It's that wonderful time of the year when grey skies turn blue, brown trees turn green, and blue items turn purple. As more mid-level guilds step into Karazhan and heroic instances and the top guilds head for the 25-mans, people are beginning to get items that could be described as "end-game." Unfortunately, with end-game gear comes the responsibility to maximize your gear -- which means enchantments, high-quality gems, and other enhancements.

Before Burning Crusade, it was pretty easy to decide when to get serious about enhancing your gear. Unless you joined an AQ40 raiding guild while still in greens, you got the best gear enchants as your items became epic, since you were probably going to be using that gear for a while. You knew that you were going to get your Tier 1, Tier 2, and then so on, and since you had to split the loot with 40 other people, it was probably best to just enchant everything. (Although not everyone did this -- I knew a rogue who used a Vis'kag with a Lifestealing enchant on it for most of BWL because he refused to get Crusader until the Chromatically Tempered Sword dropped for him.)

But now the alternate routes of gear progression means you have to make certain choices. Should you enchant the epics you're getting from heroics, or wait for Karazhan or your tier gear? What about your crafted epics, or very good blues? Fully tricking out a piece of gear -- including enchants, gems, spellthread/leg armor for pants and purchased enhancements for head and shoulders -- can run into many hundreds of gold.

Currently, I'm getting minor/free enchants and cheap gems for my blue items, and springing for the slightly better stuff for my small collection of epics. When my schedule opens up to permit more raiding, I'll probably start enchanting everything. What is your threshold for really tricking out your gear?

Filed under: Items, Analysis / Opinion, The Burning Crusade, Enchants