Gearscore

Gearscore; love it, hate it, it has become an unfortunate part of World of Warcraft life.

Let me start off by saying that I am NOT a player who believes that Gearscore is the end-all or standard to which players should be judged. Instead, I see it as a potential tool, when used properly.

As I sit in trade chat, I constantly see Azeroth bombarded with queries of interest in people joining raids, forming groups for randoms, people looking for crafters/goods, gold farmers scrounging for clients, and the occasional (not really) ad for Guild invites. The ones that I find the most fascinating are people looking for more for raids, yet putting restrictions on it.

My first observation of this was when specific items would be "reserved" prior to the formation of the raid, generally by the person forming it. First I thought that this was rather rude, but realized that these people were users, trying to leach off of others on the off chance that the object that they wanted would drop (most with about a 2% drop rate).

Then I started to see required specifications for raids. First it was looking for people with experience or understanding of the fights, but quickly developed into a numbers game based on Gearscore. At this time, I was but a novice player, and thought that they were talking about my WoWHeroes score (which was the only type of scoring I knew of at the time). I was obviously below what they were looking for, and was confused how they could get ratings so high (at this point, the max was around the mid 4000's). So, I thought I was out.

As I started to use more addons, I was recommended Gearscore by someone who boasted of being a good raider, so I decided to try it out for myself. Cool, awesome, I now understood what they were talking about.

But what is Gearscore? Gearscore itself claims to be a meter for potential playing ability. They state that it is up to the individual player to meet that specific skill level (and as I'm sure many people are aware, that doesn't always happen, especially with Triumphs falling like candy at a Halloween parade).

Currently I use Gearscore not to gauge a player's potential (as I'll soon see that as I raid with them), but instead for the other function it has (besides being a benchmark for idiots to boast about). That function, in my opinion, is seeing what stats a character should focus on. By this, I mean that in the /gs interface, you can see each individual piece of armor, as well as a breakdown of if certain criteria in a player's build have been met. On most, it adds the major stats (Stam and Armor for Tank, Intel for casters, hit/crit for dps, mp5 for healers [minus healadins], ect), and then shows if the player has met the minimum requirements for specific tasks.

On the right is a mini-character display of the targeted player, showing their gear. To the left are three or four bars, each with a percentage filled in, and representing one of the builds a player can have (for instance, on a Mage it would show Arcane, Fire, and Frost). Each one is weighted differently (as we all know, Fire requires more hit than Frost or Arcane), and thus scale differently. Another example is on a Death Knight, where the bars would break into Blood dps, Frost dps, Unholy dps, and Tanking. When you mouse over the bar, you see a breakdown (in place of the character display) showing the major impacting stats for that particular build. The stats will be listed in either green or red, and with a percentage next to them (positive or negative), which is used to ascertain the total of 100% of its potential or not.

That is where I use Gearscore; to see where I can improve at a quick glance, rather than muddle my way through all my gear, checking on which enchant or gem would work the best, ect. Gearscore helps me to identify specific problems with my class at a glance.

Now, I do not, nor will not say that a player's Gearscore should exclude them from a raid. I am an avid fan of the YouTube videos of a guild called , who is currently progressing in Icecrown Citadel in iLevel 200 blues. If this is not proof enough for the elitists who use Gearscore as a standard for players, than I'm not certain what will.

Today I replied to a friend's blog on a similar subject, and stated that I recently had a few run ins with Gearscore, and people who use it.

The first was in a TotC 10 man raid I was in with my Mage's guild. We did not have enough people on at the time, so we pugged the last few spots. Upon entering the raid, I realized that one of my friends would be tanking. I knew he was new to tanking in WotLK, so I /gs'd him, and realized he was missing several potentially vital enchants. As a tank myself, I am under the philosophy that a dead tank is no tank at all. So, after enchanting his gear real quick, we started the raid. The two pugs with us had Gearscores of about 5000 (hunter) and 5600 (lock) (again, not that it matters). As good raiders do in pugs, we posted our vent info, and said that they could join us if they wanted to. We also asked if they all knew the raid (both said that they did). So, we started, and I realized that about 15 seconds into the first fight, we lost our hunter to fire.

