Are gear rating add-ons beginning to wreck the game?
 

I just dinged 80 about a week ago (huzzah!), and I'm pretty excited that I can finally start running some heroics. This is the step that is needed so I can get geared and start raiding again. I have been pugging small groups here and there, and every time I get in a run, the puggies frown at me and try to tell me I'm undergeared, am going to be out of mana in a hurry, and that if they weren't desperate for cloth damage, they'd just as soon replace me. I always tell them I'm hit-capped. They say that doesn't matter. I tell them wait and see. We go through the run clearing trash, and I surprise them by never asking for a mana break. (With Evocate on its low two minute cooldown, I only need about five seconds when my mana is two-thirds of the way gone, and I'm good to go. This happens about every third or fourth fight, so I have enough mana to last me between Evocate cooldowns.) Then I blow them away when I top the dps chart on the bosses and only needed to pop a gem. They say my gear stats don't support topping the chart on bosses. I tell them they obviously must. They ask what my Spell Power is. They laugh when I say it's only about 1.3k and tell me it makes no sense. I tell them it works, because I'm hit-capped.

I've been tolerating this, because I want to get geared. Well, today, someone invites me to a group for chain-running heroics. They look at my health and mana and run a gear-rating add-on to check my gear. The add-on reports back a number they don't like, so they tell me I can't go. They wouldn't even take the time to try me out on one run.

I snapped.

You people with your add-ons... When did you get the idea that an add-on could tell you what my stats were, how much I know about my class, or how well I'm going to do on a boss? When did you begin thinking that an add-on could make it so you didn't have to think as much? Who told you that silly amounts of Spell Power was the only way to get good dps? Maybe some other idiots with my gear rating have done terribly, and the law of averages may be working against me, but that doesn't mean I'm not the exception to the perceived rule.

I know wtf I'm doing, and I'm tired of people telling me I'm a cloth-laiden pile of suck because their stupid mod says so.

What do you guys think? Are certain mods making it so that elitist jerks (ucwutididthar?) are getting too lazy to do their own homework? Has anyone else had this issue? How did you work around it?

This is kind of funny because some addons i.e. the achievement spoofers are reducing the amount of VoA Link Achieve Spam I've seen.

I've had/seen similar things happen to me/others and yet I still wrote GearGauge, to help with raid progression, and to see which guild members were being too lazy to spend the time/effort to run the heroics and get enchantments for, and socket gems in, their gear.

Before these types of AddOns, the metric was "Oh, you're wearing blues. ****-off!"

Idiots will be idiots, and the way I look at it is I probably wouldn't want to run with these ****ing retards anyway.

LoL

You know, Torhal, you make a pretty valid point. If the WoW community wasn't peppered full of these kinds of people, I would be less bothered by them. Unfortunately, they dominate the player-base, and it's keeping me from getting geared. The idea is that I'm not allowed to go get geared because I'm not geared.

What kind of f*cked up logic is that?

Any gear/player rating addon is part of the problem, not the solution. My advice is to avoid them like the plague and the idiots that run them. They only serve vanity. Period. The ONLY, and I do mean ONLY way that I would pay any of these things more than half a mind is if there was ONE standard method of evaluation/ranking/rating. You have Wowhead profiler scores, Wow Heroes scores, Billy Bob's elite gear and endowment stroker, Joe Addon's neat gear checker, and a host of other random crap out there. None of them produce the same results and thus, all of them are useless crap.

I can tell you from firsthand experience that it's possible for a tank to hit a higher gear score with lower mitigation/avoidance/tanking gear. How's that for a ranking system? Pretty rank if you ask me! My paladin tank can boost his gear score by equipping a few pieces that I typically keep in the bank because they don't improve me as a TANK. You know, my primary role.

I have yet to meet anyone that wants a tank with lower mitigation/avoidance/tank stats in favor of one with a higher gear score. If you know of anyone this stupid, they are probably about to burst with premature manlove about the next expansion and all its vanity appeal.

Pfft. Gear scores? Addons that contribute to elitist children? Yeah, I got yer gear score right here! Know what I'm saying? Of course you do.

Good luck fighting the elitist idiots (or are they jerks?) and the addons/sites/tools they covet. Here's to hoping there will be one standard someday if these slapnuts are going to continue using/running/making these things.

...don't hold your breath.

(as a disclaimer, I don't intend to offend anyone who makes otherwise well-intentioned addons, sites, or tools...this isn't about you and your hard work to help advance a community...it's about the damned fools that abuse them)

Personally, I run two gearcheck addons. Torhol's and InventoryOnPar. IOP used to give a rating of raid boss experience which was useful in guesstimating how far an Uld pug would possibly go, but it's borked now. It does give a gs number rating and I find it most useful now to quickly see if anyone is in PvP gear. Other than than it needs an update.

GearGuage I'm still learning it's intricacies, but the rating formulas are the most well thought out of all the mods that I've seen yet (Torhol, you owe me a cookie).

Addons aside, my mentality with the pug is that for PVE, pls wear your appropriate gear, and tanks, pls have minimum of ~3k hp. Other than that, regardless of what your gear, gemming, or enchants are, everyone has a fair chance to pug with me. The only way to tell if someone knows their class well is to run with them, and knowing your class still doesn't mean that you're alive through the whole encounter, which to me is the best display of someone who knows what they're doing.

To sum it up, I pretty much play with the idea of, "make the most of what you have available, adapt to the situation, live, profit."

The fact that people are looking at your gear score only for heroics (which i feel is just utterly stupid) and paying no attention to what the important stats are means your surrounded by idiots.

I can partially understand it for raids. In moderation that is. If all people take on any sort of run (5 man or otherwise) is geared people then you get a gap in the population. Granted this is an extreme case but its not impossible. Personally ive never had anyone mention or tell me on any toon i play im not geared enough for a heroic, then again my server is pretty casual.

Unfortunately the 'geared rant' (i had a thread on here named that back a while ago) is an old one and its never going to go away. Some people are obsessed with spending as little time as possible getting as much as possible done in the game and i will never understand it. Im not one of the types that checks gear scores for anything other than friendly banter between guildmates. I've never bothered to check even for a tank. I just ask if they are capped and i trust they are being truthful.

As for the... shall we say uninformed people you had to deal with they will never get it. You showed them how the mechanics of the game works and all they obsess about is score even in the face of proof. Much like my guildies that obsess over dps as opposed to total damage done. As a consequence i dont ever show reports from skada if i can avoid it.

The main reason these addons get used as much as they do is people want a simple yes or no answer on something and are afraid (or is it incapable) of making their own decision.

I feel the same as you on this subject us2006027321. Sadly they are entitled to enjoy their monthly fee as they see fit. Granted its no less frustrating.

