Dismantling ignorance, a thread of enlightenment.

[sulfuric]

Lots of people are easy to hate. It's easy to hate the person who shows up and contributes nothing more to a thread than a personal opinion of the OP .. but hey who's keeping track of such things!?!

I still hold out some hopes that community members might contribute ideas for improving the current system. I'm no math wiz, but I know a lot of people out there are.

If you took a mage with a 5.5k GS, Spec'd properly in Arcane with appropriate gems & enchants; how much DPS would they do if they never used any trinkets, popped no CD's, and spammed Arcane Blast on a single target? How much DPS would they do if they DID use all their CD's, clipped all their cast times perfectly and really MAXED out their DPS?

Until answers like that can be given, and some type of standard given to GearScore numbers .. we aren't actually "enlightening" anybody, just complaining that people are focusing their anger at the wrong thing. More than likely GS will never deliver any of this, but the next generation of it's type might.

There will never be an addon to do this, unless there is a note portion attached where players can actually critique indidividuals and leave a lasting "player score". Gearscore is nothing more than a calculator telling you what you should be able to do in a certain level of gear, you're not going to get much more out of an addon.

I dont think anyone who speaks english properly is a pompous douche, i think your a pompous douche. What do you care if people hate GS for the wrong reasons? You keep talking about logic as if every person should be held up to your standard of reasoning when very few people think like that. When someones car wont start, they often get angry with the car itself. Or a chair when they stub their toe. It dosent make sense, its just the way feelings work. Can you honestly say youve never blame an inanimate object for anything?

Nothing is done with logic alone, but its used for almost everything, including research for cancer. Get out of your mommys basement, get a tan and do something constructive with your life.

I find it incredibly offensive that someone who lacks the knowledge to understand the simple difference between your and you're, or that realizes that logic is applied to everyone regardless if they understand it or not is making judgment calls about me and my life. I care if people hate gearscore for the wrong reason because it's bringing intelligent discussion on these forums to it's knees. Logic is not "my standard of reasoning" it is THE standard of reasoning for anyone who lives in the physical world. There is also a difference between saying "fuckin chair" after stubbing your toe, and saying "fucking gearscore keeping me out of groups" and creating threads about it. One of these actions is completely in the moment and innocently uninformed, and one of them is willfully ignorant, makes little to no sense, and is a blight on intelligent debate.

Well, I gotta say, I have to agree with you OP, and I thank you for enlightening me. I did hate the addon. For what it did to the community, but I guess I never took a step back and realized it's the community's damn fault.

Well, you're welcome Earthson. That was my goal

[Deleted]

You cannot seem to understand that casue and effect are always linked. If the raid leader refuses you because of a low gearscore, then yes, it IS the raid leader's fault. But, what CAUSED him to make that decision was the gearscore.
How can you say you can have no opinion on the cause of an effect you don't like? Humans don't work that way.

You state that if the raid leader uses a tool to deny you entry, you must dislike the person, not the tool. I say it is impossible to not dislike the tool. It may have no effect whatsoever, but human emotions work that way.

You're saying that gearscore has made people have higher standards for the gear pugs wear if I understand you correctly, and I disagree. People have always wanted to make raiding with strangers easier rather than harder, and to do this they demand people be overgeared.

Contradicting yourself in one paragraph, impressive. First you say that people don't demand higher standards for pugs. Then in the next sentance you state that people do demand higher standards for raiding with strangers (otherwise known as a pug). The gearscore element makes it much easier to set an number, which people just below would have got into just fine, but now do not.

As for the definition of contradiction, no. My point was that all the people arguing against you have made some valid arguements, and your replies have made very few counterpoints until I specifically told you about it. It is all about attacking people's reasons for arguing with you, and that I hate in a person.

Oh, and to everyone mindlessly spouting "don't blame the tool", well done, you can read. Now try to understand my point, I have written it enough times, and come back with your own arguement.

I can see I'm smashing my head against a wall here, so I'm going to stop. There is a point where logic stops being as effective and you need to look at actaul experiences to gain further insight, and I feel you are severely lacking in this department.
Have fun children

[Luko]

Let's make this quick and simple.

