Gearscore =/= Player Performance

[Emi]

Hmm, that "fashion" of using gearscore hasnt hit my realm(nor my previous one) yet and i hope it doesnt.

As far as getting an idea about the players that are in my group and what to expect, a quick inspection for gear but mainly for gemming and enchants is more than enough and turns out to be quite accurate ...

[Blue]

More like half a minute

Depending on the size of the pack it's easier to just mind sear everything if you have good group dps and stuff dies fast. Obviously, the worse the rest of the group is the stronger a shadowpriest is because there's more time to dot up everything and reap the rewards.

Oh, yes I use Mind Sear...it's the only true aoe I have, although it really doesn't improve my dps...not that I'm a recount junkie, or anything...I can stop watching it, anytime I want, you know...really...must have more haste...a, what was I sayin'?

[Tylovan]

Well, Blizz has already given us a way to beat gearscore. Soon, it won't matter.

Look at it this way. In previous patches and expansions, there were "tiers" of content. You had your Naxx10 guys, you Naxx25 guys, your Ulduar guys, your Ulduar Hard Mode guys, etc.

Now? A little dilligence and any 80 fresh out of 79 can have a 5k gearscore. I myself retired from wow for a few months prior to 3.3, and between when it came out and today, went from 3.4k to almost 5k. And that's without really putting a lot of time in. The gear "gap" between played of different levels of experience has mostly disappeared, other than maybe the real tough guys have more ICC25 stuff right now. So eventually people will be like "Well, EVERYONE has a 5k+ GS now. How do we tell who to bring to our raids? Then thigns like "word of mouth" and "good reputation as a player" might mean something again.

Just hold tight brothers.

A very good point. It also brings up something someone else pointed out to me awhile ago.

so...with the whole Triumph thing in 3.3 right now (nearly free Tier 9 and all that), we're all feeling pretty good because we're on top of the world. But eventually the true great equalizer will come: The expansion.

We all know that if things follow the usual form, your best purples will only last you so far into new expansion content, and depending on what the stuff is, will quickly be replaced by quest greens and blues.

I kinda wonder...how's that gonna affect things? Especially due to the changes we'll be seeing...could Blizzard be using this as an excuse to sort of 'reset' the item levels? like will the gear we see now be only...ilevel 55 in the future? That'd kinda throw things on their ear.

[Airowird]

To me GearScore is a bad thing because:

#1 It's used as a metric for skill. Checking Gem choices & Talents or even a Karma-like addon with sharing capability are all better options imo.
#2 Several people don't know how to use the addon, or insist on using it wrongly. Usually, it's those people not living up to the GS expectations, making the addon less useful.
#3 It doesn't have a tank/DPS/Heal score, it's purely item level. Heck, it doesn't even account for enchant and gem levels (which would be a major step ahead)

The only reason it's 'useful' is because it makes inspecting someone and going over their gear faster.


PS: @Saent; Generally it is better to write a message in the body of a letter or post than in a PS. On top of that, PS is short for Post-Scriptum (after-writing), so multiple PS should be written as either PS1, PS2 (although not that smart on a forum full of gamers) or preferably PS, PPS, PPPS, ...

[Selyndia]

"Well, EVERYONE has a 5k+ GS now. How do we tell who to bring to our raids? Then thigns like "word of mouth" and "good reputation as a player" might mean something again.

No it won't. The scale will just simply shift. Instead of 5k it will become 5500 or 6k.

The end result is, Gearscore does a single thing: It provides a numerical value representing the ilevel of the gear a character is wearing. That's it. You could do a similar thing by just adding up every piece of gear's exact iLevel or using PUGChecker to see their average iLevel, taking a look at wow-heroes or whatever gear sites or even look at it yourself with a cursory glance through armory or an inspect.

In the end, all it does is provide information, and how people react to that information, you, I or blizzard can not change. The reason it is so popular is because compared to all of the other options I listed above gearscore is faster.

[Eravian]

Word of mouth and reputation still do mean things, at least on my server, because if you know the guy putting together the raid, and he likes you, you're much more likely to get slotted in because he knows you can perform. This is the case in most places, people are much more willing to group with people that they know can perform. It's largely when you don't know the person putting the group together or they have an anathema to wiping that this pops up.
And as far as the expansion goes, Tylovan, I think it will indeed equalize things, and to a certain extent those who aren't cutting edge now but want to be may be best served by just leveling toons, raising gold, etc. in anticipation of the expansion launch, and just do ICC for fun. That being said, however, I think our epics will be outmoded, but with only five levels instead of ten this time around, it may just be that our ICC gear lasts us into raiding the new content.

[Sedraxis]

Personally I would prefer WoW Heroes over GearScore. At least with WoW Heroes it will check gems and enchants and you can see if the person has a general idea of what their character is supposed to be doing vs just randomly enchanting crap. It will also show you the general area on where that player should focus instead of just giving them a number.

[Mert]

Yeah, I was always that guy while levelling that refused to run an instance with the level 60 someone wanted to bring into the group. I'd seriously leave the group, because I don't run instances to be completely unchallenged. What's the point in doing RFD, if it's not epic?

I didn't start playing until just after Wrath came out, but I was also that guy. Aside from Dire Maul, I did every Vanilla instance with an at-level group the first time through. By the time I got to Outlands I'd built up such a reputation for my tanking that I only did around 30 quests between 58 and 70 and most of those were dungeon quests anyway. I also set up (pretty successful) runs of Kara and Zul'Aman without anybody being higher than 72.

Back on-topic, I can see why Gearscore could be nice as a personal measure - I like to look on wow-heroes and see how I compare to the other Prot Paladins on my server and that kind of thing sometimes. But to refuse to heal someone without having even seen them play is just completely ridiculous. A friend of mine once got told he couldn't do UP because he didn't have proper enchants. He was missing Beserking on his iLevel 187 quest blue sword or something I think

I might start queuing for things in my passive unhittable gear and see what kind of comments I get.

[bobdole99]

I really don't get the hang up on gearscore, infact I never even heard of it until 3.3 dropped and people starting posting threads about it here. I installed it and find it entertaining, about as much as the namescore addon.

Personally I've NEVER kicked anyone from my groups for putting out lousy dps, I have kicked plenty of people for being jerks or running ahead and pulling things and then complaining that I wasn't taunting off them... pulling is my job. Heck I even had a 600 dps rogue the 2nd day of 3.3 in one instance and a freshly "hacked" ret pally with half his gear slots empty in another... or last night I had a lock that never ran gundrak before that I had to explain the bosses and she only put out 1.2k... she was one of the funner pugs I've had in my groups.

People just need to get over it, big freaking deal if a random pug takes an extra couple of minutes due to low dps. H HoR is a bit different, but you shouldn't be getting anyone that given they are skilled can't put out suffienct dps in a pug anyhow, if they can't perform you'll know soon enough and then you can decide.

-b

[Finelle]

Well, the pugs on my server have begun asking for 5.3k GS to do TOGC10. And 4.8k for MALYGOS of all things. Kill GS dead IMO. But wait, doesn't Armory tell you the same info? Yes, but by killing GS, you make the benefit/cost ratio shift markedly towards actually paying attention to what gear the person has and the enchants, gems etc instead of some number derived off the item level. And it will stop idiots from wanting absurd GS scores and actually spend the time to check.

[Kazeyonoma]

Hey didn't I say no more of these threads?

Bad Satorri.