Greedy Goblin

Monday, August 24, 2009

Ungeared

Important note: I started a guild to repeat the achievement below and progress it to ToC/ICC. Read more.

Have you heard the excuses that "I'm ungeared for 3K DPS" or "My guild is really nice and good but we are yet ungeared for Ulduar"? Or on the other hand have you seen the ridiculous requests "whisper [epic] for inv to 5-man"?

We at Windwalkers thought this nonsense should end. 10 of us gathered blue gear. I mean not a single epic item, not even an ilvl200 crafted. We did not used epic gems or enchants needing Abyss crystal, nor Sons of Hodir exalted enchant. We used profession bonuses though as every raider should.

So we got 10 characters in gear that would not get us invites to any PuG. What did we do? This:


Combat log, part2.


Raid setup (some logged out in blues, some in epics. We have fires to fight you know):
1 shaman (enhancement)
1 rogue (combat)
1 mage (fire)
2 priests (shadow, holy/disc)
1 warrior (prot)
1 paladin (holy)
and 3 of the OP class:

(tank, resto, moonkin)

As you can see it's far from any synergic team. Practically those who wanted to come. Bring the skilled player, not the class.

83 comments:

Anonymous said...

Congrats,

Seriously, congrats. I'm really glad someone went to the effort to prove that gear is not THAT large of a factor. Someone should really post this on the US forums, the response would be pretty.. Interesting.

Anonymous said...

Wow, that seems like a lot of extra pointless work.

Why bother collecting all the blue stuff? I don't get it. Just to feel superior to the scrubs? Very non goblin :)

chewy said...

spinksville: way to miss the point

Rohan said...

Heh, Spinks, everyone is a "social" at heart.

Anonymous said...

tank has an epic gem.

Anonymous said...

He's a jewelcrafter.
"We used profession bonuses though as every raider should"

Unknown said...

spinksville: way to miss the point
"Never let the facts get in the way of a good grudge." - Zack Allan

Leeho said...

Gratz!

Larísa said...

That was a really cool thing to do! Awesome. I wish I was such a good player. Who knows, one day, many years from now? Practice makes skill.

Cheers and appreciation from your innkeeper!

This round is on the house

Walgierz said...

Ooh, I am impressed!

Now, Gevlon, I looked at your logs, and despite having extensive experience and skill, you still wiped quite a lot. You know what that proves? That content isn't dumb and too easy - average social guild with Naxx and 5-man epics didn't had much better gear than your (top of the line) blues.

So, you proven that Ulduar is fine as long as you don't overgear it and bring players that have skills and persistence to push forward. Good job to you and good job to Blizzard actually!

Nathan said...

A pretty impressive display. If you had told me you could do Yogg (even 10) in full blues, I'd have doubted you.

Well played.

Jacob said...

@Spinksville: Collecting the blue stuff took me around 1.5 hours including enchants. Wasn't that bad really. And I rather go and do this than stand around in Dalaran idling for the time and it's not really that I have that much else to do. Was a nice break as well from trying to get a good 10 man group with perfect composition for the 2 10 man hardmodes we have left, for me at least. Check my armory if you think I can do something else instead. I don't do pvp.
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Stormscale&n=Astmathic

@Walgierz:
Ye we wiped a lot. Specially on FL, that was probably the hardest boss in the whole instance since the gear didn't just make the stats go half to what they use to be but to around a quarter, including damage.
If we go through boss for boss.

FL: Basically had to get 4 perfect shutdowns and not have any demolisher being chased. Once was ok, but not more. Harder than the hardmode.

XT: oneshot, wasn't really that bad at all. It was around here everyone discovered that "Holy shit, I really have bad mana regen and low mana pool now"

Kologarn: oneshot, not much to say.

Auriaya: First wipe was due to tank being basically oneshotted. Used to just having one tank pick the sentries up and thats enough it was a bit amusing to have to have massive use of cooldowns on both tanks and really watch it how it was done. 2nd wipe was the normal "Feral defender interrupting everything, locking down the healers". Ye, we couldve hugged the boss, but we where still used to doing this tactic so meh.

Hodir: This was actually hard. Specially on healers, was some sick damage flying around. We pulled through though, think we had 2-3 standing in the end.

Thorim: It required maybe 3 wipes to get the composition arena/tunnel right and then 1 wipe due to healer in tunnel dying. Then we got him down as soon as we managed to get through the tunnel.

Mimiron: 1 wipe here since we tried to 9 man it since one of our healers had some gfx problems right there. Not a good idea in blues with Napalm shells and Plasma Blasts. Wasn't that bad when we got our healer back though. P4 was interesting since he dropped really slow and instead of going "Just nuke him down" when its 100k left, it was more "get all parts to 20k and carefully get it down at the same time".

