Every time you log in to WoW, you’re bound to get spammed with something like this: “LFM to <random instance here> Link [Epic] and Achievement, or ignore”
Me personally, i think that’s bullpoop. This days, gear is handed to you as soon as you ding 80. What i want to say, that gear does not mean skill. Perhaps in vanilla wow, but not now. It sure does help when your gear is great, it shows your dedication and some other stuff, but not the skill.
I’ve meet countless of clueless players with great gear. Also, i met tons of players, that were AWESOME, but due to RL, they don’t have time to farm raids for better gear, but non the less, they out perform better geared players in any way. So, me being EWUL as only Healers can be, refused to go ANYWHERE with the people that asked me for my gear lvl and achievement. (I own even naked, i’m that awesome! 
). Besides, i hate pugs, but that is not the topic here.
Anyway, i know that people who ask for achievements and [epic] have their own reasons, one of them being “better a noob with [epic] then a noob without it”. Whole point of this post is that skilled people don’t need “Über” or “Imba” gear to kill bosses. Hopefully, this post will make some people contemplate their game.
Originally written by Gevlon. You can check the original post by clicking HERE.
Ungeared
Have you heard the excuses that “I’m ungeared for 3K DPS” or “My guild is really nice and good but we are yet ungeared for Ulduar”? Or on the other hand have you seen the ridiculous requests “whisper [epic] for inv to 5-man”?
We at Windwalkers (BTW recruiting) thought this nonsense should end. 10 of us gathered blue gear. I mean not a single epic item, not even an ilvl200 crafted. We did not used epic gems or enchants needing Abyss crystal, nor Sons of Hodir exalted enchant. We used profession bonuses though as every raider should. I logged out in this gear, and also the MT of the run.
So we got 10 characters in gear that would not get us invites to any PuG. What did we do? This:
Combat log, part2. Video will come on Wednesday.
Raid setup (some logged out in blues, some in epics. We have fires to fight you know):
1 shaman (enhancement)
1 rogue (combat)
1 mage (fire)
2 priests (shadow, holy/disc)
1 warrior (prot)
1 paladin (holy)
and 3 of the OP class:
(tank, resto, moonkin)
As you can see it’s far from any synergic team. Practically those who wanted to come. Bring the skilled player, not the class.
Not sure what happened to my above post but some words seem to have gone missing. But that first line was supposed to say “I seriously believe Skill is greater than Gear and I’ve seen countless proofs to that.”
x_X
~Raive/Arnoch ~Malfurion ~Horde ~Bomsquad
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I seriously Gear and I’ve seen countless proofs to that. Like a heroic with a lock in all greens… pulling 3.5k sustained single-target..
Anyway, my warrior is decently geared Prot and Fury. I levelled him prot all the way to 80, learning the skills, getting better at it, then Dual Specc’d fury to try out dpsing and let me tell ya.. I don’t care how much gear I get for my dps set I will probably never hit the 3k mark in fury cause I just can’t figure it out and I will admit it. My fury spec has been shunted to the side and is now a “dailies spec.” Bravo guys. Keep opening eyes on silly skill measuring methods.
~Raive/Arnoch ~Malfurion ~Horde ~BomSquad
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I’m an 80 Blood DK, who’s been playing for a grand total of about 6 months. I have a gearscore of 2300, and I’m working on improving daily. Currently putting out around 3k DPS, and I can tank most heroics. I’m not the greatest player, but one thing that stands out to me is how little people listen to each other.
I’ve been in several runs where the raid leader would take 5-10 minutes explaining the fight, and what each person should do. These aren’t even the fast “Special Achievement” runs. They’re runs for first-timers (like me, usually). Yet most of the time, the few people that need the explanation are off messing around, and end up dying first. And yes, those are usually the ones who complain the most.
Patch 3.3 just came out, and I was attempting to tank Halls of Reflection for the first time. Noone made any suggestions, but a mage (of course) complained because my health was only 27k, even though my defense was at 540 (generally considered raid worthy). So, without any instructions or suggestions, we attempted the dungeon, and of course wiped. Before I could resurrect, much less adjust my tanking strategy, the mage had cussed me out and left the group.
