Gearscore....love it or hate it & why?

[Torzak]

Gearscore is just too unreliable. I didn't even know my main character's gearscore until a little while ago, and I thought it was really funny when I found out that it's only 2600. I'm one of my guild's best DPS, and I pull first or top three at worst in most any pug, including pugs that are mostly made up of another guild and they "just needed one good pug" to fill up. I recall seeing around 2500 and 3000 GS being the "median" GS that people ask when they try to put together pugs using it, that being the minimum acceptable.

A lot of people do not realize that there are two different number sets of GS floating around. Your 2600 is likely pulled off WowHeroes website. The median 2500 to 3000 you hear about in game is likely from the addon.

They are two different metrics and leads to a lot of the confusion. But if you do a bit of homework, and use a little reasoning skill, you can get around most of what would be confusing to someone else.

[Iosif]

This is why gearscore sucks, its not an accurate representation of min/maxing of correct gear choices in favor of priority stats. (ie. hit/expertise caps, arp favoring etc...)
Higher item level gear doesn't actually mean its better

for example the 245 holy pally libram is terrible, but one using it in favor of the ilvl 200 badge one would give you a higher gear score, ironically that shows the exact opposite of what you are trying to use gear score to find (a good player). People on my server have taken gearscore "checking" to such an extreme to where pallies are actually buying an equipping it whenever they log out, to ensure a higher gear score.

The same applies to ret pallies, its not worth breaking the 4 piece conqueror set until you have minimum 4 pieces of tier 9.5, it's mathematically proven to be a dps loss if you do. But a person choosing to break that set early would have a higher gear score than one who decided to take the correct min/maxing route.

In short, gearscore is not reflective of proper gear choices, all gear score does is ensure there is a bunch of idiots running assuming higher ilvl gear is better for them because gearscore tells them so.

^^ This is dead on ^^

Rogues lost DPS by going to less then 4 pieces of iL245 and hunters lost DPS by going to iL245 set w/o having at-least 5 pieces of iL245+ gear.

Most of the classes the stat distribution/set bonuses are just horrible in comparison to the previous set bonuses.

On my Holy Pal i picked up 2 Peices of T9 just to gear score, when I raid I go back to my T7.5 because it offers more useful bonus with out much of a overall throughput loss.

[Nezoia]

Tbh, if gearscore was to be taken seriously, they would have to remove trinkets from the calculations.

[stormix]

Its useful in some way, because people learned to farm they badges and just buy and return some epics for their Epic achievment...But it DOES NOT determine skill/experience.

[K4ge]

because 4t8 for rogue is better than 2 232 and 2 245.

[Pascal]

A lot of people do not realize that there are two different number sets of GS floating around. Your 2600 is likely pulled off WowHeroes website. The median 2500 to 3000 you hear about in game is likely from the addon.

They are two different metrics and leads to a lot of the confusion. But if you do a bit of homework, and use a little reasoning skill, you can get around most of what would be confusing to someone else.

It's cool that in addition to being useless, there are also multiple accepted ways to calculate a GS which produce vastly different numbers.

I obviously don't know much about GS because I've never used it. I just know the very obvious mathematical problem behind calculating someone's use based on their gears' item levels.

[gaymer77]

Being the person who started the thread I thought I'd post my feeling on it. Gearscore is probably the worst addon that has ever been implimented in WoW's history. It takes no concideration into what is actually good for the class/spec nor does it take into concideration gems or enchants or the fact that some of the lower lvl items are far superior than some of the higher ones.

Take trinkets for melee. Greatness cards are still one of the best trinkets you can have outside of ToC & ToGC yet they are ilvl 200 which provides a low score.

Tanking trinkets like the lvl 75 JC are ilvl 200 blues. Again amazing trinket that gives 120 stam each (165 if you socket them with your dragon's eyes). Compare that to http://www.wowhead.com/?item=37220 for 111 stam or http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47216 for 126. Sure both of the others have a proc of some sort but for raw HP the JC one is still beyond amazing.

Look at the caster trinkets like Dying Curse and Illistration of Dragon Soul. Both are only replaced by stuff in ToC/ToGC but have an ilvl 213 (except for Dying Curse for Elemental Focus Stone if you're in need of that much more hit). Look at how long the stupid hero badge offhand lasted because of the stats that were on it.

[gaymer77]

OH yeah my favorite story of Gearscore being a royal fuckup is my prot pally friend who is in full T9 but runs around in 8 piece T2 because he likes the look of it getting invited for a VOA and then immediately getting kicked from the group from the leader. He got a whisper saying "sorry your gearscore is too low and you don't even have 15k HP which is way too low for a tank". He replied back "I'm in T2 dickwad but I have my full T9 in my bags. Your loss on a tank though." The leader invited him back after that but he declined for obvious reasons.