Freya: 1 shot, only time I was worried about a wipe was on the first Detonating Lashers wave, had around 5 sec to spare there. With a bit perfection we could've probably done her +1.

General Vezax: We recently downed the hardmode of him on 25 man but haven't really done him since the patch on 10 man. So even if we knew that the crashes would be a lot more frequent we didn't think it would be this much... Took us all the wipes to figure that out and then we just put 1 position to each of the 3 ranged and we had a kill.

Yogg: Probably the boss I was the least worried about. That was a mistake. He is hard with this low damage.
p1 is a pushover as always. p2 was sick. 1 mistake here and we would fall too much behind on damage and if we let too many corruptors be up we wouldn't have any mana left due to poison. The "dreamteam" made a great job inside on the kill, I think he went down on 3 portals. Above we had 1 corruptor left when p3 came so we decided we could handle it.
We also had 1 wipe the first time we went to p3 since we normally just tank the adds on top of yogg and kill them before the beaconds go off. We didn't really have that much dps now and suddenly I saw how yogg healed for maybe 200k and then we wiped due to enrage. We fixed that the next try and he went down with a whole 30 seconds left on enrage!

We then went back and finished up IC, Razorscale and Ignis. None was really that interesting. Maybe Razorscale since we started to get a bit cautious when we discovered we had around 8 debuffs at 20%.

Was great fun and I guess that "Link [epic]" is just a load of bull.

Jacob said...

Oh forgot to say, I only frapsed hodir and onwards, might've forgot some of the bosses on the way since it was my first time frapsing and I kinda installed the program during the run :)

Basis said...

The people who have negative comments to this are defending their pride, because they cannot do in epics what Gevlon did in blues.

No point to explain that really. Pity the M&S.

Bravo Gevlon, a great achievement! The best kind have rewards that you personally can enjoy, not 10 points only. Congrats.

Frosstbyte said...

Once again gevlon you apply your keen intellect to the situation and come up with the wrong result. All you showed is that ten people used to doing ulduar 25 hard modes can waste their time both collecting a lot of useless gear (totally wasted unless you can all de) and then spending way too long clearing an instance with twenty wipes that you could have cleared with no wipes in a quarter of the time or with hard modes for better rewards.

The mantra you preach here is gain more with less time. As far as I can tell, you gained nothing but social congrats (in you very own and very vociferous terms useless) and wasted a TON of time doing it. Now if you did it for fun or to show off (purely social endeavors both) then you necesarily concede the value of that very same social behavior you so adamantly decry.

The feat of clearing ulduar in blues is without a doubt commendable. But you failed entirely to prove any point other than that old nerfed content can be done by people who undergear it if they are very familiar with the encounters already. Gear matters when you don't know encounters because it provides a learning curve buffer. Certainly some people use gear as an excuse for failure or lack of ambition and I agree completely that asking pugs to link epics is just silly. But you, I think, ended up proving conclusively that gear does matter and it matters a lot. And it should matter even more to a goblin, to ensure maximum returns on the time you spend in the pve game instead of wasting a night getting blue gear then wasting another night wiping (repairs and consumes) a bunch to clear what should be a two hour thrashing of one shots.

Really-everyone knows that skill > gear. If you really want to prove it, go learn (emphasis learn) 10 man Twin Valkyr this week with the same group in blues. Good luck. SS or it didn't happen.

Dan said...

Excellent achievement.

Rawrasaur said...

Damnit Gevlon, I salute you.

/salute

Anonymous said...

I play a relatively decently geared Warlock main who can do 4k or so on heroic bosses.

I also play a Death Knight who is geared in Naxx10 gear only, with the 213 Sigil from an off chance drop in one of the few Naxx25s I pugged. So the point is her gear isn't great.

I pugged the DK into an Ulduar last night and broke the 3k mark consistently, with no BL, on bosses that were tank and spank, ie Kologarn, XT. This dps figure is substantially higher than I was doing on the Warlock with the same level gear (I think he was doing about 2.5k)

Yet when asked whats my gear level for Heroic farming the DK gets ignored when I mentioned her gear... go figure.

This post makes me so happy that yes, gear is not everything...

Frosstbyte said...

Just to be clear comment 15 Dan and comment 16 Dan are not the same Dan

Gevlon said...

@spinks: your answer coming tomorrow
@Dan: If you check my achievements you'll see that Blue Ulduar was the very first time I set foot to Ulduar 10. If you are checking the others, you find 3-4 more people who never done it either. Most of the wipes came from learning the encounters. For example I wiped the team twice at Vezzax for dieing in the saronite cloud. Excuse: it was the first time I used them since I've always done it in 25 hard attempts. About the Coliseum10: be careful what you wish for!

