The Glass Wall
All tanks are concerned about itemization, and every patch seems to muddy the waters a little. With increased accessibility to raid instances comes a heightened sense of this. There is now a large population of tanks who are not accustomed to the “marginal upgrade” and “side grade” aspect inherent in the tiered progression system. Even the most seasoned of tank can fall prey to what I like to call The Glass Wall effect.
The What?
The Glass Wall is a psychological aversion to “new” loot; the thought is that if I want to get these upgrades from the new instance, I have to downgrade in other areas to stay competitive. This might be true in the short-term, coming from one instance to another you may decide to hold off on a particular item upgrade to keep hit capped. This is especially true in raids using a point-based reward systems such as the EPGP that my guild uses.
This poses a particular problem for us tanks; I would say Druids and DKs especially, since we have more competition for our gear than Paladin and Warrior tanks. Even I got the shakes the first couple of nights in ToC when I started seeing gear that left me underwhelmed. At the time, we were using /rolls to sort out loot in 25 toc. I lucked out and picked up several upgrades in rapid succession as new bosses became available. However, I noticed that my hit was dropping at an alarming rate if I were to equip all of these “upgrades” immediately. In one night I went from Shard of the Crystal Forest to Fortitude of the Infernal. In addition to the neck upgrade, I also nabbed a new cloak; going from Platinum Mesh Cloak to Pride of the Demon Lord. Now, much as I was happy to finally drop that iLvl 213 badge cloak I’d been using since Naxx, I was still down a whopping 74 hit simply by virtue of two “dubious” upgrades.
Now, don’t get me wrong I am still quite glad to be rid of that cloak; seriously. Cloaks, weapons, and trinkets have been a real stumbling point for me during this expansion. However, seeing a loss to a key stat such as hit so severe in only two items is a bit disconcerting. Initially, this leads people to pull back and that is the Glass Wall effect essentially.
Ok Genius, Now What?
Well, for starters it is certainly easy to feel underwhelmed (at best) when seeing loot drops like this, what’s important however is to realize that you can still balance key stats within a progression tier without “downgrading”. It’s easy to say that, but in practice it can be difficult I admit. The best thing you can do is plan an effective gearing strategy, especially if using a points-based reward system as mentioned earlier. This will ensure that A. You spend your points optimally, and B. That you get a little peace of mind when gear stops dropping with the “wrong stat”.
The Tools
I found Chardev on tankspot some months ago, and have become increasingly impressed with it since. This site is precisely what I’ve been looking for since coming over from EverQuest several years ago. It is certainly a handy replacement to the popular Magelo profiler site which has sadly fallen a bit short as an effective tool for raiders (at least in terms of WoW). When ToC came out, I was a bit concerned when I saw the apparent amount of expertise in comparison to hit. That’s really what got me thinking about this knee jerk reaction, because I wasn’t the only one who felt it apparently. Multiple tank friends were saying the same thing I was already thinking. That’s when I sat down with Chardev and the loot list from the MMO-Champion TOC Loot List. I started working out sets using nothing but 10 man gear, 25 man gear, and a mix of 25 and heroic 10. Then of course, the BIS from 25 heroic. What I found is that in each iteration I was able to maintain the hit cap with a little scrupulous gear management.
Icecrown is approaching, and there will surely be similar feelings (at least initially), so remember to breathe and do a little homework before you get too stressed over stat disparities in the new tier. You can expect to see some theorycraft and gear analysis here as soon as I’ve got some real data to play with.
