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OP: does gear score matter?
My two bits: only as a loose guideline.
Interesting question posed, and this thread has been thoroughly beaten to death. I'm not trolling here or wanting to kick the dead animal myself, but I noticed some things not mentioned about the gear score obsession. (And, yes, this is my first-ever Tankspot post.)
There is a severe bias shown by many players in the game as to what gear someone is using and what that gear adds up to as the various gear scores from so many different add-on and website assessments. When I'm on my rogue in a PuG, I often feel like some people give me reverential treatment and I often get the whisper: "wow, nice gear." However, I am by no means the best geared player around. Most of my gear comes from PuGs be they heroics or raids as I am not able to play the game 12 months/ year due to my work and lifestyle.
When I'm on my priest, it's a different story. He has a funny spec, but his gear is respectable and also gotten from PuGs. In heroics, I am a supeb healer and keep people from wiping from all kinds of stupid moves while adding a good 400-700 dps to the fight as well. The build holds its own in battlegrounds too (which is why I use it), but when it comes to raids, I can keep up, but am in no way the top healer in HPS, and sometimes people comment about that. In that sense, gear score is like a damage meter: a guideline, but in no way a true measure of caliber -- more often a measure of one's epeen size or lack thereof. I find most use it as a crutch and the most concerned about it are often the weakest players projecting their own personal fears and inadequacies on others. I've had to keep more than one Ulduar-geared tank from wiping a simple heroic run with his dumb tactics.
Finally, I have a new 80 warrior who I'm working on gearing up. When I join a PuG for a heroic, I am frequently getting the question: "Is that your tanking gear?" because I am not yet at 30k stamina. But heck, I'm not trying to tank Onyxia, often it's a run as simple as the Violet Hold. People are pretty jaded these days and only want 'MOAR PHAT LOOTZ' with no effort put out. One poster stated that the best thing is to say "we'll be fine," and I've also found that some variation of that statement does the job, though not always for the bigger prima donnas of WoW who insist on continuously making comments (or sometimes dropping group). As yet this character has not failed to complete a heroic run, but the atmosphere while playing on my warrior is decidedly less fun at times, and I find people condescending a lot even though I know my stuff, have been playing for 5 years, have run these instances many times on multiple characters in multiple roles, and am a good and intelligent player (unless it's 2 AM and my eyes are bleeding from playing too long).
So why make such a long post? I wanted to agree with the idea that gear score is often a crutch used by untalented players, but add that it also becomes a means to unfairly discriminate against and belittle others who may be superior players in terms of talent and knowledge. Yes, use it as a quick way to see if a player is ready for content, but, no, don't believe that it means a high gear score will guarantee success or that a low score will prohibit it. But that's the nature of a PuG. If you want people to not whine about gear score, it's best to keep away from PuGs, though sometimes you get lucky with quality people in your PuG -- that's how I've found most guilds that I've joined.
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Is Gear Score really that important?
