Tier-Gear Attunement

Let's get something straight before you dive in and rip me a new one. I'm not elitist. I consider myself far from it, actually--and anyone who has been on one of my successful Ony-25 one-shots (w/ players in greens and blues) knows it.

That being said...

I don't think I like the way T9, ilvl 232 gear has become patch 3.3's quest blues. Actually, I know I don't.

You're probably asking yourselves, "why?" Right? There are sooo many pros to it...easier to gear alt's, don't have to worry about winning rolls, yada yada yada--yeah, I like these aspects of the system, too.

But I hate it. And here's why::

The distinction between raiders and casuals has become too blurred. Normally, I wouldn't care. However, I just don't see ICC being forgiving enough to accomodate players that don't quite make the cut. Deathwhisper requires competent dps to get adds and mana shield down, and an avg of 4.5k is absolutely necessary to best Saurfang...

Tier 7 was money; you saw a player in Tier gear you knew they had the chops to best patchy, the horsemen, KT. Now, everyones runnin' around with tier gear, and it's troublesome to get a raid going and see a player 5/5 T9 struggling to break 2.5k.

Here's my solution: Attunement.

Create a weekly raid for the current tier of content. Example: Create a quest chain to go in and kill Saurfang. Make the reward an attunement token--not necessarily something that can be redeemed, but that will grant you access to purchase Tier gear (like reputation unlocking a quartermaster). This way, when you see someone running around with Tier pieces, you know they had to work for it: they've passed a "bar" of sorts.

Then, when you're making a raid sometime later, you don't have to /facepalm yourself over and over because a player is completely underwhelming you.

=)