What's with Gearscore fanaticism?

[Squirrelnut]

Maybe I just never payed attention before but it sure seems like everyone is referring to gear score much more frequently. Whether looking at TankSpot, WoW Forums, or even in-game it seems like everyone and their dog talks about / worries about gear score.

Apparently I have kept myself in the dark because I don't even know how to check gear score. I am aware of some gear rating involved with wow-heroes.com but I see a lot of people talking about 5k gear score stuff when the wow-heroes site seems to refer to 2-3k ratings.

I know there is an addon for gear score (which I have heard is a resource hog constantly sending requests to people around you) but I have never personally used it. Has this addon simply gained immensely in popularity?

I suppose it can be a decent tool for an extremely generic overview of a player before inviting them to a pug, but in general it seems like gearscore is a terrible metric for evaluating people's experience or ability. Especially now that we are in ICC and idiots can easily farm triumph emblems, I see people with good gear that are TERRIBLE as compared to a friend that just recently starting playing and was out healing people while wearing blues.

So in short:
1. Has there been a substantial increase in gearscore popularity
2. Do you pay any attention to it other then e-peen?

[Warwench]

1. there has, it's over run the game and it's a cancer.
2. I started to take a stance of "ok well i will refuse to run anything where there is a GS requirement". That led to be never running anything. Everyone uses it. I personally use wow-hero's and I see that used a lot. It can be confusing as people use the term "GearScore" for both the GS addon, and for WH, when one is about half of the other. I saw someone wanting GS2500+ for Ulduar25. I thought great, i am 3200, i'll be in that!. Yeah, they meant wow heroes and I was at the time, about 2000 on that. I got told to piss off (that term exactly).

so I now use WH just so I know what my GS is to know if I qualify for what ever is being offered.

[Shortypop]

1. Seems almost mandatory for organising pug raids on my server.
2. Nope, I knew what my dps and tank scores were about a month ago when I asked a guildie, just so I knew for pugging raids. On my server its all the GS addon numbers which are quoted, so that's one less confusion.

[PatrikL]

I'm guessing it has to do with the ilvl increases. A few patches ago checking that all gear was epic was enough but now there are so many different levels of epic lvl 80 gear that its easier to use an addon to sum them up.

(and woho, another gearscore thread )

1. Yes on my realm there has been an increase in the usage. It hasnt taken over completely though I dont pug raids so often anymore to say for sure.

2. I have it installed and do look at other peoples gear score every now and then but I dont use it more than to know if a pugged member is a freshly dinged lvl 80 or not. Neither me or any of the guild runs I have been in have kicked someone because of it since the end result is what counts anyway. If a pugged dps claims he can do 5k in starter lvl 80 gear let him show it instead than guessing (which I havent seen anyone do yet but several claim)

[defence]

haha, you know gearscore is bad when a warrior was wearing a +int shield and his reasoning behind it is because the sp shield's GS is bigger than his tanking one

[nethervoid]

I don't really care about gearscore. My gearscore rocks. If you're having a hard time getting into pugs cause you need the gear from the raid you're trying to get into, join a raid guild instead. If you're raiding on an alt, start a raid instead of joining a raid.

I really don't understand all the hate for gearscore. What other information is out there by which to reason who of the mass of total strangers you should invite to your pug raid? It makes perfect sense. Secondly, there are easy solutions for raiding with a low gearscore.

I think people just don't like being measured up.

[swelt]

Would be nice if Elitist Group caught on.

Elitist Group, Blue posts, Comics

It's better, in that it provides a much more balanced overview, but it doesn't look to be quite accessible enough right now. The thing is, gearscore clearly fills a niche, otherwise it would not have caught on to this extent. The problems with it are obvious and described in enough threads already.

The other day, a guild mate set up an ICC rep farming raid. We had a few alts but needed to bring in some pug people. He put the shout out in trade that he was LFM, asked for a gearscore over 9000. This was clearly far too far above the heads of the gearscore morons, and the trade channel erupted. Amusing we thought, and headed off to the instance. When a healer DC'd and we needed a replacement 20 mins later, they were still talking about it. Remarkable.

[Dreador]

I don't really care about gearscore. My gearscore rocks. If you're having a hard time getting into pugs cause you need the gear from the raid you're trying to get into, join a raid guild instead. If you're raiding on an alt, start a raid instead of joining a raid.

I really don't understand all the hate for gearscore. What other information is out there by which to reason who of the mass of total strangers you should invite to your pug raid? It makes perfect sense. Secondly, there are easy solutions for raiding with a low gearscore.

I think people just don't like being measured up.

Well you can take 1 person with 5000 gearscore, that got such by raiding ToGC 10, and you can take another person with 5000 gearscore who farmed heroics and never even stepped foot in naxx. How the hell does that equate? You need to not only require a gearscore but also an achievement link, and even then someone could have been carried.

[markv]

The hilarity on my server is that people want a GS that's much higher than is even required to do the zone. I always point out in trade chat that you don't even have a GS that high even after doing the heroic version of said zone, and the people then tend to stop broadcasting such a high GS requirement. Still, it's pretty funny. GS does not even remotely dictate your skill level, so I don't get why people are so hung up on it.

[Bovinity]

There's a myriad of flaws with gearscore methods, and they've been hashed out over and over and over through thread after thread here. This thread probably won't last long.

But since I'm here at work and I hate gearscore...I would say that my biggest objections to it are:

1) It gives people ignorant of other class mechanics a really lazy way to just judge people without knowing a thing but think they've really got a solid grasp of things.

2) It encourages people to wear bad gear for the sake of a higher gearscore, and then they get rewarded for it by said ignorant people. (From a bear standpoint, the 245 feral idol and most all the tanking rings in ICC are good examples.)

3) People generally just pick a number out of the air to hold people up against without considering the instance they're doing. You see a lot of, "LFM ToC 10, 2800+ WH only!" and you've just got to think, "Where do they even get those numbers? Why would someone with 2800+ even do ToC 10?" And of course the bad side effect of this is that the barrier-to-entry for new players is set ridiculously high.

[Kazeyonoma]

Check out some of the other threads about gearscore to get an idea of its popularity, its pitfalls, and largely, both sides of its love/hate.

Thread closed.