The Equipment Manager

Our characters spend levels 1 to 79 picking up new gear, and we have a general idea of what we can do with it. Unless you make a regular habit of switching between PvP battlegrounds and PvE instances, you’ll tend to have only one set of gear, maybe a few alternative weapons to keep your skills up, and that’ll be that.

Come level 80, the tables turn entirely. While there are still some quests to be done, any foray into the PvP and heroic instance challenges will start to highlight some of your gear’s inadequacies. That’s not to say you should fall victim to gear prejudice, but a warlock in Icecrown has different priorities and needs to one fighting for Alterac Valley or felling bosses.

Because heroics and PvP both have currency-based options for attaining this new gear, you can quickly find yourself with a bag devoted entirely to outfits. Swapping these pieces around individually can be tiresome, which is where Blizzard’s equipment manager comes in.

What Does the Equipment Manager Do?

Put very simply, the manager tags each item of the gear you want to swap around, and lets you use these tags like folders. My own example is this:

I maintain three gear sets, all held in the same bag, which I drag out of the bank for PvP and heroics.

• There’s a set of honour-bought gear for PvP;
• a set for solo quests, such as the Icecrown dailies or materials farming;
• and a set for heroic instances.

I can swap into any of these sets in an instant by using the equipment manager, without having to scan each item in my inventory to try and work out if it benefits my PvP or damage output. One might also argue that it keeps you more reliable, such as in a heroic group where a PvP set might leave you out of mana rather soon.

How Do I Make a Set?

1. Ensure that the equipment manager is enabled. By default it is not, but as of patch 3.3 you could enable it in the Interface menu, under ‘features’ (see right).
2. Equip all the gear you want to save as a complete set. At this point you would usually make a note of the various statistics your characters possesses, and try to swap in different gear to see what changes.
3. Click the Equipment Manager icon, found in the top right of your Character palette (press ‘C’).
4. Choose ‘Save’ on the little window that rolls out.

   

5. Enter a short name to describe the set, and choose an icon to represent it. Just as when making macros, this palette gives you access to all the game’s many icons. The manager will, however, place your equipped gear icons at the top to make things easier. My own method has been to label my PvE gear with the very distinctive Conqueror’s Deathbringer Hood, which doesn’t feature in my PvP set.

That’s all it takes. Now that you have that set, you can swap your gear items around and revert back to this setup by choosing its icon in the manager and hitting ‘equip’. You can also swap a few gear items around and select ‘Save’ to store a new gear set.

Tips

• If you decide one of your sets needs updating, such as for having earned a new headpiece, you can overwrite it by selecting that set’s icon in the manager, hitting ‘Save’ and keeping the set name the same. The manager will ask you to confirm an overwrite. There’s no need to delete old sets and re-save them.
• If your bank gets a little full with gear you’re not necessarily using, you can refer to the equipment manager in your tooltips (see right). If an item doesn’t carry an equipment set tag, you’re not currently using it for anything!
• As mentioned earlier, equipment sets are a good way of keeping things tidy if you want to compare the effect one piece has on your wardrobe. Simply save a set so you can roll any changes back, and watch the numbers fly around your character palette.