What's even more amusing, is that it's not something that happens solely in end gaming.

Was questing around on a Paladin character around the 30's, when I decided to join a group that must have been looking for a tank for at least the past half an hour. We got to the meeting stone; summoned those that weren't there; and not before had we began buffing up, the everyday smart arse(s) of the group went loose. "Do we really want this tank?", "why you got talent points there?", "don't know how great that DPS will be."

Wonder if this whole gear rating trend is part of what made the developers decide to rework and simplify stats in the coming expansion. The elitism around it is a load of needless crap at any rate.

Well I have to agree that these people are idiotic morons (I would use other words but dont want to take the time to 'star' up my letters). You see the problem lies in people thinking for some unknown retarded reason that ItemLVL is the way to go when rating gear. That's BS! Look I understand that blizzard uses it for most if not all of their vehicle set up and I understand that the itemlvl is some sort of mathematical formula for the calculation of all the stat points on the item or something to that affect. (Apologies it's late here and I can't remember too clearly about what it actually is) Sadly, this has been reinforced by various websites that rate peoples gear based on itemlvl to what instance they should be in, I won't mention as to what two websites come to mind atm because I don't feel like starting a volatile firey flame thread with other posts becoming counter flame posts of defense just not worth the time of people on this site..we're better than that I think. At any rate since I like to rant and go off topic I will try to hop back, as I stated people think this is the way to rate people but seriously for instance, I was grouped with a healer not too long ago who was pretty near geared to my priest, and I was tanking on my warrior and I swear I was at half health for most of the instances I ran with this healer. Anyways as far as answering your question of why or how do people get off deciding who should go and who should stay based on what a silly addon says, well the reason for this is because we have had two websites that will rate people on this and it does a great job rating item lvl skills but not playing skills or even what stats are on the item and there are alot of addons that work similar, not all addons but ALOT so please dont go posting what addons work this way and dont cause I dont care otherwise I would've posted them myself. Anyways keep wandering in hopes to not start a fire, I think through a short story long, I have boiled the problem down to a few things:

-people are (and I am guilty of this as well) to quick to judge based on a crappy rating system...Itemlvl
-feel that the WoW authorities are feeding them the correct numbers 100% of the time and follow their instructions to the T! (Again been guilty of this and victim too)
-Feel that they know best when it comes to WoW even if they A.) don't have the class, B.) have a lower lvl version of the class, C.) have the same lvl as your class but not in the near same quality gear as your class. (And yet again, that's right I am guilty of at least B and C though I try to state where I get any info which would make me think differently than the person I am chatting with.)

I apologize about this post being as long as it is but I have had this happen to me many a time and it's a topic that's near and dear to my heart as I feel it's one of those great misconceptions in WoW that you can just completely rate someone down to a number and say that the number is too low and you can't go somewhere to get better gear. I am glad (or saddened, not too sure) to see that I am not the only one kind of fed up with this elitist mentality that's infested itself in WoW, it really ruins the game alot of the time for me when it pops up which is pretty often nowadays. Anyways I am done, again I apologize and hope my post makes some sort of sense as it is late and I am getting tired.

In my posts I usually try to explain my stance on the issues we bring up.. The second half of my post is more of the meat of my opinion on this thread subject.

Which brings me to the another point. Attitude goes a long way (happy toons get gold stars and friends list adds). :)

Did you die? If not, the healer wasn't doing their job. If you didn't, he was. A healer's job isn't to keep you topped off all the time, it's to keep you alive. If keeping you alive requires you to be topped off, then the healer needs to know that and do it. Otherwise, it's not necessary and wastes mana through overhealing.

Hihi, a friend of me runs ulduar with a new guild. On XT, he was #1 dps in 25 man(9%, 5.4k DPS). He is wearing mostly naxx 25 gear, but also hit capped. The other mages have everything ulduar 25 gear and are below 6th DPS.

Good pve mages are rare nowadays :P Most of them are too lazy to cap their hit and use frostfire bolt.

If you have problems getting into groups because you're mostly wearing blues, either don't run PUGS or try to find a different server. I've had the same issues with my hunter(wich does 2.8k DPS in karazhan gear...)

I played on a pvp server with a lot of PUGS (heck, they even run Ulduar 25 runs probably), and all they require is to have all of the achievements that you can get for that raid, and minimum of naxx 25 gear. That's just insane. Skill > gear. It doesn't mean people with gear have skills 100% of the time (ok a large part of them might, but seriously). Since I couldn't even find a guild on stormscale because of my gear, I moved back to my former pve server on terenas.

It's good to know I'm not the only person with this problem, and it's rewarding to see I'm not the only person who feels as I do about the problem.When I dinged 78, the first thing I did was gem out of Spell Power and Intellect (which I had done for leveling purposes), and began gemming straight into Hit Rating and Spell Power. The reason for it was that one day I had a sad realization: I was missing on bosses in normal 5-man runs on about every third or fourth hit because my Hit Rating was garbage. I had about 1.8k Spell Power, and my dps wasn't getting above 1.4k. That's a problem! I've lost about 500 Spell Power, and my DPS has gone up so much. I don't know how any other Mage couldn't have noticed the same thing in the process of gearing and leveling up to 80 if they were doing anything even remotely similar. Capping should be first priority for any Mage, and Spell Power should come only after Hit cap has been achieved. That's my theory on it, but it seems like a good deal of the player base on the three servers I've played with this toon would choose to disagree, which brings me to my next point.I've had a bunch of people pick me apart for being in a few pieces of Kara and ZA purples. I even have a green belt I've refused to give up. (My toon's siggie is a link to his armory entry if you wish to review it.) I've kept all these pieces because the only options I've had in loot rolls would cause me to lose 16-24 Hit Rating. No one sees that though! All the see is that it dropped from Kara or ZA or that it's green, and they pitch a fit about it. This has happened on three different servers. I've blown $75 on server transfers trying to escape this awful behavior of "your Spell Power isn't high enough to play with the big kids." No one cares about Hit Rating. They treat me this way, and then they gripe in Trade Channel about how Mages don't have good dps... They're pigeon-holing us into doing terrible dps because if we don't compromise our standards on our stats, they won't let us come with them. I'm sick of it!The other day, I was on my Alliance Mage (Imperiosus, 69 Draenei Mage, Stormscale), and someone was in Trade recruiting healers for a run of some kind, and all he required was a link of the achievement. (I believe he was recruiting a H VoA.) Anyways, I shift-clicked someone else's achievement (it even had their name in the achievement — I wasn't spoofing), and I got an immediate invite. He didn't check my level or class to see if I actually qualified to fill the slot he was looking to fill. (Click here to see a screenshot. It was funny stuff. He tried to invite me twice before he realized that I was just baiting his stupidity.) This is the mentality people have now! Inasmuch as achievements were supposed to be for fun for the casual player, they've actually only made things worse, and I'm really sad for where the game has gone.