Suffice it to say that I understand from firsthand experience that gear does not equal skill. A lot of the people with gear have gotten it on lucky rolls or ninja’d it. On the other hand, there are the few amazing players I enjoy running with, because not only can they hold their own, they’re helpful even when someone new (like me) screws up on their first attempt. The important thing is not having gear. The important thing is being willing to learn and improve, and passing that knowledge on to anyone that needs it.
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I go both ways on this topic. My main point is that, yes asking for achievements is absolutely retarded. If you ask for an achievement that only better guilds on the server have done and no pug in the past has ever been able to complete it, what point is there asking because all the people in those “HARDCORE RAIDING GUILDS” aren’t going to pug.
On the other hand, gear checking to me is a guideline for what you will be pulling in my raid. I gear check any pug I put together, mind you I don’t gear check anymore for Naxx10/25 EoE10/25 or OS10/25.(if you still do, you need to uninstall cause you can do it without evening looking at the screen now). But back to the story. The gear checking process isn’t as much to weed out the geared and the undergeared for me, it’s more of a first stand point. If you are lower geared on wow-heroes then I want then I’ll ask other people in the pug if they have run with the person and if they would be suitable for the pug at hand. If no one answers I ask the guildies if they have any knowledge on the character. If nothing else, I’ll just blatently say, “So I looked at your gearscore and it’s lower then expected. What has your DPS looked like in the past and what kind of raids have you completed before?” If they answer correctly, I’ll just grant them a one way ticket to more gear, but if they don’t they get an invite but it’s only for a trial run. Their continuation in the pug will all be on their own shoulders, if you fail well sorry, gtfo. However, if you pull your socks up and do what you are told then all the better welcome to the team =).
On another note, similar to the gearchecking process and all is the fact that these triumph badges drop in heroics. When Blizz first did that with conquest badges I was furious. It was a smack in the face for all my hard work. People were walking around in 2 piece T8 25 man just cause they can get a chain heroic group to do so. Ya I’m all for gearing up people quicker, but to the people that worked hard to get the gear from the raid itself didn’t earn any compensation other than having a LITTLE more T8 then the rest. But as far as the triumphs go, I’m even more furious about. Since you can purchase full set t9 with just badges, EVERYONE when i get back from exams to play is going to be running around in t9 232 version. The only thing to set people apart now is if they are lucky enough to get a trophy from 25 man version. I like the visible gap between those who don’t put the time in compared to those who make a little time out of their week to make that raid and get some gear. It’s not to say that you farm the raid, but mostly it’s is the luck of the drops. You win some you lose some. To those against this, I could assume that you are one that just doesn’t have the time to grab gear from raids. But to counter that arguement I have to say. Put yourself in my position. I did ToC10 and 25 regularly with my gear. I got lucky with a ToC25 and got 3 healing plate pieces for my Holy Pally in one run (being the only holy pally in the raid did help), but it took me a while to get other pieces of gear to make my gear score what it is today (2570).
My main character
US-Garrosh Canadialad (Holy Pally MS/Prot Pally OS)
Gearing is all about luck of the raid drops, but now since the new triumph crap that has entered patch 3.3 you will see everyone at a starting point of 3k dps minimum. Unless you just don’t understand the class, you will pull 3k dps regardless of your skill in raids, the gear will carry you there. So asking for 3k dps or better is practically obsolete now.
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tbh, after reading all of this…gear is extremely easy to get. if you are talking about doing an end-game raid, you by nature are to have gear FOR the raid. the new lfg system makes is unconditionably easy to get gear no matter what. I personally wont take anyone who is not the ilvl for a raid im doing to come becaue i expect other players to know what the hell theyre doing, and by at least expecting the gear from the instance and the acheivement provides me they’ve has SOME experience in there. l2find a guild. seriously. if ppl are so good as they say in their blues and crap, you would have no problem and be in a guild.