Rawrasaur said...

By the way, at Dan (The first one)-

There will be a certain limit of where skill can take you. No matter what, there will be a time where it is mathematically impossible to achieve something with low quality gear. For example, try killing Patchwerk with, let's say, level 70 green gear. It's just not going to happen.

Philipp Smirnov said...

About all - it is waste of time comments - Playing wow is very non-goblin, just go an do something important in real life. Don't forget to get fun from the game.

Wooly said...

Wow! I love it that you did that! This proves what I was wondering for quite a while already, though I didn't expect to see yogg go down.

The reason is that not too long ago I joined a U10 pug with 2 members from my guild, both offspec. It was a Tuesday night boredom run and I have this obscure love for pugging, hoping to be treated to total chaos and raidleaders losing their mind. This always cracks me up, and it's pure entertainment for me. So I tagged along. It's great healing practice also btw.

The group was mixed. Besides us there were 2 or 3 that seemed to know Ulduar quite well already, but the rest was crap. There was a mage and a rogue that both were clueless: green/blue gear with 0 enchants and gems, the mage even had a melee trinket. Rogue standing in front of the boss, doing 800 dps. FROSTmage had no replenishment specced (I mean.. If you HAVE to pve frost.. it's the **** LEAST). They were so stupid that even when we put down a free feast, we had to use a ton of force to make 'm actually eat it.

Yes, we kept on going with them :)

Anyway, even though we didn't expect to get anywhere with this pile of crap, we still managed to clear siege and kolo at which point we stopped because of the time. It wasn't anything close to smooth, but to say it was very hard, no, not at all.

So, I never got to know how far we could actually get with a mixed pug. But what you guys did is enough proof for me I guess.

Evildutch said...

Well gratz Ghost, seems you got it done after all.

Now lets see if mooii can make a movie:D

GrG said...

Fantastic job Gevlon. Gratz!

Anonymous said...

Wonderful!

Thunderhorns said...

Gevlon,

You knew the encounters. Just because you haven't done Vezax 10 doesn't mean you don't know the Vezax encounter. It's an easy encounter. And standing in the clouds is crazy easy. I switch classes and roles all the time from melee to ranged to tank and to heals and perform at a high level once I know an encounter.

None of the encounters in WoW are very hard. No idea why people claim they are. They are very easy and more a matter of determination to learn than "skill". I really have no idea why anyone considers WoW a game requiring skill other than general video game skills like knowing how to use a keyboard to control your character, having a bit of awareness, and reasonable reaction (mental and physcial) time. After that is all experience and then monotonous repetition.

Not sure why you took the time to prove something anyone with half a mind would know. But I guess it was an important point to drive home due to your bagging on the M&S. So I guess you did it because you felt it would further strenghten your argument that the M&S are that way because they are particularly bad players rather than competent raiders are particularly good. Which I feel is true.

WoW encounters are not built so that only the very best raiders can win the game, it is more built for an average group of fairly competent people.

Anonymous said...

The problem is that most of the people that raid on my server don't want skilled players they want warm bodies.

Generally they will not invite anyone thats not in their guild for the most current heroics and raids like the tournament.

For everything else they want a body to fill a slot. And they don't want to have to care if you are any good. Which is why they gear score.

I really like this post because it proves that you don't have to have epics to get epics. I always laugh that people think you need lvl 200 items to a simple heroic.

Ayonel said...

I think this is an excellent demonstration. Every single person who logs into wow should have to see this so that they know that they suck, and it has little to do with gear.

Maybe Blizz can put it in one of the startup tooltips:

Skilled raids have downed Yogg-Saron in level 187 greens. Don't obsess about gear.

No, I suppose not.

I really like the second line of this post. I got gear-checked for 25 OS last week and my response was, "Are you f$@%#! serious?"

The strangest thing about the preponderence of gear checks is that is is a recent, yet already antiquated, development. For a dps race like Emalon it was important to a degree. With 3.2, I often find myself running chain heriocs with pugs topping 10k dps.

Jacob said...

@Ayonel:

Interesting enough, we had enough DPS to pull off Emalon 10, at least in theory. With a 25 man raid, I don't know but I think it would be possible.

Razer said...

Kudos and to those who are doubting the goblin way of this , even a goblin has to have a night on the town once in a while so to speak,

We recently recruited a pally tnak into our guild that is in his leveling blues and yet he has no problems whatsoever tanking anything, even still we have had people leave a group because "the tank is undergeared" which just amazes me that people will not even give it a shot because they think that they know all.

erikbranson said...

Very impressive. Also, regardless of how some might feel, I find it fascinating to read about your experiments in game. I don't think the average 10-man guild to could do Ulduar in blues, but it certainly proves the point that gear is NOT that important.