This could be a simple mistake, made by anyone. Well, long story short, we wiped. And then we wiped again, and a third time. In each occasion, I realized that we would loose the hunter within the first 30 seconds of the fight to fire. So, being a compassionate fellow, I sent a raid warning, as I tend to do in these occasions: "Remember, the Fire is NOT there to keep you warm". Humor to express a point; love it.

Cool, he got it, and we got through the Impaler just fine. Enter the worms. Bam, down he went. Basically, he had never stepped into the raid before, and now my friends and I knew it. OK, happy to help someone new out, but when you don't want to take the time to take the advice that is sent, not sure what to do with you. Looked at his gear through /gs, and realized that he was missing almost all of his gems, and half his enchants. So, at that point the raid lead decided to kick him.

Sorry for him leaving, I truly am. How can someone get better or learn the raids without going to them? But at the same token, how can someone learn the fights if they don't listen or show a willingness to learn?


So, without focus now, lets go to the conclusion!

Gearscore; not a standard, or something to lord over other players with. Please stop shouting it out in raids, or snubbing people due to their GS (they just might be better players than you). However, GS could be used for another purpose, that is to say a quick-glance at the efficiency of a player and his gear.

If someone knows a better addon to accomplish this last part, please let me know! I'm more than happy to switch from GS to something better/new!

Behold, Azeroth; Death hath come!

OK, so not really, but what else should I title the first post? "My First Post", "Oh Hi World!", "Prepare for Awesomeness?" Huh... That last one's not bad...
First note: So, I occasionally will put on my PvP gear, and go pillaging in a few choice spots throughout the old world, generally concentrating on Gnome, Dwarf, and Night Elf villages. It can be much fun. I almost always yell out something stupid like "Fear, ye Alliance! Death hath come!" whilst charging in on my horse. It makes me smile.

But I digress.
A quick note about my stylinz with teh keyboard-to-interwebz(well, most things I write non-professionally), I vary between being verbose and brief, in both lengths of entries, and specific portions inside of them. Also, I will capitalize words that I view as something of more importance, or the subject matter, or other words just to emphasize a point, like the word Awesome in this sentence. Yes, the word Awesome should be capitalized more frequently. I think that would be Awesome. Me on Profanity; not really going to use it. There are so many better words out there than the vast majority of curse words. I use them sparingly in my own life, and I nearly never use them in game. You may have also realized that I will occasionally misspell certain words, add random z's instead of s's, spell The t-e-h, and type as I occasionally speak; Awesomely, or mockingly, depending on the situation. There. You are forewarned.

While there are many, many other WoW blogs that chronicle a virtual cornucopia of issues, topics, silliness, debauchery, and other unrelated topics while set in the background of WoW, I suppose my reasons for creating this blog are mainly based in the fact that I'd like an outlet for the ideas and thoughts that appear randomly in my head, as well as a way to put into commentary my own views on the game, and make comment on the players, raids, and situations found within. Oh, btw, I completely do not believe in Twitter, or posting an update on my Facebook Account every 15 minutes when I decide to do something different.
On a side note, don't you think that by now the word "Facebook" should be recognized by the various spell checks on this planet as an actual word? I mean, Websters added the word "Unfriend" to their dictionary because of Facebook (and "Unfriend" isn't recognized by this spell check either!).

Back on topic:

About my experiences with WoW, or at least to sum up a few quick points, and a generalized picture of what I play, how I play it, and my overall gaming profile...
I started playing World of Warcraft back in what many people call either Vanilla or Classic. WoW was a birthday gift from a friend, and I started to play as an Alliance Night Elf Druid. I successfully leveled all the way up to level 32 before I decided to call it quits. WoW was stupid, boring, and I wasn't having fun playing the class I was playing.