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Getting gear got easier; getting into PUGs and raids is about to get easier with the latest patch. Gearscores were intended to provide a measure in the wake of cookie cutter raids. I get more invites to PUGs on my “undergeared” hunter than i do on my Epic geared DK because ranged DPS is in demand and hunters are notorious for sustained high DPS numbers. BUT gearscores dont tell it all- and I’m not just talking about ‘chants, gems and profession specific stuff, I’m talking about your basic buffs from foods and having the right raid buffs- why on earth do mages give a DK an intellect buff? or priests a spirit buff to the DK? It’s either because they are lazy, they are inatentive, they don’t know better or they are just stupid. I know, it’s easier to give raid or group wide buffs, and that isn’t the best example, but it is the most obvious of useless buffs that are often applied. Depending on the pally buff or totems that get dropped your DPS is going to be different, period- in a 10 man with 2 Shammy’s it’s great to have the mana totem out, and if they both drop one your casters are golden! But that does nothing for your melee dps.
A point we are all dancing around here is group skill- the synergy of the group. “Pecker Checkers” usually bring a fair amount of drama with them, which interferes with the group’s dynamic and leads to hurt feelings and wipes more often than it should. It’s what we all complain about in the battlegrounds (“why’d “X” just run by while I was fighting all alone”, or “what? no heals?”)If you can work together you can overcome a lack of gearscore or, to a certain extent, skill.
Gearscores and gear inspections can give you a concept of the player and their skill, but nothing more and its not very accurate at that. I roll a hunter and a DK- which requires two different play styles, different macros, different hotkeys and buffs, and most significantly two different skill-sets (I’m not a faceroller and actually don’t use any macros). This doesn’t make me more or less skilled than someone who only rolls one class, but I do understand the mechanics of both of these classes well enough to know when I’m doing my job and when someone else isn’t.
I avoid “P-Checkers” since I hate in game drama, which means that they are limiting their choices- I know I’m not the only one out there. So do you want to waste time “checking” ppl, or do you want to play? I’d rather play- it IS why i pay that $15 a month afterall. So go ahead and GS me here- you’ll find a weakly geared hunter who pulls 2.5-3k dps in 5 mans because I have worked hard at two things- knowing my role and playing my role. Role as in my little piece of the 5-10-25 or larger group.
The group is greater than the individual- perhaps we should all post “DPS LFG- post GS and acheivements before invite” lol!
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It’s definitely true that gear does not equate to skill. My mage ran once with another mage – both of us arcane – and my dps was a solid 500 above his. Halfway through the instance he /whispers me asking how my dps is better than his. Turns out he was running with ilvl ~232 gear, while my ass was clothed in ilvl ~200 gear.
Although its important to remind all dps out there that it takes more than just high dps to be skillful. If you have recount, you’ll often note that some people are rocking high dps, but actually account for a nominal part of the total damage done. Other dps just get themselves constantly killed by attacking a target the tank hasn’t aggroed well (dps isn’t worth shit if you’re dead half the time).
Now, I’m not perfect myself – but I’m getting better. I understand keeping the healer safe (amazing how many tanks/dps won’t pull targets off the healer), letting the tank build at least some aggro, etc. Or, as a healer – how to not only react to damage, but anticipate incoming damage so those long cast times don’t leave you’re charges dead…
It’s not gear that makes the player. It’s their skill.
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This story made me happy to see.Heres what I think of “Link said achvment”,my douch brother bought his account on ebay:an 80 prot pally…it has all 10m raid achvmnts up to uld and a few 25m along w/an arena netherdrake,with that said hes never played a pally ever.So for all the ppl trying to keep “noobs” out of pug grps remember Ebay.
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Well i can see the point people do need a chance.But also 1 thought some bosses require geared players.enrage timers can hurt if not.Otherwise np at all gotta have a chance.
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Ok normally I just read posts and listen to the difference in opinions. but this topic i just cant idle by and not comment.
Ok given it is true that better gear can (and generally dose) increase a persons given potential. ( dps, heal, tank) And yes in this day and age in WoW epics for the most part can be easily obtained (via emblems, proffs, etc.) Acheivments can show that youve been through places and is often a decent sign that you at least have (at minimal) know the fights.
Having said this…..
There are factors that(unfortunatly) are tended to be forgotten.
