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Anyone that plays World of Warcraft has been asked, “What’s your gear score?” so many times they can’t see straight. any time you are looking for a raid, you will see, “Need 3 dps over 5500 gs only for ICC10” in trade chat.
Gear Score is ruining the game.
Gear Score is a World of Warcraft addon that checks your gear’s item level and assigns you a number–the higher the number the better your gear is.
Up front, Gear Score sounds great. But what if I have a lower Gear Score but my button smashing is so extreme that I out-dps (damage per second) people with a gear score higher than mine? What if I am at a 5200 Gear Score but use my innervate and battle rez’s so perfectly that I would be an asset to your group? In contrast, what if I have a 5800 gear score but what if I don’t really understand the mechanics of my class and perform poorly because of such?
It appears that the players trying to find groups are relying too much on this specific addon. This Gear Score oriented system of finding groups is flawed and should not be used as the sole requirement for assessing a player. Gear Score does give you a good basis to see what that toon has accomplished, such as noting that a toon with a 5200 Gear Score is not a new level 80 for example. However, as I mentioned before, the Gear Score of a player speaks nothing of his/her ability to perform and using it as the sole criteria can lead to detrimental effects on your group during pressing encounters.
Furthermore, it is quite easy to falsify a Gear Score reading for a toon. I have heard of people using a combo of mismatched gear to raise gear score, then once in the raid, swap to their actual gear which has a much lower score. You can also buy PvP gear with honor points that has an item level of 264, which is equal to top-tier raiding gear. Obviously PVP gear may not be ideal to raid with, but it will sure show a higher gear score number when quickly inspected.
Luckily, Gear Score attempting to improve its service to the WoW community. The addon now has a new feature where you can type “/gs” when selecting a person and see how far they have gone in certain raids, which is a better overall view of how people play. One issue is they have to be near you to be inspected, in addition to the possibility that they could have been carried through the encounters they are listed as completing.
I am not saying Gear Score is a bad addon, just one that is so strongly relied on that you undoubtedly are losing quality players because they need to break through that initial Gear Score barrier that may not even be a true verification of skill . So, use Gear Score as a tool to determine how a player may work in your group but do not use it as the sole basis for accepting or rejection!
About the Author
Bloodragé is a single father of 2, a full time worker and a gamer–not necessarily in that order. He has been playing World of Warcraft since early Burning Crusade but has tried and failed many-a-MMO before that. He recently took a year break from the game, so no comments about his gear . He is sarcastic, witty and has a thing for cleft hoofed females. He is currently in the guild Illuminatus as a guildmate and on the guild council.
Posted in world of warcraft
Tagged addon, gear score, gearscore, world of warcraft
Written by Bloodrage
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I agree with pretty much everything said here. I miss the days of vanilla WoW when you spammed for classes…not gearscores. Back in the day you judged a person with colors. Green-noob, blue or above were acceptable. It was so much simpler.
I’m running into a lot of difficulty with this lately. My gf recently reactivated her accnt after not having played since naxx. I want to raid with her but there is such a gap in our GS now that people will not take her, even though she’s a good healer. It’s frustrating and i’m stuck between leaving her behind to do ICC or not raiding and doing painfully boring 5 mans to gear her with 232-245 gear.
Gearscore, while it has its uses, has done more to squash the average player than anything else. She’s considering quitting again because she can’t do anything without people commenting on how low her gs is.
This all being said I DO use GS, but more as a guide for myself. I never comment on someones GS. If I see a low score I use that guage if I need to DPS/Tank better to help the group along at a normal pace. People seem to forget that EVERYONE started from scratch at some point. What if nobody allowed you in groups back then?
Gear Score only exists as long as people run the stupid addons. As someone playing this game since Vanilla, I have to say it’s one of the dumbest fad’s I’ve seen come along that has taken hold. If people really are sick of this, the first step they can take towards helping get rid of GS is to uninstall the addon.
I use the add on mainly for randoms to see if I have a newish tank or not and if I should hold back my dps. Since the only raids I pug are Voa’s, as a raid leader I normally check out my sign-ups gear through wow hero. That being said I was in a VOA yesterday where some one was complaining that we had a 3000+ something gs person in it and I pointed out that perhaps that person could actually use the gear that drop and was not after just badges. I agree with pokeadot’s comment if you want to devalue the significance of Gear score than don’t use it.
This addon has also led to poor choices and group drama through inferior gear/rolling choices based purely on an item’s gearscore.
I can understand using it as an at-a-glance type addon, but it should not be an end-all be-all either. I used to be an avid GS practitioner myself, but about a month ago I realized I was making mental notes while comparing performance to “low” gearscore.
