As a RL, it is indeed tricky, but this article is just elitism. Either you dont do TOC because your raid isn't ready, or you replace your supposedly bad player. Or maybe figure out what is wrong that the dps is so low. I agree the RL shouldn't have to teach people to play their classes, but it is part of our job to coordinate the raid and make sure everyone is on the stame strat, and evaluate gear before sending an invite. That is your job, and you failed. Don't post articles here about your failures as a RL can be pawned off.

Our guild is social/casual, and we are doing progression in ulduar, and farm content for naxx. People who are not geared for Ulduar dont get to step foot in there until they have some very bare minimums, esp if there are new bosses we are trying. Everyone understands that in our guild, its how the game works. We do have options, we are glad to teach people to do better, we are glad to help them gear up via heroics or naxx. And if they dont want to do that they dont get to go to the higher levels of content. Unfortunately this game is all about carrots and sticks, and one of the sticks is a solid gear check, which isn't exactly trivial if you are in a guild that only does early content 10s.

But yeah anyway it really is your job to look at their gear and make sure they have an idea of how their class is supposed to work. You can just look at people before you go in. I recommend the gear score addon to tell very quickly what level of gear people have. Gear skill though, I don't want to get into that debate.

And welcome to the wonderful world of patch 3.2...

A world where everyone, no matter how bad can be fully geared up with ilevel 226 and 219 epics.

A world where everyone can check this out and think that they're okay.

A world where said player can still be terrible.

This is what the so called elitists were up in arms about when the badge changes were announced, it being rather hard to tell who can play the game these days, so you can't fault the raid leader.

Neither is the raid/guild leader your mommy... he/she is not there to hold your hand, get you geared, gemmed and enchanted and tell you what buttons to press. People need to take responsibility for their actions and abilities, here.

You can look at their gear and they might seem fine. You think... "they should be OK, gear looks nice" and then you find out they don't know the spells at their command, can't put together a rotation to save their lives and say idiotic things like "I don't think hunters can put out 3k DPS ". Really? That person doesn't know their class. A hunter in my guild regularly comes close to 4k in Naxx10 and Ulduar10 gear and others are close to him - but I bet if I logged his toon in I'd suck since I've never played a hunter at all. Same gear, less skilled player, worse DPS. That's not something you can tell from the Armory.

It's a two way street - but it's primarily the player's responsibility to know their class. If they ask for help, help them... but if they just say they can't do that, well... /bye

@brownyboi

What a load of crap. If you're judging people by gear then you're an idiot, that's what achievements are for. You people need to get it through your thick heads that whining about other peoples access to gear is just pathetic, it's not going to change, so just deal with it or move on to another game.

@ QQinsider

No, no, no, no... not what I was trying to get across at all. Sorry, I realise that not everyone understands sarcasm...

Memo to me: remember not to be sarcastic on wow.com - people won't like you and they'll click the "vote down" button and then you'll be sad and cry.

I was referring to the odd comment where people suggested checking raider's gear to see whether it was appropriate for them to be in the raid. Now, we all know that gear checks are a complete waste of time these days being no indicator of competance - I don't care what your armour rating is, you stand in the fire, you're still dead.

Honestly... wrong end of the stick or what?

Forgot to mention that most of my gear is 219 and 226 badge welfare epics, too. I'm rubbish and I can admit it.

Got a load of those wonderful achievements, though... Question is, did I get them because I'm good enough or was I just in the right group and got carried through the raid?

Hmmm...