Brian said...

This is probably my favorite post on this blog so far. It is a very cool experiment that proves two things every WoW player should know.

The first is that gear matters. Even if you are a totally epic player, you'll do better in better gear. Gevlon's guild wiped way more often than they would if they were wearing their normal gear. Those who are suggesting gear doesn't matter are missing the point...clearly it DOES matter, to some extent.

That said, the other point is that gear is ALSO not an excuse for not being able to do content. Good gear helps make things easier, but it's not necessary...and it's not the reason your raids are failing. It might be a convenient excuse, but that's all it is...an excuse.

This should be obvious by looking at the real gear differences between someone who excuses their poor playing by claiming they are undergeared and the people that same person points out as totally epic. Or for that matter, the gear difference between the elitist group leader rejecting people from PUGs for OS-25 because their gear sucks and the gear of those "sucky" players. If it's more than 10-20%, I'd be incredibly surprised. And that number is pretty small. For the "excuse" players, having 80% of the gear of the epic players isn't a reason you do 50% of their DPS or can't figure out how to move out of the fire. For the "elitist" players, skill can easily make up the gear difference, someone with 80% of your gear might be able to out-DPS you.

But on the other hand, I think I know why "bad gear" gets such a bad reputation. Gear is pretty easy to get, so the assumption is that if your gear is crap, it's probably because you make no effort at improving it...which doesn't say anything great about how you play the game. Of course it could be an alt that hit 80 a week ago, or a great player who just doesn't play that often. But in my experience, bad gear often points out bad players. Bad players can also have GOOD gear of course, since it's so easy to get...but good players definitely tend to have good gear, if only because they tend to play more often and raid content with gear upgrades.

The last thing is that I think Gevlon's experiment proves that it's not THAT dumb of an idea for PUG leaders to ask for things like [Epic] before inviting you. It's stupid and unfair if you happen to be an awesome player with lower level gear, but how is the raid leader supposed to know that? At least if you have GOOD gear but suck out loud, the gear might help make up for some of that. Gevlon's guild did better in Ulduar with excellent gear than with crappy gear, and I imagine the same goes for everyone else too. I'm 100% positive that there are guilds out there who clear Ulduar in epic gear that could NOT clear it the way Gevlon's guild did. Because instead of blowing through it, they just barely sneak by...they need all the help they can get. It would be awesome if PUG leaders could just divine that you are an awesome player despite your fail gear...but how exactly are they supposed to do that?

Anonymous said...

So what exactly did you prove that we all didn't learn in vanilla?
That a player in a quite active guild can do better than a random player who logs on twice a week?
Or that there are several aspects in this game, not just gear?
Or that my nephew which is 7 years old sux in this game even if he got some epics?

Anonymous said...

Kudos, only thing to say.

Kudos.

Diorinix said...

For some of the pug runs my guildmates and I set up for 3.1 content (OS25, Naxx25, etc), we don't do a gear-based invite requirement - we do a performance based requirement. If you cannot do 2k-2.5k dps (depending on your class and boss fight), you can stay but you get excluded from gear handouts. You're getting badges and raid experience from us carrying you, that gear is not going to waste on your sorry butt.

Jacob said...

@Brian:

To check if a player is good, do as I do if I ever put up a PUG for any raidcontent. First you check for the achievements linked to the instance and dates when he got them. Secondly you check the gear. And by that I don't mean that you should check if all are epics, check for gemming, for enchants, for gemslot bonuses. Then you go on and check talents. Is it a cookiecutter specc? Is all necessary talents included? And if you wan't to really check him out then you check his guild. Is it a raiding guild? What have they cleared? When? When where they formed?

Then you invite him if you see it fit. If they don't perform I will just kick them. Easy.

@Random others.
Yes, we did this with Windwalkers in Vanilla as well, on a slightly bigger scale when we cleared BWL around 4 weeks after a server start. Raid was in mostly blues, the epics that 2 resets of MC and a couple of ZG runs had yielded us and also around 3 resets of Onyxia. If I remember correctly we had around 3-5 scale cloaks for Nefarian. Was fun times. Gear does not matter if you know which order to press your buttons.

@Anonymous
Yes, your nephew is bad at the game if he's only 7 years old, specially since he's playing a game that's PG13. He shouldn't be able to understand all the factors that matters if you want to raid and if he does, he's one smart kid!

@Diorinix
Nice lootsystem, if I ever plan on doing some Pugs then I will use that lootsystem.

Yaggle said...

I am glad at yet another confirmation that I have absolutely no need to improve from my level 80 blues and my blue gems. New purple gems are another carrot held out on a stick for us to chase. My character is already ready for Catalysm(if I decide to buy it) with no raiding so why should I bother? Thanks for reinforcing my beliefs that I am already geared just fine. Purples are for time-wasters. And my time is, like, super-valuable, you know!

