Alternatives to gearscore: Pugging a raid - What do you look for?

[Fuzzzie]

I didn't read all the posts but a good thing pugs do on my server is post a week ahead of time and make a signup list. People from all across the board sign up and the raid leader/organizer has time to look at peoples gear and achievements.

Trying to cobble together a raid in trade chat 20mins before you're wanting to start and seeing 10 people leave because they sit there for over an hour waiting to start is fail.

Pre-plan!

[Halicia]

What would make more sense is an addon that says "This person has intelligent gemming/enchanting choices, he should do well." or "This person has completed "X" so this makes him a logical choice." or [Insert logic here].

Yes, you can talk to people and get the gist of what they're about, but what we really need is a way to weed out players who pass the screening process, and a new screening process to begin with to make sure that's less likely to happen

what we need are raidleaders capable of spending 5 minutes finding addons that are already out there, or say... reading the thread for the answer.

as far as screening, i find heroic marrowgar and making sure people are capable of flying to the instance and ghosting back if they die on trash does the trick.

[dakalro]

Gearscore is a great addon, could be a lot simpler though, average ilvl is pretty much the same since the addon doesn't implement much, if any, class based stat weights, not to mention trinkets. Then a fast inspect for PvP items, idiotic gear that is just used to inflate the score, achievements, takes about 1 min max. I have decent knowledge about all classes and specs and where I'm lacking, well, I have a guild for that. Though unless the player is from a very good guild (12/12 HM that is, no matter what your opinions are they can play properly, on pretty much any class/spec, when they choose to do so) or I personally know and have played with her/him I assume guilty until proven innocent and pray.

Most players, even from guilds with 11/12 HM ICC 25 are still crap (on alts but some even on mains) but if you manage to lead a decent PuG (leaders are the ones that usually fail, everyone else can be potty trained), keep the core of good players and repeat on weekly basis, got a very good PuG going this way and you can see people improve week by week (11/12 HM ICC 25 atm with LK normal being 1shot).

[Brince]

Asking someone what their single target dps is, is like asking a kid how long his dick is. Everyone knows he's going to measure from his asshole and then add two inches.

Welcome in my sig

[Contion_BB]

Ermmm... No.

In a pug (as opposed to a guild) why would you question someone's roll?

Ok, there are blatantly bad rolls (the enh shaman or retri paladin rolling for DBW), but most of the times you can't judge an upgrade by comparing only the piece they are wearing and the one they are rolling for. You can't know what stat they are going for and what gear they have in their bags for an alternate set. I wouldn't even pretend to know much about itemization for all the classes/specs.

Unless you have ALL the information, you shouldn't second guess most of the rolls (feel free to disregard blatantly stupid ones, though).[COLOR="red"]

As a raid leader I have every right to questions someones roll... again I said... question... not throw out... if someone says "well I am working on a haste set." that's a good reason... if someone said... "well... hum... you know... I just want it..." then well its not a good reason.

again I also said SLIGHT upgrade... if its a major upgrade minus the stupid stat... I would not question it.

[Yoshimiko]

Simple answer to your first question: As far as I know, Elitist Group doesn't give you a "general score" based on all that. There isn't a number you can put beside another person's number to say "this guy is better". You actually have to compare the two people, which is too much work for GS-using baboons.

A person may be rolling on something with a lower gearscore and still be an upgrade to them (better itemized). Why would anyone use GS for THAT?

I have 50 applicants to my pug. About 30 of them whispered me at roughly the same time with a number. I have two options) Ask them all to meet me somewhere so I can spend roughly 20-40 seconds a person, wow-heroes them at about 10 seconds a person, or trust their GS. One of these options can take 30+ minutes, the other can take 30+ seconds.

Quiet simply, their's no such thing as a skill check. You can heroes them and see they have a 3.5k heroes gs{or 6.5k gs}, downed every boss in the game 10x over, and find out that it's just the top guilds leader's girlfriend who actually just got carried through it all. Or that fresh 80 pumpen 10k HPS on marrowgar, or that 2200(3.5k) gs Ele shammy dishen out 9k dps in icc.

Want successful pugs? Start running them. After your first run if you yourself aren't fail, and lead your pug fairly, you'll start seeing returning people. Best of luck to ya.

Edit: Generally the way I handle rolls is If it's BiS for one person and not another, they can roll on it. IE: If a ret pally rolls on DBW Just because it's a personal upgrade...I'ma deny him that. If a warrior rolls on torokk's though they can have at{leather bracers that drop off of the same boss, heroic version is bis}. 1 weapon/trinket per run, 1 item per boss- saronite isn't counted.

[Endler89]

well I have an idea for an addon but i don't have the programming to pull it off. It would be a spec checker. It would have every talent tree and you can mark the required talents for each spec. Basically a blank spec tree of every spec where you can mark what are key abilities you must have in that spec or be flagged. You could also mark specs to disclude a specs completely. It would be customizable way to make sure people had a good spec. Set it once and go and customize in later patches with new relevant info. Yes it is biased to you knowing what each spec needs, and setting it up correctly for this, but a little extra work for less work later really wish i had the programing skills to make it

[Fornaw]

During the brief time that I could stand to lead pugs, I had a decent idea of most of the skilled players on my realm as it was a low pop server at the time (just moved up to medium I believe). If I didn't recognize the toon's name I would check the guild name. Failing both of these, I would do an HP/mana bar check. I could always tell that when the unbuffed hunter had 15k mana during naxx/sarth days he was doing something wrong. Or if any given person had say 16k unbuffed health. I would boot anyone who failed this. If my suspicions were aroused I'd do a /inspect.

I would then post my loot rules. These rules allowed for absolutely no nonsense when it came to questionable upgrades. Its surprising how different people react when reading loot rules, as most good players don't really care, while baddies piss and moan. I don't remember exactly what they were as its going on a year and a half ago now, but my reputation was such that people knew I wasn't a ninja or played favorites so I said I reserved the right to loot the item to a more qualified person in a close call.

Next I would pay attention to the effort people put in to get to the raid we were doing, as well as during buffing and trash. Good players generally do what they need to do without me asking them, while baddies afk or have to be asked for mark of the wild 10 times.

Next is the first attempt hurdle. I always clearly explained the fight mechanics before a pull. Repeated examples of failure in one fight earned a boot. If someone messed up once without too much hurt to the raid I didn't care so much as I am rather easygoing. If I got spammed tells about so and so's performance I would usually watch them closely or bring up the relevant stats on recount. If we downed the boss I would generally proceed to the next one with no boots.

(However, I usually had at least 6 or 7 guildies with me in 25s and 3 or 4 in 10's so I had a little backup if someone decided to bitch)

Anyway thats how I used to do it. Stressful as hell but it was worth it, usually. I guess I was kind of a nazi.

I remember having barely around 17k unbuffed health as a well geared Tauren Enhancement Shaman in Naxx gear. In fact I just made a Draenai on the wowhead profiler with full ilvl 200 epics which are all spec appropriate and came out with 15980 total health. That's gear which is far and above what should be required of a Naxx 25 raider, yet they fail to meet your requirements to raid. Whereas a Fury warrior could probably pass that requirement in full blues. I played when mana/health checks were considered part of pugging, I remember players had a piece or 2 of PvP gear that they could switch out after getting an invite or had more than the number of stam gems required to activate a meta.

I'm not trying to rag on you, I'm just trying to put the community's rampant pre-GS nostalgia in perspective.

[Riboe]

Elitist Group > Everything > Gearscore...

EG lets you check a persons iLvl, gems and enchants with a single glance.

I simply don't get how ppl could start using GS instead of such a great addon...