A moderator should make a thread: GS topics will be locked and will result in a temporary ban.

Then, in this topic, you have this. This is not a bad topic, it's the plain true. It's not even an opinion. Simple and good. That's all.

By your logic, this would be a very dead forum site, in general. It would start with gear score, then move to the opinion polls, and class QQ, and then end up in the "What do you want to see from blizzard in the future?" threads. They all make about the same amount of difference.

The OP makes alot of good points that many of us already considered. The problem is, in a round about way, he's blaming the community for the downfall of otherwise harmless things.... and he's talking to that same community about it.

Just sounds like a debate spark to me. Normally that's fine, but in a community more likely to respond with "lolwut" then constructive critism, I think the effort was wasted.

[Schippi]

im glad that everyone on my faction with GS is ignored.
everybody that mentions GS is kicked from group or if readleader everybody leaves and form a new group without the leader.
sure you have to have resonable gear for pugs, but not gs

[Luko]

Is it just me, or is sulfuric putting way too much effort into this? If hes so smart and logical, why dosent he put his efforts into curing cancer or solving the mid-east crisis instead of making a huge, really arrogant post about how its not the add-ons fault? I normally never post things, but i couldent help myself here. Hes just so easy to hate...

I found this one a little late, which is upsetting as there's a dozen things I could say about it. But I'll simplify it for you and for the sake of the "TLR" method:

The OP isn't anything special. He's not displaying any amazing intellect or conversational tactic. Honestly, I think you're maybe just a little too used to your server's trade chat to remember a day when people typed things out and used full sentences, not for the purpose of appearing high and mighty, but because doing otherwise made you appeal slow and flawed... because literally, there's no reason not to.

Seriously, that entire quote of yours is spawned strait out of a cyber world that has become so lazy that holding the W key to move to your next destination has become too much for them to handle.

<Mageindalaran> "summon 2 vault plz"

[peaman]

Everyone is subject to logical assessment my friend, I am not forcing beliefs on anyone however what I am doing is applying logic to their predicament. I hope you're not pretending the statements you make are outside the realm of criticism and logical analysis?

It's not the fact you're forcing beliefs on anyone, more that it's just a pointless thread? Yes some people will agree with you, some people will continue to disagree, but at the end of the day, i really doubt you'll change anything with this (even if that wasn't your objective), you've just clearly got way too much time on your hands to have thought about it this much, there's just no need for it. Clearly you're an intelligent guy, so go and put some effort into something important.

[unillenium]

GEARSCORE
What is this addon? Let's ask the author [i]"GearScore is an addon for World of Warcraft that allows you to quickly and easily judge a player's level of Gear. GearScore represents the maximum potential for a player to perform.

Except for when they use higher ilevel items that aren't as optimal for their spec for the sake of having a higher gearscore.

Gearscore removes the need to load up a players armory, and speeds up the process of character inspection.

If I have to form a pug I deliberately do things the slow way, because patience is a virtue that doesn't go unrewarded in raids. The players who qq about starting soon and quit are the ones that will quit mid-raid whether or not it's going well.

a mathematical standpoint of what that specific character is capable of in the gear they are wearing. Players do not want to be simply classified into "do's" and "don't's" without taking their individual ability into account, something an addon can and will never be able to do.

Except you know... a hunter with Banner of Victory (ilevel 200) has more potential than a hunter with Mark of Supremacy (ilevel 245). In a single target situation Windrunner's Heartseeker (258) in the hands of an MM hunter will out-perform Zod's Repeating Longbow (264), whereas the former would potentially be superior for a BM or Surv hunter. A hunter with a Fel Glacier Bolter (232) will out perform a scrub with that boe tank gun (264). The boe phys dps neck (264) from ICC wouldn't neccesarily be a dps gain over a 251 neck with armor penetration (assuming the wearer doesn't need the hit on the neck), There are many such examples, meaning that if a player is primarily concerned with boosting their gearscore there is a significant chance that they are actually poorly geared (with missmatched high level gear.)