Tobold said...

Impressive, grats!

But no experiment proves anything without at least one or two control experimets: Can you repeat the same feat with grey gear? No! Thus "ungeared" does exist! Can a group of 40 M&S in epic Ulduar gear beat Ragnaros in Molten Core? Yes! Thus we prove that gear can compensate for lack of skill.

Fact is that every challenge in WoW can be overcome by a COMBINATION of gear and skill. And the person who says that he or his guild is "ungeared" uses that as short form for: "We would need either more gear or more skill to beat this, and gear is a lot faster to acquire".

Sid said...

http://wow-heroes.com/index.php?zone=eu&server=Stormscale&name=Ghostboci

According to WoW-Heroes, your blue gear only could go as far as Naxx 10.

Yet your full-blues raid beated up to Yoggy-10.

Excellent experiment. This definitively proves that gear is NOT a valid excuse (unless you're trying to farm the entire raid in less than an hour without wipes, of course)

The problem with those link-epic people is that they try to measure the skill of a PuGee through gear, which is very innacurate (and stupid) in a game where epics rain from the sky and 10 people can down Yoggy in full blues.

The problem it's not the undergeared players, it's the M&S who are too lazy/stupid to stand out of the fire, or perform a decent rotation instead of facerolling.

Gratz Gevlon!

One of the best post I've ever read =)

Sydera said...

OMG the goblin did something fun!

Grats to you. That's the kind of stuff that makes me enjoy this game. Sure, it's not very goblinish, but what a challenge!

Saavykas said...

Behold all the folks out there who armory check for heroics. Behold as they intentionally miss the point. Behold as they try desperately to defend themselves and deride this successful Uld10 run in full blues; a thing that, had they been asked about yesterday, they would have scoffed at the notion of.

Anonymous said...

I wish my guild could do that.

But we can't. Not because we're not geared... we have at least 25 peeps in full epics.

We should be roflstomping 25 man Ulduar.

Yet we can't put together a 10 man with 10 people that are any good. Our guild is just that bloated with M&S.

Those guys could do that not because they're so skilled in PVE content, but because they have the single most important raiding skill: They tell people "No! You cannot raid with us because of your lack of skill."

As such, when they ask in guild for "10 people for an experiment" they will get 10 skilled players every time.

William said...

Cool experiment Gevlon!

I wonder how differently your run would've been if you had ONLY the healers and/or tanks were wearing full Ulduar epics, but DPS in full blues. Something tells me you would've roflstomped the whole instance with 0 wipes.

Anonymous said...

Tobold:

"We would need either more gear or more skill to beat this, and gear is a lot faster to acquire".

Actually, no. There is a point, very low in the scale... where no amount of gear can make up the gap. Combine that with 2 factors:

Spell rotation skill can be obtained in only a few hours.. it just takes the desire to learn and a teacher.

Learning an encounter is a factor of persistance, focus, and committment. People that are skilled possess these talents innately. Some people can never learn them.

If you don't weed the unskilled out of your raiding group, you will be buried by them.

Varaben said...

Very impressive. I think we all knew deep down that it could be done with no gear at all. Not that its any comparison, but I remember doing naxx10/25 3-4 days after wrath came out and clearing the whole thing in one night. As long as you know the fights it not bad. Good to see someone put the effort in.

Argon said...

Very cute.

A complementary experiment would be to gather together a group of people in Ulduar 25 gear who are terrible and can't make it through Naxx 10.

Obviously you don't need to be geared out, but it is likely that somebody who has done a boss many times (like your guild) has good gear. Thus gear acts as an imperfect proxy for skill and knowledge. Unfortunately there is no achievement for doing reasonable DPS and knowing how to not stand in fires all the time.

Anonymous said...

What astonishes me is that there is a level of understanding of the classes here, not really even related to 'skill' displayed.

My Shadow Priest, Iiene of Kul Tiras, in epic gear, only manages to pull off 2500 DPS in Ulduar 10, but your Shadow Priest, Astmathic, managed 3000 in blues. That's huge, and I don't totally suck.

Is it my spell rotation? I don't think so... my breakdown looks a lot like Astmathic's... I keep my dots up at all times, Mind Blast a lot, about the only thing is I do different is cast SW:death more.

Talents? Virtually identical. I have 2 points in Improved Vampiric Embrace, whereas Ast has 2 in Veiled Shadows.

Glyphs? Identical.

Where is my problem? I don't know. I dominate all other Shadow Priests in my guild, So I can't get any help there.

Perhaps I should pull a Gevlon and yell "Shadow Priest looking for leet training! Will pay 5K to get me to 3K DPS on the Training Dummy!" in trade.

