The Rarity of Weapons

Leveling up through WoW, getting items for most slots is relatively easy. Perhaps the exception here is trinkets, which tend to drop only from quests or bosses, or are constructed by Jewelcrafters or Engineers. Once one hits the level cap, however, the biggest barrier is getting a better weapon.

The number of available weapons becomes a fairly small, limited list, and in general, weapons are only available through certain avenues.

Unlike armor or other pieces, in PvP, weapons require a commitment of time to attain them. You can't just convert Justice Points to honor and then pick up a 522 weapon. Instead, you must earn that honor within the space of that season. Granted, someone who actually PvPs will probably be able to do so - presumably a PvPer is getting all his or her gear via Honor and Conquest, and so it's not that much of a burden to ask that they... well... earn it.

In PvE, and the greater outdoor game, however, things are still fairly linear and limited. Not counting multiple versions for different difficulties, there are eleven total level 90 epic strength two-handed weapons that one can get through PvE or Crafting (not counting the random chance at one through heroic scenarios.) Since Wrath, weapons have been held as somewhat precious. One cannot buy them through Justice or Valor points (or their forebears from Wrath onward.) With the exception of crafted weapons, there's no way to grind them out. You just need to be lucky and get the drop. One can get a very decent set of 522 epics through Valor Points these days, and you can, through a whole lot of grinding, get 535 Burden-of-Eternity-boosted gear, but the best guaranteed weapon you can come across is 502, crafted over the course of about a month (if not more,) and these BC-throwback weapons only serve some specs, and not all (there's no caster weapon if I recall correctly.) And taking this out of the picture, the best guaranteed weapon is from the Arena of Annihilation, which is iLevel 450 - a full hundred levels lower than the gear a casual player can get from the Celestial world bosses.

So why are weapons so hard to get?

Well, the reason they're hard to get is also why it's so important to get them. Weapons make a big difference in one's throughput, meaning that an upgrade to one's weapon has a big impact on DPS and healing (tanks, admittedly, might be the least affected.) For physical classes, many of their abilities are based on weapon damage. Attack Power will raise your effective weapon damage, but the weapon itself provides a big chunk of that weapon damage on its own, giving it a disproportionate effect on your performance. For a long time, caster weapons were merely "stat sticks," having no intrinsic difference from another piece of gear. However, nowadays caster weapons have raw spell power on them as well, to give them that same sort of effect that physical weapons have.

The acquisition of a new weapon means a large jump in power, and I think that is why Blizzard makes it hard to get.

The question, then, is what the right way to make something hard to get is.

If you're a raider, even only through LFR, you can expect that if you run the raid enough times, you'll probably get that new weapon eventually, and it will help you be a stronger contributor to that endeavor. If you don't raid, or you are gearing an off-spec, you probably won't have much of an opportunity to get a weapon. Take my tankadin, for example. In order to get him a weapon for his Retribution spec, I need to switch out which kind of loot I'm looking for. I might want, say, the Shield off of Sha of Pride, but also the Sword. If I "roll" for one role, I rule out getting the other.

But let's even set aside off-spec people. Should there be a way for non-raiders to get decent weapons? There used to be an old refrain that was "if you aren't a raider, why do you even need good gear?" I reject that for two reasons - the first is that the game can afford to be broad enough in scope that players of all types should have some kind of progression path. The other reason is that I think places like the Ordon Sanctuary mean that even if you aren't a raider, you need some top-notch gear to survive. Frankly I'd love to see more tough-as-hell outdoor areas for hardcore solo-or-small-group players, but it seems like there ought to be some reward for the difficulty.

There are counter-arguments to be made, however, against these many paths to fully gearing up. During Wrath and Cataclysm, Blizzard was upset that people had essentially skipped Ulduar or Firelands with the advent of new tiers of 5-man content (which, I think, used to fill this weapon-gap.) But I really don't think that's much of a cause for concern these days. It is very easy to go back and run old raids, and unlike the olden days (as in, pre 4.3,) the vast majority of the player base will be able to step into raids as soon as they come out. Back in BC, for example, a lot of guilds hadn't even finished Karazhan before Black Temple came out, but in the era of LFR, we basically all headed into Throne of Thunder as soon as the gates were opened (earlier, actually, because there was that sewer entrance.)

Would the acquisition of gear outside of raids draw people away from raids? It's possible, but then doesn't that tell you more about what people actually want out of the game? Admittedly, that's not a perfect argument. People didn't flock to Trial of the Crusader when 3.2 came out because they liked it better than Ulduar (I suppose there must be some people who did, but they are a minority,) but I think that if Blizzard is interested in emphasizing the "World" in World of Warcraft, they need to make it a viable option to be a wandering adventurer, and not always a member of some tight-knit small army.

And to do so, they really just need to give us a new option to get weapons.