A couple of months ago, Vok wrote a post entitled “Gearscore, How I Hate Thee“. Since that time, it’s gotten worse. Much worse. It seems like everyone is running GearScore nowadays, or knows what their GearScore is. You can’t walk 10 metres in Dalaran at the moment without hearing calls of either “LFM, min GS 5000″ or “Tank GS 5319 selling heroics runs”.
Things came to a head in guild yesterday, when some guildies were organising an ICC 10 run. I joined the raid and we were stuck at 9 people – the call of “LF Tank ICC10″ went out in guild. A couple of minutes later, a guildie responded – “I can tank, but my gearscore is only 4681″. ”Nah, you need 5k for ICC, sorry” was the answer from a raid member.
Myself and a few other guildies challenged – “This guild doesn’t use gearscore, and he’s close to what you want anyway, give him a chance”. It turned into a huge argument – the gearscore adherents stating that “for a tank, gear is more important than skill”, and the gearscore haters pointing out that we’d rather take a guildie than a pug, and that gearscore is fundamentally flawed. Eventually Guild Master Vok logged on to stop the argument, and the raid broke up due to lack of tank and frayed tempers.
I am most definitely on the side of the gearscore haters. That exchange to me shows the worst of gearscore – people pick arbitrary numbers, and use them to exclude people. Gear’s important, sure, and for a tank it’s very important – but it’s not everything. Smart tanks use their cooldowns to mitigate big damage, and don’t stand in things that they shouldn’t be standing in. Smart tanks also know that the best piece for their gear might not always be the one with the best gearscore – a lot of people are still using Darkmoon Card: Greatness, despite its low iLvl, because it’s better than the other available options.
“Skill > Gear” is an often-quoted mantra, but I’m not sure how many people really believe it. I’d like to propose a new way of dealing with these issues when they arise, in guild at least.
Just ask. ”Do you think you can tank this?” Put the onus on your guild member to judge whether they feel that their skill and gear are up to the task. Give them the benefit of the doubt, even if you think that they might not be good enough. If you wipe a few times on the first boss and it’s not improving, they’ll probably offer to bow out. You’ve probably lost about 20 mins – which you would probably have spent looking for another tank anyway, but this way you had a chance of it working out, and you’ve given a guildie a chance, and something to work towards.
Today, a group of us ran TOC 10. I installed the GearScore mod for the purpose of writing this article. The main tank (pally) had a gearscore of 4799, the off-tank (also a pally) had a gearscore of 4596. The two healers had gearscores of 4693 and 4482. Only one person in the raid had a gearscore over 5000, and yet we one-shot every boss except faction champions, which took us a few tries to get the strat right. There were no problems – everyone did their part.
For the record, I’m aware that ICC is more difficult than TOC. However, I’ve been informed that the first week that the Pirates team were in ICC (before the Lord Marrowgar nerf), our two tanks both had gearscores of under 5K, one significantly (off-spec) – it was also no problem.
Skill > Gear, every time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkwnSsSkFuM
My alt priest has a gear score of 4978 and still can’t get into PUGs for ICC 10
And Lath has multiple trinkets some of which are ilevel 245 that I don’t use because my Meteorite Crystal is way better sometimes the pieces that are best for your class aren’t necessarily from the latest instance.
I think gear is important but not from a mod that is simply adding up ilevel stats, it should be more complicated then that.
Its a hard one to decide.
Guildies before pugs is a good call, however when some (like rochamadour – my alt) cannot pull off sufficient DPS on the boss, it makes it difficult for the whole raid to achieve the outcome.
ICC saurfang becomes unattainable because it is a dps race if someone can’t pull the DPS required (yes i was one who couldn’t do sufficient dps on rochamadour) it becomes a drag on the whole raid.
Also the question of when alts come, should loot go to mains before alts? if the alt is contributing to the raid, then surely they are entitled to rewards for contribution? which results in the effect that for some, their alts and their alts of alts are stronger than people’s mains?
if we denied loot to alts, then their motivation for assisting alt runs would be diminished for some people, thus denying others the access to content because of insufficient numbers?
what about when person 1 has 232 item, and rolls on a 245 item, while person 2, has a 213 items and loses the roll for a 245 items? the 232 person becomes stronger while the 213 person does not personally progress their gear?
I enjoy raiding, and i enjoy the sense of accomplishment, even though its only a game, I also enjoy becoming stronger as a healer or a dps.
I also occasionally do become an ass hat, or when i’m tired, become the cause of failure due to falling asleep at the keyboard on late night runs.
What’s the point of this post? its complicated being a raid leader or an officer.
Do you always take the strongest available? do you take to support your guild even if it reduces the possibility of success?