Gevlon said...

@Tobold: Both gear and skill upgrade has diminishing returns. Every next hour is less and less effective.

- From naked to random green: 150% increase in an hour
- From random gear to decent blues: 60% increase/hour
- Making money for ilvl 200 epics: 10%/hour
- Farming raids for higher ilvl: 1-2%/hour

If someone already have Naxx gear, despite extremities learning has bigger DPS/hour returns than gear farming.

@Anonymous shadow priest: being in noob guild damages your DPS. For example Astmathic had +13% damage from moonkin effect. If you don't have moonkin, warlock should use curse of elements. However noob warlocks prefer agony. Also having a shaman who bloodlust at the right point can make huge differences.

Jacob said...

@Anonymous: Send me a couple of WWS logs, preferably on patchwerk since that's easiest to break down of your performance. Also give me your armory. You can pm me on windwalkers-guild.eu.

Small tip straight away, SW:D is a dps loss now since you have to time it properly and just not spam it when it's off cd.

One said...

The difference can be caused through a few things, as caster what usually makes the biggest difference is if you can compensate for your lag.

Let's assume you got a ping of 200ms, you chaincast a 2 second spell, and the spell does 1000dmg on hit.
If you play good, you probably hit the spell button a few ms after your castbar shows the spell has ended. which is 200ms later then when the server thinks your spell has ended.
That would increase the effective cast time by around 200ms, so instead of 500 dps, you now do 454 dps.

When you got a castbar which estimates your ping at casttime (i don't know how, but quartz does this xD) you can, dependend on your ping, increase your dmg bye a large amount.

Thats just one thing out of many that makes the difference between good and great players^^

Jenna said...

"The problem with those link-epic people is that they try to measure the skill of a PuGee through gear, which is very innacurate (and stupid) in a game where epics rain from the sky and 10 people can down Yoggy in full blues."

THIS! All the people being snarky and just passive-aggressive in their comments... are missing the point that - Apparently not everyone knows that gear is not the end-all, be-all.

I have a level 80 warlock. For quest quality encounters? her gear was wiping up everything. Myself and a friend would take on 5-person quests together, as soon as we were able to take them. We finished Outland and ended up hitting 80 after finishing Borean Tundra, Howling Fjord, and just a fraction of Dragonblight. As you can imagine, this doesn't make for impressive gear. No dungeon runs, btw.

Even in that gear, with some education about my rotations, and the like (and yes, I gem and enchant)... I can hit 1400dps on trash in heroic runs. Roughly 2500dps on single bosses. I don't think that's shabby at all.

However, for someone to LOOK at my AH bought blues, my crafted tidbits and yes... I was wearing green drop pants (level 74 req, at that)...! They would have lol'd me right off the face of Northrend.

As the rundown on the experiement explains, it wasn't easy. It was very difficult, but possible. It takes skill and at least SOME commitment to gear.

For those of you going "way to waste your time" - stop reading blogs and go do something productive.

Mentat said...

When they announced cross-server LFG at Blizzcon I got in line to ask how not to get stuck with people who fail. This post says it's not about the gear and a few people have said, "look at achievements." However, this stuff all needs to be in the WoW UI to make it actually usable quickly for trying to put together cross-server groups. It would be good if they did PvE ratings. I think there's probably a clever way to figure out if someone's being carried. At each instance reset you could figure out who all had been in that instance and figure out how much they contributed to it being successfully cleared (or not) and adjust a rating scale by that. Feel free to poke a million holes in this idea...

Goreon said...

I think it has to be said that whilst this is quite an achievement, it cannot provide a decent baseline comparison for real world PUG situation.

You guys know each other. You KNOW you're skilled and can work as a team. What you lack in gear, you made up for in ability and skill.

In /4, it's impossible to know whether the moron who just PST'd you for an inv in his scrub blues is actually *skilled* OR a *moron*

As a maintank myself with considerable repair costs, I have enough experience and caution to not accept any random idiot based on a 'trust me, I know what I'm doing' reply.

Even linked Achievements only show that you were 'there' and not that you contributed to the event in a meaningful fashion.

Without much in the way to clarify if it's a question of skill or gear, most players (when dealing with the very random element of PUG players) will opt for the lesser of two evils - gear.

Put another way, if two randoms ask for an inv to your group - one has EPIC and the other in quest Blues, who are you gonna take?

My Server has a population in excess of 30,000. If I'm PUGging anything, I don't have to just accept the guy in blue and hope he's good when there's 6 DPS right behind him who have made the effort to get better gear.

Of course EPIC doesn't prove their good either, but I consider it the lesser of two evils.

My repair bill demands it...

Anonymous said...

