For those who might not know yet, my gluttony for abuse knows no bounds. As a result I find myself in a rather large number of P.U.G. groups. At the end of the day I bring you, my readers, the stories of my travels in the random grouping of Azerothian adventure!
This week I’m going to focus on a mod that’s been getting a lot of attention for a while now, (both good and bad) Gearscore. The irony of this event is it comes right after listening to a podcast (no not mine) but the resident gentleman Dorf himself Brigwn over at The Hunting Lodge podcast. They had the creator of the addon as a guest and asked him all sorts of questions about the mod. Why it was created, if this was it’s intended use and where it’s going from here. Gearscore is a quick comparison of gear assigning a number based roughly on stat allocation per class / role on the item. It does not, in any way shape or form reflect skill. Simply put it tracks maximum potential for a role, the higher the number the better potential healing, dps or tankage you can do. You’re probably why I’m bringing this up. Well here’s why…
Last weekend I got bored and didn’t feel like doing heroics on my Shaman, and my Hunter needed a night off. So I did something I haven’t done since Naxx was THE place to be, I broke out my Death Knight Tank. She was the bomb when Naxx was the raid zone of choice and as a result has Naxx level tanking gear. Not the best, but not the worst. More than enough for heroics, which I can then convert the badges into T9 tanking gear. So I put on my tanking gear, change my specs, and hop into the queue to tank. 20 seconds later I find myself in AN with similarly geared people, everyone sitting there in Naxx (25) level gear, and seemingly good attitudes. So we buff, and I head down and start making pulls. First pull, no problem. Second pull, no problem. Then we get to the watchers. I pull the first group and pull them wayyyy back. I Deathgrip the caster onto me and drop Death and Decay. All of a sudden the healer leaves group! Not a word, not a disconnect, not lag and no vote kicking. Just up and leaves. One of the people in the P.U.G. Happened to be on the same realm as the person, so he shot them a tell asking what happened. The response he got back sort of shocked me.
“I looked at the Gearscore for the tank, too low I can’t heal that.”
I had a good chuckle at that. My DK might not be ready to storm into ICC at all, but she tanked Naxx 25 and is more than adequately geared to handle some measly heroics. So as me and the rogue are laughing about this the Warrior of the group drops, for the same reason as the priest. So what remains is a rogue and a mage and myself, all laughing about it. You would think that the story would end there, but it doesn’t. People joined and dropped the group 4 or 5 times before eventually a healer and a dps stuck. The kicker? The healer was in full tier 9, the DPS was another DK, in full heroic ToGC / ICC gear. I jokingly asked
“I have a low gear score you guys sure you want to stick around? already lost a handful of healers an dps”
Healer looks me over says
“Nope you’re fine, just keep shit off me”
the new DK pipes up.
“If I can’t manage my aggro on you, then that’s on me, no worries let get some badges”
Finally, after waiting for nearly 30 minutes we start really pulling, and blow through the instance, I don’t lose any mobs to the healer, there are no close calls there. And the DK ganked once, stopped attacking so I could taunt and then didn’t gank again. The run was smooth, and quick. With my badges in hand I hearthed back to Dala and logged for the night.
The funny thing is that was my first hands on experience with Gearscore ever, and I do mean ever. I heard about it when it was created at the beginning of wrath and wrote it off as something I didn’t need. Eventually as people kept talking about it and how it ranked gear and assigned a value, I pushed it aside from my thoughts. When I started seeing requirement levels in gear score for easy content, I got a little bit angry at it’s creation, but I had never run across it in all my travels in Azeroth.
Thanks to The Hunting Lodge, I now know the mod was created at the release of Wrath and it’s original goal was to show that the heroic blues (ilvl 200) were on par with the 70 purples (ilvl 154ish) so that people weren’t excluded from Naxx runs. It has since become this oddity that has people calling for 5k Gearscore for heroic runs. Without listening to that I probably would have looked on the above chain of events with a much heavier heart, and some abject hatred to the mod.