If the majority of the player base stays this way after Cataclysm has come out and "simplified" the stats for the people who don't want to do their homework and still want to act like elitists, I'm quitting. I'm so tired of doing the research and time to be good at my class only to have a game full of baddies keep me from getting anywhere in the end content.

Maybe I'll find a pr*v*te s*rv*r so I don't have to pay to play with morons. Oh wait... That's against the ToS and EULA, and I would never make a suggestion like that. >.>

With stats being simplified in 4.0, I'm actually releaved. I think it will help getting players that know what they do, but "don't have the gear" actually find a group, or at least less trouble.

I'd recommend telling people your DPS instead of just your stats, they obviously don't have a clue about your class if they think spell power is all that matters. Yes, it matters most if you are hit capped.
If they still want to know your stats, only tell them if you are confident that they will understand. You can actually see if the player is mature and will understand you just if he uses full sentences and/or uses correct punctuation. It works like that for me.
If you don't tell them your stats because you don't feel confident about it, and you're not invited, then they will just have to cope missing a water vendor :D. Make a funny joke about it, or challenge them to something, it might make them invite you anyway :P

I won't edit my post and I do apologize if this is seen as a totally off topic post but seems my example wasn't taken very well or maybe quite honestly it wasn't that great of an example but I wont go into how a healer should or shouldn't be played but yes I did die as well as the group a few times. But I guess I am just spoiled by good healers most of the time. But really that's neither here nor there in my opinion as I am not even sure why my post was nit picked just to bring that up...

Now back to on topic junk, ya I hear you about the blowing all that money to get away from the stupid crap that people come up with I had the same issue when I first hit 80 on my priest as I was still in a few 70 epics as there was just nothing better really for many different reasons. Sadly as I stated this seems to be something that plagues all servers for the game which I think is horrible. It drains the game of fun as many have stated.

I remember posting something similar to this thread in at least two of the guild I was in while I was raiding in a guild and not a group of guilds and I would say I was amazed at the amount of hostile posts I got back it just amazes me of the mentality of people.

Personally as far as research goes I don't spend hours upon hours crunching numbers trying to get the very last drop of efficiency out of my spells from talents or stats, generally what I do is look around on my server, which probably isn't the best around, but look around on my server and grab names of characters from the top raiding guild(s) on my server for classes I play and look at their talent spec and glyphs go down each talent and if it seems useless to me or too situational than I won't get it and tweak their specs. Does this make me a worse player? I don't know and honestly don't care cause guess what, if the talent spec doesn't work I can experiment and tweak it more, sometimes that's a pain in the butt but I like when I find a right combination of things that work through experimentation. I mean it's nice not to have everything handed to you on a silver platter with everything arranged correctly. I think that makes a worse player when they grab cookie cutter specs and don't really examine them. Sorry this is getting away from itemlvl topic but talents were brought up.

I find it quite amazing that I haven't seen any of the "link this achieve for an invite" deal though I haven't been playing much lately, but still I haven't seen any of it. Luckily though I am sure it will hit because as we all know achievements aren't there to have fun but to rate characters like everything else in this game it seems except skill. Anyways I didn't have much to add hope that doesn't get pointed out as I just did it myself, just wanted to basically agree with most everything that was brought up and maybe toss in a cent or two.

In all reality if people asking are intelligent enough to know that hit rating is needed before sp matters as much then they would ask if your hit capped. And im sure those people are out there. They are just a minority in most cases. A large percentage of people just have the impression that score (or even specific stats and generally the wrong ones) is everything and that it must magically tells you all you need to know. It removes the need to think for your self. You just set a magic number in your head and if its under then so sorry. Like any rating or comparison it takes a level of judgment that people are willing to suspend or have no desire to use more intelligently.

WoW has ALWAYS been like this though.. well, at least since TBC. I don't recall much elitism in Classic, but then, then content wasn't that difficult and there were no "Heroics" or anything. If you could follow directions on a tribute run, you were in. (For Raids, it was pretty simple: run MC until you collect that tier set, then run BWL until you collect that tier set. If you were a Druid, you wanted 8/8 Cenarion, period. The fact that you'd rather play feral was besides the point. :-p )

Here's what I would recommend - but you'd be losing your time investment so far.

1. Wait for a brand new reroll server to be opened up. No transfers allowed on this server.
2. Roll on it.
3. Work on that character exclusively. Try to stay ahead of the curve.

In this way..
- There isn't much room for "elitism", because nobody is much better off than anyone else.
- Even if they want to get "elite" on you, you should be able to be in the top 10-20 for your class on that server if you focus on it.
- If you level with a fresh server, you should wind up with lots of friends / new guild / etc. and have less dependence on pugging.

But then, you lose what you've done already, so.. /shrug.

Here's what you do:

1) Head out to Wintergrasp for battles. You only have to win 5 times or lose up to 15 times. Buy these Titan-Forged Slippers of Dominance. You'll get +20 hit rating from that before adding a gem, allowing you to change 2 of your gems. You mentioned your belt before, so you'd be able to get a new belt entirely. It'll also boost your gear score some to appease those jerks.

2) Try to get in a heroic Violet Hold run. Mark of the War Prisoner is really good and loaded with hit rating. (73, 2.78%) This should help you replace your +hit gems for better dps gems. Again, it'll help boost your gear score to appease those jerks AND help you get better mileage with the gear you have (after you change some gems around).

Because 1 and 2 will take some time, here's what you do in the interrim:

3) Tell them your DPS before they can get your gear score. If they question it, then reassure them that you do, in fact, know what you're doing and can put out a helluvalot of damage despite having less-than-satisfactory gear.

4) Tell them that it's a friggin' heroic and your gear score doesn't matter, unless it's Trial of Champions. Be sure to reassure them that you can and will kick ass regardless of your gear score.

5) Do a gear check on them. Pick out every little detail you can about their gear and say how that's actually really bad for the gear they're in. Challenge them to reciprocate their knowledge about mage gearing, and point out where they're wrong. You'll come off as a dick, but you'll show people that you have a clue what you're talking about beyond some mundane gear score.

6) Try and learn what addons the jerks are using, then make requests to those authors to provide better checks. Politely explain to them what their addon is doing to the community at large (creating faux elitists). Request that their addon enumerates the stats on the gear as well, takes into account talents and racials, and overall at least tries to guess at what the individual's skill (aka DPS, to the common grunt) is.

