Let’s start off with a quick explanation of what exactly the equipment manager is. It is Blizzards way of adding in a gear swapping system so that players are not forced to use the popular add-ons that do this such as Itemrack and Outfitter.
Now that everyone knows what it does, some of you may be asking why you need it. If you are asking that question, you probably don’t need it. Many players honestly would never make any use of it. For example while leveling, it is generally useless. Also, if you always do the same thing, it’s probably not for you. If, however, you are a raider, PvPer, or have dual talent specs, it becomes a must have tool.
Many times players, especially those playing hybrid classes, will find that they need to switch to something else in the middle of a raid. For example a fight that needs a single tank and your group has two, one tank switches over to DPS and changes all their gear. Or as a second example: you are 10 man raiding and have 2 healers and get to a hard fight and need 3 - one DPS can swap to healing gear to fill in. There are many other situations as well, such as a PvP player keeping their PvP gear set lined up and ready so that they can go from PvE to PvP quickly. Many tanks also keep several sets of gear ready - one for avoidance, one for health, and one for block value. Healers do the same type of thing as well, often times they have a mana regeneration set for long fights and a spell power set for big heals. The options really are endless.
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How do I turn it on and get to it?
Turn on the "Use Equipment Manager" option
The first thing to do is to go into the options and actually turn the equipment manager on. By default, it is set to off. To do this press your “escape” key to bring up the options screen. Then click interface and go to the “Controls” section and click on the “Use Equipment Manager” option. Once done click ok, and return to the game.
Once enabled, you can go to your character screen and you will see the equipment manager icon in the top right corner of the screen. Simply click on its icon to open it.
How do I Use it?
Setting up a PvE - DPS gear set
Before really using the equipment manager you need to setup your various equipment selections. All you need to do is gear yourself with all the gear you want for a specific setup and then open up the equipment manager and click save, once the second window opens you enter the name of the gear set, for example "PvE - DPS", and then select and icon and click Okay.
Once you have one gear set created, change your gear to whatever you would like to have as a second setup and then click save again. Perform the same steps as above to setup a second icon and grouping. Continue this process until you have all the gear sets you would like.
Now that it is setup, to switch between gear sets, simply open the Equipment manager and click on the gear set you would like to use and it will swap the gear out for you. For even faster access you can drag the icons of the gear sets you use often to your toolbar and use them from there making gear swaps a single mouse click.
Tidbits
To update an existing set, just select the set that you have an upgrade for, replace the piece of gear and then click save again. Keep the same name and select the same icon, and click ok. A window will come up asking if you are sure you want to overwrite the previous setup, click yes.
There are several nice little features of the Equipment manager, such as when you hover over a gear set, it will show you a list of what is used by that setup. This is useful if you have placed some of your pieces in the bank, so that you know what you are missing.
Multiple Gear Sets
Missing Items
While the Blizzard Equipment Manager has several useful features it is missing a few that I find very useful in Outfitter (which is the one I have always used). The one I really miss is the auto equip for stat or ability that outfitter has. I find I use this a lot when I have gotten several new pieces of gear to see what is possible.
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