To put this in perspective, I installed the mod and had a look-see at all my characters and even the members of my raid. Lodur, my main who is decked out in T9.5 and Tier 10 / 10.5 only ranks about 5795 on gear score. My alt hunter Abigail, in T9 with heroic level trinkets ranks 4900. My tank, in Naxx gear is somewhere around 3799. Most of my raiders are in the 5500 – 5700 score mark and we’re clearing ICC25. It just seems odd to me to cling so hard to a scoring system that only appraises gear, and not skill or personality.
In other P.U.G. related news, I hit a random up last night with my main Lodur, wound up getting Gundrak. I’ve done this place a million times, yet somehow never managed to get Less Rabi achievement . We stacked a group from guild one day to try for it but for some reason it just fell out of reach each time. So we get to Moorabi and the tank pulls I instinctively wind shear the first transformation, and I notice his health is dropping like a rock. I wind shear the second and pop heroism and drop my elemental. he goes for the third transformation, the DK pounds him with a mind freeze and he dies. I see the achievement pop up and I’m one happppppppy Shaman. The hate tells roll in from some of the guildies yet to get it and I log off to go to bed one contented man.
So, how about you guys? Any interesting stories from the P.U.G.-Verse? Have any run ins with Gearscore? Good or bad?
Until next time, Happy Healing
Ah, Gearscore. I love Gearscore. It helps a good player recognize their capacity, and it helps identify idiot players that swear to it like it’s a religion.
Gearscore is great in that it can operate as a benchmark for expectations, showing well-informed players the capabilities of their team mates, raid friends, and PUG passersby. But it’s obviously a double-edged sword, since too many people look at it as the end-all-be-all of player quantification.
Obviously in its original design, a lot was left out. Gems and Enchants don’t augment the score, nor does Gearscore take into account things like set bonuses. It’s a very good introduction to what will eventually (I hope) be a strong scorecard for players. I hear Elitist Group is already paving a stronger system, but I look forward to improvements on Gearscore that will enhance the accuracy of the numbers.
The problem with Gear Score is it turns close to “normal” people into assholes. I can’t really imagine a scenario in WoW where it is helpful. But people like to measure themselves, and the mod does that for gear in some limited capacity. Achievements are almost as bad. It really makes you wonder what WoW is devolving into.
Imagine in real life if everyone had a phone app that would ping the IRS servers and instantly tell you what that person earns per year. Would that make the world a better place.
When running heroics on my druid, I’ve gotten into the habit of asking whether they want to kick me before we get started. She still has BoA shoulders and a BoA weapon – the upgrade gods are mad at me.
I’ve actually only had one bad experience; the rest of my groups have been very understanding and appreciative of my up-front-ness, and the tanks then know to keep an eye on my mana and not just pick up every mob they can see.
As for tanks… on my Priest I’ve healed a pally-tank with less than 25k hp through heroic Temple. I’ve also had a Bear with 50k hp who gave me my first grey hairs. It’s not about the gear, it’s about the person playing. That understanding usually determines whether the pug is memorable for the right or wrong reasons.
I made a post regarding Gearscore here many moons ago, noting very similar instances such as the one you mentioned. I think the best Failscore story I’ve read so far was this gem by Kyth @ Stratfu. Were I to see a full T6 lock with Sunflare in a heroic PUG, I wouldn’t be too worried about that person as far as them failing goes, heh.
Gearscore can be a useful tool, if used intelligently. Same applies to Elitist Group and other similar mods. Sadly, it seems like the general response is “Your GS must be this high to run this heroic/raid”.
A year ago I was farming heroics in gear that would be laughable now, and I ran with a group of guildies that were equally geared. I got my red proto drake almost a year ago to this day (1-24-09) with bits and pieces of T7 loot at most. Now people want you to be decked out in gear 2-3 tiers higher than that to run heroics…heh.