7) When looking for a group, try saying "LFM <instance here>". You'll probably get a few bites, and you're likely to be the party leader. As party leader, you can say who joins and stays in the group and who goes. After the first few pulls, ask if the tank would like to mark targets. From what I've seen, pugs don't tend to mark, they just chain pull and things die. With any luck, you'll get a tank like that and get to keep your party leader status (especially if the tank is one of those elitists).

8) If the tank is said elitist, then try to pull aggro off of them. If they continue to be skeptical about your gear, then showing them that you can give them a run for their money should impress them. If they question it, then say that your gear score should mean you can't generate that kind of threat. Perhaps suggest their gear score means they sacrificed too many of their tanking stats to have a better gear score, and can't manage the threat from someone with less. If you can successfully embarrass them, then they should get the hint that a higher gear score does not reflect higher skill. Be sure to suggest they've been carried if they can't hold aggro from you. :P



Hmm, 5-8 would really make you come off as a dick. They'd probably make you feel better, though. Consider suggestion 5-8 as last resort measures.

We have a running joke now in my guild that if you aren't over 2XXX (fill in the blank) wow-heroes score you should quit the game and die.

I was running 10M VOA the other day and we actually had a player (from the top raiding guild on my server ... sounds something like "Hush";-)) tell the Tank that he should quit the game and die. This same idiot continually pulled the boss before the group was ready and apparently couldn't figure out how to NOT FRIGGIN STAND IN THE FIRE! An important lesson that Gear does not equal Skill. I think this genius had a false sense of superiority and playing skill from being carried through raids by his guildies.

And what happened to running/failing and then learning the fight? I'm ok taking along a noob ocassionally, otherwise how will they ever learn. If no one knows the fights, how will I ever find skilled players?

I usually kick a player if they dare utter the words "this is a non-fail group right?"

You guys have made some amazing suggestions, and I greatly appreciate all of them. I will be looking into the specifics of each of them as I have the time and ability.Actually, Psycho, I really like your seventh suggestion and plan on using it. There's no better way to take the elitists by the sack than to be party lead and keep things fair with boot threats when necessary. I'm really okay with being a d*ck when the situation warrants it, so there are no issues there.

Your eighth suggestion is my favorite, and it's something I used to do in BC with guildies just to be obnoxious and have fun. (They were all irl friends, so it kind of didn't matter if I wiped the raid.) Now, if I really feel like being a jerk to an elitist party, I can pull aggro off the tank, Nova the mobs right on top of the healer, pop Ice Block and Mirror Images until everyone else has died, and then pop Invisibility to avoid a repair bill myself. That's a brilliant suggestion you have there, and that is exactly how I'll handle elitist groups. Thanks!

That's okay. You shouldn't have to do that in order to be able to keep up with the game in the first place. Casual is okay, and a lot of the best connections I've made in this game have been with the casual players because they're so relaxed and don't take this game so seriously. (This is the part where Heath Ledger strolls his s*xy self in and says, "Why so serious?" LoL)

Because this game is my hobby, I really do enjoy spending two hours at a time in front of an Excel sheet with the Mage Theorycraft-o-Matic up and spending silly amounts of gold on respec's, trying out different spec's and spell rotations on the training dummies. It's a good way to learn a lot about my class. I might be a little serious about the knowledge, and it might be fun to pick on someone a bit for making a bad nub mistake (like a Hunter who does Distracting Shot and then tries to Misdirect and wonders why it isn't working), but I really don't expect others to have my same love for the game. Expecting others to view the game the same way only takes the fun out of it for all involved, and that's what I'm battling most right now.

Oh, well. I'm not txferring Arc yet again, and I'm not rerolling him on another server. I've invested too much time and money on him to feel kosher with doing either. He came from Kel'Thuzad, and on Kel'Thuzad he'll stay. I'll beat these morons. I know I will.

I've had good help and advice from y'all to make sure of it. ~_^

We don't seem to have that many snobs on Gil'neas, I guess we're lucky :)

Ahh, I use GearScore all the time.
But I have never used it to exclude someone. As lead Healer I use it to identify people who might need extra heals or help healing. It's a tool like anthing else and if you dont understand it it will make you look like a noob.

[rant]
OMFG Hit Cap, it's like people just dont understand mathematics or something. Sure, dont replace 50 SP and 20 crit for 2-4 Hit, but you should be aiming for max +Hit. I have had this discussion with Mages, Shaman and Huntards. Same people probably believe the gambler's fallacy is true as well.
[/rant]

The single most important part of playing is knowing what the f**k to do.
Stand out of the Void Zone.
Go to the tank to remove Paralytic Poison.
Take the Burning Bile to the Tank.
Stay in range of the healers.
[rant]
Stand the f**k out of the f**king fire! 50minusDKP :banana:
[/rant]

For Heroics it's weird they would "rate" you. hit capping is nice and all. But for raids, you have to take into account debuffs and raid composition.

Debuffs/racial abilities/talents all affect your "soft" hit cap. Shadow priest and Boomkin and a Draenai in your raid? You don't need as much +hit gear on yourself because you gain a lot of +hit from those types there.

So maxing out your +hit on your gear, while fine for the pug where you won't always have those, is NOT necessarily the best practice for a raid where you will know who is on it.

Guys using fail as an adjective should be kicked anyway, simply out of principle. I'm not sure why gamers think using that word in so many different ways is cool, but well, it's one more aspect of the community of nerds that I simply cannot relate with.

The only things worse than using "fail" to sound cool are guys that have phrases as a name, guys that use "UR" to cover the fact they don't know when to use your, you're, etc., and then perhaps guys who are comfortable playing a female toon and running around semi-naked (you know these nerds - hide the cloak when you get leg armor that shows your rear, etc.).

Wow is a really sad collection of folks sometimes. If it isn't the addons, sites, tools enabling the elitism, it will be something else (vanity pets maybe?). The game IS simply that stupid.

The ironic thing is, most people posting in forums refer to these types as "those other idiots" but frankly, some of us are part of the problem as well. Why do "we" tolerate being around these other "idiots"? I find it interesting that most people talking about "those other idiots" are probably guilty of the same behavior in the game. Even in this thread you see people referring to using these tools. Bah.

Call me crazy but the best part of vanilla wow was the fact there weren't all these ways of being elite. Your elite players were such because they were good players, not because they had a 20k elephant parked at a mailbox and the other nerds were drooling over them. Know what I mean? This game is becoming FAR too much about vanity. I've stated in the wow forums that Cataclysm turns this into nothing more than a fantasy based Counter-Strike with vanity enhancements. This game is nowhere near the game that started all this. Lore is being thrown out the window. There's nothing epic about epics anymore. Cows are becoming paladins. What the hell is the point?

