Adventures in Beta: How fast will you replace your gear?
It's one of the big questions of the expansion. Many people have worked for a long time to get their epic weapons and armor, whether they got it from grueling raiding, hardcore PVP or annoying reputation grinding. Then Burning Crusade comes along, and suddenly the slate is wiped clean. Or is it?
When I arrived in the beta, my rogue had two blues (Blackhand's Breadth and some horrible blue leggings I had grown attached to,) with the rest a mix of MC, BWL and AQ40 gear. Two levels later, I've replaced a bunch of that gear -- both blues, my Mandokir's Sting, my Cloak of Veiled Shadows, my Don Julio's Band and my Nightslayer Chestpiece are gone, and my Boots of the Shadow Flame and Taut Dragonhide Belt have received equal sidegrades.
From what I've seen, Tier 1 items will be replaced almost immediately, Tier 2 will last until the mid 60s, and Tier 3 will take you into the upper 60s and 70. At 70, Tier 4 (which largely drops in Karazhan) makes it a whole new ballgame again. In a Hellfire Citadel group today, the Tier 3 level 64 warlock was wearing nearly all of his old gear, while the 66 mage was mostly decked out in new stuff. (The druid also had Tier 3, but he was tanking for us, so he was wearing an odd mix anyway.)
If I had to recommend one high-level item to bring to BC, I would recommend that you bring weapons -- at least for melee, the High Warlord/Grand Marshal weapons will last you a long time, since weapon DPS doesn't jump up quite as fast as stats on armor. For example, a one-handed rogue sword that drops in Hellfire Peninsula will net you 52.5 DPS, as opposed to the 59 and change on the High Warlord gear.