The only thing I can really say is if you’re feeling down/pissed about someone kicking you or giving you crap about your GS, just round up a group of guildies and get to farming. That’s how I’ve gotten my alts geared, along with many other folks in our guild. We know one another well enough to know even with poorly geared new level 80 alts, we can get the job done in heroics.
I wrote about a PUG experience on my blog today as well.
As for gear score, I’ve found the Trinket spot can have a huge affect on your score. Many iLevel 200 trinkets remain very competitive even when compared to trinkets 30 to 40 iLevels higher.
I’ve taken to using high iLevel trinkets to inflate my gear score (even if they are for the wrong spec) then switching to the ‘right’ trinkets once I’m in the group.
I don’t bother with Gearscore. From time to time I use Elitist Group. It doesn’t focus on the gear score itself, but gives you an idea if a person is gemmed/enchanted and wearing the right gear/gems/enchants for their class/spec. Much more efficient at informing you if a player appears to be capable or not.
And as for Less-Rabi. GRRRRRR!!!!!!!! That is the last achievement standing between my paladin and his red proto-drake. Pain in the ass, that one is, and the bane of my existence. And now since everyone and their mother is pugging stuff and not looking to farm trash for battered hilts or help someone get a missing achievement…I may never get it. Everyone is just “get in, get out, get er dun”. It’s all about the gear, apparently. Me? I actually have more fun going after vanity stuff. The gear is great and all, some of it looks cool and helps you down content quicker and more efficiently, or helps you survive longer or heal for more, but I don’t see it as the main focus. This comes back to the Gearscore debate. What matters is not a high gearscore, but that you are having fun with friends doing something you enjoy. It’s cool to have some friendly competition, but don’t lose sight of the fact that this is a game, and we’re all here to just have fun. So take your guildies back into Ulduar to get them some sweet new rides! Everyone should outgear the hard modes by a good margain, so there’s really no reason not to do it. Makes your guild the envy of the realm. =)
I’ve never had to deal with the dreaded GS… and, thankfully, I leveled my druid to 80 before the new LFG and I only pugged on my pally after she was fairly geared. I don’t want to know what GS people would’ve thought of my half-blue-cloth tree… but she held her own very well in heroics anyway.
Either way, I have a problem with people who drop group without even trying. Unless the “tank” doesn’t have defense gear or something extreme like that, most runs are doable. Maybe not fast or painless… but they’re possible. Too bad people are lazy and only want to blast through the content asap. God forbid there’s an actual *gasp* player who’s gearing up in their run!
.-= Jen´s last blog ..Nature vs nurture? =-.
Less Rabi achievement .
Never got it on any of my stable of 80s.
.-= Dracomage´s last blog ..Saurfang is a pain. =-.
I’ve never had an issue like that in heroics. I do look at the gearscores of people in the group, but that is for different reasons. It gives me a an idea of who to put Vigilance on initially (if I’m on my warrior), and I will often set the intial pace of pulling based on the healer’s gearscore. If they’re in BoA & green gear, I’m not going to grab the first 3 pulls all at once.
I’ve had it a few times where the healer ends up barely above a 2k gearscore (blues and BoA items), and each time it has worked out fine. I may have to wait for them to get mana every few pulls, but that is fine.
Honestly if I’m tanking one of the things that makes me cringe most is having some warlock with an insanely high gearscore, because for whatever reason that is what I have the most luck with for finding a jerk player who constantly pulls aggro and dies then bitches all the time.
Re: Less-Rabi. Get a shaman with that talent that gives the interrupt a 5 sec cooldown. Tell him/her to do nothing BUT spam the interrupt. The healer can go DPS (with a decent tank) and it should be enough to get him down. That’s how we did it a couple of months ago.
@Morlin: Getting the red drake with a group of friends was a blast! Even the wipes were fun 🙂
.-= Jen´s last blog ..Nature vs nurture? =-.