Some raid leaders lack the time or desire to look into a potential

You mean the ones spamming trade with "LFM FOR ICC25 @ LDW PST GEARSCORE".

being denied access to a group

I don't get denied access, I got a high guildscore.

blah blah mathematics blah blah blah.

MY problem; Before gearscore exploded in popularity in 3.3.3 on my realm there was a lot of good pugging going on (Heck I was in a 25 man ToC pug for the 2nd week of ToC that cut Jaraxxus down, we all basically were able to learn an entire fight with a bunch of people who have never raided with each other before(25 of them at that.). After it spread around pug leaders got lazy and used it as a crutch, at first things weren't so bad because at first only the good players met the typical gearscore mark for a certain raid, but as you mentioned it's easy to reach those gear marks on this expansion. So several weeks later; joining a pug for ANYTHING is a headache waiting to happen. So now if I have to bring an alt to the guilds ICC run on a particular lockout I won't even bother pursueing a pug for it on my main anymore because of the big fail boat that promises to set sail. Cause and effect: Cause - A wonderful addon that instantly gives a group or raid leader access to a numerical value showing the maximum potential of a player. Effect - Virtues have died in the pugging community. Not only does the gearscore crutch attract unskilled improperly geared players but ontop of that nobody has any patience what-so-ever anymore. They expect a raid to be formed and pulling within 5 minutes.

The community has deemed it unacceptable to take pride in your accomplishments, and doubly unacceptable to do so publicly.

That's pretty much the only thing I use Gearscore for; to track the gear progression of my toons and of my guildies so that I can congratulate them on their progress or give myself a pat on the back "woot another one over 5k" yada yada.

blah blah blah jealousy

Once again I'm not attacking pride, I'm attacking laziness and the damage that laziness has done to a community.

Summation

Not everybody who attacks gearscore falls into your narrow little window of generalizations. Nor does a players gearscore accurately represent their maximum potential by any means.

[willtron]

Much uncommon sense.

fixt. Common Sense isn't common.

[sulfuric]

You cannot seem to understand that casue and effect are always linked. If the raid leader refuses you because of a low gearscore, then yes, it IS the raid leader's fault. But, what CAUSED him to make that decision was the gearscore.
How can you say you can have no opinion on the cause of an effect you don't like? Humans don't work that way.

You state that if the raid leader uses a tool to deny you entry, you must dislike the person, not the tool. I say it is impossible to not dislike the tool. It may have no effect whatsoever, but human emotions work that way.

The cause was the desire of the raid leader to discriminate who he invites to his raids based on the requirements of a high itemlevel in gear. The effect was you being denied a raid spot, gearscore is neither of those because it is not an action, it is a tool. Also however you viscerally react out of emotion does not in any way disprove logic, logic is the science of the formal principles of reasoning. Emotion and reasoning do not compute.

You're saying that gearscore has made people have higher standards for the gear pugs wear if I understand you correctly, and I disagree. People have always wanted to make raiding with strangers easier rather than harder, and to do this they demand people be overgeared.

Contradicting yourself in one paragraph, impressive. First you say that people don't demand higher standards for pugs. Then in the next sentance you state that people do demand higher standards for raiding with strangers (otherwise known as a pug). The gearscore element makes it much easier to set an number, which people just below would have got into just fine, but now do not.

You just confused yourself enough to morph this into a contradiction, I embedded the quote into this reply so you could understand it better. I never said that people don't demand higher standards for pugs, this entire thread is based on the knowledge that they have and always have. I said that gearscore is not responsible for this, people were denied from all expansions and all raids regardless of an addon made in wrath of the lich king. For the contradiction to be valid, you'd have to actually get me to say what you pretended I said, and I quote "you say that people don't demand higher standards for pugs".

As for the definition of contradiction, no. My point was that all the people arguing against you have made some valid arguements, and your replies have made very few counterpoints until I specifically told you about it. It is all about attacking people's reasons for arguing with you, and that I hate in a person.

The problem with logic is that it is sound reasoning, whatever you're refuting it is fake and deliberately asserted phrases that I have not said in order to make an argument for yourself. I really don't know how you're expecting me to fight a phrase I never said.