I don't keep track of Wow's development team(s), but it sure seems to me there's been some massive personnel changes at the top. And no, I don't mean Activision's influence. I'm talking about the actual "creative types" that can make 400 different recolored dragonhawk pets but cant fix a hunter pet bar issue that has existed since the dawn of man.

To each his own I suppose, no matter how stupid.

This is very accurate. My horde 80's are on Thrall and my alliance 80's are on Aggramar. Of the two realms, only Aggramar is obsessed with gear scores and this elitist crap. I level all my horde to max level as priority (when an expansion hits, or whatever) and then swap over and do my alliance. When I got all my horde on Thrall to 80, I started on alliance and I remember seeing mention of "GS" and stuff in LFG. I asked a friend wtf that was all about and was introduced to wow heroes, and the GS ratings this thread is about. I was shocked this was how an entire realm placed people into groups. On Thrall (at the time I leveled up mine), there was NEVER any mention of any of this stupid stuff. I guess it took me about 3 months to get all my horde up to 80, so that's a pretty significant amount of time to have never heard talk about gear score, etc. It's not like I was just there for 1 day and no one mentioned it. It simply wasn't part of the "culture" at the time I leveled there.

Each realm does have its own unique stupidity. It just seems like it's spreading at a rate that's hard to control or something.

Heh, I feel your pain man. The only add on that I use that benefits anyone at all is Rating Buster. I cant' see myself using any of those mods where you look at their score or item level because one, it's a waste. Two, it's a joke, and three, I find it simply ignorant of folks to simply rely on factors that could either make or break your views of that player and their capabilities in playing that class.

The game used to be all about skill, and the gear you received was all icing on the cake. But my hubby was talking to me last night about this and he made a valid point, "It's all about the gear now. It used to be about how good a player you were, but now it's about how much gear and how good it is before you even get seen as a good player. They've taken the know-how on playing your class right out and that just doesn't make it fun anymore". So people that you've faced are on that mentality now and unfortunately, it's difficult to get them to give people who know how to play but don't have the gear a chance now.

"Oh you don't have ItemRating blah blah blah...you can't join our group for Heroic UK!" What!? This makes zero sense.

We do gear checks at least when we do raiding in our guild, but outside of that, as long as you bring the know how to play, we don't care. Some folks out there just need to get with the program and not believe those silly add ons like that. It's turning people into elitist idiots that won't give people the shot they know they deserve.

personally, i think these issues are much larger than the availability/lack of "rating" addons.

i suspect that in any large, anonymous, egalitarian, "one-size-fits-all" virtual online environment like this, especially with such a wide variance in content/difficulty (and degrees of commitment on the part of the community), there is just no way to win :(. literally anyone you encounter could be an inveterate jackass, and the "jackass" stat is not something the armory tracks.

what is more, i have found that even in a jackass-free community (like the guild i am in), i am way behind most of my active guildmates. i am a casual enough player (at this point) that i just don't have the time/resources to "keep up" with the progression, which means there is a lot of content that simply isn't "intended" for me (like... heroics), AKA content i just wouldn't have the means to access with what i would consider a reasonable level of effort even if i suddenly found i had more time/resources.

for myself, given Blizzard's whole philosophy for the game (i.e. rich enough that people can make a second career out of it, if they want to), given how high the ceiling is at this point, i suspect i would need to churn servers, guilds, and/or playgroups to find folks at "my level" (and with a similar level of commitment to mine, who would be somewhat likely to remain at "my level"), which would significantly increase my exposure to the jackass factor for a while, or wait until the next expansion and suddenly stop being casual.

and churning seems to be the name of the game. i cannot think of more than one or two people i started playing with (in November 2004) that are still in the game with their "original" toons on my preferred server. everyone from the "old days" is gone; either quit, switched servers/toons w/o leaving a forwarding address, or some such.

i wish it was different...

I brought up this issue a while back in a different thread, and I'm still stunned by how many elitist jackasses there are in this game. I moved my only level 80 to another server (a newer one, in fact) and I'm still seeing the same crap in the trade channel regarding "must be geared". That's partly why we established the nUI based guilds. We're still recruiting members but, in a sense, we're "growing up" together. Since our members know each other, we're quickly establishing trust. I'm starting to think this may be the only way to avoid the elitist attitude that's so prevalent these days.

Acapela, you brought a tear to my eye in your ending. I go back to my original server on occasion to try to track down one friend who remains, but finding what alt they are on is hard. I have to send around 3 in game mails and it normally takes a week or so to finally get on the same page (actually talk).

I know where about 7 of my original 10 charter signers for my first guild are. Most no longer play, a few play casual, and that one I mentioned earlier is pretty much the same as they were when I met them. All of us wish we were 'capable' of all playing together as we did back then, but schedules, and real life don't allow for it. It is sad.

/off topic


Rating gear, gear scores, elitist attitudes, and general D-bag behaviour are going to be around. Skill no longer seems to matter, unless you are really bad, if you have gear that is attained at the highest content level. It's kind of like high school was. Reeboks, Coca Cola collared shirts, Levi's, Izod, Members Only jackets, "Feathered" hair cut or a -high gel content- flat top (had a feathered mullet myself :eek:), parachute pants... the list goes on. These things make me think of how the community relates to people in game; I find it a sad state of being. Personally, I don't care about your gear, or even your skill... if you are a genuinely 'cool' person, I'll wipe over and over with ya, laughing most of the while.

Coming back to play the game after 6ish months (active account =/= playing), I'm finding myself not having fun like I did in BC. People have quit, left servers, and turned into gear checkers themselves. It makes me wish there was a WoWI server, reading this thread. I think I'd be happy playing with ~96.2% of the WoWI posters (the others could be Alliance, on this fictional server :p).

Great thread N8te, thanks to all of you :).

Edit: I know it didn't really take me 30 min to type this dumb post...
I may have to check out the nUI guild thing. Do you need to use nUI to be in the guild? (yeah, I'm a nUI supporter, but I've finally gotten enough of my ui back to not need to use a pre made any more *nUI is great, it's just not "mine"..). Well, something to think about, anyway, if I'm eligible.

Of course you don't "need" nUI to be in the guild :D

Just go to that server (forget which one now) and ask for an invite :D

Well, yeah that's true. :D And it's Nesingwary.

Oh, and Yhor, I'm not using nUI at the moment either, since I recently had to do a major-league downgrade in computers, I pretty much have to rely on the default ui until such time as my girlfriend and I can afford to get the computers we really want. CMON TAX TIME!!!

I'd just like to point out that most of these rating AddOns, in all likelihood, were not written to cater to elitist morons. In my case, I wrote GearGauge to help raid guilds by giving them a tool to look at who is not spending the time and effort to properly gear/enchant/socket, and the individual players have a browser they can use to see what other folks are using for gear, enchantments, and gems.

