Topic Tuesday – Blinded by BIS, Part 2

This is a continuation on the topic Blinded by BIS. See Part 1.

Recap: so, we know that gear is important and everyone is shooting to get to BIS for each tier. It’s a great goal and one that most won’t get 100% on. Most people get to half or mostly BIS. Only a few will actually be fully BIS in every single slot. Until you are perfectly BIS you have to worry about adjusting your gear to match the stats that you currently have. Spreadsheets and gear tools are the biggest help here (we have one incoming very soon!).

Why BIS Items Are So Important

There is a good reason why BIS is so important. Some slots lend themselves to being more valued than others, and also some items with their very specific stats cause them to be unusually important despite their relative lack of strength throughout the tiers. Often these items are ones with hit stats such as Truestrike Shoulders, Band of Accuria, Drake Fang Talisman, or the Devilsaur Armor set. As you can see these all provide 2% hit. Why is that so special? Well because now instead of trying to shoehorn in 2 items with 1% hit, now you can free up an entire item slot to have no hit instead. There are many many fantastic items that have very good itemization – but they don’t have hit and it makes it challenging to utilize them as melee when you are working toward or floating around hit cap.

Some classes are more prone to problems with this than others. Warriors have a bit of an easier time because they have access to Lionheart Helm which just has unbelievable itemization especially for being available at the beginning of the game. Other items are arguably BIS but it is far more about their ranking as such than what they provide to the user’s end stats. Hit (both melee and spell) is usually the stat most affecting builds and to a lesser extent crit. Other stats are mostly about the basic concept of more = better. Most items fall in the basic stat increase category which leads to the point of this article.

BIS Blindness

So here’s where my discussion and frustrations come out. People are fixated on what is BIS. Often it is far more about what the piece of gear is than the benefit the gear provides. What am I talking about? How much DKP or convincing would a rogue go through to try to acquire Bloodfang Boots to upgrade from his Nightslayer Boots? Hopefully not a lot. Because the damage dealing stats compared to these two items is virtually identical. It’s +6 str, -1 agi swing when looking at the pure dps stats. That is nothing!

Here’s another example: every healer is drooling to be able to get Cauterizing Band but lets compare it to the previous BIS ring Fordring’s Seal. Now it’s better in every way. There’s no question there but what exactly does it impart to your character’s bottom line? +9 heal, +7 int, and +5 stam. This is pretty similar to having a libram enchant or not. The difference is minor and is hardly a make or break issue for a healer for topping meters. Giving a top healer Caut band is much more about the feel good than to the short term benefit of the raid.

Now of course the whole point of upgrades is that they aren’t earth shattering. I get it. And to give lots of loot to lots of people slowly but surely increases the entire raid’s strength. That’s exactly the point. But my point is that these Best In Slot items generate a lot of drama. Who gets what first and how upgrades are dolled out is serious business that can literally rip guilds apart. and the upgrade value is not even worth squabbling about when looking at the big picture.