In a recent post I divulged my fear of tanking heroics or at least my fear of failing as a heroic/raid tank. It’s a bit relevant to today’s subject so it might be worth a read. My death knight has finally reached level 85. I immediately queued for a regular to get my daily allotment of justice points and practice tanking some more. Naturally, I got Vortex Pinnacle (it’s my new Halls of Reflection) but the run was very smooth like most of the regulars I’ve done as tank. ALL of the dps even beat my damage done on each boss fight, a first for my dk. You might be wondering, “I thought you said you’d do heroics, pansy!” Well, I will, but…my gear isn’t ready. Not even the excuse I would use previously to myself, literally, I can’t queue for heroics yet due to item level. As I recall, 329 is the item level requirement to queue for a heroic and mine is only 323. Aside from that though, I started thinking. What really is the right gear level for running a heroic as a tank? Honestly I don’t appreciate when fresh 85 tanks who barely meet the gear required to queue at all are tanking for me. Usually they’re a strain on the healer to keep up, they can’t keep threat from the DPS so either there is deaths or if the DPS tone it down, things take a long time to kill. So when is it okay to start tanking?
Tag: gearscore
Daily Thoughts: Item Level is the New Gearscore
To be oh so cliché, the more things change the more things stay the same. WoW is no exception to the rule. I’m not talking about whether or not new bosses or gear are too similar to old ones, which are complaints I’ve heard from a couple of fellow players who’ve been wowing since vanilla. Nope, I’m instead here to talk about players and how regardless of what is added to the game, we’re always going to act the same way. Prior to cataclysm and 4.0.3 I suppose, gearscore ruled pugs. The gearscore addon, which attributed a point value to each piece of gear and gave a “score” for each player based on that gear was the loathed standard from which players were judged before being invited to a random group or raid. Not content with mere players making their own system for judging the “goodness” of others, blizzard implemented the average item level. Viewed on both your character sheet and on your armory profile, it is the new number from which all characters must be judged. I say this sarcastically of course, as there are much more important factors; see: Skill. Now instead of a gearscore requirement, we see “looking for heals for *instance*, 350ilvl or higher”
Along the same lines are the recruiters for small or social guilds and their message. Prior to cataclysm we’d see “Friendly leveling guild looking for members of all levels. Have tabard and 4 bank tabs, pst xxxx for invite”. Quite often after spamming a couple of those, random /trade trolls bash the poster, mocking their guild tab message. Usually undaunted, they continue the recruitment spam. Now the trolls have a new topic to mock the social guild recruiters for, “we’re a level 4 guild…”
Anything else you can think of that we keep doing over and over as players? Aside from standing in fire.
Weekend Update: It’s Over 9000!
It’s official. This blog has reached over 9000 views. Any other group might have waited until 10,000 views to care, but no, not us nerds. We know the significance of over 9000. Even blizzard acknowledged the importance with the achievement. Although faster than I expected, I saw a paladin with over 9000 gearscore. He was actually not very good. Proof again that skill > gear.
That’s really all for today. I’m just working on gearing up my warrior, leveling my shaman, and possibly a little archeology on my paladin for some nice epics (I hope).
Thanks everyone for reading this and helping me reach… over 9000.