I've actually had similar experiences with my hunter who runs around with only the Auriaya druid helm on and no other armor except bracers, belt and a cloak on & getting kicked from groups because my score was too low eventhough he's got gear.

[wolfwood888]

Gear score is a useful tool for deciding if someone isn't geared enough or not, but it should by no means be a major deciding factor.

[BeastlyBoy]

I dont really see why people arnt Voting "it helps a little", because it really does - u wont see any players ever get 4k dps in greens and blues. But course it doesnt say alot about skill so it generally does help a little bit on determining the players dps or output really.

[Hexus]

Fact of the matter is that if you're putting a pug together, in essence you need to judge a book by its cover. Gear score is another tool for that purpose. Has it been misused? Certainly, but the raid leader needs some way to judge his or her applicants, that kicks some people to the curb who don't deserve it, but every system has its flaws.

[Oursaviour]

players skill > gear

[DaLeetPawner]

I have a high gearscore aswell... in PvP gear

[levandor]

Well, i couldnt care less 1. of all, its not used on my server (yet) and even if it would be used, chances are players named Déathártáhs or évílhúntárd would ask for a certain gearscore, and well, others may judge PUG members by Gearscore, archivs or whatnot, i only look at the toons names, didnt put effort in your name? Shurely doesnt put effort in his gear/skill

fun thing as a side note, i ran ony 10 with members of the 2 top horde guildes on my server, just having scrapped together basic cat gear for my heal druid (wearing Udluar/ToC 10 heal gear) well for feral i am decked in blues and even 3 parts still healgear because i have no items to replace them yet and OMG nobody gave a fuck about it, we went there, we killd her (with me being somwhere in the middle dps wise, thx to to aoeing welp) and adding one BR to the raid and everybody was happy, no trouble whatsoever...

so, again and in short:

Ask me for GS/Archi = go heal yourself fucktard

[Spide]

Blizz should start a rating generator like: A dmgdealer has to dps a dummy within one minute an the DPS result will be converted into a score. (Or some other PvE situation where you can show skill. i.e. a dummy with additional effects such as an aoe that melees must avoid or a dummy that must be tanked and another dummy that heals, the incoming dps will counted) Yes it's more work for Blizz than: for(item i : player.items) { gearscore += i.itemlevel }, but much better.

[Pancakesammich]

Gearscore is oceans of lose.

Guy on my realm has 4pc T9 (2 @ 232 a @ 245), the lock helm from Ony 25, Firesoul (ok yeah that's old hat now but it still looks flippin' cool), leviathan fueling manual, the whole biz.


He does 2500 dps on a good day.

[velourea]

Just another epeen measurement for noobs.

[Nightbliss]

It's overused on my realm, HC's, Normals, Raids, PvP etc. It's fucking retarded and annoying like hell.

GS means absolutely nothing when it comes to individual playing capabilities or raiding/instancing experience due to the current state of WoW.

Another thing that pisses me off is people asking for Achievements for everything. How the fuck is a "New" player able to get into a RAID/INSTANCE, say something rather simple if they don't have the chance to go because they don't have the achievement, In before "GO WITH YOUR GUILD LOL".

I'd rather ask for First Aid Link, or any other proffession link over a thousand times more before inviting someone to a raid than Achievements/Gear Score because it simply shows more effort into the character than having overninethousand Achs/Gear Score.

[Naft]

I just love when people ask for my gearscore as a tank, then get rejected cause I got 2 iLvl 200 trinkets (and 1 219 ring + 1 226 libram, rest 245).

[Drunkenfinn]

GearScore is made of so much fail that I cant even describe it with words.

On my old realm people did not use it, but then I migrated my lvl74 lolDK to Al'Akir to start "anew" and to play with a few IRL friends of mine... And well, you can imagine how frustrated GS has made me.

2 days ago I managed to talk myself into a Naxx25 PuG by gettin the RL to armory my Main. He told me that if I do bad DPS he'll insta-kick me. My GS was the lowest in the raid by far (3400gs, blue weapons lol) with the others being in between 4-4.8k and a few over 5k.

We decided to do Construct Quarter first, which basicly means its DPS test time @ Patchwerk.

I ended up being 7th on damage done with 4,2k DPS, leaving behind several people with 4-4,5k GS.

I got to stay and had the RL apologizing to me for being so rude at the start lol. Also shut down the few people who whined about my gear and wanted me kicked as they got outDPSed.

Really, gearscore does not mean sh1t. Though I approve for requiring an decent amount of GS for the "harder" stuff like ToC25 and such, but even then asking for 5k GS is kinda dumb.