Rocking the [Wound Dressing]

I'm going to let you in on a little secret.

... Promise not to tell?  If it got out, it would totally ruin my girl cred. 

Okay.  Here goes!

The most important factor to consider when creating a gear plan is not /actually/ how pretty a particular piece looks or how nicely it matches the rest of your kit.

At this point, I have my guild more or less convinced that this is, in fact, how I roll.  (No RNG-themed pun intended.)  I am, after all, the shaman who maintained a running stream-of-conciousness in /guild chat while agonizing over which T9 piece to buy with my very first trophy:

We-ell.  If I buy the helm, I know I'll just end up hiding it because — hello, femtaur!  (All credit to Diodorus for coining that phrase, by the way.)  But I still really like the look of those sweet goggles Flame Levi coughed up; they make me seem smart, and that's no small feat for a bipedal cow.  I don't think I'm ready to part with them yet.

On the other hand, I've always hated how my T8 shoulders roll around when I jump.  I can't wait to replace them! But Thrall's spaulders will clash horrifically with the rest of my tier gear and force me back into that ridiculous anchor to avoid breaking the my 4-piece bonus.  So I think I'll just go with the pants for now.  The T8 chest is a robe so no one will ever know that my legguards don't match, and by the time I have the emblems to bid on another trophy, I may have picked up some non-set pieces (with the same models as T9!) to tide me over.

Win?  Win!

The world's most annoying shoulders.

At this point, our mage officer interrupted me to point out that my mace and shield look so silly together that it doesn't matter if the rest of my gear matches or not ... and he's right, the jerk.  >.<

Anyway, see that bold sentence up there? 

That's not the secret.  Everyone knows that already.

No, the secret is that I have an Excel spreadsheet on my Desktop called Shaman Gear Comps.xls.  I created it during some downtime at my last place of employment — and by "downtime," I mean when I should have been frantically busy but wasn't (because once you've been given your 90 day notice, what's the worst that can happen?). 

I'll spare you all the math (This isn't that kind of blog!  Although, I suppose, it could be ...  /ponder), but, basically, I calculated Healing and Mana Equivalency Points based on my current gear, talents, and glyphs, and then used them to assign weights to the various healing stats according to two separate profiles: one that favors raw spellpower and crit for MT healing, and one that favors haste and mp5 for raid healing.  I pre-filled the spreadsheet with items I can reasonably expect to attain (so, all Emblem of Triumph gear and anything that drops in Trial of the Crusader 10 or 25), with additional fields to plug in anything new that I might have missed or just didn't count on (such as hardmode loot, which I'm seeing much more quickly than I had anticipated). 

By using and abusing this spreadsheet, I can make intelligent loot decisions more or less on the fly — but don't tell my guild.  Like I said, girl cred.

So, what's the point of telling you?  Or flashing a nearly naked Blood Elf at the top of this blogpost?

(Isn't she cute, by the way?  I love the little red-headed Tinkerbell look she has going on!)

Well, the way I see it: since we all choose the best available gear for our class and spec as opposed to the best-looking gear, there isn't a whole lot of room for customization or, well, personality to shine through.

Except for one little, oft-over looked item:

Your shirt.

See, Larissyn isn't (just!) showing off her Blizzard-endowed assets.  No, she's rocking the Wound Dressing — one of two shirt slot pieces you can buy from the first aid trainer in Dalaran.  She wears this for two reasons.  First, and most obviously, she's a tank.  She's always taking a beating.  Second, it's silent homage to her friend and mentor: a fellow tankadin who recently left the game to teach English in Japan.  Alysanne always wore an Antiseptic-Soaked Wound Dressing under his armor (although in his pixelated form, he was actually a she), and so Larissyn does the same.  It's just a little memento of our friendship. 

As silly as it sounds, almost everyone I know has a story to tell about his or her character's shirt. 

Some of my friends are wearing the the shirts they started out with, and can proudly boast — or sheepishly admit — that they haven't taken it off in 80 levels.  (Ew, by the way.)  Others, like my fiance, have a signature piece: every single one of Keaton's characters has a Lavendar Magewave Shirt crafted by yours truly.  (He was actually wearing Lavendar Mageweave before we met, but at some relatively early point in our relationship I replaced them all with shirts <Created by Sarielle>.) 

I have a theory that you can tell something about a character (or player, I suppose; we aren't all compulsive roleplayers) based on his or her shirt.  It's actually the first slot I look at when I inspect random people (or orcs or trolls, as the case may be) while idling in Dalaran.

So, what about you?  Are you wearing a White Swashbuckler's Shirt?  (Very sexy on a female Blood Elf, by the way, especially paired with Tuxedo Pants and a pair of low level leather boots.)  Or maybe you've gone a little more modern with a Sleeveless T-Shirt?

Inquiring minds want to know.

And by inquiring, I mean mine — and mostly to reassure myself I'm not completely insane.