I Need to Score Some Gear!

I had never really cared about Gear Score in the past, and had always religiously ignored the ‘Must have 5k+ GS and Achiev’ trawls in /Trade. I believe, as do most right minded people, that Gear Score does not really count for much in Warcraft. It doesn’t account for player skill (or lack thereof) and it doesn’t account for spec either, so you could be a Combat spec’d Rogue, gemmed and geared for spirit and spellpower and still have a massive Gear Score - that just can't be right.

I have recently been running a lot of daily heroics and spending a shit-load of gold trying to gear up McRaffles as best I can. I make sure that I am properly gemmed, glyphed and enchanted and I keep up with the best rotations using resources such as RogueSpot, Elitist Jerks and rogue spreadsheets. I am certainly not claiming to be best, but I do put some effort into learning fights and pride myself in being able to (mostly) keep out of the fire.

So more interested in how well my gear was coming on than stroking my epeen, I decided to install the Gear Score addon and see how I measured up. Well I wasn’t disappointed; it seems my recent efforts have not all been in vain. Though I already knew this through the spreadsheets, it was nice to get a little extra validation. So happy with my lot, I queue up for and start Forge of Souls as the daily Random Heroic and I see that I can mouse over the other guys in the party and see their Gear Score at a glance, no problems there, we head of and clear our way through the dungeon. After downing Bronjahm, he drops the axe ‘Nighttime‘. As I am currently sporting ‘Quel’Delar, Cunning of the Shadows’ (I still love that name) in my mainhand and ‘Liar’s Tongue’ in my offhand, it wasn’t an upgrade for me so with no enchanter in the party, I just rolled greed. The hunter, for whom it was an upgrade rolled need and won it. It didn’t put me up nor down, however the tank quizzed me as to why I didn’t need it too. I let him know that it wasn’t an upgrade so I just rolled greed. He then told me that according to Gear Score it was an upgrade to my ‘Liar’s Tongue’ and I should have needed it. I told him that Gear Score was wrong and my slow mainhand/fast offhand combination was optimal for me, He still didn’t seem convinced and I felt sorry for the poor hunter who was trying to defend his proper need call.

Anyway, we went on to easily clear the rest of the dungeon and once it was over I promptly uninstalled Gear Score. The addon itself is not the problem; it just grades the items and adds up the score, it’s how people interpret and use the numbers, that’s when the problems start.

~McRaffles