Saying that these types of AddOns are the problem and should be done away with, instead of the idiots who abuse them, is like saying we should stop making knives because idiots could use them to hurt people.

I'm with Torhal here, I didn't write GearScore to cater to the elitists. In fact it allows more flexibility for playstyle in its raitings. Its only meant to be a guide but people abuse it. The addons arn't the problem. The problem is people. It also doesn't help you've hit 80 way late in the game. There isn't too many of you left so its difficult for you to find other people with your gear to form a group and tell all the a*holes to f*off. I'm hoping Cross-Realm LFG will really help remedy this situation.

So, you in essence wrote your addon to serve as a convenient method of judging someone else? Interesting. This is a perfect example of being part of the problem rather than the solution. No offense or disrespect towards your work, of course. I appreciate people working at making the community better, I just don't see how feeding elitism does that, but maybe I'm the crazy one. I'm certainly open to that prospect.

On another point, it was my intention to state that "idiots" stop using these addons for elitist purposes. It was not that the addons shouldn't be made. I give two craps about who makes what or what's available or not available so long as I have my few core addons ;) I do care though when things like this are used to shape an entire realm's persona into an elitist bunch of nerds and theorycrafters. The addon and the knife are fine until they are in the hands of a fool.

As a general question to you and any other author who makes these tools...

Why can't you all band together and establish 1 standard rating system? It would give you all much more credibility, for lack of a better way of saying it.

While it's true people have a thousand different opinions on how to gear a tank, a point of dodge is always a point of dodge, stamina is always stamina, etc. etc. Why is it so hard to combine all these things into one standard method of evaluating them? Your addon shouldnt like the fact I have dodge gems over that other guy's addon that would like me better if I had parry gems in their place. See the point? It makes no sense.

In other words, why does Wowhead's profiler like my gear more than Heroes or whatever else is out there judging me? Get my drift? On similar gear, everyone scoring it should be similar in results. Period. Any variance is someone's opinion and shouldn't be mentioned let alone be tallied in some tool's report.

The only viable use for any of these addons at the present time is simply to view another person's gear, etc. We already have that now. It's called the Armory. We don't need 9,000 different ways of looking at it. Know what I'm saying?

I'm not here to argue. I'm also not here to try to convince you that using my AddOn is a good thing to do, so saying that I'm part of a purely perceptual problem is a load of bull****.

As to the reasons for not banding together to make a standard rating system...that's like asking why there are so many action-bar AddOns, or so many different buff AddOns. Different strokes for different folks. I didn't like the huge numbers I saw in other AddOns, or what I deemed arbitrary ratings. I don't care what your spec is, or if you're a Paladin who likes to heal in cloth. Judging should be up to the individual, not a number.

GearGauge wasn't intended to be a quick way to "judge someone", but rather a quick way for the raid leader to say "Hey, why isn't your weapon enchanted? Why are you missing gems in your weapon, boots, and chest piece?" - at which point (at least in my guild) that person would either be taken on more runs to get what is needed, or something would be taken out of the guild bank. It was also intended for the other reasons I outlined - item-by-item stat breakdowns for comparisons, so someone has a chance to see what someone else is wearing in any given slot and perhaps have that in a wishlist.

I get what you're saying, and you have given me an idea. Thou hast inspired me.

Well let us in on it, willya! Don't leave us hangin!

Simple. Addon that looks over their gear, scans the talents. Puts in the tooltip what that persons relavant stats/combat ratings are. For example: Tanks, def/hit. DPS, hit. Healers get off free because I can't think of any stat that all healers must have a minimum of to heal well.

Ultimately, it'll probably become another addon that faux elitists use to alienate "the bads."

I can see the argument. I think the bottom line on it is that people who use those types of addons are probably using them for the wrong reason. Either they don't want a group of bads so they assume through the gear rating that they are a bad player and they get snuffed. The other case is that they use the addons as a way to get carried themselves through whatever raid/instance that they are trying to do. Or it could be the simple fact that those people are just terds and you don't need to be running with them.

I can see the logic and the fundamental purpose of using an addon like that, just it's being used by the wrong people for the wrong purpose that it's really intended for.

That's just my final 2 copper on the thing.. :D

This!

The "other" case in my experience is the prevalent one not the fringe one.
(especially if we keep this in the context of small-group play ie 5mans/heroics)

This has been my experience as well. Gear rating addons can be an invaluable tool to raid leaders, when it comes to optimizing their setup for a particular task or even individuals that are looking to squeeze the best out of their gear (and possibly spec as well). The sad and the bitter truth is, that more than 80% of the people using those addons (and I'm being generous here), has very little idea on how to play their own character (not to mention other classes), so they basically rely on those addons to either find people to carry them through content or simply make informed decisions for them. Both uses are really way outside the original purpose of said addons and it's kind of sad to see their authors getting bashed simply because they coded something they believed would benefit the community.

No it isn't. Different people may like different colors, thus individual tastes drive need for "many" bar addons, etc. Stats are stats. Dodge is dodge. Parry is parry. An item providing me with 100 stamina should be seen the same across all methods of measurement. Opinion and personal tastes shouldn't enter into the evaluation that determines "gear score" as measured by these addons, sites, etc. That is, if any of them care about credibility.

My friend, you've just defined your own brand of arbitrary ratings. You didn't like other numbers so you in essence made your own. How is yours not as arbitrary as anyone else's? I understand what you are saying about paladins healing in cloth, etc. But, you know what? That cloth should produce the same gear scores as if it was hanging on a priest. A robe is a robe. If it's a nice one, it should always be a nice one no matter who it's hanging on. There really shouldn't be any room for subjectivity in determining GEAR score. The issue of whether or not a paladin should be wearing it is open for perception and should be counted as something else, but not literal gear score. Gear is gear. If you look at item stats and values, you see Blizzard has already defined what comprises its gear score. A method of tabulating these scores across a player's full set of gear is all that's left to do. I simply don't believe it would be difficult for ONE STANDARD in doing so.

Here's a little scenario to indicate why I think subjectivity and lack of standardization sucks...

Raid Leader A begins putting together a trip into Ulduar. He calls out for dps in the unfortunate method people often use today, "LF1M DPS Ulduar, please be geared, know the fights, checking gear scores, yada yada yada."

Player B, who uses "Fred's Cool Gear Score mod" and a nice "Holy Axe of WalMart" responds to Raid Leader A. "melee dps here, ready for invite".

Player C, who uses "Barney's Cool Gear Score mod" and a nice "Holy Axe of Walmart" responds to Raid Leader A. "melee here, ready to go".

Raid Leader A asks each player for their gear score.

Player B, who uses Fred's mod (and Fred has man love for big axes), responds with "2500 gear score".