I ran my guildie, who has several well geared alts, last night through a heroic. He had 25k in his prot gear one of our main tank raiders joined as well with 27k health in his dps gear. I had encouraged him to tank, because it was going to provide me a little bit of a challenge (i was still healing outside of tree form being a druid). We didn’t have a problem at all and in fact I told him that I’d be willing to run a tank/healer combo this weekend to help get him geared (I still have some triumph gear to get =P).
Gear score is a nice tool but it doesn’t evaluate a players knowledge or skill.
This is actually funny. My wife and I are both on different sides of the gearscore debate. I despise the addon because people use it as an excuse not to use a perfectly capable person for either a raid or herioc. My wife on the other hand will go straight to gearscore or wow-heroes and use the number to blame people for wipes or other such nonsense. I am one of the people that is in the camp that with the right skill and build (/w ilvl 200) you can do just as well as a faceroller in ICC25 gear. I wish that people would grow up and understand that a good tank/dps/healer does not need High ilvl gear to get the job done, the only time that becomes the case is when they want to do the entire instance in one pull. Hopefully when Cataclysm comes out it makes gearscore disappear, especially with the way Blizz is doing stats and talents.
@Jen: Yeah you’re right…I got most of my other achievements for it with friends, and some I even stealth-obtained through pugs (like The Incredible Hulk…I always pull abominations while waiting for the dialogue anyway…and I never tell anyone that I’m going to do it =P ). One that I’m particularly fond of was finally getting Chaos Theory. Wiping was never so much fun! My warlock friend was particularly plastered that evening (as he usually is on the weekends) and promptly ran off the platform into the abyss below. Funny thing is, alcohol level for him doesn’t affect his playstyle…he is an excellent player whether sober or drunk. It’s mundane things like running that are his downfall. =)
Of all the roles, tanking is the least forgiving of having sub-par gear, but in Nax 25 gear, as you already said, you outgeared any heroic except maybe Halls of Reflection and the group finder wouldn’t have put you in there anyway.
Gearscore is useful for putting together a PUG raid (to make sure you aren’t trying to tank ICC 25 with a tank in Nax 10 gear for example), but it’s completely worthless for heroics.
Recount now can report dps/gearscore. I think they call it performance. It’s great to use when annoying puggers chastise lower geared people about their dps. I agree skill > gear when it comes to heroics. We were already outgearing them when we were in Naxx gear isn’t it?
I don’t use that addon..if i want to know my GS i goto Wow-Heroes which calculates differently…I am at 3000+ on that in almost full ICC 10/25 gear, which puts me in the Top 10 of Priests on the Realm…I guess your GS addy adds over 2000 for something else.
In Randoms, I inspect the tank and DPSers and if they are ALL in blues and ilvl 150’s i might just bail if its a long dungeon. I don’t have time to play babysitter for a brand new tank who hit 80 5 mins ago and wants a drag thru.
did PoS in a random..the tank had blues, another DPS had blues and greens…but we all decided to stay and work it. We eventually had to kick the tank b/c he took too much damage for that place. Nothing elitist, his gear was just not up to par for that particular dungeon.
I don’t need Triumphs i just need my 2 daily Frosts, so i don’t want to spend an hour and a half in Gundrak.
Thankfully, I have not yet been subjected to GS criticism in a pug. I didn’t even know what mine was on either of my 80’s until a week or two ago when I went to check it. The only thing that bothers me about it is the people who treat it like the end-all be-all of your character. Mostly because there’s someone in my guild who has a pretty high one from having lots of time to run ICC rep grinds and faceroll heroics, but can’t play for a hill of beans.
It makes me long for the old days when people gave you a chance based on how well you could play, not the time you’ve got to farm badges or (in the case of another guildie) how much cash you have available to buy gold and get crafted stuff off the AH.
.-= Asara´s last blog ..Epic WoW Marathon! (plus news.) =-.
GearScore can be useful sometime when you use it to have an approximation of the potential DPS a player can do. Just an approximation. But most players worships at gearscore and judge everything with this addon – and that’s wrong.
