Can't stand having to prove myself for every raid that gets formed

[DarkAxius]

Good point, my druid has zero raid gear and 5.2k GS. I don't think that these super high numbers are evil.

Find a guild, or start your own pug. GS problem ceases to exist if you do.

Not true - if you start your own pug you get members who use GS within it complaining if someone inside doesn't have a good GS and that this person will wipe the raid or whatnot, so the uneducated force him out or just leave.

Gearscore should really have had another name like 'Average itemlevel' or something...

[Toas]

Let me start by saying that I dislike linking achievements for invites and that I am by no means directly equating achievements with skill.

Now then, achievements do have SOME worth. Most of the anti-achievement people here think that it's completely useless and has no merit. But I'd much rather have someone in my raid who at least has SEEN the content than some random who's never done it before in their life. Sure, that person with the achievement may have died on every fight, but at least they somewhat know the fight mechanics. If you pick up someone without the achievement, this could be their very first ever raid, and, not to sound "elitist," but I'd prefer an experienced raider over a brand-new one.

"Oh but I've read the tactics online and watched vids so I know what to do."
- Great if you have. A large part of raid leaders aren't totally thick-skulled. Some are, yes, but if you tell most that you know the tactics and have good gear, a lot of raid leaders will take you anyway, especially if they're desperate for people (usually tank/healer). Not everyone, or even a majority of raid leaders, are the "Oh no achievement don't bother talking to me#" type.

"oh but this is an alt"
- First see above. Second - how long does it take you to log your main and link the achievement? 1 minute max? Spend a minute of your time and you'll get invited to the raid with no hassle whatsoever. Sure, you may not like linking achievements, but if the achievement is 1 minute away and will get you an invite to a group, just hop characters and link it. Don't be lazy or stubborn.

Finally, if you've ever led a raid, you'll know that having people link achievements saves a lot of later headaches. If you start inviting people without the achievement, people with the achievement start complaining because they think that the achievement-less people are gonna suck and wipe the raid. It's much easier if you just make everyone link you the achievement, or at least spam that in trade, so that your group members don't fuss and leave. Now, assuming you're not thick-skulled, you'll see the point I made above and may end up taking people without the achievement if they convinced you they're ready for the raid. As long as the rest of your raid is none the wiser to their not having the achievement, it saves a lot of headaches.

[Offhand]

Just said that its often impossible to start own pug - most player who are willing to join pug are already inside those forming groups. I do make my own pugs for lower content to have at least some pugs without stupid GS requirements and intentional overgearing. I also have good guild, thank you.

Did you even read, here let me write it again: "I hate it becouse people think GS plays the game for them."
What you are saying is like "if I put my hands over my eyes and can't see you, you can't see me". Problem doesn't go away just becouse you aint looking at it.

Do these people in your raid have assist? No
Do these people control who you invite to your raid? No
Can you boot these people if they offend you? Yes

I disagree entirely. If you think flaming the guy in trade talking about his GS pug is going to stop the add-on from being abused, you're sorely mistaken. The only way to solve the problem is to actively create successful groups despite the add-on and despite the bads obsessed with it. The problem goes away when people stop abusing the add-on (this likely means never). But how does GS ruin your experience of the game if you're always running your own pugs without it or in a guild that knows your capabilities?

[Powerogue]

there are so many pitiful players out there in heroics that you just don't want to be caught dead with, elitist jerks made the Elitist Groups mod, to sort through misc. signs of noobiness, even heard of another one that checks if their using the max possible rank of their spells.

people are looking for any way to stick a filter inbetween them and PUGs to sort out the dead weight.

[Aoemal]

Gear Score is an amazing tool, no one can doubt that. The Problem however is the wow community it's anywhere near as amazing thus, Great tool in the hands of fools.

Kind of like giving a car to monkeys, an amazing machine but totally useless in the hands of people that don't understand how to use it.

[Sharaki]

But how does GS ruin your experience of the game if you're always running your own pugs without it or in a guild that knows your capabilities?

I'm mostly running pugs for weekly raids and used to make runs for those instances before invention of weekly. Theres three kind of people (generalization!): guys who don't have that much gear but usually follow and do what they are told to do or at least can ask if they don't know, linkin achievement. Raiders coming on alts or mains without mentioning gs at all, doing their and everyone elses job. Then those people who just link GS, rate other people by it and get hit by every possible enviromental damage in raids. Guess which group I like to get rid of..

I'm not leading ICC pugs, not with this current playerbase who let GS play for them and forget to kill snobolds in Beasts.. rather hop along and enjoy the ride as long as it lasts.

[Deleted]

Gear Score is an amazing tool, no one can doubt that.

No it's not. It has loads of issues and proves more-or-less nothing.

First of all, it ignores all your enchants; you get the same score if you have all gear enchanted with the best possible enchants as someone who has no enchants whatsoever, or even worse, who has enchanted all the wrong way!

The same applies to gems: using no gems at all has exactly same result as using all-epic gems.

Thirdly, you can mix and match items from different specs to artificially boost your gearscore. Like f.ex. if you have a paladin with holy and prot gear you could just mix them up, a prot trinket here, a holy trinket there, and so on, and get artificially high gearscore.