Player C, who uses Barney's mod (and Barney was traumatized in his youth by axes), responds with "2350 gear score".

Raid Leader A takes Player B on raid. Player C is left out.

Player C goes to the armory to look up Player B. Player C is very pissed off to see Player B has the same exact gear. Player C stops using Barney's mod because Barney is a biased idiot.

Player C becomes a defensive obnoxious elitist idiot when he sets up his own runs because of his experience with Barney's mod and Raid Leader A's rejection.

Do we understand now? Barney's mod was contributing to the OVERALL PROBLEM it was trying to fix. It isn't Barney's fault that Fred likes axes. If there was a standard measure in place, Player C wouldn't have become a jerk and player PREFERENCES in things like interface, ease of use, etc. would determine if Barney's mod was more popular than Fred's. You know, the way it should be. One system, many interfaces. Get my point?

Honestly, is there anyone out there that cannot see a need for ONE standard in determining gear scores? There really is no point in any of it until there is only one way to measure. Well, other than enabling more elitism. And well, I dont think that is anyone's intention. I know it isn't yours.

Stats are stats. Opinion is opinion. Gear score should only come from stats.

Last I checked, this is 2009 and there aren't many raid guilds carrying large rosters anymore. The kids don't run 40 man content anymore, it's beneath them ;) How hard is it really to keep up with 3 or 4 tanks a couple of healers, etc.? If people have trouble following that kind of thing, they don't know how to delegate. I was in a large guild once that class officers coordinated almost everything happening with their respective classes. The warrior CO set up runs to gear his warriors. The paladin CO knew who was holy, who was prot, and who needed what. When it came time to set up a large MC run, the raid leader would tell the officers how many guys they needed and the officers did the rest. It's amazing what happens when one guy isn't responsible for knowing the content of every last gem slot in the guild.

The problems here indicate a lack of competent leadership, not a need for these kinds of addons (although nice, fluffy, and convenient as they may be). And btw, no one is bashing authors here. I've said a few times I appreciate their work. The people being bashed here are the "nameless and faceless" idiots who abuse these tools made by these fine authors.

Republic, I don't disagree with what you are saying, nor did I imply that said addons are useful or even desired by absolutely all the raiders (and not only). I can tell you for a fact that hardcore guilds that do indeed run 40-50 man rosters (for redundancy) will NOT require said addons, because for the most part they know the people they are raiding with.

I simply stated the obvious, that rating addons, do serve a purpose, if you use them as an indication (not proof) of quality, or to simply quickly discover some discrepancies in parts of gear that can be significant in certain situations.

When one unattended child shoots another, do we blame the gun, the gun's manufacturer, the kids, or their parents? In some way, each of them plays a small part, but the manufacturer and the gun are the last things that should take the blame.

While my analogy isn't perfect, I think I've made the point.

These add-ons were intended to be a good useful tool, and they weren't intended to wreck the community. I suppose I inadvertently pointed a finger in the way I asked the question in my subject line. Torhal can't help that a bunch of bratty twelve year olds want to lean on his mod to do all the thinking for them, and he's not going to pull it off the 'market' and away from good raid and guild leaders just because of those twelve year olds. (At least, he shouldn't pull it down because of that.)

My biggest baffle was over how anyone assumed that a gear rating tool was a player rating tool, and we can't blame the tool maker for the end-user's folly.

(first note, i have not read all of the posts so excuse me if i say something that has allready been said)

i think the best solution is to get a standard
every addon calculates the gear rating in theyr own way. if we can get a universaly accepted calculation, so that every addon returns the same value for 1 item.
Alot of problems will be solved then (nearly not all tho)

i agree, the player still matters most
i had some discussions on how i could not solo rfc at a low level with the current gear i had, yet i still pulled it off witouth dying
so a players skill is still the most important, if you can't handle your char, then the best gear in the game won't help

i have a gear rating addon, but i use it for me personaly (or when someone asks wich of the 2 is better)
even then, i use it as a last resort if i cannot decide, then i look at the score i get from it and take that into decision

You're missing something: Class Mechanics are Class Mechanics. The Robe shouldn't count nearly as high for the Paladin as it does for the Priest, as all that Spirit is completely wasted. Your suggestion, in essence, that iLvl and rarity are all that matter.. but in that case, you can slop on your Arena Gear and "win" the rating.

Mods like this, if they are to have any true value in evaluating a player's potential, need to consider each stat's and talent's potential contribution given that class's mechanics. And if it can't do that, just listing all the gear and seeing that the Resto Shammy gemmed for Agility (to better dodge adds, lol) is all that's really needed. (And that's a much better Guild Leader tool than assigning an arbitrary number to each person based on the phase of the moon, the color of their hair, and whether welfare smiled on them recently.)

I almost feel like writing a Fuzzycalc just to throw a wrench into the gears.

I agree and you don't really see what I'm saying. Mods like this are NOT intended to evaluate a player (at least one author has confirmed so in this thread even), they are used to evaluate gear. Literally. Gear. Measuring whether the paladin benefits from gear is a completely different issue, or should be. That requires opinion and is even harder to define one standard. Line up 10 players, you will have 15 opinions. Gear ratings are literally about gear. Player ratings cannot be standardized. Game mechanics, if you really think they should be evaluated, should be done so by someone who knows what those game mechanics mean. We have the Armory for this type of "application" of gear scores. We don't need 53 different authors and their personal preferences dictating to Joe Raid Leader 53 different ratings of how a person uses his gear and thus, impacts his game mechanics. We can however have 53 different interfaces for ONE system and everything begins to make sense.

Without a standard, none of this has a point. There is no way in hell though that a raid leader takes a gear score and says to himself "okay, will this paladin's MP5 be enough for him to heal our run?". They instead look at the gear score itself without caring about the fact the player may use a different set of buffs to enhance his healing (for example) than other paladins. For further example, my own paladin tank NEVER has to drink and is always topped off with mana because of how I buff myself during runs. I have the choice of using different buffs to perhaps increase my damage, but I choose to keep myself in position to keep a run moving quickly as the kids lose patience and need their ritalin when someone is constantly drinking. My gear has very little to do with this fact. It's how I choose to play. If an identically-geared paladin used a different set of buffs, he might have to drink a lot more. Which paladin would you rather run with? One who has to drink all the time or one who can run heroics in less than 30 minutes? In this case, gear is equal but player ability may be seen differently. How or where is that captured? It's a case of player mechanics being different having nothing to do with gear. Obviously one would be preferred, but both look the same on paper.

I'm sorry but I just don't buy the fact that raid leaders actually "drill down" on gear scores to determine which player/class is optimizing his mechanics. That's almost funny to suggest. People are so not that bright. The kids see the GS number. Period. Many of them don't have a clue about other people's mechanics so they once again fall back on a simple GS number, which I've already shown has many, many problems.

