So hopefully 3.3 is just around the corner, mmo champ seems to think that it’ll be next week. Which to be quite frank sucks for me because I can’t take any time off just now at work. Actually that’s a lie, I could take a few days off but I decided against it for the following reason:
Icecrown is gated…
Yeah, so the rumour mill is that it’s gated and it might even be longer than a week between each ‘gate’ open. So I’m thinking, what’s the point in taking time off around patch release? Pretty much none right? Because hardmodes wont even be active for like a month or more so the only thing I’d gain is a few badges (YES BADGES NOT EMBLEMS) from normal modes and a bit of normal mode loot. And quite frankly I can get both of those at the weekend anyway…
Since my situation will probably change in January and I’ll be able to raid hardcore again, I’m actually pretty happy about this. Yeah that right, I’m happy that Icecrown is gated. Not because the artificial drawing out of content which isn’t designed to last the time it’s meant to last is a good idea. It’s not, it’s a fucking lazy shit idea. But because right now, it means that the actual competition in Icecrown probably won’t start hotting up until January at the earliest (since no one gives a shit about normal modes – likely there will only be points for normal mode full clear) – which is great for me.
So yeah, Vive la Gated.
On a secondary note: what the fuck is this bullshit with gearscore suddenly? As I’ve only been playing on weekends recently, due to work, I think I’ve seen this as a more sudden change than most people. 6 weeks ago no one on Al’Akir was using gearscore, very few people knew what it was or had an addon for it, some had heard of it by reading US forums and hearing the whine there. So yeah it’s totally fantastic that now this disease seems to have crossed the atlantic and infected our precious Parisian server farm. Within a few short weeks every trade pug had gone from “Link Archiv [sic]” to “LFG Wailing caverns 5k gearscore minimum”.
You might wonder why I give a shit, since 3 out of 5 of my level 80s have over 5k anyway. Well it’s not really about that, it’s about the whole idea that people over-inflate the already inflated gear with regards to what instances you can do with it. For example, requiring gearscores of 4k+ to do fucking heroics is a complete joke, how the hell are people supposed to gear up when they can’t even get groups for heroics. Heroics being fucking stupidly easy to do in just-dinged blue gear.
Although really the gearscore / link achiev problem is not as bad as you might think from reading the forums. As anyone knows who’s played wow for longer than 1 expansion timeframe, when the expansion comes pretty much everyone is set back to square 0 in their gear. Thats why a new expansion launch is one of the best times to level up a new character, or to start playing again (and many do) because everyone is suddenly thrust into the same boat of having crappy gear. And it feels good.
#1 by Chimy on December 3, 2009 - 17:44
I totally agree with your post. I think I have an answer to your gearscore gripe though. Gearscore helps compensate for incompetence and I don\’t know about your server, but 1/5 of the people in our pugs Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.
#2 by Intact on December 3, 2009 - 23:09
lololol you getting back to raiding after new year?!
#3 by minttunator on December 7, 2009 - 03:10
I disagree, gearscore won’t help compensate for shit. A resto druid could have a GS of 5K+ while wearing full Relentless feral gear (because GS only takes into account the item level and nothing else) and be utterly useless as a healer.
I don’t completely disagree with the idea of assigning a “score” to pieces of gear, but the algorithm needs to be a lot more complex than just summing up the itemlevels. be.imba used to do it a bit better, IIRC.
#4 by Sharp on December 8, 2009 - 08:40
I have done few casual PUG Onyxia 25 to get few badges, new neck and the head piece (about to get that gun…). Done some VoA 25\’s too. So to talk about that gear score. In the world of PUG\’s this score fails as much as it has success…
Success: It kind of gives the idea, that the person has put some effort in gear and possibly knows the content (s)he got the pieces.
Failure: It does not take into account gems, enchants, spec, !skill to dps! (talking from dps point of view). This is the same for tanks and healers as well, but it is hard to measure tanks (spec, gems, enchants, health, avoidance, defence…) and healers (spec, gems, enchants, +spell, regen). It gives score for PvP gear as it was PvE…
My gear score is just a gram away from 4800 – got onyxia neck and badge ring – everything else is 7-8 months old gear (to be fair I am not even \"Epic\", since I am using Greatness card
). And I still out dps people having loads over 5k scores – I am talking about 100% PvE geared people. Those people should be doing miles more compared to me, but they don\’t… It\’s because of lack of proper gems, spec, enchants and possibly correct spell rotations. Why the heck do people hoard up the gear, if they do not min/max it (or at least go as close to the max as possible – cutting some corners on gold, which is easy to get anyway?)?
Plus. I do not understand why people want to join up higher tier raids, while having only quest \"blues\"… People doing less than 2k at Onyxia was kind of sad to see
It would be kick ass to get a mod for full PvE gear, spec, gems, enchants and gives extra or deducts score according to your average performance – this is hard to get into an addon and make it all work, because this way everyone should use that particular mod to get the performance part (even though if you perform bad, you could wipe all the data and start all over…)
For kicks I will definitely try out that new servers wide PUG joining thingy
)
As always thanks for a nice post, Cows.
