World of Warcraft at Ten Ton Hammer

You know what they say about the size of your gear score…

The great gear debate of World of Warcraft marches on. Anyone who has finished Wintergrasp after a win knows the routine in general chat: “4k DPS, 4800 gear score lfg 25 VOA” or something along those lines. If you don’t know what your gear score is or what the term refers to, read up on the WoWwiki and you’ll see the different flavors of gear scores. This article isn’t about which gear scores are more accurate, it’s about the fact that gear scores have become the defacto noob-meter.

As pointed out in our previous articles; Raiding Isn’t Everything, and Overgeared and Underskilled, good gear is now easier to get than at any time in the history of the game. As both a blessing and curse, the ways to evaluate skill and or game knowledge is muddied even further than it once was. Without putting too much thought into roles (I know a tank with a 3k gear score can’t tank hard mode TotC), but for conversation sake, which is more valuable to your raid:

• A player who has cleared hard modes in Ulduar and TotC on his/her main but is now on an alt with a gear of 3,800, or
• A player who has played solo in Battlegrounds and run daily heroics to get a gear score of 4,200, or
• Your beer drinking buddy

The obvious answer is #3, and if you pick anyone else then you are playing the game for the wrong reason! Seriously though, in today’s game #2 will be chosen over #1 almost every time. Even though it’s not a fair representation of a person’s skill or knowledge, gear score will get you places – in the real world we call it the SAT or ACT test.

It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that bling.

Gear scoring was always lingering on the fringes until Blizzard made it a requirement. The Flame Leviathan fight in Ulduar makes gear scoring mandatory. For the uninitiated, this fight puts players into vehicles, and the vehicles strength/health scale with the gear score of the player driving. This means that players in the fight put on their best gear score items, regardless of spec (a healer may put on a DPS belt because it has a higher iLevel and thus a better gear score). In the blink of an eye gear scoring addons/mods and raid-wide gear scoring became yet another tool for puffing out your chest or hanging your head in shame – “hey, are you even wearing any gear, I’ve never seen a score that low, and about that DPS…”

Whether they meant to or not, another ancillary score has been added to the game to be analyzed, scrutinized and theorized. Whole websites are now teaming with logarithms to help players better understand how their gear stacks up against others, and where the best upgrade options reside. Some of the tools are quite useful, but other times it feels like splitting hairs, “hey I need to run ABC dungeon for the Hammer of Much Coolness so my gear score will go up 2 points.”

Gear Scoring, the new attunement system

Gear scores are nothing more than the latest in attunements albeit player created. You must have gear score of “X” to get into this raid, hence this dungeon. It’s pretty smart on Blizzard’s part because now they don’t have to police attunements and other hurdles to keep under geared people from attempting instances.

Well that's simple enough. Think I'll start an alt.

Adding to the Bartle Battle

I know that Bartle says there are four types of gamers (Hunter, Killer, Explorer and Achievers), but I’d add a corollary to his theory and say that in addition to the type of gamer, people are either math people or not. I’m sure you could weave that into his descriptions, but I’ve noticed quite a few players who can recite their top DPS, average DPS and required Raid DPS for various bosses (I wonder if they know their significant other’s birthday?). There are also those who try and play the best they can, but won’t put the time in to understand the nuances of cooldowns and rotations for maximizing output. Each of these types of players could have the exact same gear score and achievements.

So who do you take to the raid? How can you reasonably determine who is better? If WoW has taught me anything, it’s that persistence rewards more than performance. If you really care about the player and not the character, find out a better method to assess their ability. I’m sure a few questions asked in the right manner can yield answers that will provide enough information for raid leaders to make a decision.