Thursday, June 11, 2009

Gear: the means or the end?

We lost another 80 in the guild yesterday, and I cant say Im sorry to see him go. His comment on leaving (Im paraphrasing) "I met some dude in barrens, he said his guild could one shot all the bosses in naxx and theyd farm it for me, I want to get my t8 set, peace". Ive read a lot about "charity purples" but this is taking it to a whole new level, and it bothered me.

It has nothing to do with a dead-weight douchebag leaving the guild. He was a mage, and not that good of one, we have 2-3 others who are better, and I would say could take his place, but really, they are what he would be aspiring to anyways. I view our guild as a group of mostly friends who get together for a common goal. The overwelming majority, I think of as friends, and I help out in any way that I can. Lately, I have been crafting gear for people as I have a high level jewelcrafter and blacksmith. Sure, I want to upgrade my gear, but lets be honest, its not like there is a ton of new content coming out soon and Im not exactly a hardcore progression player.

I see gear as something that happens, yeah there are a few pieces I want, but if I wasnt trying to get geared up to tank heroics and raids, it would be irrelevant. I would never try to tell someone how to play their class, and admittedly, DPS is something Im not super knowledgable about, but Im not aware of any "gear checks" for DPS. There isnt the equivalent of the defense cap (maybe hit cap for casters, but it doesnt seem super hard to get there). How much new content is going to be released in the near future? How many times do you really want to run through ulduar? And if a guild is good enough to one shot the bosses in naxx, what do they need a random mage for?

To me, gear is a means, it is a tool. Obviously, Im not naked tanking any dungeons in the near future. I wonder how many people really see it that way. . .

1 comment:

Edyion said...

Actually Fish dps gets gear checked a lot more than you would think. Though our gear isn't as crucial as yours as a tank it still matters. Most of the time when dps is gear checked by a raid or instance group it s to see if they can give them a "probably good" nod and hope they are just given those pieces in charity as you can have the best in slot of everything and still blow raw goat nuggets. So think of a dps gear check in those terms as a "we will asume you know what you are doing" kinda nod in a group (then there are scaled fights like flame leviathan in ulduar that actually scale with gear but thats another matter all together).