Anyway, I prefer to know the average ilvl of someone than his gearscore (with xpose or the huge Elitist Group). The way I use this addon is when I’m PUGging, so I can approximately predict the content that we can reach. And, when I meet a good player with a high average ilvl (or GS), I say “Oh, he plays fine.” When I meet a good player with a low GS, I say “He just rocks !”… and vice versa : “He’s a real noob”.
@Lodur, It must have been something in the water then, I got the Less Rabi achievement last night also in a PUG. no one said a word. The tank blazed thru the instance, when he pulled the boss, I hammered him just before his change, why? Just because… and before you know it, I had the achievement and without a shaman in the group. Myself and a small group of guild members have been trying off and on to get this bad boy for a while now…. they are not going to be happy with me.
We actually banned Gearscore from being active during our raids. It constantly pings players in near areas to yourself in the background to gather score data and causes massive amounts of lag during raids. We were having a rough time due to lag on some Rotface attempts and asked everyone to reevaluate which addons they needed. When we ask the guildies who had Gearscore installed to remove it the lag immediately stopped. The next night when guildies forgot to turn it off, the lag started again, after reminding them to remove it once more, the lag stopped.
.-= Napps´s last blog ..Happy New… Resolutions! =-.
I see this all the time in my guild. We have a tank that was jumping for joy claiming he was top 3 geared people in the guild according to wow-heroes and gearscore, while me in my tanking gear were in the 20-40th place. While going through ICC, he consistently dies while I stayed alive throughout. It really is unfortunate how people are boiling down everything to a number that isn’t indicitive of actual skill and how well people cling to that. Every night on my server there is some argument about gearscore.
Without this addon though, as others have said, you’d have people demanding that you link achieves.
its comical.
there have been a few threads on my server’s forums (btw its a top ranked pve US pve server) about how GS = breeds bads.
(doesnt take into account, spec, itemization, experience)
and the baddies, who couldnt clear any hard modes, nor even things like festergut in ICC, love gearscore.
People in top end guilds think of it like I do. just means you are bad if taking GS serious.
The best quote was from someone in a top 150 in the world guild.
“I just generally ignore any player that mentions gearscore in a serious matter. If this addon has done anything good, it really does tell you the people to avoid. ”
Pretty much sums it up.
Fellow hunter (FH) in ICC-10 last night, crowing about how his GS is mid 2700 (WoW-Heroes). Higher than mine by 75 or so..
So, we’re on Saurfang. I’m kiting Blood Beasts, and casters are dutifully burning them. FH is NOT getting his beasts down and is dying. So I mention that I can Distract Shot his if he gets in trouble after mine is down.
FH says he’d do the same except he “…does not have Distracting Shot.” Even the Uber Lock knew that Hunters get that at, like level 40-something. FH looks in his book and, “Oh, there it is….”
So, yeah, there’s definitely not a one-to-one correlation of GS to skill.
Faux Paws
@Napps
We suddenly have Evil Lag every time we try to raid. Maybe I will ask people to start removing gearscore before raids!
We’re a tiny casual guild anyway, and so our gearscores are not indicative of anything at all. Not skill, not likelihood of getting a raid spot. Nothing.
.-= Rhii´s last blog ..How to Eat My Words: 101 =-.
The only use I’ve actually discovered for gearscore is it immediately lets me know if I significantly outgear the tank so that I know to pay close attention to my threat before the tank starts pulling.
I tend to translate the “LFM for this or that; must have 5k gs + achi” in /trade as, “looking for people to carry me through this raid/instance/etc”
Gearscore provides an easy number so people won’t have to think for themselves. That is why I soubt ElitistGroup will ever become as widespread.
I just wonder when people started trusting a computer to think for them…
@ Rhynchos – I make that very same conversion in my head. But I understand the reason. I was in a pug ICC 25m just yesterday that had no gearscore checks. I was baffled by some of the people in the raid. Quest blues and greens. Gone are the days where people will respectfully and gracefully stay away from places they have no business entering.