We use wow-heroes as a guide for gear score to see who has the gear for a raid. But it doesn't stop there. Each of us know how the players are working and in some cases we ignore the gear score because we know the player knows their class enough to throw out the extra dps/damage that belies the gear they have.

Also, everyone in the guild and the people that raid with us regularly knows we use the site, so they know what to check and when. That said, we do use the gear score to put a limit down. If wow-heroes says the guy should be doing heroics he doesn't come into ulduar with us. Now if it said he was almost ready for ulduar we would let him in to give him that chance to show us what he has.

Some of our guildies are using gearcheck addons but they generally use it to gauge how well people are gearing compared to others. Several times now he has asked me the question, 'Have you got all your gear on ? ' Then I realise I had switched specs for dailies and forgotten to switch back for the raid. That could have easily been a problem if I hadn't noticed it until the raid had started and I tried to put Earth Shield on the tank to have it fail.

So, as has been said, and I have iterated this several times to our raid leader , who thankfully relies on the other people in the guild to tell him who should raid with us rofl, that gear checking is just a guide as to whether someone should be in the raid and shouldn't be the reason we put people out, and the gear doesn't necessarily mean they are good but in fact that they can be good if they play their class well.

Summary up to this point:

-Said addons originally designed in order to allow guilds and friends to help each other.
-Elitist Jerks (not the theorycrafters, but the actual jerks) misusing addons is bad.
-Something should be done, but no one really knows what.



I'm in agreement that it is too easy to obtain "epic" gear. Yet, the fact that someone does not have 'perplz' should not be a factor in judging how good they are with the class.

For high-end raids I can understand the need for prerequisites, but the subject seems to be heroics and beginning raids.

Everyone seems to have forgotten december 2008. When EVERYONE was running around in greens and blues; and how did we do? Everyone did perfectly fine.
The occasional death in HoL or UP was chalked up to not completely knowing the fights.

Over time as people began farming naxx, voa, os, and maly, the amount of epics in the game grew and grew. The relative cheapness of emblem gear didn't help. Epics no longer feel, well, 'epic'. People only see the color of the item name or item level and base judgements on that.

Case in point - Was working on my shaman alt one day when a well known jerk was looking for another DPS for H-HoL. At the time, I still needed something from there, so I responded.
Neeph has a good set of resto gear (being my main spec) and a set for enhancement made of mostly blues and a green or three.
My resto set was equipped while he did the gear check. I believe his words were, "This group might be ok. everyone's over 2k ilvl."

Only after Loken was dead and I did 2.2k dps overall (2.4k on bosses) did he notice I wasn't in all purples. After a bit of berating about 'deceit' and 'carrying me' did I point out that I beat his guildie in full naxx25 gear by 300 dps.

But that's just one of the countless stories out there.

When running pugs, I always stand up for the "under geared". Having taken a 2 year hiatus from WoW (from between AQ to BT) I can relate to people trying to do easy content and being judged. Anyone that uses an addon to "screen" people from anything but ToC 10/25 or Uld 25 is put on my Bad Players list.

All in all, that's about the only thing we can do in the short-term to stem the "X-box Live" feel (no offense meant to those decent people that also play on X-box)... not patronize them.

I agree with your stance on things. The thing I don't get is why people all of a sudden require 2k dps for simple 5 man heroics. It simply isn't needed. I'm a good enough tank to work a little harder if need be so that "fresh 80's" can get some upgrades, etc. I can also say that 2k dps is not a standard by which other dps should be judged for 5 man heroics. I've had successful runs with everything from 800 dps dk's (yes, true story) to 4k dps mages. Obviously, more dps is better, but the game is sometimes about cooperation and helping others advance for themselves. I realize that's a rare opinion but that's the way I am and play.

Gear checking for heroics and even 10 man raids is a little ridiculous. I think most people know their own limitations and won't really try to tank Ulduar with quest reward greens. Well, most mature people won't and that's the only kind of player I'm interested in running with.

We can fix gear. We can't fix stupid.

Please, do it. Someone needs to do something, and as this is the only solution that has been thrown out, you need to make it happen. I want to see a gear addon that guages an item's value off of nothing other than its vendor price. If it doesn't have a vendor price, it should use a randomizer.

Wouldn't you love to see someone in full H Naxx 25 gear get sent home for being poorly geared by a bunch of morons?Q F T ! !

(Aside)
I find it disappointing that so many players downgrade the 10 Man. I've been in two 10 Man Progression guilds and I will tell you without a doubt that those were the most fun guilds that I've been in to date. Synergy is and always will be my focus in the game and coming together as a 10 Man within a guild is great for general morale and for building your understanding of raid mechanics and teamwork. Take two of these teams and bring them together for 25 and kiss the nerdrage goodbye..

Since the patch made t8 more readily available, there pretty much is no excuse not to have it along with some 219. Recently I've met a few toons who did exactly this and never stepped foot into Naxx or Uld and pretty much were going straight for 25 Trials. On one hand I think this is bad, but on the other hand I can see the sense it makes for the new-to-WoW player (new content is always the most interesting and should be made reasonably available to the new customer).


Gearchecking
If you're in greens or blues, you really have no place in Uld or Trials. Heroics are where you should be for the moment to build your teamwork skills and learn your class and movement. Eventually you'll be in all epics but the gearcheck will now focus on your enchants and gems.

If you pug, expect to be gearchecked. It's the same as filling an app for an accomplished guild (might seem ridiculous to you, but try to see it from both sides.. the players you want to group with don't know anything about you aside from what a quick gearcheck addon can do, or looking up your achievements). The best advice I can offer is to just thank your group and whomever invited you, add them to your friends list and just get known. Connections are the best way to pug and overpower the gearcheck.

http://www.wow.com/2009/09/02/yogg-saron-in-blues/

Who needs purples?

I wish there was a Neon sign on every instance portal with those words.

When my Ret Pally got her Bronze Drake from the Heroic CoS achievement, she put out ~1800 dps. And topped the chart. Good group coordination (despite it being a PuG), not RAWR power, won the day.. and we finished it with 5 min to spare.

First off I would'nt even wanted to go with fools like that. If i know what I'm doing and my gear ain't perfect it should'nt matter.
Next time you see those fools just do a "%^&*" and walk on by..

There are definitely exceptional players all around, and this is a great example of what can be achieved with the right synergy (yay 10 Mans). It's kind of tongue in cheek to the discussion going on in this thread though, which addresses more of the hurdles that upcoming players are having with pugging.

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Maybe the real question is, who needs 23 others?
2 Man Heroic (25man) Flame Leviathan Ravencrest EU