Cute Fuzzy Meow

Ah yes, Gearscore — does anything else elicit such a negative response about the current state of World of Warcraft? Or maybe it’s just me, rolling my eyes at the very concept. Is it pride that makes me refuse to link my gearscore? Is it my dislike of acronyms that makes me refuse to even respond to comments of “GS plz?” Well, perhaps. But listening to some of my friends complain about it, someone commented on how it’s a recent problem that’s cropped up. This got me thinking about how while Gearscore is a recent development, the problem has gone back to original “Vanilla” World of Warcraft. Sure, maybe we didn’t call it Gearscore back then, but the basic problem still existed.

World of Warcraft Classic, Vanilla Flavor

Allow me to take you back to the old days of Vanilla WoW. You’re running something like 10-man Scholomance as an undead rogue and you have your wonderful Dire Maul Bracers of the Eclipse, a wonderful mix of agility and attack power. Suddenly, Shadowcraft Bracers drop. There’s no Tier 0.5 upgrade quest, but my goodness, don’t they sound like something a rogue would want? You upgrade and remove your awesome agility and attack power bracers for… a huge downgrade. Why? Well, because it’s your set. You feel cooler. It sounds better. Sure, the item level is way below what you’re wearing but no one knew item level back then. Is this isolated to the casual players? Nope! Watch as an army of cats “upgrade” from their lame “blues” like Chitinous Shoulderguards to the amazing Blackwing Lair purples of Taut Dragonhide Shoulderpads. What, are you “chitin” me? Why would anyone go from the best stats for a kitty to…. attack power and stamina in mediocre amounts? Well, it was called purple fever. If it was purple and you had a blue, you rolled on it because it was purple. If it was purple and from a raid later than yours, you rolled because it must be better if it shows up later in the game, right?

I’m sure you can already see the problem here. People were more worried about where something came from than whether or not the item was actually worthwhile. People should be looking at the stat distribution and how important those statistics are, but instead they’d just wear whatever was “more purple.” The only benefit it had is that you could easily spot the poor cat druids because they were in epics while the good ones were wearing blues from Zul’Gurub and Ruins of Ahn’Qiraj. Man, I’m glad this was just a Vanilla thing…

The Burning Crusade

Except, of course, that it wasn’t. The same problem existed in The Burning Crusade, except it was more a matter of the “more purple” issue instead of blues to purples. People continued to work off of the assumption that if something came from a later instance, it must be better! Instead of taking a smart approach to gearing up, people would just grab their next set piece and work onwards. I’m sure I’m giving away that I raided as a cat druid in Vanilla and Burning Crusade, but there were some big itemization quirks and a lot of extremely dumb cats out there. Some set bonuses were amazing (Two pieces of Tier 4, lovingly called 2pc T4, granted energy per attack). Some were awful or useless (Tier 5 offered a caster increase… for cats.) I’d see cats upgrading out of extremely well-itemized gear for set pieces that did nothing for them. Then I’d see cats putting away their Tier 4 with a nice AEP value of 500 attack power for two more strength from their Tier 5, losing their set bonus. While Damage Meters are another issue altogether, surely seeing your dps plummet from your “upgrade” should be a clue? Then from a class that lives off agility many cats would take attack power idols from Black Temple simply because of where it dropped. Taking set pieces that lower your dps greatly combined with grabbing whatever gear seemed newer made it feel like I was pugging Lower Blackrock Spire all over again. What’s wrong with these people?!

Wrath of the Lich King

And now we have Gearscore. People are taking gear with a higher item level over gear that’s good for them because it inflates their gearscore. In some cases, the old problems exist exactly the same way they did before. For classes like hunters, two pieces of tier 9 gives such a huge DPS boost by allowing Serpent Sting to crit that “upgrading” to Tier 10 and losing the bonus will tank your DPS. Some of the Item Level 264 relics have a ramp up time and can fall off easily, making the 245 relics a big dps increase most of the time. Darkmoon Card: Greatness is a great example of a trinket with near-perfect itemization. It’s item level 200, but it ranks higher than a good deal of the 245 trinkets. While I could continue to list many other examples, it is worth noting that overall itemization tends to improve as the item level goes up. The important thing is to be able to think for yourself and know your class. Which brings me to the interesting problem this poses: requiring gearscore to do pugs and raids and bragging about your gearscore. This rewards players for making poor choices. Your gearscore does not show your DPS, your skill, or your experience. If you can click need on the item with the highest item level, you are rewarded by having your gearscore go up. The problem is that we use a sort of mental gearscore sometimes when people ask us about gearing up. No one worth their kitty paws would say “get 5,700 GS before you should look to Trial of the Crusader,” but we might say “Try to get some good badge 245 and heroic 232 gear before you look into ICC10.” If that player goes and builds a Darkmoon Card: Greatness, great! It probably beats their trinket. But again, I suspect giving out advice like this probably encouraged things like Gearscore.

On a tangent, I think the best bet would to be to develop an add-on or system that works off of AEP. Perhaps if we had to link our Tossk Kittypoints or Rawr simulator score it would be better. Then again, to remain accurate those are constantly being updated and worked on, and they don’t always update immediately. But at least there is some thinking going on there. At least the statistics and set bonuses are weighted. Instead of complaining (too late!), I just hope this is the direction we’re heading. I would love a mod that replaces the Item Level on the item with AEP. (AEP is a generic term for Attack Equivalency Points, basically a way of comparing stats. Think of it as “For your current gear level, how does this compare to another piece, comparing how things equal out in attack power.”)

I’d love for someone to defend Gearscore, feel free to e-mail me or leave a comment below.