I don’t care how skilled a player you are, you can’t do anything but be carried through ICC 25 in blues and greens. With people no longer having the decency of knowing their own limits and constantly trying to “slip one by the raid leader Ho HO!” the gearscore check has almost become mandatory.
I both love and hate Gearscore and related mods.
I hate it strictly for how it is misused and you have several common examples of how it is misused.
As a Pally healer from long before TBC I have learned a lot about how the run can go. I use this with a variation of Grearscore to look at everyone in the PuG’s gear rating. If it is universally high I change my set to one that has less healing but more mana regen because I expect that the group will not want to stop and will want to go as fast as possible. It is not uncommon for me to be in PuGs like this that do the pre 3.3 Heroics in 10-15 minutes.
The other thing I use the score of the entire party is to decide who will be taking a lot of damage to put Beacon of Light on. This has allowed me to regularly keep standing people in mostly greens alive in some of the more difficult instances.
In both of these cases I use the tool to make an adjustment in my preparation for the run. I often change my Beacon assignment or gear set based on how the run actually unfolds. I also do not drop from a group or vote to kick someone just because of their score. I may make comments in vent to guildies while I am in a PuG that the group is way undergeared for the instance and things like that, but I take pride in healing and always try to do my best.
Also Gratz on the achievement, I missed getting it when it was exploitable and have been chasing it ever since.
2 hates – one of the abuse of the gearscore mod and the other of you getting that achievement. It’s all I lack for a proto drake on my main … grats.
I’ll never install GS or one of those mods, save one reason: if I’m curious about where most of my upgrades for a character can come from. Other than that, I refuse to facilitate the community of jerkishness that comes from GS and EG. I’m a good player; you’re a good player. Just because I’m in blues and you’re in ICC25H epics doesn’t mean we can’t kill Eck.
.-= Professor Beej´s last blog ..A Different Kind of Roleplay in World of Warcraft =-.
i hate GS, really hate it. my main (resto shaman) doesn’t give a crap about it, but my feral tank hates it, people do not understand that my gear choice is all about tanking and not gear lvl.
as u said “scoring system that only appraises gear, and not skill or personality.”
I ehco a lot of the sentiments of the others here.
The biggest issue I’ve observed with the Gear Score addon, though, is that it seems to negatively reinforce and validate the sordid behavior of elitist players.
Unfortunately, the skills and knowledge necessary to be a successful party member or raider (i.e., a positive attitude, willingness to work within the framework of a team, reliability, and dependability to name a few) are regrettably being overshadowed in favor of an addon that is at best an indicator and at worst an arbitrary tool.
Hopefully, the negative experiences mentioned here will lead to some more meaningful discussion about what is already becoming an extremely bothersome problem.
OS10 run – no drakes, 1/2 pug & 1/2 guild.
I’m running as off tank, with mostly ilvl 200 purple gear, with a couple of badge peices.
DK dps turns up with mostly blue gear ranging from ilvl 150-180, clearly the worst geared of the raid. One of the raid members QQ’s about the DK’s gear, and about how we are going to carry yet another toon. We run anyway.
All in all it’s a clean run. I even manage to dodge (most) of the flamewalls. DK comes in with an overall 3rd in both total damage done and DPS.
Heroics, Nax 10, OS10 are all designed as gearing instances. The very strong chance is that your raid is already overgeared for these instances. If you are overgeared yet cant heal a toon that is appropriately geared for instance, either learn how to heal or get out of the fire.
I have the addon installed and I use it just to give me an Idea of how the pug heroic is going to run.
Tank has a gear score of ~5k then usually I can dps alot with minimal healing
Tank has a gear score of ~4k then maybe watch his health pool abit more.
I still judge the dps classes by their damage on a boss, and if their GS score is not ~= their damage then I give them an inspect and look at see if they are just noobs in 4x t9 or they have actually done anything.