Spec- ok duh for some cases (like a fury warrior trying to tank prolly isnt going to work to well). However thats not what im getting at. Take example of the Rogue class, they being one of the most (if not the most) Stat specific classes out there. however contrary to popular belief its no where near an easy class to master. those that are truely great not only have the skill but highly monitor the stats based off there spec. IE- hit cap, weapon type/avaiablity, crit, armor pen, expetise, Agil, Stam, Dodge, Resil, haste, armor. and these numbers are all different for each and every spec, so gear has to be different. and given the numer of specing for the rogue class it is no where near as easy as one might think to get gear.
Acheivments- ok sure i mentioned the positives up top however there are the negatives. say its an alt your running and you have the gearscore some1 requires but not the acheivments on that particualr toon. S.O.L buddy your not getting in that group with this toon.
Guild- this is what i refer to old saying “stuck between a rock and a really hard place”. Your in a casual raiding guild (at best) but there not really progressing so your only alternative is either to move to a Raid guild or Pug. The raid guild has the standard (need X GS and X acheivements to join) and on top of that you start off low man on totem pole at best if you acually manage to get in. Where as you go for a Pug knowing the bad possibilities going into it and in most cases with seasoned players expect it, however now you need the same requirements as the raiding guild just to Pug it? Where is the justice?
There are many more problems with both sides of the argument. more then i care to take the time with writing this (belive me i could write a 20 page paper on this in a heatbeat sort of speak) The point is there really is no right or wrong side to this. Its all a matter of so many different aspects comming to one place. That being said just take a look at all aspects of things before decideing on weather or not to let someone into your Pugs, raids, instances or whatever and that everone just needs to relax and use your heads.
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Weigraf’s post, though very informative, doesn’t exactly fit into my schedule. I do what I can, when I can. Upgrading my first set of 80 badge gear made my hit rating go into the crapper and I sold it back to the vendor (warrior) Not so much of an upgrade for me. I filled in a few new pieces of ToC heroic plate because the stats were different but the GEARSCORE stayed the same as what I had before. And my guild has the attitude of “we have done it, we got the acheivement, we are not going to go do it again” The same 10 folks go raid 3x a week and the rest of us sit it out, because we are “undergeared”. Who’s fault is this? Why not take one undergeared player per week and help them out? Why keep running Ulduar and D/E the gear into abyss crystals? With over 100 in the guild I am sure someone would jump at the chance to go. But only the “leet 10″ are raiding as a guild. I am not asking to be carried, I am just asking for a chance to prove my worth. And nothing like getting into that Ony 25 and having a dps sword drop and it be given to the pally TANK (“roll for main spec my @–”) If only I was able to roll on tank gear…..
So needless to say I am shopping for another guild.
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It’s gotten to be as if folks don’t remember when they ran through places needing skill to pull things off, and instead rely on gear to faceroll.
An obligatory sob story example about skill. How about the pug 25 VoA that gets through Koralon easy. Get to Emalon, and have a feral druid topping the chart pulling 5k. Wipe on Emalon pull 1 due to tankage with a tank new to the fight. Fight 2 wipe to chaining lightning on half the ranged dps. Fight 3 wipe to just 2-3 dps dieing, so blame the guy only pulling 2k dps. Turns out 100% of the druid’s damage was on Emalon none on the adds. That same druid didn’t use his battle res for one of the other 4k damage dealers that went down to chain lightning. That same druid calls everyone noobs and quits the raid.
I’ll admit, there is a minimum I expect of players going into a run, but I don’t base it on gear score. For my pugs, I ask that folks have a minimum dps/survivability/healitude, a minimum amount of skill, and the ability to follow directions. If we wipe for pure lack of dps, I replace the worst performing dps (this is rarely the cause with 6k’ers in such supply). If someone is a moron for multiple pulls despite directions, causing wipes, they get replaced. If someone acts like a whiney ass because the group wiped on an “easy” boss, they get replaced.
I don’t take people who like to waste other people’s time. If a player is honest about their ability, performs well enough, and takes directions well I have a spot for them in any of my runs.
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On KJ where one of my 80s now reside, my Deathknight. I have been part of most of the big raiding guilds, but due to schoo, and work, i was hardly ever on to do raids. But last month, got on, and got an invite to 25 man VOA, my DK probably had a 2200 GS, didn’t play him much, my paladin had been xferred to a different serve. I went and survived, and was top 5 in dps while everyone was well above 4k in GS. We moved from 25man VOA, which btw I had never done, to 25 man ONY, and granted I died due to whelps, I never got deepbreathed and only died after she was down about 10%. It is easily seen that if given the chance, the under geared people can help in any way.
