>Don't I need filtration? Basically it depends on whether your leaves can get overbrewed or not. For example most green teas absolutely will get bitter and nasty after a while, so you need some way to get them out. Also using water below boiling somehow makes leaves float more, which again means for green teas brewed at 80*C or so leaving them in the cup is impractical. Most decent black teas, and most dark teas (puerh etc.), are completely fine sitting at the bottom of your cup for half an hour. Then you can usually just add more water to brew them again. And using boiling water makes them sink pretty reliably so it's not a bother to drink. Also if you're doing gongfu then that's obviously different (though gongfu doesn't use strainers either). But if you're doing western brewing in the first place, that's irrelevant. >Don't I care about dosing, water temperature These are the two main variables but you don't need a strainer or filter for that. A scale and a temperature-adjustable kettle are fine or literally just eyeball it until you learn what you like. >water quality, filtration, etc? Kinda but mainly you want to avoid hard water. Other than that, extreme mineral composition autism is mostly if you find it fun to care. >Like speshulty coffee. I'm not a coffeefag but as far as I know they place a ton more emphasis on the roast, the preparation, and the brewing, with the actual beans being of relatively minor consideration (I think with regional/continental variations but not like individual cultivars). Tea is a lot more like wine in that the provenance and processing of the leaves is much more important. Then you brew gongfu if you want to degust, or just brew approximately the right temperature for the kind of tea if you just want a nice brew with little effort.

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