I don’t like Gearscore at all: the principle behind it is good but it is mostly used for bad purposes.
Gearscore in pug heroics is ridiculous, though it is sometimes fun seeing people with 5000 GS faring worse than others in 3000. Skill > gear any time, and you need very little gear for heroics: we all started in blue quest rewards, remember?
Only exception to the general rule (GS= BAD) is if you are trying to form a pug raid. In this case you won’t have time to check every whisperer on the web sites, and the addon give you a chance to quickly decline the heavily undergeared.
An unskilled /undergeared character in a raid may waste a few hours of 9-24 people – there is nothing wrong making sure that no one, or just a couple of new alts, are carried in raids. But in random heroics, please accept the dice roll and go with what you’re given without becoming obnoxious.
I have tried the addon and still load it sometimes (never in raids), but I have never even thought of using the info to drop from a heroic. A few times it has showed me I had to slow down my attacks, as my main (spriest) has 5500GS and may have been annoying for a well-meaning tank in starting gear.
I’ve had a lot of bad experiences with both Gear Score and people being nasty in heroics.
I ran a random Heroic HoS the other day where the tank opennly started the run with “I’m skipping bosses, you can deal with it or leave.” If you choose to leave the run, your penalized for 15 minutes for choosing to not agree to random conditions placed on your group which you didn’t really sign up for. Some people did leave that group, and the tank berated them for doing it. I nthe same line of reasoning, I don’t want to be subjected to this for a Naxx10 that you should be able to do in blues. I want to pitch something at the wall when, on my warlock, I see a Naxx10 Weekly Raid 5k+ GS or 5k+ dps only.
I’m totally fine with Gear Scoring ICC or ToC, but heroics are designed for gearing, using it as a justification for kicking people or leaving is stupid.
oh, less rabbi /shudder. me and a bunch of guildies were running the place over and over and over day after day after day and it took weeks before we finaly got lucky enough to get it for my hunter and their red drake toons of choice O_O.
Random heroic on my shammy (who is perfectly happy with netherdrake so I never bothered to actively pursue the glory) we get to moorabi, I’m slightly bored casue people are not taking much damage and things are dying quickly, so I pop ele, BL next thing I know – achievemnt pops up for the entire group. We started laughing, becasue none of us were even trying for it, I just halfheartedly interrupted what casts i could and I think someone did as well on third cast.
worst part? few days later – heroic gundrak again. I do the same strategy again….and it works. again. achiv pops up for couple of people, DK comments that his MAIN doesn’t have that achievemnt.
what..the heck? I’ve given up trying to understand it…I just go with the flow.
/hate at gearscore and people who mindlessly abuse it.
a nice number to run original Wrath heroics, according to the description i found is actually 3000ish. anything more is nice and will speed things up, but frankly? overkill.
As someone with 2 tanks and a healer – I would rather take 3 people that pull low dps b.c they are fresh lvl 80’s (better not have greens unless they are trinkets – no excuse for that) than to take 3 people that pull low dps b.c they are lazy. I will gladly carry the new guys, and do it quite often.
All I ask is you say something at the beginning. Best DPS’er in the world I met a few weeks ago in a 5 man. Zones in and the first words out of his mouth are not Hi, but “Please excuse my low dps, I just ding’d yesterday. I’m trying to get geared as fast as I can. If you feel like I am that much of a hinderance, then I will be more than happy to leave.”
I look him over and see that he is honestly trying. One of the other DPS starts to whine about it and I clearly state I would rather 3 man it with this fresh 80 than a whiny epic whore. I start the pulls and low and behold, the fresh 80 did 100 more dps than the epic’d out guy. The epic’d dps leaves the party as fast as he can, at which point I reroll a lvl 1 to whisper him (not my finest moment, but couldnt resist!)
“Wow, for someone whining so much about DPS, you let the tank and the fresh LVL 80 beat you, and if there was a lil more trash, the healer would have caught you to!”
