What You Should Know About Gear Score
Over the past month or so I have seen more and more keyword searches land here (specifically this post), and it astounds me that people actually seem to believe that gear score indicates a level of proficiency, or that there is even a number to aim for to partake in specific avenues of content. Since the thought continues to be so prevalent I want to try to provide a comparison that will help others understand why gear score is not indicative of skill:
The Number And Relevance Argument
- Gear score provides a number that corresponds to the item level of the gear a player has.
- High item level gear is available to everyone with varying degrees of ease.
- Therefore high gear score is available to everyone with varying degrees of ease.
- If high gear score is available to everyone then gear score cannot be indicative of skill or ability.
- Gear score is not indicative of skill or ability.
What exactly does this mean? Quite simply, the ability for any player to pursue the acquisition of gear will automatically provide said player with a high gear score. How the player managed the gain their gear is not taken into account, nor is any indicator of whether the player actually actively participated in any of the encounters or activities in which they received the benefits of gear or emblems.
Let’s take this a step further, though, and examine another aspect of the gear score argument:
The Correlation Argument
- Gear score only calculates its number based on gear.
- Player performance is based on many factors unrelated to gear (such as latency, personal ability to respond to situations and adapt quickly, etc.).
- If gear score does not include all factors that affect player performance then it cannot be used to judge player performance.
- Gear score does not include all factors that affect player performance, and therefore cannot be used to judge player performance.
This one is pretty straightforward. Gear score does not reflect anything but the item level of the gear a player has. Not only can players perform beyond the level of gear that they possess (not mathematically, obviously, but in relative performance to others) but players can also, and often do, perform below the level of gear that they possess.
Quite frankly, seeing a tool used to exclude players simply due to a numerical statistic that has no true bearing on performance irks me. When did we reach a point where the concept of working together to clear content became all about individual performance? Obviously I’m not suggesting that a fresh level eighty with nothing but quest rewards for gear head on into Icecrown Citadel, but using gear score to claim they reach a level of proficiency just doesn’t hold much weight.
I’ve considered upgrading my gear to some higher ilvl pieces, only to be told by Rawr that the higher ilvl pieces were actually downgrades and would hinder my DPS.
I thought about addressing that as well, but then decided I probably should do a gear-related post that attempts to explain how to choose gear instead of adding that to the item-level argument, though that is a very good point.
Gear Score is just a tool. The problem isn’t with Gear Score, but in how it’s used. Anyone trying to build a raid group and that relies solely on the criteria of GS rating and completion of achievements, is likely to find a few “deadbeats” none-the-less. But it’s far more likely that someone with a GS of, say, 5000 is going to do reasonably well in ICC (assuming they have any ability to match their gear). By comparison, someone with a GS of 2000 is probably NOT going to be able to contribute much to an ICC raid… unless they’re incredibly skilled. The problem is, it’s unlikely you’ll run into a lot of skilled players with a GS under 2000.
Does GS get abused? Sure. I’ve seen idiots looking for groups to do HEROICS with a GS requirement over 3000 (which is utterly ridiculous). But I’ve also seen people looking for TOC or even ICC groups with GS of 2800 or so, and that’s marginal for those instances at best.
Those who use GS correctly use it to weed out those who are obviously under-geared for the instance being run. They then take the rest on faith of ability. (Obviously if that ability results in the instance being unable to be completed, those people will be dropped.)
Anyway my point is: don’t hate the addon. Hate the idiots who abuse it. Then again, most of them probably end up with fail groups anyway, so they probably reap what they sow.
@Fujiro
The general player-base doesn’t make the distinction between the addon itself and the way to use it (otherwise my first post on the subject would have been sufficient to explain it to most people), so the point being made here is to shed light on the method in which it is being used by so many, which is incorrect.
I use gearscore personally. I like being able to, at a glance, know what type of gear a player is in. I’m intelligent enough not to make a leap of faith and assume that correlates to player skill, though, which is where the majority seem to be failing.
The problem with GS isn’t that it gets misused, the problem is that it doesn’t do anything to determine how well a player can navigate and contribute to content. These are the following factors that have the most impact on your performance:
Spec
Rotation
Gems
Enchants
Correct gear for your spec/environment
Glyphs
latency
All GS does is indicate the ilvl of gear a player possesses. It does not factor in anything else, and as such, should not ever be used, for anything, period.
People don’t seem to get it that you have to actually play with someone to get an idea of how well they will perform.
Currently healers with low GS can heal content far above what they should be, simply because healing is OP in wow. I did a ToC 10 last week and not a single dps besides myself and a hunter was above 2k dps. We full cleared ToC in just about an hour and a half, no wipes.
Simply put, the people who use GS to determine if you can join a raid or not, are the kind of people who are too impatient to pug raids anyway. They are the kind of people who want to walk into the content, one shot everything, and walk out with shiny epics. They don’t want to spend times teaching other people the fights, they don’t want to spend time enjoying the game.
More often than not, these are the people who put together fail groups anyway. One wipe and they call it.
“People don’t seem to get it that you have to actually play with someone to get an idea of how well they will perform.”
I certainly agree with the above, as outlined in the post itself, and I wanted to point that out before I respond to the following statement:
“All GS does is indicate the ilvl of gear a player possesses. It does not factor in anything else, and as such, should not ever be used, for anything, period.”
This I somewhat disagree with. GS can provide some useful information, BUT it can only provide that useful information if operating under general assumptions that DO NOT correlate to any indication of player ability or other factors. Basically, knowing what Persons A, B, C, and D (all of whom have comparable gear scores) are capable of in damage, or healing, or mitigation means that Person E with a comparable gear score COULD be capable of the same level of play assuming all other factors are the same.
Where people make mistakes is assuming that this correlates to anything that resembles player skill or ability. The only thing this does is give a person an idea of where a player could perform given all other factors remain comparable.
In the end, I completely agree that using GS is unproductive, and is definitely something that should never be used as a requirement or restriction. However, for having a theoretical performance max/min at a glance (and remembering that all of those other assumptions have to be factored in), GS can be useful to an individual person to compare where they are to another, “comparable,” player in performance.
I felt this needed to be added to this discussion:
http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20100222
I laughed so hard when I saw that comic originally… it really is true!