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Great discussion and valid points have been made on both sides. Love the fact that the OP’s guild pulled off the all blue down. Now THAT should be an achieve. Also like the “diploma” comparison.
Just a quick aside regading dps waiting for tanks to establish aggro: don’t forget that hunters (Misdirection) and rogues (Tricks of the Trade) can assist in that regard. So when you see the hunter fire off shots as soon as the tank engages and/or the rogue run in on the heels of the tank, that’s not a green light to dps… that’s your aggro management team in action. Give ‘em a couple of seconds.
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If your guild isn’t running ToC/Ulduar, but you want to. Not only do you want to, but you want to make it fast, fast being around 1 hour or 1 hour and 30 minutes for ToC. If you’re like me and have studying to do, you obviously don’t want to waste 4 hours wiping in ToC because someone has low dps or a tank or healer can’t do their job right. I have nothing against helping other players gear up, and I agree that asking for epic and raid achievement is ludacris. Nowadays I rarely see a pug looking for people without the achievement for a raid. To me, Naxxramas is an instance that level 80′s with 1/2 – 3/4 epics should we able to attend. As many have said, skill does not equal gear, and vice versa. But… if you were to look at it at a different angle, you can see that if you have a grey sword that his 42.3 dps … and you compare it to an item that has 345.4 dps then you can obviously tell that the sword with 345.4 dps is obviously going to hit harder.
I have tried to assemble pugs for ToC, and some times I do check gear, its compulsive. I do ask for the achievement if they have it, just so I know if I have to explain tactics or not. It is nice to have everyone know what they’re doing during each fight in order to save time. Asking for the Epic achievement is unnecessary, there are plenty of blues that are better than epics. Take for instance, the Essence of Gossamer. It gives a lot of stamina, but it is a blue, ilvl200. It is basically the equivalent to the Black Heart from ToC Hc. (Btw… ToC Hc and normal is a great instance to get good gear once you turn 80.) What is annoying though is that you can’t carry 2 or more dps through a boss fight due to the enrage timer. If 3 dps are hitting 1.5k in Ulduar, you won’t be able to beat the enrage timer. A good player with blues, greens, and some epics are able to hit over 2.5k, I’ve seen it, but it shouldn’t start a trend when players have to carry others through content that they are obviously not ready for. This in turn sacrifices their own time and progression. Also, if you have a dps in a raid group that is underperforming and he wins a high level piece of gear as opposed to a good dps who also needs it, then it is a bit unfair to the better dps. Yes it is nice for the underperformer to get better gear, but it’s also unfair. The higher dps obviously contributed more to the raid and therefore deserves it more. It’s a two way street and it can be argued either way.
Anyone can lie about their dps… I’ve seen a mage in 4.5k gear score hit 2.5k on Jaraxxus. I’ve seen a dk with 4.1k gear score hit 3.3k on Jaraxxus. It doesn’t matter too much, but inspecting someone’s gear or having them link their achievement or epic is just a way of making sure you know what you’re doing. I admit… I’ve cheated on getting my epic. My trinkets are ilvl200 still, but the best tanking trinkets are from Ignis and ToC25. Ignis gives the Heart of Iron and ToC25 gives Juggernaut’s Vitality.
Don’t dislike this comment just because I’m telling the truth.
BTW… please don’t get the underachiever addon and fake the achievements… it’s really stupid.
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i get asking for geared people to an extent. typically the beter gear obviously the more experienced the player is… in most cases. gear is literally given to you as long as you take the time too run heroic dungeons, which you can do witha fail group of any competence. conquest badges are literally given to you pretty much for showing up to an instance. however achievements need leet people. on one hand theres the “we were definitely leet enough to do this before you guys” and then theres the “i might be slower than the rest of the realm but that doesnt mean im not leet i just havent had a chance to run this raid yet” if you ask for an achievement link say for naxx thats fine seeing as people get there gear before they even get a chance to worry about a raid in the first place. but much after naxx 25 is just plain stupid even with conquest badge gear your still gonna be labaled as undergeared for say uld 25 or eoe 25. all ill say is yes make BENCHMARKS but dont make them unnatainable to players who may not have the time. say link that youve done the previous raid to x boss or have 3.5k GS (that number is 1. based off the addon and 2. a rough estimate of where heroic and conquest badge gear will get you) AMEN =O
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Some times I think that Saurfang server is where all the gear leets go to die, as another poster has said, it’s all they ask for when PuGing raids.
