Poll: Gear progression, horizontal or vertical?

[Aeyis]

Definately horizontal. It means you have more choices in building your character, and thats ultimately one of the core aspects of the rpg genre.

Unfortunately, you can too far in the opposite direction, as WoW showed us in the past.
Lots of occasions there where a set bonus on a lower tier of gear made the higher level gear worthless.

A nice balance could be struck, but getting that balance right is incredibly hard, as the theorycrafters will always math out which bonus is superior to ilvl gains and then that becomes the only piece of gear people want.

Prefered playstyle will always effect things tho. For example in wow you could see fire, frost and arcane mages at the same time, even tho perhaps one spec did way more damage then the other 2.

[Sylve]

Prefered playstyle will always effect things tho. For example in wow you could see fire, frost and arcane mages at the same time, even tho perhaps one spec did way more damage then the other 2.

Personal preference is irrelevant to the raiding communities.
Seen any MRDs taking DPS slots in Coil runs?

Also, for the longest time, the only viable raiding spec for Mages was Arcane. Frost was the only viable PvP spec and Fire Mages were laughed at and scorned in ALL content.
Hell, even back in Burning Crusade, you NEVER saw an Arms Warrior outside of PvP, it was Fury or Protection or you got kicked.

If you want to use a Tier 2 set because you 'like' the bonuses over a Tier 3 set with mathematically superior bonuses, you will never see endgame content in your hypothetical scenario. Barring of course your own personal static where everyone involved is more concerned with playing their own way than winning in the most efficient way, like PuGs tend to do.

[Dhex]

Personal preference is irrelevant to the raiding communities.
Seen any MRDs taking DPS slots in Coil runs?

https://youtu.be/LtE-jJDSG8E
Pesky MRDs.

[Sapphic]

https://youtu.be/LtE-jJDSG8E
Pesky MRDs.

Pretty safe Sylve meant cutting edge, not outdated echod content ^_^