Not really true. Off-tier armour has almost always been reskins or generic stuff.

Take Molten Core (first raid). Several of the off-tier armour pieces are generic models:
- Helm of the Livegiver
- Deep Earth Spaulders
- Wild Growth Spaulders
are all reskins of generic Common loot.

Whilst most of the weapon models are unique enough, some are decidedly meh (Blastershot Launcher, Earthshaker).

Blackwing Lair - weapon models cleaned up a bit, most are now specialised draconic looking things. Off-tier armour still very generic (Helm of Endless Rage, Black Brood Pauldrons).

AQ40 was the same - good unique weapons, fairly generic off-tier pieces.

I forget Naxx 60, since never went there

In TBC, almost all off-tier armour pieces were reskins. 60-68 instances had dungeon set 1/2 reskins. 68-70 had Tier 1 & 2 reskins. Karazahn/Gruul/Magtheridon had Tier 2 and Dungeon Set 3 reskins throughout.

Most of SSC/TK off-tier pieces are reskins of various Tier 5 sets - the very set you were supposed to be there to obtain. This is the theme they have used for most of the rest of the raid instances - use same models for stuff of the same quality, so it all kinda fits together.

Oddly enough, the primary exceptions to all of the above are Zul'Aman, which has it's own troll-themed stuff as a non-set; and Sunwell Plateau, which has it's own non-set models (albeit, shared with the Brutal Gladiator set).

To be honest, this reskinning doesn't bother me too much. For each new raid tier the model designers have to come up with 10 sets of interlocking armour pieces (1 per class), and a variety of unique-ish weapon models (heck, even Finkle's Mixer Upper, a wand so rarely if ever seen has a unique model). Asking/expecting them to make another 9/10 new armour sets purely for the "filler" drops (meaning not-tier items) seems a bit harsh.

This has an added benefit, though a fairly mild one. In current content (BoT, BWD, ToFW?) the Holy Plate is the Paladin set, the DPS Plate is Warrior set, and Tank plate is the Death Knight set. So if a Warrior really likes the Death Knight set, he can collect a look-alike set.

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