I've said it before, but I'll repeat it here: be.imba.hu actually has a rather good tool on their hands. It does take gems, enchants, proper gear and all that into account and gives a rating based on all that. It also tells if you have too low hit rating, too high hit rating etc. That's what a real, proper inspection addon should do. I would love to whip up something like that myself but I unfortunately have no experience whatsoever with WoW addon coding or Lua. (If someone here decides to start coding such feel free to contact, I'd love to help out with bug testing and ideas so people would move away from the horrible Gearscore addon)

[Offhand]

I'm not leading ICC pugs, not with this current playerbase who let GS play for them and forget to kill snobolds in Beasts.. rather hop along and enjoy the ride as long as it lasts.

Then you suffer the consequence of being in someone elses raid and following someone elses rules. You can complain all you want about getting an item ninja'd or the RL having unreasonable expectations of the gear level of the group, but it's his raid, hw invites who he wants.

Or you could do it yourself, but you seem to think all pugs are designed to fail regardless.

I can tell you that my game experience isn't effected by the gearscore add-on at all. I assemble alt raids on my DK thursday nights. I use private channels that contain members from the half dozen or so good guilds on the server to fill in what I couldn't from my guild at the time. I have a guild, and I run my own pugs, GS has no negative effect on me.

[Worshaka]

Good PUG leaders give info to a vent server , explain tactics for 20 minutes over and over before eachfight, asign healing, asign misdirecting, etc.
Bad raid leader yell like morons for GS and achiev then goto sleep during raid time until it's looting time , or if they wipe until ppl get fed up with their..leading.

I was with you until this... the last thing a raid leader should do is have the raid stand still for 20mins while they ramble on about the intracices of every boss encounter and flood people with too much information so nothing sinks in.

And if healers can't communicate between themselves on how to heal, and hunters can't communicate about misdirects then the problem is the participants not the raid leader.

[Kolarian]

GearScore numbers mean nothing under about 5.3K. That said, I use GS just about every raid.

I use it to track who has gotten upgrades since last guild raid.

I use it to take a snapshot of PuGs, especially if they say they, "Might be a little undergeared for this..."

I use it to track my own progress as I get better gear

And perhaps most importantly, I use it with the Recount interface to track who is underperforming.

be.imba.hu is amazing, and I use it to tweak my toon a lot. I also use Mr Robot (http://www.askmrrobot.com/WowSimulator.aspx) to look at how I should be performing. But in a pinch, GS does the trick.

And if you don't like getting GSed and inspected before ever raid? Then don't pug. Deal

[Halicia]

I've said it before, but I'll repeat it here: be.imba.hu actually has a rather good tool on their hands. It does take gems, enchants, proper gear and all that into account and gives a rating based on all that. It also tells if you have too low hit rating, too high hit rating etc. That's what a real, proper inspection addon should do. I would love to whip up something like that myself but I unfortunately have no experience whatsoever with WoW addon coding or Lua. (If someone here decides to start coding such feel free to contact, I'd love to help out with bug testing and ideas so people would move away from the horrible Gearscore addon)

I seriously wonder if people posting here even read the main page.

"Elitist Group". It was plugged on the main page, and is godly for gear and (subjective) skill inspections. I was(am) a huge fan of be.imba.hu, but ingame addons capable of batch inspection of a guild/raid are MUCH preferable over html.

and another thing thats been irking me for a while.

A gearcheck is just that, a GEAR CHECK. Gearscore didnt invent it, I certainly remember seeing plenty of "T5 Ret Pally LFG" in BC. and you can argue all you want about how much harder BC was and how people can get carried, it doesnt change the fact that a gearcheck is no guarantee of 'skill', then or now.

[alpy1885]

Everytime a raid is started atleast at Emeriss
Edit: Clarified your subject. Clear subjects make a happy me. Grimlor

If u are hord u can try join a guild if u are aly M_I_G_R_A_T_E from emeris top 10 most crapy aly realm or just race change
If u dont wana join a guild cuz of the program/requierment then migrate to a pug realm ( there are few realm's with elit pug ) but then agian /w ACHIVMENT but atleast on those realm u dont get 10 years old kids makeing the pug

[hobbydaggy]

im not looking forward to this once my char im lvling now hits 80 and i start gearing...i saw the other day someone was asking for GS for OS 10man of 5.2k min

I laughed, oh and after asking he said he didnt want a group that would wipe and have problems dodging the fires...he wasnt going for 3 drake or nothing

im not sure how GS of 5.2k min helps you dodge fires tho.... :-\

[kittycuddler]

If you don't like having to prove yourself for each pug there is a rather simple solution. Get in a guild that can clear content. :/ Since like you said it takes about two days to gear up in full 232 ish gear, there's no reason to be gearscored out of a raid. If you're not happy with the requirements of the raid leader, start your own pugs.

[SweetLou570]

To respond to the original poster, I don't like having the same issues when I get into pugs. That being said, it is not the end of the world.

Just some options:
-Join a guild that meets your tastes/desires.
-Start your own pugs or join ones with friends. (I highly recommend)
-Continue to pug as is, making a point to join future groups with the same leader(s) if successful. Pug leaders tend to remember capable people quite well.

[Deleted]

I seriously wonder if people posting here even read the main page.

I sure didn't, I was only interested in replying to the person talking about how awesome GearScore is.

A gearcheck is just that, a GEAR CHECK. Gearscore didnt invent it, I certainly remember seeing plenty of "T5 Ret Pally LFG" in BC. and you can argue all you want about how much harder BC was and how people can get carried, it doesnt change the fact that a gearcheck is no guarantee of 'skill', then or now.

I agree here, but a gear check can still be useful to check for poor players: mage wearing strength gear or enchants, player with no gems, etc. That's exactly why GearScore addon sucks so much: it ignores _completely_ all such very obvious signs of a poor player.