07.20.08
Set Bonus
Item sets are a brilliant invention. I’ve loved them ever since I first encountered the concept in Diablo 2. It tickles my collector gene in a way not even card games like Magic: The Gathering has managed to. The moment I pick up a set item, I know that I must have them all, even if they are individually inferior to items I’m already carrying.
Yesterday Nick ran me through the Deadmines instance in World of Warcraft with his level 41 mage. I came out of there with 3 items in a set of 5, obviously designed with rogues in mind: Blackened Defias Armor, Blackened Defias Belt, and Blackened Defias Boots. Together, they gave me a set bonus of +10 Armor and +5 to Arcane Resistance, but temptingly greyed-out stats informed me that picking up either the gloves or the leggings would grant me a +2 increase to my expertise rating (which I don’t even know what is) and that completing the set would increase my attack power by 10.
I immediately went to the auction house and spent a fortune to acquire the gloves and the leggings. The funny thing is that this set is pretty useless to me as a druid: I need Intellect and Spirit to boost my magic, but every item in this set grants Agility and Strength bonuses. I don’t care though, I’m primarily concerned with looking extremely cool and stylish in a world where almost everybody below level 60 looks like a tramp or a clown. You just can’t go wrong with black.