Sharp.
#5 by Cows on December 8, 2009 - 19:16
Did you guys see the new addon GearscoreBreaker? Google it. Basically it sends your score out as whatever you want – I prefer 9001 for leetness sake.
#6 by Sharp on December 9, 2009 - 08:00
Yeah, I saw that thing as well
It’s over 9000!
#7 by Geoff on December 10, 2009 - 10:46
This horror addon is all over Silvermoon too. People ask for stupid shit like 4.5k gearscore for Naxx 10 ffs! This was before the patch dropped too, so it’s not even people farming for Triumph Emblems (BADGES), which if you have 4.5k GS you’re probably getting already from TotC. These were people asking for 4.5k to farm t7 tokens and Conquest Emblems (BADGES). I imagine the person asking was in quest blues and building a group to get carried.
It’s just totally innacurate, an interesting example being: A green mangle -> agi proc idol from Northrend quests having a higher gearscore than the Justice Badge idol that actually grants more agility per proc…
Also, even if it was an accurate reflection of gear, it just promotes lazy raid leaders. I always see the arguement trotted out that “It’s essential for pugs as you can see if someone’s gear is crap. Well I was in a heroic pug last night where a hunter with a “good gearscore” was pulling 1.3k dps, which is frankly shit. In another pug I had a “great gearscore” arms warrior pulling great dps, but I had to heal him about 1/3 as much as I did the tank.
Requirements should be: Don’t stand in the fire, know or at least attempt to learn the tactics, don’t be a prick. If a boss has a so-called gear check, then look to see if they are rocking up with bad gear by all means, but saying shit like 4K GS or don’t bother /w me for a fucking Naxx 10 or heroic PUG screams of someone wanting to fall asleep and wake up with some abyss crystals.
P.S. The new LFG system is awesome.
#8 by Mirrikat45 on December 12, 2009 - 21:24
GearScore is for pugs guys.
When a guild runs an raid it doesn’t matter as much how well geared they are because they have (hopefully) good leadership and players who are working together and having fun together. This sense of Unity help compensate for less gear by means of increasing efficiency.
However the quality of players who join a pug run tends to be far less then guild runs particularly because everyone might have a slightly different strat for that boss or do somethings in different ways. In addition the leadership in a pug group isn’t as good as a guild because the pug leader must attempt to please everyone. Being too mean means people leave. Being to nice and people are like “why does this guy invite scrubs? I’m outta here!”.
I have seen many Naxx runs back in the day take forever to startup go to spider-wing and wipe on Anub’arak. A lot of the times the wipes weren’t gear related they usually had to do with people being familiar with pulling the boss in different areas in the room or kiting/not kiting during locust swarm. However, take that same group of people in overkill gear and their stamina is high enough to survive locust storm and their dps great enough to greatly shorten the encounter and reduce the amount of time the boss has to kill players. Sure the raid will still come into trouble with movement based fights like Safety-dance and Thaddius, but they can still get a majority of the bosses down without much skill because their gear compensates for such lack of skill.
So naturally overtime pug leaders have begun to want higher and higher gear levels for pugs, because when you pug you have NO IDEA how much skilled a player is. So pug leaders assume that players suck and ask for enough gear to compensate for that potential suckage.
I’m really happy to see blizzard have plans to help encourage players to look for a guild. Running with a guild is a much better experience to running with a pug.
#9 by Chimy on December 18, 2009 - 23:47
@minttunator:
Yes, you’re right, a druid with a 5k gear score can suck at healing, but all I’m trying to get across is this..
If badDruidX sits there and facerolls HT on whoever needs healing with a 5k gearscore, your MP5 will still keep your mana up long enough to clear most of the heroics.
If you do the same thing with a newbie in levelling greens and blues.. well, lets just say it wouldn’t be pretty. goodDruidY in levelling gear can still heal through a lot of instances, though. That’s the compensation factor.
I’m not saying it’s right, it just is what it is.
#10 by Magusmisa on March 28, 2010 - 16:33
Yes I think it is a bit crappy system, people who have all gears what you can get from raid, raiding raids because of emblems of frost to get best bossible gears to their charcs from vendors. The “noobs”=weaker characters who actually NEED the gears are rejected from raid groups. I think the RPG idea don’t work like this or in this game, but it is best game most closest to ultimate RPG game I know… Every game has its weaknesss… Maybe if the stronger characters took their head from their ass and helped weaker ones gear up, it might be better organized. But the age of the players are 12- it should be 18- or at least there should be servers who has 18- age limit.
MagusMisa Al’ Akir Arcane Mage GS 4570 SP 2050
gearing up PRETTY FAST HAPPY GAMING!!!!!!!!!!!
:=O