Had a nice run last night when i logged on my prot warrior alt, who has a mix of badge gear, and heroics blues and epics. I see a post in trade pop up: “LF tank weekly Obs10 run, last spot”, no mention of link achievement or gearscore. So i decide to give it a shot and whisper the guy, and say i can OT it, but probably not MT it, since i had never done it before, and might be a bit undergeared. The guy just says, you’ll do fine, and invited me. I use ekInspect (similar to gearscore) and see that pretty much everyone in the raid is vastly outgearing me, and mostly in ICC gear, and also that im the only tank in the raid….i started getting a bit nervous there, tanking the place by myself for the first time with all that high dps potential, but not a single person mentions my gear, or gearscore whatsoever.
So off we went, and i managed to keep aggro quite well on the trash packs, taunting stuff back and frantically aoe tanking everything. I did notice the rogue and hunters using tott en md on me, so that helped as well. The 2 healers had no problems keeping me alive. We wiped once for having a drake and a trash pack at the same time, but noone leaves and noone whines. At sarth i ask someone to point out exactly where to tank him, which they politely do, and we one-shot him. I manage to get the achievement for not getting hit by flame waves, and for doing it the first time, and all are happy.
Also got some nice complements on my tanking considering my gear and saying to me that skill > gear, always good for my ego. Anyways, nice friendly ppl do exist still in pug raids.
I’m not really a fan of the addon i think asking for a 5k gearscore just to do heroics is a bit rediculous, although the one thing i do like about the addon is the fact that it allows you see if someone is good enough to get gear from a certain raid. I mean it is nice to see your self with a high gear score and be like oh yeah but its not like your required to have a gear score for something just because you may not have the best gear doesnt mean you suck, although it is a way to weed out people that might suck and might not.
gear is gear…. we all know how to get it… we all know how to look at it on other ppl.
i’m geared for ICC25, so 5man’s are rarely a challenge, unless i have a group that is all low 3k (or less) gear. having said that, i still run (and never drop from) 5 mans. my gear hasn’t always been like this… other ppl with better gear ran me through instances; helped build me up. i feel it is my responsibility to help others in the same manner.
all i use GS for is a quick glance to see what i might expect from a player that i am randomly queued with. if the gear is really low, then that person will likely need to be watched a little closer for heals, beyond that…. lets go! I’m ready to run.
Like all tools it’s fine if used properly.
But I find that most of the time it isn’t.
GS can define a lower bar for TOC, TOGC, ICC …
But most people don’t really have a realistic sense of what those bars should be.
So maybe instead of giving a number which has been and will continue to be badly misinterpreted I’d like to think the author of GS could turn it into colors (Red, Yellow and Green) for an instance.
Personally, I don’t use it. I like Trackwarcraft better as it gives me an idea of gear level that has more innate meaning by presenting average ilvl of gear and then if
I see a low average ilvl I can drill down and determine if they have experience in the area we are visiting. Personally I’d prefer experience over great gear.
I’m for the most part a pure pug raider, there are one or two guilds who i freelance for and fill in holes when they need someone but otherwise i just take what comes to me. With that in mind someone who pugs into raids lives and runs by their GS.
Now as far as heroics, i have a well geared mage (5399gs 232ilvl or better other than abyssal rune) and a slightly less geared priest (just over 5k still with some valor badge stuff) When i get into a heroic random i use GS for a few things.
First on my mage i used it to pace my dps, if the tank is geared around a certain level i know how much i can do without blowing up their threat gen, if they have low gear but then show they can keep up, then i scale with that player’s skill.
On my priest i used it to pace my heals on the tank, since a lower GS tank may need more attention, and once or twice i’ve run into non defcapped tanks who needed me to work really hard to keep up.
Outside of heroics i use it to get an idea of where i stand among other people in a raid, and i use the database tool to look up friend’s gear sets so i know if i need to kick them to roll on some loot. (my guild is an all RL friend thing so we only rarely raid)
GS is a tool, how it is used is another matter.