ICC gear required for...... Patchwerk???

[Bears_are_real]

I dodnt really get the point of this thread,you can get a 5k gs with badges/ICC 5 mans,go run them and you wont get shit for not being geared,done and done.

[Guvernment]

This is my mage:
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...an&cn=Reagalan
I do not know his gear score.
When I join pugs, I never tell them my gear score. If they do not want to invite, their loss.
Sometimes I'll wear a set of Tier 6 and try to get in pugs, and when they see my gear score they tell me it is too low. If they do not want to invite, their loss.

This is my DK:
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...an&cn=Komunism
I also do not know his gear score.
When I join pugs, I still never tell them my gear score, or my unbuffed hp. Most of the time I am not invited.

One week I decided to run ToC10 normal on the DK. Two pugs turned me down for having too low a gear score. The third invited, but as the group was filling, a better geared tank (I distinctly remembering him to be a male tauren warrior) was invited and I was immediately kicked.

I logged onto my mage, found the leader of that ToC10 and asked for an invite. He asked me for my gear score. I linked my Tribute to Immortality achievement. An entire three minutes later, he said "ok thats good enuff" and invited me. Upon joining the group, I noted there being another random mage in Group 3 for a brief moment, before his name flickered off Grid.

Inspecting the tauren who had replaced me, I saw he had recieved his ToC25 achievement many months ago, had Mad Skill 10 and 2/5 Heroic 25. He had cleared Ulduar 10 and 25 short of Algalon, 9/12 ICC10 and 7/12 ICC25, had no glaring inefficiencies in his gear and in every evident way was superior to my dk.

The instance was cleared without a hint of a wipe at any point. The bosses melted. Twins had only two spells go off. No deaths on FCs. Icehowl didn't even crash into anyone! Oh, and, every single piece of loot was sharded.

Every...single...piece.

Since then I have done almost nothing on my DK. He has effectively quit the game, logged on only under extreme boredom. Random dungeon triumph badge farming got old after 40 or so runs, and given how a ToC10 would not even accept me, I'd rather just do something else.

My two characters represent a microchasm of scenarios that gear score has created. The mage is geared so highly that replacing any other player in a pug would be an upgrade, however, any gear that would drop from such a pug is a guaranteed downgrade, and generally he has no business being there beyond boredom alleviation.

The DK is geared at a level sufficient to tank most puggable instances, but due to the perception that gear score has branded upon him, and the nature of the game where Getting In and Out as fast as possible is the goal, he is unable to gain entry into most groups, or is quickly replaced by people like my mage. Either way, the loot that drops from the instance goes to waste.

Truth is, with that other mage and my dk in the aforementioned ToC10, the chance of a wipe was almost equally unlikely. My dk and that possibly that mage could have used some loot from that run. Instead, in the interest of saving five minutes and the irrational fear of the magnanimous embarrassment induced by a wipe (again, as unlikely one would've been), both were ejected.

While I do have my mage as a fallback position for when my DK gets rejected from pugs, many other people don't. If joining a guild is not an option, a player is confined to the boredom of random dungeon grinding. Faced with this interminable possibility, many just quit the game altogether. With the steady atrophy of more advanced players and the natural "this game just isn't for me" that occurs for some people during the levelling process, this 'gear score effect' might as well be one reason WoW's playerbase has not expanded in the past year.

Until gear score reared it's ugly face, only someone sporting many blues or quest greens would be barred from puggable content. Now, there exists this gear score Catch-22 that is driving many players away from the game.

Someone else in an earlier post also mentioned this, but it credits repitition. The gear score addon has precipitated the explosive growth of a population of "elitist puggers". An example would be the leader of the ToC10 mentioned earlier. If I were running any ToC pug and someone linked me A Tribute to Immortality, I would instantly invite them even if they were in quest greens. Same thing with Algalon for Ulduar or Immortal for Naxx, or some generic skill achievement like Gladiator. Because gear is so easily obtainable at any skill level, such achievements are the only rock-solid measures of skill anymore, and despite this undesputable fact, gear score is still used as a measure of skill by puggers the world over. The highest gear score is the world was not created by having a high gear score, but by being very highly skilled.

I also don't subscribe to the idea that missing crafted pieces or auctionable BoEs indicates someone does not care about their character. My mage doesn't use the 264 crafted boots, they are inferior to my current 258s (I'm aware I'm well over hit cap atm, bite me). For those who had quit at an earlier tier, or who do not possess the gold to buy such items, if they can prove by some other means that they are a skilled player (achievements, titles, dmgmeter, etc.) then they are worthy of a raid spot in most pugs. In 90% of puggable content, it doesn't even matter anyway. Oh and... buying crafted items from the auction house is a measure of skill...right?

