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by Mike Schramm 
Sep 2nd 2009 at 1:00PM
Gevlon talks more about it in this post, with a little more math that shows that while we consider gear to be a powerful indicator of a player's skill, it isn't necessarily so. Gear upgrades, even to the point of legendary items, will only update your stats to a max of around 40%, which is not insignificant, but it won't make you two or three times the player you are now. The only way to do that is by playing better: knowing your spec and how to use the bonuses you get, knowing how to deal with aggro and how to run the fights, and knowing the rest of your raid. Does your tank know who to watch and what to do when things go wrong? Does your melee know when to get out of the AoE, and does your DPS know when to drop threat and when to open up? That stuff, as Gevlon shows in a stark light, will make your raid go much farther than any epic gear ever will.
Filed under: Items, Analysis / Opinion, Guilds, Raiding, Bosses, Leveling
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 5)
Marlus Sep 2nd 2009 1:48PM
Cant find either
William Sep 2nd 2009 3:28PM
If you read his blog, that was only the first half of the log. The post containing the logs has links to both.
1st Half: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/udDazqi2wXRKtVKY/
2nd Half: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/Dng5rUzDWwDJy49j/
Precision Sep 2nd 2009 1:38PM
wow that is better than any achievement i've ever heard of. Many grats to them
emarch2 Sep 2nd 2009 1:40PM
Assuming they did it with all 4 keeper buffs up, this really isn't any more impressive than a guild doing 0 or 1 light with full epics. +40% damage and the health buffs more than make up for the difference in item level. Normal mode Yogg isn't a gear check by any means. And I'm not sure but if this is 10 man like the picture suggests... yeah. Pat yourselves on the back if you like to do that sort of thing, but this isn't an achievement. Rate down the elitist raider if you wish, but this isn't deserving of a news story.
somedumbum Sep 2nd 2009 1:57PM
Being the only people ever to accomplish this in the 5 or 6 months ulduar has been out isn't an achievement? These guys put in 110% of the effort alot of the raiders i take into ulduar, and have linked this article to our guild forums to quell the "We're not geared for this" QQ's when we wipe on something difficult (which is the #1 most common thing for someone to say after a few wipes). Our 10 man team did 4 towers, and it took us about 2 hours straight to do so, after spending about 2 hours a different night trying to work our group and strat out. The whole time everyone said "We CAN do this...we ARE geared for this" and we won. A positive mentality and confidence in your group is paramount in any encounter, and this is a shining example of both.
Grats!
BigBadGooz Sep 2nd 2009 3:04PM
I bet this guy has been wipeing on yogg for months. tassedar-daleran is my toon and yogg is hard at first easy once u mow him down a few times gratz on blues kill
theRaptor Sep 2nd 2009 1:48PM
I think his argument is flawed. I have never seen anyone in a top guild seriously argue that the gear is a massive advantage (well an officer or the like, plenty of top tier players are smack talking rtards). In fact I remember guilds doing alt Tier5-6 runs back in BC with Alts in blues and greens. The reason they won't look at most under geared applicants is because if your most geared toon is in blues you probably don't have the raid experience. They aren't interested in teaching people the fights and filtering out the bads, they aren't worrying about gearing people up (which has been ridiculously easy since BC).
And his arguments that potential top players can't be bothered doing "boring" content to get the gear is frankly stupid. Being in a top raiding guild is one of the most boring and grindy things you can possibly do in game. It is very hard to keep your enthusiasm up when you wipe on a boss for four hours, so if you can't even do a couple of boring PUG runs you aren't top tier material.
His example classes are also not very gear bound. My enhancement Shaman went from barely pulling 2k to pulling nearly 5k with a couple of weapon upgrades. Not every class scales based on raw stats like casters do (and even there he is comparing raw healing, not longevity).
Knowing the fights has always been more important than gear. If you have perfect synergy and no mistakes you can do some crazy stuff. But gear gives you a buffer.
He is 100% right though that large segments of the WoW population use "I am undergeared" as a cover for the fact they suck. My shaman was doing 1500 DPS at 75, and could do 2000 as a fresh 80. Yet I still often see people in Naxx+ gear who can't break 2000 DPS.
scarab2501 Sep 2nd 2009 1:52PM
Take THAT you people who spam your elitest nonsense! You know the kind "Only geared high DPS allowed". That's a big steaming pile of murloc poo that I never bought and just ruins the experience. Congratz to the guys who pulled this off!
theRaptor Sep 2nd 2009 1:57PM
Geared High DPS players make the runs faster, you can't deny it and neither can the guy who wrote that article. Very few people want to take a risk on some ungeared random because most of the time they do suck. If you had the experience to not need the gear you would know this.
Silversol Sep 2nd 2009 2:11PM
"Geared High DPS players make the runs faster"
Not if you have to rez them after every pull.
Scott Sep 2nd 2009 2:44PM
"Not if you have to rez them after every pull."