Oh, and to everyone mindlessly spouting "don't blame the tool", well done, you can read. Now try to understand my point, I have written it enough times, and come back with your own arguement.

I can see I'm smashing my head against a wall here, so I'm going to stop. There is a point where logic stops being as effective and you need to look at actaul experiences to gain further insight, and I feel you are severely lacking in this department.
Have fun children

Good luck to you in your next debate, I hope you're better prepared in the future.

[Fenixdown]

I'll say it again, since the thread still seems to lack quite a bit of rationality to it. Most of us don't hate GearScore or people with "e-peen". We hate people that have issues handling GearScore and "e-peen". My examples are stated in my post several pages ago.

The reason for why people hate GearScore specifically is, in fact, not because of how it works. It's because of it's limited functionality. It rates one thing specifically, item level. Now, I know for a fact you played in BC, where item level didn't explode to the astronomical proportions that it has today. So, let's use this as a hypothetical. You have an option of two holy priests for a PuG (I use this as my best example). These are your options.

Priest 1. Wearing 4-pc T7, Ruby Slippers, other various speckles of DPS caster gear (as we all know, bonus healing was still the primary healing stat in BC)but is in full epics.
Priest 2. Wearing full Primal Mooncloth and Whitemend, various pieces from heroics but full bonus healing effect, some of which are blues but are still rated very high for throughput.

Now, completely disregard the knowledge that PMC/Whitemend was a far better throughput set bonus composition until SSC than tier 4, and the knowledge that you know that bonus healing is better to have than bonus damage and healing. Also disregard the fact that priest 1 is gemming for agility and priest 2 is gemming for spirit and spell healing. Go based simply on the fact of this. Priest 1 has a higher GearScore than priest 2 (priest two, by the way, was myself in the early days). Based on only that alone...which do you take?

THAT is why people hate GearScore. Forming a PuG in the past actually took thinking, and more specifically knowledge. Now it takes one simple factor into account, and that factor is "did that guy get gear". It's turned PuGing from what it used to be, which was reasonable and to some degrees successful, into what it is today, which on many realms is downing four bosses in ICC25 and quitting.

If you used the knowledge that you have from the past to form a PuG now, it would take longer but you would easily down eight bosses out of twelve. However, many people that are from that era of this game either don't PuG very often, don't speak up about why specifically GearScore is an insane way to judge a person, or don't play anymore for various reasons. GearScore has specifically led to more and more and more players doing things that you hate more than bashing on GearScore...playing their characters wrong.

Now, as a min/maxing elitist, I would actually think that you would be MORE inclined to be on the "I hate GearScore" bandwagon, not less. GearScore has taken people from the days of looking up their spec, doing research on what stats are best optimized for throughput, and actually playing with some basic form of common sense to the days of putting on the highest item level crap you can find, DPS/TPS/avoidance/healing/regen/everything else be damned. Your cause and effect scenario is misguided, the cause and effect goes as follows.

Before GearScore: Cause - Gearing up for Ulduar and ToTC meant actually playing well and making proper decisions on what items you should and should not be using.
Effect- More frequently, players were in acceptable items for their role in end-game content, people played with no less than basic knowledge of their classes.

After GearScore: Cause - GearScore is created to tell you how good or bad your gear is based on item level and nothing else. No need to stat optimize, no need to increase your throughput by wearing the proper weapons, no need even to enchant and gem properly as those aren't even factored in for GearScore.
Effect - The playerbase now only cares about one thing and one thing alone, having high GearScore. Best in slot trinkets for ret paladins such as Darkmoon Card : Greatness are no longer used and replaced instead with trinkets such as Deathbringer's Will. Healers are using anything with spellpower, half the time it having hit rating. Tanks are in PvP gear.

To summarize best why GearScore specifically is blamed for this is to compare it to some of the more modern robotics movies. Robots are created, robots turn on humanity. Who's to blame, the robots or the creator? In that comparison, GearScore is the creator, and the playerbase are the robots.

As far as the "e-peen" thing is concerned, that entire point left this topic about nine pages of posts ago, so I'm not retouching that one.