Quote Originally Posted by Shurrikhan View Post
If I may ask, what change might address that?

For instance, would it be better if the new Crafted and Normal gear is simply equal to the Savage gear of the tier prior (existing only as catch-up)? If so, should Savage remain a 30 ilvl jump over the previous tier, or just 20? Etc., etc.?
I think Savage BIS should be equal to the incoming crafted gear. It'd make it more desireable for longer (you can immediately challenge new savage with old savage's gear), it'd reduce the ilvl jumps per expansion (currently we go through 130ish item levels per expansion, this would reduce it to 100). On the flipside, while crafted would be 'less impactful' and that's kinda not great, it's still got it's place as both 'gear to get you onto the treadmill', ie if someone's taken a break for a few patches, they can get full crafted and jump back in. Also, sometimes you just get got by SE for gear. For example, you're a DPS of some sort. Your ring options are Crit/SS from raid, and DET/DH from tome. Okay, so the skillspeed sucks, but you've got no alternative. Then the crafted gear comes out and bam, it's Crit/Det. It's now an alternative to the sucky stats you had from your BIS. Also, Crafted would still be 'an upgrade' because it can be pentamelded. And while the gap between current BIS and crafted would go from 10 ilvls and 3 overmleds to 'just 3 overmelds' in this pitch, there's plenty of people who would go for those 3 overmelds anyway because it's more stats, gil be damned.

If the acquisition method was reworked to make it more deterministic, I'd also say the 24man gear should be bumped up to be equal to Savage gear, so there's another option for BIS. It's terribly bland having our BIS be limited to two sources. The fact 24man gear is 10 ilvls behind relegates it to glamour fodder and alt gear, I think it should be useable on mains too