My guild we have this rule, it’s the player we care about, so if we have to Pug a member we don’t care what your wearing as long as you do your bit.
I think if someone is doing so badly in a run, it’s not worth yelling at them that they are Noobs or what ever, give them some constructive feed back is way better. And heck wiping that first time is half the fun, at least you learnt he next time around where NOT to stand.
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While I agree with the [link achievement] thing is wrong for 10 mans, in 25′s it’s completely different. The ten man version is always a much better place to gear up, especially now with ToC10 being as easy as it is. With 226′s being available with Conquests which drop off all bosses, and Triumphs coming from the Daily Heroic, gearing up isn’t hard anymore. As soon as you have all the 226′s gear from Conquests and T9 shoulders from Triumph, you’re pretty much set to go for ToC10. Especially if you run H ToC5 everyday and get the other gear from there, you’re easily good to go.
No, I’m not saying that gear is everything. But, being undergeared for 10 mans is near lazy in my eyes. I’ll give you a chance, but you have to prove you’re good.
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I agree that gear is not the only deciding factor, but the thing is, not everyone with poor gear is skilled. While there are some skilled ungeared people, the majority is not and thats why people ask for achievments in pugs. Asking for gear requirements and achievments is simply the most reliable way to form a raid that is unlikely to wipe.
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The problem is that there are 2 groups of people in any game; the people who think they’re god’s gift to gaming, and the people who can do their job well. Unfortunately the latter are rather rare.
A lot of the time when people ask for Gearscore or something similar, it really isn’t neccesary – the only exceptions are if you want to do hardmodes, and then you only need the tanks to be geared enough to not die faster than they can be healed. What you need is not even necessarily skill, merely the ability to use that gray matter between your ears, or failing that follow instructions.
Most of this Gearscore nonsense is created by the people who think they’re amazing because they have a few fancy pieces of gear and don’t want to take anyone with gear that is a single whit worse. As always, gear only defines the peak of your potential output – if you are in greens then there is no way that you are going to be doing 10k dps on a single target, but neither is it guaranteed that you will if you’re in full iLvl 245 gear; and not just that, there are plenty of cases where the best gear is not the gear with the highest item lvl.
However I would have to say that the thing I find most offensive is when an alt is declined for a raid because their gearscore is lower than the minimum that the raid leader is spamming into /2 when infact the raid leader also has a lower gearscore than that minimum!
Mathilleus – Colonial Icons – Thaurissan
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Twisting Nether ~ Kahlancypher
Well this is a debate I have had many times over with friends, an random people that would like to join a pug that I might be leading.
An for me anywayss when I GC someone. This is the list of things I look for.
Gem: Do they have gems in ever socket, an are they proper gems I.E. a mage or priest with a STR gem in.
Enchants: Do they have ever item enchat, an again the proper enchant.
Greens/Blues: How many if any at all.
An I understand that putting a epic cut gem into a item lvl 200-226 is jsut crazy, being it so easy to get 232+ items. But having no gems at all, tell me you might not understand how to use the AH an buy gems. Or how to socket them.
An as for enchats. I also understand that something like 81+ Spell power to a staff cost 1K gold. An putting it on a low lvl item seems a waste. But just putting 18+ stam. Enchants on the gear you can will help. More HP never hurt anyone.
An if your a skilled player. Well then the less greens an blues items you have the better right? if you can do 6k dps with a 2k GS. then you should be able to do 10k dps with a 2800 GS right?