Looking at gear is foolish and a very poor way to judge someone's ability, especially in a time when epics fall from the sky.

If anything, before even looking at gear, you should be looking at gems, enchants, talents and the like. That is - and will always be - the superior way of determining if someone is completely terrible or is at least taking the time to learn something about their class.

Anonymous said...

I like how you can have every physical buff/debuff avaiable in that raid comp yet you claim it's not very "synergetic".

Playing dumb ftl.

Anonymous said...

Oh man that's the most win I've seen in a while, good work. Rofl. Absolutely love that and grats on Yogg and the rest :p

Anonymous said...

I think one thing people forget is certain gear equates to experience with certain bosses. Plus, no one wants to be challenged anymore than needs be on bosses that have already been won.

Nevertheless, grats to your success, even though I would never revert back to blues to prove a point. I would rather do arenas, but that's just me.

Also, keep in mind that most of ulduar has been nerfed, so if you were to apply this logic when Ulduar first came out, I doubt you would have the same success, especially if you didn't know any fights.

Sten Düring said...

Grats to performance :D

@Goreon

I usually ran the Tuesday (pre-maintenance) OS 25 PUGs, and had done so since late May.
Not doing them now while chain-farming heroics is all the rage.

We have yet to fail downing Sarth.

I have an absolute demand on each and every raider before they're allowed to join -- they're 80 and have two legs.

When content is common knowledge asking for gear and achievements is just a stupid insult.

Anonymous said...

@geron:
YOU just failed mate, his message was EXACTLY that gear does not count but skill/ability. Which we proved by doing a blue 10 ulduar.

I do have 4 tanking chars and to be honest i have a repair bill aswell but yet i am less arrogant about it. I am giving people a chance and usually it turns out for the best. they are greatful got gear and not just badges and i made a few new companions who will come back to me to play again.

i mean please almost everyone can do heroics / 10pugs with their eyes shut. if not then its a simple stand here and push these buttons.

since tbc people are less and less prepared to compromise and want the easiest way....

i consider myself a teacher :P i'll gladly take in a few guys who are new into a group and show em how it goes. ups the quality of player base of the server !! Community service ftw.

Anonymous said...

Absolutely brilliant proof that skill matters more than gear.

Goreon said...

"YOU just failed mate, his message was EXACTLY that gear does not count but skill/ability. Which we proved by doing a blue 10 ulduar."

No, what he proved was the communication and ability was key to winning raids, not gear.

This I accept.

What I don't accept is that random idiots in /4 will have the same ability and what's more I cannot even PROVE they have that ability other than trying them out and risking a hefty repair bill.

On a high pop server like mine where I will have a number of options in people wanting an inv, why the fuck would I waste my time with someone trying to convince me they can 'do it' in blues when the next bloke has already linked me his [EPIC] and [ACHIEVEMENT]?

It's not a question of morality or justice here mate, but plain fucking common sense.

Why take a chance on randoms who don't give a shit about your repair costs just to prove a point?

Fail my fucking arse sunshine! I've been playing since vanilla and I've seen all types come through the game to waste my time on such a lofty ideal.

Yes, he has cleared Yogg 10 in blues with a KNOWN TEAM WITH SKILL AND COMMUNICATION. Well done.

That doesn't mean JACK SHIT in the real world, especially concerning pug randoms with one hand on their mouse and the other on their cock, hoping silly old me will ignore the EPIC/Achievement inv request to give him a free ride into pretty purples.

It's not about standing up for a moral ideal as much as employing common sense and following the path of least resistance.

You've all been around enough to know that there's some REALLY dumb mofos out there who play this game... and I've spent THOUSANDS on repair costs over the years dealing with them.

There's no damn chance in hell I'm just going to start accepting randoms in blues into my runs just because Gevlon proves you can clear Yogg with a good team in blues.

Anonymous said...

Grats! That took a lot of dedication regardless of knowledge about 10man fights. Anybody posting to say anything other than congrats on a notable feat such as this needs try it themselves before lodging complaints and their own theory.

You've proved your point and many guilds could stand to look at this.

Again, congratulations.

ArchDruid Angela said...

LoL I love that you did this. Not surprising really that you were successful. I mean... yeah it's easier with gear, but I'd rather run with un-geared alts of good players than PUG with geared n00bs anyday :)

Anonymous said...

Yeah good work, but you cant do much Hard mode whit that gear, but runing tru Ulduar would work, and that is what pugs do to so...

well some Harde mods can work but some realy needs good gear.

Beth said...

I've always believed skill is more important than gear. I was in level 71 green boots when my family group did a 5-man achievement that our friends in epics couldn't get, and it was simply because we knew how to play together.

Unfortunately, I won't even try to pug without gear because you run the risk of getting kicked or denied loot by jerks.

