo burst build.

Good read relevant for all brackets