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09-10-09, 04:00 AM   #1
us2006027321
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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?
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09-10-09, 04:05 AM   #2
Slakah
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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.
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09-10-09, 04:07 AM   #3
Torhal
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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.
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09-10-09, 04:11 AM   #4
us2006027321
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Originally Posted by Torhal View Post
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?
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09-10-09, 04:39 AM   #5
Republic
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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)
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09-10-09, 04:44 AM   #6
Limb0
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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."
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09-10-09, 04:52 AM   #7
MidgetMage55
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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.
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09-10-09, 04:59 AM   #8
Folji
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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.
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09-10-09, 05:00 AM   #9
Miralen
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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.
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09-10-09, 05:18 AM   #10
Limb0
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Originally Posted by Miralen View Post
...so please dont go posting what addons work this way and dont cause I dont care otherwise I would've posted them myself..
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).

Last edited by Limb0 : 09-10-09 at 05:52 AM. Reason: reflection
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09-10-09, 06:17 AM   #11
Dusso Janladde
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Originally Posted by Miralen View Post
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.
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.
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09-10-09, 06:51 AM   #12
ravagernl
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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.

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09-10-09, 08:48 PM   #13
Mirrikat45
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Originally Posted by Torhal View Post
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.
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.
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09-10-09, 10:38 PM   #14
Republic
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Originally Posted by Mirrikat45 View Post
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.
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?
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09-10-09, 11:06 PM   #15
Torhal
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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.
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Last edited by Torhal : 09-10-09 at 11:11 PM.
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09-11-09, 04:08 AM   #16
Republic
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Originally Posted by Torhal View Post
IAs 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.
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.

Originally Posted by Torhal View Post
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.
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.
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09-10-09, 11:12 PM   #17
Psychophan7
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Originally Posted by Republic View Post
Know what I'm saying?
I get what you're saying, and you have given me an idea. Thou hast inspired me.
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09-10-09, 11:17 PM   #18
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Originally Posted by Psychophan7 View Post
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!
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WoWInterface » General Discussion » General WoW Chat » Are gear rating add-ons beginning to wreck the game?

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