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While [EPIC] may be a worthless achievement it is not true that gear does not matter. You CAN do a lot with little gear but its very rare to find someone who is very skilled yet too lazy to get their free 4k gearscore by running heroics. My roommate just hit 80 on his first toon and had a 4k gearscore in 10 days without setting foot in a raid. Gear does not prove skill but lack of gear proves that you can’t put in the effort to run a few heroics and become all that you can be before going to raids. If you could pull 3k in blues then why don’t you run a few heroics, get 226 gear, and pull 6k in a week? People in blues performing well are definitely the exceptions, not the rule. Performance = Skill*gear. Skill is impossible to judge before a raid. Gear is the only part of the equation you can figure out easily. Which is better? X*2 or Y*10? We dont know the value of X or Y and we have no indication that one is higher than the other so we might as well go with 10 unless you like playing the lottery. In fact I would argue that since all the bad players I know have bad to mediocre gear and all the really good players have at least 4k on any alt that didn’t ding 80 yesterday (and if they did they’re running heroics for super easy and fast epics) gear does not guarantee skill but it indicates it. The more skilled someone is the more likely they are to gear up quickly so the less time they spend with poor gear. Therefore the lower the percentage of skilled yet under-geared players. You’re all just getting your panties in a bunch because you’re assuming that people looking for gear think gear>skill but that isn’t the case.
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@Avarice, I think you kind of missed my main point. Which is that people have all of these easy opportunities to get gear, therefore I don’t respect them if they don’t take advantage. And no, you’re right, I don’t expect people to do outdated content. But I’m still frustrated that the Tier 7 content is all completely outdated at this point. I mean when new players dinged 70 during BC they still had to go to Kara, just because the rest of the server was geared didn’t mean they got to jump right into Hyjal or BT. I enjoyed not having gear because it gave me a goal to attain. Now I shit epics, and I am bored. I can’t imagine it is much fun for new players to hit 80 and gear up ridiculously quick. They spend all that time leveling, hit 80, spend 2 weeks gearing up and realize “Oh, now there’s nothing for me to do.”
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When it comes to pugs you have to make the best group choices with the tools you have. If I see someone with 4.5k gearscore, I’ll always take them over someone with worse gear. Why? Because unless you know the player it’s impossible to tell if the person isn’t a drooling idiot. If they are well geared then there is a far higher chance they will perform well. This being said I think there is far too much focus on ‘epic and achievment = inv’ and over the top requirments for everything. The amount of times I see people asking for ‘LF1M dps for CoS HC! 3k++ dps only! /w epic for invite’ makes me sick.
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yah , thx for the support. There is alot of gs talk and requirements to run various raids this is espicially prominent on area 52 and a little on Alleria. i try to help out the noob as much as possible, need a run thru deadmines? I just like the feeling of helpin someone out once in awhile….sorry a little of topic…..lol
—the baz…
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Where’s the video…lol
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Here is my take on things. Gear is ridiculously easy to get nowadays. I have 3 sets of gear for 2 classes. I dont even focus on one of them, only pick up off spec gear (my tank set on my dk.) My hunter is unguilded and on a different server. I didn’t even log into him between early naxx and a few weeks ago. My lowest gearscore out of all three is 2498. Remember, one set of gear is offspec only and the other I have only been working on for a few weeks.
It takes a few weeks of work to get the gear you need, if you do your progression right and go to instances that you know will drop something you need. Between reg toc’s(which have better gear than Naxx 25 btw), Htocs and badge gear, you can be almost completely epic, ulduar geared in a very short time. Anyone who claims to be skilled enough to do ToTC should have taken the time to do these very simple steps at least to make themselves better.
Achievements are a different story. Should I have firefighter to have to do a regular ulduar 25 run? No. Should I at least know the basic strategies in ulduar before I go on a pug? Yeah. It isn’t fair to other people to ask them to carry me through a dungeon I haven’t even watched videos of. I resent people that do not know the basic strat of fights, because that is laziness on their part, since they can just go on youtube and watch a video of every fight in the game. Achievements are a good way of determining if someone knows the fights, since if they have the achieve they have done it at least once.
Basically, if you haven’t taken the few weeks needed to improve yourself, and are still wearing greens/ mostly blues, or if your badly itemized (wearing a leather agi item as a plate dps), dont have anything gemmed at least to the blue gems (only cost about 40g each if that), and arent enchanted (again, dont need the highest level, just need chants that make sense), don’t expect me or anyone else to take you at your word that your a good player. Your gear choices tell me otherwise. Go through the very easy process Blizzard has created to get you geared, don’t expect to have everything handed to you.
