Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Gearscore is so yesterday

Last night I was healing a guild ICC10 group. Someone asked about the Lich King encounter and what kind of gear score is required. I swear if it was possible I would have gone through vent and strangled him.(btw this person should be far more concerned with his dps, he was riding just above the tank)

Once more, with feeling.

The Gearscore mod is highly flawed. It doesn't track enchants, experience or the accuracy of stats on the player. All it measures is iLevel. And any Hunter who knows anything about gear knows that Darkmoon Card:Greatness is better than basically every trinket under ilvl 245, and things like Herkuml War Token are inferior to 245 and even most 226 trinkets.

Someone just pointed me to a bright and shiney new method of warcraft evaluation.  Elitist Armory.  Its a web based tool that is a hybrid of the Elitist Group mod and the WoW armory.  Elitist Armory is everything Gearscore could be if it wasn't a lazy mod for lazy players.

For kicks, giggles and examples lets look at my Elitist Armory page.  You can see a ton of information about my character.   Both of my talent trees, my professions, the average item level of my gear not counting trinkets, and the accuracy of my gemming, enchants, and gear as it relates to my class and spec.

But beyond that, we get into the meat and potatoes of EA – the Raid Experience calculator.   This is highly cool.

If you’ll look (at time of writing), I’m 100% experienced in ICC10 but only 89% experienced in Ruby Sanctum despite having 2 Halion kills.  Why? Because EA’s Raid Experience index doesn’t just care about kills and achievements, it actually rewards repetition, rates harder encounters (LDW, PP, Sindy, etc) worth more points than lesser encounters (the whole Lower Spire on normal, etc.), and gives you a composite index as it relates to a value at which one should be expected to be 100% experienced with the instance.

Elitist Armory is unique in this experience is rewarded, not just “link achievement”. Running the instance weekly and gaining more and more intimate knowledge of the encounters builds my experience rating, until it caps at 100%, at which point I should be considered autonomous and able to work on my own in this instance.


It also has the usual “look at their gear/gems/enchants” stuff that you’d expect from an armory, experience ratings for 5-mans and older content, and a whole bevy of information to give you a REAL way to determine a raider’s aptitude, instead of just saying “oh that hunter has 5896 gs, take him”.

It’s a major step up in information analysis for current and aspiring raid leaders.  Spread the word, there's a new sheriff in town.

8 comments:

  1. I've started answering any GS questions in gchat with "over 9K!!" If they ask for a serious answer, I tell them to stop using GS and actually worry about performance.

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  2. Unfortunately, until there is an in-game mod this won't get used. If a raid leader is lazy enough to use gearscore, then he's to lazy to alt-tab out and look people up.

    Also... on Dinaer I rate 0% on Halion, only 60% on ToC25, and just 61% on ICC10. I don't know if that's a very accurate representation of my raiding, even though I did some of the high end stuff as a tank.

    I'm just griping. Its all kind of pointless. At this stage of the game, as the current expansion cycle winds down, with Emblem of Frost gear and the ICC 30% buff, they should just let anyone into raids.

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  3. I'm with SAn on the idea. I HATE when I hear people talk about GS. Its just a simple way for people to judge others. "Oh. You don't have a 9k GS. You cant do Naxx. Good day to you sir"

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  4. I just wish once someone would ask me how much DPS I thought they would need for the encounter. Well someone besides Gibby.

    There is an in game version of that online mod but its not as extensive. Check out Elitist Groups.

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  5. Hey Cheres. How much dps would you think I need for LK..... Your welcome =P

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  6. From Drowningpool: I have a very strong feeling person that person was me and I have no intention of not owning up to my stupidity ,bad dps ,noob questions,misspellings, yelling WAZZUP in guild chat when I come online, and my relatively bad gear , I realized a long time ago that I need a LOT of improvement I need to learn my class better but I intend to get better. Also as a previous horde member on a pve server it is hard to get into a good guild and people don't seem so eager to help out noobs very much . This guild is just plain great and there are many people who can easily do double my dps a couple of em are rogues like myself I am very open to constructive criticism so please don't hold back everyone and I would really like any possible knowledge on how I can get better dps . So thank you cheres great post hope to see everyone when I get back

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  7. I hate GS as well and just type "probably higher than yours in response". I refuse to load the mod for the reasons stated so well by Cheres.

    As Din stated it is pretty much pointless at this stage for ICC. I just hope with the upcoming expansion people focus on the player and having fun....not his or her gear score.

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  8. Hey Drowning its not just you that does it, you were just the straw that broke the hunter's back.

    I'm sure we can toss together a ToC run for you to get some easy gear and badges outside of the normal ICC runs. Half the guild has alts that can benefit from a run, few mains too.

    All I know about rogues is I try not to misdirect to them so I'm not much help there.

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