Talk:Gear score

Regarding the accuracy of gear score

While I can see the merits of both sides of the gear score controversy (easily found by visiting even just the official forums for a while and searching for "gearscore"), I think that it is important to caution players reading this entry about the possible flaws in the system.

Even those who support the use of gear scores have admitted that they are not foolproof; they can be spoofed by dishonest players, and they don't always calculate other things that have huge impacts in player performance (enchants, gems, even talents and inscpritions).

I know my latest revision seems somewhat negative, but it was meant more as a caution to let others know that the very concept of a gear score is a player-based one. Blizzard does not set such scores on the availability of content, and I believe there was at least one blue to note that they did not consider the use of such a thing beneficial to the game.

This is a very touchy subject. I think we need to discuss it, but we may have to ultimately agree to disagree about the effect it has on the game or its community (at least, that is, until we see the results of using it). If civil discourse on the issue is possible, unlike on certain forums and blogs, I feel the time has long since come to have that conversation.

My visiting of this wiki is infrequent, so do not misinterpret my absence from this discussion as inability or unwillingness to respond. If I'm not at work, I'm likely busy doing dailies in the game. --Kaelgrim (talk) 10:36, October 19, 2009 (UTC)Kaelgrim

Mirrikat45

The formula for calculating GearScore does calculate Gems and enchants. Failure to enchant/gem your items will decrease the GearScore of those items. In addition, the new calculations spit out multiple calculations based on the possible specs a player can be. So if an item is a caster item only the Stamina will be counted for Physical DPS classes.

I moved the controvery to a new section and added additional material. I removed the reference about Enchanting/Gemming because as far as I am aware, The addon, Wow-heroes, beimba.hu, and wowhead all use gems and enchantment calculations now.