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Different bosses require different things.
Sometimes it requires you to use a special ability to the detriment of dps (eg mages de-cursing against Noth). Sometimes it requires you to perform a tactical task to the detriment of dps (eg getting people out of coccoons against Maexxna). Sometimes it is a survival fight (eg Koralon) — you have to focus on survival, because total damage done is more important than spike dps. And sometimes you just go all out (eg Patchwerk).
Through it all, the ability to do what you need to do in order for the raid to succeed is paramount. But gear is not unimportant. Nor is dps/tps/hps output. It’s part of what makes a toon successful. It’s just not the only thing.
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Shacklebolt- would you think that everyone should have to raid level 60 raids and 70 raids before being allowed to raid at 80? Of course you dont- because that would be silly to force people to play old, outdated content when there are easier ways to obtain loot by leveling quickly to 80. The same can be said for your argument against those ‘who skip the gearing process’. The only reason to do this would be to satisfy some desire to punish others who didnt go through the trouble you did and ‘earn’ their gear. The game continues to grow and advance, with new ways of earning gear- you might not like the fact that it is now easy to bypass raids like Naxx, but it is illogical to punish those new to the game by forcing them to do old, outdated content for your sense of ego and entitlement.
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In the absence of knowing the person and how good they are, gear score and achievements are the only way to get an idea of how good the person is. Would any reasonable group take an 1800 GS on wow heroes over a 2600 GS on wow heroes when know one knows who either is? Also, a high gear score tells several things about the person who has it: it tells us the person is willing to spend the time to gear their character (even if its just heroic emblems, and it shows they have run a lot of instances and thus probably at least know their character), the gear tells us they have an understanding of what items are good for their toon, and it also gives an idea of how good they are. No, you can never know for sure how good the person is until you run with them, but in the absence of other information, GS is the way to go.
Additionally, achievements are helpful as well. Achievements can show that a person at least has experience inside of instances. If someone has the Ulduar achievement, you know that they have at least been inside the instance, and they have seen it and probably understand their role in it- even if their skill is lacking. Experience in many cases is just as vital as the persons talent level. Many fights are difficult to understand without having seen them in action (Like the Twin Valkyres), so experience can sometimes trump skill.
Finally, someone mentioned that it is unfair that when a person dies, they still get the achievement for the boss fight. I fail to see how this is unfair, many people die in many instances, yet they still get to roll on loot, and get the achievement, and get experience from the fight, and get to progress with the group farther into the instance. How is it fair to deny them this? This is not hardcore mode in Diablo 2, where if you die, your character is lost forever. This is WOW, where if you die (and it will happen often), one of the many rezzing classes can bring you back. The game is designed to cause characters to die- and to punish them further from raiding would be unfair and unnecessary.
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As a leader of a guild on Stormreaver, I can understand why people use the gearscore addon. My guild is a ridiculously small group of friends from college and we barely get enough people on to run even a guild 10 man. So when we get together and need to pug people for spots it’s just easier to have some sort of bar to judge them on. Granted I still think gearscore is a terrible system, it doesn’t take into account enchants or gems. But I also know how easy it can be to get gear. Since they replaced Heroism and Valor emblems with Conquest emblems a person can feasibly gear in almost all 226 gear without doing anything other than heroics or Naxx 10. As such, I find it a bit frustrating when people don’t take advantage of this. I hit 80 shortly after the xpac hit and spent a good amount of time farming heroics for 200 level items. I have no respect for people who assume they can skip that step in the gearing process. This is not to say I require people to have all ToC25 gear before I bring them to ToC10, but I prefer if they have at least a few 226/219 items. Just don’t make it blatantly obvious that you are using better geared players to get gear that you don’t necessarily deserve, yet. But maybe this all just stems from the fact that I hate the lack of raid progression these days. I mean, seriously, what need does anyone actually have to do Naxx, OS and EoE now? Fresh 80s get to skip an entire Tier of raid content, sometimes 2 if they are lucky.
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