Then I heard about Burning Crusade, and the Blood Elves.
Side Note (this will be a trend throughout many blogs, I'm certain): I like the way that the Elves appear. When I want to play a game, I want to have a character I can see as both appealing and something I could see myself as. Sorry, no crazy Orcs, Trolls, Tiny Peoples, Moo Cows, Zombies-but-not-called-Zombies, or awkwardly created Humans for me. Narrows down my choices to Elves (both varieties) and the Blue People, which I have no problem with (except how they look with a long cape. Stupid.).
That was awesome! Horde (which I had identified in my limited experience to that point as being by far more awesome than the Alliance) would now get the cool cool character type that I liked! So, I reactivated my account a week before Burning Crusade came out, and went to work on getting myself some starting cash for in game, went out to pre-order Burning Crusade, and was playing a Blood Elf Rogue on the first day of BC.

Today that Rogue is sitting at level 34 on the server I started on (I play on another server now).

Then I started a Twink Rogue. Happy times! I enjoyed gaining the achievements, honor, and pissed off players in Warsong Gulch, especially when I would play, carry all 3 flag returns, have the most damage, most killing blows, and not die. Unfortunately WoW decided that Twinks were over powered, and again I found myself with nothing fun to do (at that time, leveling for me was not fun).

BC went on, I didn't play that much, and then I started a Warlock, which was OK (hated not being able to take a hit). And then I heard about Wrath of the Lich King, and everything was awesome again. New Hero Class, YES! So, I put all my efforts into getting the Little-Lock-that-Could up to level 60, so I could make a Death Knight on Wrath Day 1. Well, I made it to level 58. Good Enough. Again, had Wrath Pre-ordered, and started a DK on day one of Wrath. (Yes, I had a name picked out, Bankotsu. Yes, I watched Inuyasha; was pretty much forced to by my Girl Friend at the time that it was big, and took a liking to the leader of the Band of Seven. I thought to myself, 'What would I call a character who wielded a big, runed Sword?' Inspiration hit, and I was lucky to grab the name on my first server first!)

Starting a DK, everything just clicked. I LOVED it! Leveling quickly (faster than my guild mates who had played most of the BC content, including Outlands), I entered Northrend, and reached level 80 two days before my friend did, who was leveling an existing character from 70-80.

Then my guild fell apart. People stopped playing (this time everyone but me), and I couldn't get into anything but Heroics because of my gear/experience. Times were bad. I had the Sword of Justice for what felt like forever. Finally, revelation. The same friend who bought me WoW told me that he was coming back (the main reason I started playing, and started replaying), and he was changing servers to play with another one of our mutual friends. So long Rexxar, Hello to large-RP-server! (nope, not gonna say which one!)

I joined a new guild, which was a casual guild who occasionally raided. Now I started to experience the content, and was loving it!

To make this part of the story much quicker, I got good loots, learned more about the game, started and leveled a Mage from 1-80 and a Paladin from 1-70 (all hail the wonders of Heirloom Gear), and started to tank with my DK. My DK, my main, is no longer in the same guild, due to my new-found love of Raiding (or at least ICC), but my Mage and Pally are both still in the one I joined when I moved servers. Currently, my DK has all the tank gear he can from badges, and according to WoW Heroes, should only be doing ICC25 or ICC10 Heroic (I do run ICC25, and I am but 1 kill from being able to run ICC10Heroic); and is closing in on 44k health unbuffed. Tanking on him is much fun. My Mage is 30 Frosts from being fully badge geared, and is itching to go back to Fire from Arcane. I leveled him as Fire, too. My Pally will eventually reach 80, but only when I'm bored/have nothing to do again.

Today, my in-game goals can best be summed up to be the following points:
-Make my DK the best tank as possible, and get me that blasted Unidentified Organ already!
-Return my Mage to Fire (BURNINATOR Spec!!!), and start to Living-Bomb everything.
-Kill Arthas!!!!!
-Continue to play, and enter a new expansion in a full set of Heroic Raid gear.

Well, that's pretty much it. Welcome to ma blog.