Anonymous said...

"Video will come on Wednesday."
I cant find the link to watch...

Unknown said...

Wow this is so cool guys. So glad you took the time to explain this as well. I'm impressed. Very, very fun read.

Eric said...

This is without a doubt the coolest thing I've seen happen in WoW in the last year. Good job.

BaronSoosdon said...

Big grats. I didn't even think that something like this would be possible :o

Anonymous said...

This reminds me of the time I got declined from a guild because my hunter was lacking the exalted SoH enchant and had 8 stats instead of 10 on her chest, not to mention I only had 16 agility on my cloak instead of 22.

That's why I got declined.

Anonymous said...

Hmm... I think the real next step is see how high a PVP rating on 5s a group in blues could get=)

@Ulduar: skill > gear is proven true (above minimum level)

Fuzzymuscles said...

Hmmm... the naysayers seems to be misunderstanding, unless I am. I didn't think he was trying to say that all of the low breds in /4 who can pick up a blue can complete Ulduar. He's merely stating that skill is above gear.

For instance, say you got the experience to play over years on a server and for some reason had to switch servers. Someone like me will just start a new toon rather than pay for a transfer. When you get up to 80 and work up some blues, you shouldn't be declined by a raiding guild because you don't have the epic achievement. This content is DOABLE in the current gear if you know what you are doing.

Am I wrong, Mr. Gevlon?

Anonymous said...

I don't think people request X gear to complete instances due to the fear of not actually completing them, it's all about finishing things fast and speed in their eyes.

Anonymous said...

Nicely done guys. If it is possible i would like to see the gear youre were using for the run if you are able to post is in any way or maybe send me a mail with it for proof.

Also read that you might would post a video showing the run if you know when it would come

Flormelis said...

This is excatly what I was looking for to post at morons who says I cannot join raids on my alt Feral Druid. While there are better geared people in the raid, you can be sure I will come out near the top.

I know what I am doing, I can get dots on Heigan while running, I can even get casts off, while some other idiot is standing around taking the slowing effect on spells being unable to even finish an immolate.

I've told people I can link all the achivements from Ulduar, ToC 10/25 and some hardmodes in ToC 10/25 - Yet I am still a laughing matter, as the group takes some rogue in better gear that has never even seen Yogg-saron.

Thank you!

Dude said...

i think you are also missing the most important and valuable component to all this. And this is time. i don't want to spend all might trying to down a boss if we can do it in 1/4 time in better gear. you may not value your time, but i do. So yes, gear plays a very important role, as proved by this, that better geared players have a much higher probability to clear content in less time.

Anonymous said...

It's not just gear its your way of doing it. Recently during a Ignis fight we were having so much trouble because the tank was dying and if you lose a tank its a wipe during ignis because positioning is off right? So we adopted a new way of doing things. we didnt change the strategy at all we just used our classes to the full extant. The healers heal like crazy making sure the whole raid is at full health at all times. pop cooldowns early so that they can be available later on in the fight. Just use the class to the full extant of its abilities. whatever can increase your damage at the time, whatevers off cooldown, whatever helps the tanks.the goal is to always be on cooldown.

Anonymous said...

@ Dude

They're not considering time in this equation. they're trying to show that everyone can get if you just know the fights. You could be the best geared person in the raid but if you have no knowledge on the fights and just go on your never gonna get it done.

Euphoria said...

Props to you guys!
This makes me squiggle with joy! I always tell people skill > gear and this is proof!

Unknown said...

Well done. Good to see how much skill really matters.

Someone linked this in my chat channel a few minutes ago and I thought I'd mention—the Wowhead Profiler has a system where you can save profiles with sets of gear that don't necessarily match what you can see in the Armory. Something like that might be useful for linking in your post here.

So you can link something like http://www.wowhead.com/?profile=8382858 and show the list of gear your tank was wearing at the time, even if he's changed gear now.

Dr. Ether said...

Congrats on your awesome achievement. However, you've kind of missed the point as to why some PUGs ask for achievements for things.

While a lot of the elitist attitude concerning "You have to have the achievement to do [insert instance/raid here]" and the skill does make the player more than gear does...

The reason PUGs ask for credentials in the form of gear score or instance/raid completion is because they don't know that you're skilled, they've never met you before.

You can be Jesus tapdancing Christ at whatever class you play, but they don't know that.

Unknown said...

Awesome work! I play with a lot of sick raiders none of us thought this was possible. That was some incredible play!

How the heck did your tanks survive Hodir/Stealbreaker frozen/fusion attacks? On Hodir there isn't much frost resist on non epic gear and both could one shot your tanks in blues. Did you do it solely through cooldowns and bear stamina stacking?