After realizing this I immediately uninstalled this addon after the run and have promised myself to judge a person’s performance only. I hope others either learn to use the addon sensibly or follow in my footsteps.
I suppose Gearscore is only an issue for beginners to low end casual players, I don’t have a clue what my gearscore is nor have I ever had to supply it.
I wish there was an objective way to calculate a ‘player rank’ or ’skill score’ in MMOs. Unlike RTS/FPS games, there are so many factors that come into play when it comes to your personal performance, that it is impossible accurately say, “this player is better than this other player” using a simple addon.
At least with RTS/FPS games, you can calculate APM/Accuracy/Kill:Death Ratio/Team rank / etc.
I disagree with most of the assertions here. Gearscore might seem like a “plague to the game,” but it doesn’t do anything that hadn’t already been done. You wouldn’t take a player in all blues to a Naxx PuG back before 3.1.
People are too quick to blame the “judging on gear” on the GearScore addon. The real problem is bad raid leaders who set gearscore requirements too high.
Is it really that different to say “LF Tank 5.8gs min” vs “LF Tank 42.5k health minimum”?
Great read, Bloodrage! I appreciate your perspective on this topic.
I use GS, as I do all other addons that would help give me greater insight to encounters, or enhance my overall play/performance. GS has it’s usefulness to be sure, it’s the person using the addon that is required to use common sense ALONG with GS.
What we really need is a scripter to release an addon that calculates intelligence and overall common sense when raiding.
Here are a few name suggestions: IntelScore – StupidScore – DumbassScore – IdontknowhowtoplaymytoonScore – ItookthetimetoLEARNthefightScore – ArrogantElitistScore –
I don’t pretend to be a know it all, I’m FAR from it, believe me! But, really… a little logic and practical reasoning goes a LONG way towards a successful run.
The problem Blacksen is that with the advent and popularity of gear score addons, ignorant pick up leaders, as you say, choose an arbitrary number that is usually too high. The real problem with this is that they use it as a bouncer instead of actually doing a little research into the person. I might have an alt that is in ICC10 gear that will flat out get rejected by GS alone when I could probably do twice the DPS of a terrible average player outfitted in ICC25 or above. So that PuG leader won’t invite me, their raid will suffer (pardon the egoism), and at the end of the day I don’t get my badges or loot to improve the score to make it easier to get by the morons who rely on said numbers. That’s my main issue, a selfish one, of it being harder to get things done (and its gotten worse over time) – and 80% of the time flashing them achievements from my main doesn’t work as most of them don’t believe it’s really me or are thick-headed and don’t care.
That is because you don’t have a mimiron’s head. If you had a mimi head you would never not get invited.
I actually have to agree with…
Blacksen here.
I completely understand all the complaints and frustrations already mentioned. For good players with alts (such as the ones posting in this forum), gearscore is an irrelevant tool, as most people here know all the bosses, know how to get good at their alt class quickly, and know how to perform in a raid environment. There are cases where lower GS folks are getting rejected even though they are better players. But if I was to guesstimate, I would say that’s only 10-20% of the time. The other 80-90% of the time, gearscore can be a relevant quick way to determine a person’s experience in the game, which in turn can be indicitive of their performance. Let’s face it, the most useful reason people rely on gearscore is for pugs. If I’m leading a TOC 25 pug that I want to clear rather quickly, without having to teach someone the fights, 9/10 times if I see someone with below a 4k gearscore, they are not going to know all the fights. I’d rather take my chances on a the 5500gs toon who I know there’s a decent chance he’ll be able to at least outgear the instance and help a faster clear. I don’t necessarily have time to get the complete playing history of every pug I invite to the group when I’m trying to fill 19 spots. If I truly have a question about the player’s skill, I’ll ask them their progression or if they are playing with an alt – it’s that simple. But gearscore helps tremendously in setting a barrier of who I should inspect and who I should outright reject immediately when I have a screen full of dps whispers wanting to go.
It’s like applying for a job. If a company is looking to fill a spot for someone with at least 5 years of experience, and they have a pile of 800 resumes in front of them, they look at someone’s experience at a quick glance, and throw away hundreds of resumes without even reading them based on one thing. Exceptional candidates are usually among those first trashed group. (I may be having some personal experience with this right now, but no comment)
Another reason I like gearscore, is it helps me recruit. If I see an unguilded 6k+ gear score running around dalaran, I look him up on wowarmory, see his experience, and if it’s good, talk to him or her and get their story. I don’t use his gs to make the decision for me if I want to recruit him, but it at leasts peeks my interest in a person, which gets the ball rolling.
There’s countless other examples I find GS useful, but I fear this is already TL:DNR.
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