Well, that's what happens when terribad tanks require high DPS and can't keep threat up to match it.
The fact of the matter is that the players referenced in this article are a very far cry from the general playerbase, and while this is a fantastic achievement for them it should not be used a war cry for undergeared, lazy players.
Skill will always win out against gear, but you have to have skill first....
ClayMask Sep 2nd 2009 1:53PM
I do think that this was creative and challenging, and congrats to them. However, I don't think that it proves that a random person in blues who hasn't done the bosses before is likely to be as good for a raid as a person in epics who has. Skill is a really important factor, but gear and experience are also important (and in this case, they do have the experience). Since you can't tell the skill of a pug when they join a raid, the only thing you can go by is gear and experience, so gear and acheivement checks still make sense.
Mike Schramm Sep 2nd 2009 2:02PM
You make a good point -- the Armory doesn't show skill, it only shows gear, so you can't really skill-check people the way you can gear-check them.
But I would say that the takeaway here is that if someone comes to you in just a few epics and says "I know the fights," you shouldn't have reason to turn them away. Sure, they could be lying, and sure, they could slow you down, but we place way too much emphasis on gear (his other post, which states that even Legendary gear only gives you about a 40% upgrade, is really interesting) and not nearly enough on experience and skill.
Keveline Sep 2nd 2009 2:02PM
but but but but they're not GEARRRRED! Doesn't EVERYONE know you HAVE to be GEARRRRED in order to be cool and do ANYTHING???? What a bunch of NOOOOOOOBS!!!!
Awesome job to them.
theRaptor Sep 2nd 2009 2:09PM
Except they are geared, and have cleared the entire raid. Every single "elitist" guild out there allows their current members to bring alts to non-progression raids.
If this was a bunch of guys who got together and cleared Ulduar in blues without having done it before it would be extremely impressive. All this shows is that Ulduar lacks classic "gear checks" (aka bosses in Sunwell were the top guilds had to stack Shamans and Shadow priests to down them).
You could go back to Sunwell or BT in iLevel 245 gear and if you hadn't done those fights you would wipe a lot. If you didn't have boss strategy vids most guilds would take months to learn the fights even with current gear.
sprout_daddy Sep 2nd 2009 2:03PM
I'm personally amazed at the people who want to bash this effort as being showy, elitist, or overblown. It doesn't seem to me like they're going out of their way to get attention - they posted the story on their blog, it got picked up here. And nowhere in their post did they discount the value of experience - in fact, that's the whole point of the story - that experience is more important than gear. For those of you who claim that gear elistism doesn't exist in game, count the number of times gear score is used in trade chat, instance or raid recruitment, or even guild postings.
Three years ago, class was terribly important, but the general attitude was that every instance was a learning experience, and serious raiding guilds used them to teach ALL their members how to play their class and the encounter. Now, pugs recruit as more often as not based on a reasonably arbitrary number assigned by WoW Heroes or BeImba, without any regard to the skill of the player or their knowledge of their class or the experience. This is the argument they tried to refute, and they did, to some degree.
Discount it if you will, based on the number of protectors up, their experience level, or the class representation, but the point still remains. It's sad that people can't try new things in this game anymore without a bunch of whiners coming out of the woodwork to dismiss them.
theRaptor Sep 2nd 2009 2:20PM
What is your point? As Mike Schramm said a few posts above yours you can't tell someones skill level from their armory, all it tells you is their gear and what bosses they have killed (and they could have been carried through that). So what do you expect PUG's to do? Spend a few weeks breaking in every random they meet in trade chat? Take peoples claims that they are skilled above their experience at face value ('cause wow players never lie)?
If you don't want to be judged on your gear and want a chance to prove your skill then join a guild. PUG's are never going to attempt to judge a player like a guild will. This is simply a fact of human psychology: if you have a short time to assess someone you do it on obvious externals.
In the real world we have an armory called a "resumé" to try and get in a "group", even if you could do the job you will find most "groups" judge you on the arbitrary bit of paper.
Eternauta Sep 2nd 2009 2:16PM
The problem is, people dismiss this brilliant example of skill because it deflates some people's e-peen.
If they can beat Yoggy in blues and Randomnoob's guild can't beat him in epics... then they feel humilliated, ashamed, and instead of learning from Windwalkers' experience, they try to flame Gevlon calling him lier, his data "inaccurate", etc...
Jabadabadana Sep 2nd 2009 2:17PM
I'd really like to believe this accomplishment, especially since I agree with the premise that skill > gear, but that log lacks anything past multiple wipes on Thorim, so I'm going to hold any and all congratulations until I see real data. (because either the wrong link is posted, or they thought no one would check.) Because right now on data alone, I'm seeing liars, with a screenshot of people who put blue on after the kill.
Please post real data, because if they actually did this, it's awesome.
Allison Robert Sep 3rd 2009 1:40AM
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/udDazqi2wXRKtVKY/ and http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/Dng5rUzDWwDJy49j/ are the two relevant logbooks.