I cunningly avoided any leadership rolls because I saw how some people were being burnt. I saw some people later on take on leadership roles that were really not suited to it. I saw good people get burnt and selfish people rise on the backs of others.
later on Dreadmaul, I saw some people abuse positions of power, I saw one group progress at the expense of others, and i saw a lot of people angry and a guild with good people disintegrate.
So the solution? I don’t know, Stircrazy and Grinn are good people, they just want to relax and have fun in the run.
ITs not easy being a raid leader, it’s not easy being an officer, I for one have the highest regards for people like vok, maik, star etc for putting up with people like me, and previously barra and isla amongst others.
How do you be equitable? how do you be fair? Its damn hard being a raid leader.
WoW rewards the strong, but a guild should be more than just getting stronger personally.
I probably class myself as a gearscore hater, simply due to the fundamental flaws it has gauging a players abilty. Whatever happened to simply looking at players, grouping with them, to find out what they can do?
I, personally have no issue if people believe i’m undergeared and say nah we need someone stronger, but when they invite another because he has 100 more GS than i, yet dps’s with seal of command on bosses, it is a little frustrating.
Skill will always be a bigger issue that Gear, both matter, but skill just a lil more, i’ve healed tanks with 29k hp in H Hall of reflection (wipeless FYI), i cant imagine he would get invited if he linked his GS
Oh, I’m going to have to blog about this now too =D
The trouble with tanking
As another post in this thread, One of the biggest complaints when pugging, is ‘where are all the bloody tanks’.
when WOTLK came out, you could do normals and even some easy heroics in greens and blues, 200 epics were considered good. So Gundrak, DTK, VH amongst others could be tanked by people with 25/26k health with decent specs and some ability. Of course these runs took 40 minutes or so, because the DPS were cranking out 1.2k dps and healers were in 1250 SP as well.
Now NO one runs naxx, ulduar, EoE, OS 10 or other places were T7 can be acquired.
Tanks are expected to turn up in t9 232 gears as a base minimum or people rage quit the 5 mans, heck a 38k tank left the party when we turned up at Occulus (note I hate that instance too)
So how is a new tank, just levelled to 80 expected to mysteriously appear in 232/245 gears?
As a suggestion, i would be happy to run through with others, new 80s who are mains through Naxx for 213 epics.
Perhaps if there is interest running a Naxx 25/OS25/VOA25 once per week (sunday?)with a rule Mains > alts for loots?
Back in ye olden days, we ran “Naz’s Kara”, which was the same time every week. There wasn’t a mains > alts rule. There was pure “1 for interest in X piece”, and then it was either given to the person who hadn’t received a piece in the instance yet, or rolled for if more than 1 person had.
I actually don’t believe in mains > alts unless it’s the person’s choice – if the alt is putting in the effort to bring the char, they get equal rights.
I understand that there are minimum DPS caps on bosses, but my take on this is that if someone isn’t quite there, help them improve and explain things to them rather than just saying “you’re not good enough”.
To me, that’s what this guild is all about
yeah the mains v alts rule is difficult and I raised that in a previous post on this topic.
For a guild dynamic if we are to progress through 25 man content without pugging we need sufficient people who can do the dps minimum/healing/tanking performance, which may mean that we wait two weeks for us to get an item that is a 232 to 245 upgrade so someone can get a 200 to 245 upgrade?
so if person 1 has 3 toons geared sufficiently to progress through ICC 25 and person 2 has no toons sufficiently geared, there is an issue there then.
I agree with the comment about helping them improve, i know i constantly ask about healing on the druid, for example I always look at isla’s and tingtings spell rotations, chants, gems and spec, to compare with peers who i believe perform better than me, and the shaman and where i have an answer to someones question i’ll contribute, or chip in with a suggestion, even if unwarranted.
i think u missunderstood the point of the origional post hitme its more about gearscore than gearing peoples characters
imo that more a topic for the forums
also naz i hate gearscore also its more about the person playing than the gear they have esp in a guild
Hi, I’m Ortho, a warrior. I just joined this guild of which 2 of my real life friends were members. I joined because my friends told me the Auzzies in this guild are patient chaps in contrast to the rest of Azeroth who only want tank with 5000gs+ …zzz. Most of the time, i scratched my head wondering how i’m gonna “gear up” when i can’t join any PUG to farm for the gears, people just expected you to pop up with the minimum gear! It’s a mystery. I think a guild should be like a family where the older and bigger ones help the younger “grow up”. My suggestion for the guild would be that the Guild Master lays down a working rules and policies – for eg, Guildies > GS – members and potential recruits would know what to expect and decide if they should remain and adhere or leave for another guild that matches his/her expectations. To me, WoW or any other game should always be a fun friendly experience in a relaxed environment. ;D