Figuring out Good From bad

[Drunkdude101]

ok so i'm recruiting for my 10man icc and i got a whisper from a resto druid, who has a main with 8/12 25man icc hm achieves and 10man, except he's extremely undergeared, i know there are people out there that are good even with shit gear, but how do you guys know if they are worth their salt or not, also with tanks as well not many are good at holding agro and i was wondering if anyone had any tips on how to tell them apart.

[Gandrake]

Fuck I hate referencing GS

but if he has anywhere over 5.5-5.8+, I'd buy it. People get carried all the time. Might not even be applying in his main spec, you could always check the armory to see if the achievements are real.

edit: I will admit, I'm a bit shaken by tanking changes myself. So much that I've given it up, and gone back to playing my Rogue. AS was always the Prot Paladin's opener which had a silence... but now it's just some holy dmg thing, and I haven't been able to work out a rotation in a heroic. You should probably ask them how they've dealt with the new class changes to get a good idea of where they are.

[Tumble]

Really the only way you can tell if someone is good or not is to play with them. When I first killed LK on my druid he was still at the 5% buff and I was extremly undergeared (around 4500gs) due to shit drops. Give them a chance, and maybe run other raids b4 you go to ICC, like Totc or Ulduar, if they cant stay out of the fire, manage the mechanics in those fights you can probally assume they were carried through ICC.

[Drunkdude101]

i did check his armory, achievements are real, i did have a warrior tank who used to be in the guild who was undergeared, like 35k hp unbuffed 4.4k gs sorta geared, he said, 'Catcha later guys going to clique' got geared to the teeth, within a week and is a mad tank apparently.

[Therastos]

The best way is to play with them or ask someone you know to be competent for an opinion regarding their performance.

If that fails, I'd recommend you to go with achievements on any of their characters. If they have Battlemaster or Insane in Membrane, they are at least dedicated and you can expect that to manifest in taking the trouble of reading about what they should do in the encounters. If they have highly ranked arena teams, you can expect them to know their class and have at least decent reactions and fundamentals.

Likewise, if they killed Putricide, Yogg-Saron and such things the week or two after they were released, they are most likely good. If they did Nightfall before Ulduar, they are very unlikely to be bad. If they did Firefighter, Knock*3 on the Wood, One Light in the Darkness, Orbit-uary, Tribute to insanity or anything like that while it was current content, they were in a high-level guild, and such guilds tend to have much higher criteria to even trial players than a PuG-leader ever should have.

I'd recommend you to ask for an achievement that "proves he is competent". What they give you tells a lot. If they answer with Kingslayer achieved a week ago or babble some GS-nonsense, you can tell they don't even realise that those things prove nothing. I'd much more value "I'm sorry. I'm new, and I have no achievements to prove my competence. However, I can tell you that I can play at high enough level to carry my weight in raid in question".

That leads me to a second way, showing their knowledge. You can ask them how boss-mechanics work. If they can explain them, you know they understand them, which is way better than just having seen the encounter. Still, having seen the encounters (achievement achieved at any time, no matter how unimpressive it was), is better than nothing.

If all else fails, go with the gear (a good player should have something to show before this stage). Make sure to check that the gems and enchants are at least sensibe, such as no spirit enchants for a DK.



Now that I've spouted out my "theory of telling how competent the player is" I like to spread in all threads of this kind, to your actual question: First of all, you should ask in which guild his main was. If you know anyone you trust from there, ask their opinion whether or not the player was carried, or a trial-soon-to-be-kicked. If it's a truly high level guild, you should expect them to know who they are recruiting.

Even then, regardless of when he did those hardmode-achievements, you can expect a performance easily sufficient to do whole ICC10, as long as he is using at least ilvl200 epics. If you have someone with same qualifications and better gear, they are obviously a better choice, but very few encounters, especially when it comes to healing as a restoration druid in the new patch, value any kind of gear more than more than ability to play the game.

[mikabob]

Try him out ? Its not that big a stretch to accept someone on trial-basis.


I for one will always go for the player , not the gear. Gear IS always fixable, skill.... not so much.

A healer that know how balance heals in advance, and just "follow" the fight.... will allways be worth more in my book than a gearad player, that lacks the heart in it. I will listen to the player "how" he talks about a encounter, look how he enchants and gems and stuff like that.

Just looking at GS and gear, is basicly like a bra.

The bra is a indicator that there is boobs under there, it tells nothing about how jiggly squeezable and nice they r =)

[baelon]

While gear does put a hard cap on dps / hps, the 30% buff should make up for any lack of gear. Plus resto puts out more hps now for druids with the 4.0.1 changes.

[calinass]

ok so i'm recruiting for my 10man icc and i got a whisper from a resto druid, who has a main with 8/12 25man icc hm achieves and 10man, except he's extremely undergeared, i know there are people out there that are good even with shit gear, but how do you guys know if they are worth their salt or not, also with tanks as well not many are good at holding agro and i was wondering if anyone had any tips on how to tell them apart.

Looks at logs.