For the content that requires a good pug, bringing 40 people to a training dummy and measuring all their dps against eachother is a far more effective measure than gear score ever could be. For non-dps, use achievements or something. This one tank has 11/12 but this other one has killed Algalon, Heroic Anub 25 and still has 11/12 and they're roughly the same gear? Take the Anub killing one. For almost anything else, take whatever. If your pug falls apart on Jaraxxus because no one interrupted the fireballs, grats on having a gear score. Go back to trade, let the idiots who got saved and left lose their ID for the week, refill and keep going. Get someone in greens to interrupt every fireball, they may do the job far better than the gear score.

Long post, my apologies, the length is necissary to attempt to demonstrate my frustration with the effects of this addon.

[krasgoth]

A whole lot of text.

Honestly, if Gearscore has been such a large problem for your death knight that it causes him to not be included in any pugs (Which by the way, I find highly unlikely, because there are SO many pugs even on our bad RP server that it can't possibly be the case), then why not create your own pugs? They definitely aren't hard to create or maintain, and you have a guaranteed spot.

If someone linked me A Tribute to Immortality and then logged on his hunter with greens and blues, I probably wouldn't invite them either. However, that isn't the case with your death knight, and if you get kicked from groups in perfectly passable, current gear like that, it's possible everyone on Illidan is a bunch of pricks, which is not surprising from what I've heard.

Gear score doesn't measure skill, and again for the 50th time, I find the addon useless. The only problem is, the only way to measure skill is to get people in the instance, and try them out on a boss. THEN you can look at them, say "hmm, you're wearing greens and doing 1k dps" and replace them.

The trouble with that is, in a pug, someone leaves, a cascade starts, you have to replace half the group. Bad times. The trouble is in the PuG attitude really.

[Poppasan]

Aw man this turned into a gearscore thread :-\ well then OT: I personally don't accept ANYONE by their gearscore, I simply look if they're enchanted and socketed. That atleast shows some dedication.

[Templar]

To OP I'd have taken your rogue mate because he clearly outgeared patchwerk lol. Raid Leader was just a tit.

[PWDirect]

Just gets me that plonkers say 'Starting TOC25 group - /w me your GS'

Rather than asking for ach / tacs etc, they just ask for gs. This is why so many pugs fail.

I'm near 5.8k gs (not that i care) and ive never done Ulduar except for the weekly boss quests. I could get invited to any Ulduar pug coz of my GS but I would probably wipe the raid as I've never been to the other bosses before...

[Foxhoundn]

You can do patchwerk in gear from "The Burning Crusade"...

Exatclty this...

LF 5k+ GS for naxx 10 is lame and the writer should be punished and sent to hell to burn and his soul should perish in unending pain.

[zorg]

Exatclty this...

LF 5k+ GS for naxx 10 is lame and the writer should be punished and sent to hell to burn and his soul should perish in unending pain.

Amen

[Deleted]

All of you wise-asses badmouthing WotLK here... I understand that most of you didnt play back in TBC but those few who actually played back then, did you forget already about people requiring T6 for Karazhan badge farm? Its the same today, yes, the weekly q/kara badge farm can be done in appropriate gear level, which would be gear from heroics, but you can also run through it overgearing the hell outta the place. Simply dont join those groups, ignore it when you see them on trade and be happy :P.

[Hammerbeard]

When you PuG, it's with WoW players.

WoW players are idiots.

Assuming equally pitiful IQs from all parties,

I'd rather take the person with higher-level gear.

Is it necessary?

No.

Would I rather have someone with 3.5k spellpower vs 1.5k spellpower, regardless of whether it's necessary?

Absolutely.

[Takki]

oooh reve i remember...
kara: there was my badges/T5/Za elemental/restoshaman and my sunwellgeared mage. so everytime when i wanted to join a group with my shaman i came with my mage and told the leader when he said the shamans gear were crap and he'll only accept the mage: 'its your choice- you'll get the mage but i'll log on my shaman for the bosses or you'll take the shaman for the whole instance. the time-loss for #1 is higher ;P'
for T6instances i had no problems, everyone who had the pre was good enough x)

<3 prequests ;_;

[Deleted]

6.5k gearscore is required for naxx 10 7k for naxx 25.
You should'nt allow anyone with lower than that into the raid :-*

[Foxhoundn]

7k

Is this even reachable now? Maybe with Shadowmourne equipped in every slot :-\