Feldon The Itemization Battle
When examining any piece of equipment, players must evaluate whether that item is an upgrade for their class based not only on their existing stats, but also whether the stats and effects on that item are of benefit to their class. The character’s spells, combat arts, AA setup, and existing gear must all be considered. Choosing item upgrades has never been an exact science.
At one time, all 5 main stats including Intelligence, Wisdom, Stamina, Agility, and Strength had a part to play in the effectiveness of an item for every class, not just hybrid classes. This is not to mention +Health, +Power, Offensive and Defensive Skills, and the various Resists. The last 3 expansions have added or greatly expanded upon effects such as Crit Chance, Multi Attack (formerly Double Attack), Crit Bonus, Potency, AOE Autoattack, Flurry, Strikethrough, etc.
EQ2’s Itemization has been a constant battle. Powerful procs and item effects have combined with mechanics eccentricities (and outright bugs) deep within the EQ2 combat code to result in a wide variety of itemization options for players, but many headaches for the EQ2 development team.
For the last 2 years, we have seen efforts to reign in the complexity (some would say freedom) of itemization in EQ2, to “get everyone on the same page” more or less of what gear is appropriate for each class. And we haven’t seen anything to suggest that we won’t see yet more streamlining in Destiny of Velious.
At one time, experienced players using various analysis tools cut through the complexity of all these stats, undocumented effects, and wonky mechanics of EQ2’s combat system and then posted their results and detailed explanations for any player who wanted them. Excel spreadsheets and exhaustive combat logs were used to show why one item which may initially appear to be a downgrade was actually a diamond in the rough. There was a time when thorough lists of suggested items broken down by class or subclass made the rounds shortly after each expansion to help players make a “shopping list”.
However this helpful community and detailed information has largely been replaced with vitriole and juvenile ranting. Today, up-to-date information for new or returning players wishing to educate themselves or “catch up” is hard to come by. Maybe it’s the age of the game. Maybe it’s because every time a “cool” item has been found and documented, its unique traits have eventually been neutralized by code fixes, often 6-12 months after said widely-sought item was introduced to the game. Perhaps these item experts haven’t left but have simply gone underground, keeping their research closer to the vest.
GearScore
If you are familiar at all with WoW, you know that approximately one year ago, they added a GearScore stat to the game. From WoWWiki:
Gear score is a numerical value based on the statistics of a player’s gear. It is (supposedly) the maximum potential of a player’s performance.
Most commonly, gear scores are a metric used to evaluate the relative strength of a player’s equipment as a way of determining if that player meets a given threshold to join in certain raids or groups going through an instance. It should be noted that a given gear score, no matter which formula is used, does not necessarily mean that other players can not demand higher scores from others before joining a raid or group.
Problems reported with such a system include selection of gear solely based on its GearScore value, without consideration of its appropriateness for the class, and a reduction in Casual Grouping with players who do not have a minimum GearScore. While WoW publicly displays the GearScore value in-game and on the Armory, it is unclear what form or venue such a “metastat” would take within EQ2 if it were implemented.
A thread on the EQ2 Forums (started with a tongue-in-cheek parable about how Casual Grouping may change after this expansion launches) explores what effect Item Score might have on EQ2.
EQ2Wire Asks
Do you think a GearScore system would negatively affect grouping or raiding in EQ2?
Would another player’s GearScore be a significant factor in deciding whether you wish to group with someone?
Do you think GearScore is something that EQ2 should add?
WoW adding “GearScore to the game” is a bit inaccurate per se. While there is a GearScore addon which is usable by players, it is not integrated into the game, or the Armory for that. Perhaps the average itemlevel of a player is what is being referred to, which recently has been integrated into the game and the Armory, something which has become more important lately as well as it restricts the player to which content he can access through the built in dungeon finder system.
Average itemlevel in itself says nothing about the players gear choices though, as it only says which quality of gear you have equipped, not if its stats matter to the class in question.
Average itemlevel has in many cases taken the place of GearScore in the game as it is readily available in the game without having to use an addon, and shows which quality of gear you are wearing.
GearScore on the other hand does try to rank stats on items based on which class you are playing, but it will never be as accurate as manually theorycrafting it yourself.
Yes, there are people requiring a minimum average itemlevel just as people required a minimum GearScore before the addition of average itemlevels, but there will always be people who require persons joining their groups to have good gear, no matter the game, and no matter if they check gear through manually inspecting the person in question or by checking his average itemlevel.
Do I think that a GearScore system would negatively affect grouping or raiding in EQ2? Not at all, elitists would still be elitists and casuals would still be casuals.
Would another player’s GearScore be a significant factor in deciding whether you wish to group with someone? Yes and no, if I am doing hard_90_instance_01 and the person wanting to join is geared for generic_level_50_instance_03 then I might be hesitant on letting him join unless I know he is a solid player, but the same would go even if I had to manually inspect his gear.
Do you think GearScore is something that EQ2 should add? I am not against it, but in the end it would matter little.
My understanding is that WoW added an item score to individual items, and then exposed the total item score for a character to the public through Armory, etc. That other players and other websites track and data mine that number is hardly an unintended or unanticipated consequence.
I guess if EQ2 adds a dungeon finder system, then it will be a necessity, but exposing that number may limit grouping options for people who are genuinely dedicated but lacking in gear. Some players don’t have gear because they don’t care, or don’t know. Some players don’t have gear because they haven’t had a chance to gear up yet. I’ll take that second group of people any day.
First off, SoE would need to have a reliable site. If something stops working within this game, unless it is an exploit or huge bug, it gets fixed very very slowly if at all.
All someone with a low public gearscore would say is eq2 players hasn’t updated in weeks and the information is totally old. Voila, found a workaround. And as it is already, the game has become too cliquish for it to really matter at the levels it does in WoW.
If it is the same as in SF this would be completely irrelevant.
Not so many gear tiers to choose from. And then the simplification and bundling of the gear for the same classes. Heal armor sets in SF made me cry a little, the only difference was: Plate, Chain or leather. The stats on those pieces were exactly the same !
I rather see them create more content and fix some longstanding issues then giving every item a number…
Are they numbering old tier items, pre T8 too ? Guess not, these items where not important when leveling, MC armor and weapons was way above any fabled quality dungeon drop. Not to mention the old stats on those items.
If they would be able to get it right, it will just dumb down the game further.
But I seriously doubt SOE will get this right. They are already using the ‘gearscore’ number to generate their items. And just look at the choices you get as quest rewards for solo questing, or any heroic/raid drop with +defense/parry/weapons skills on it.
This will just make the halfdecent players worse because they expect the gearscore will be right so they won’t look at the actual effects anymore.
In EQ2 you can not compare two items without taking the rest of the player’s equipment, his AA spec or his group buffs into consideration.
If you are raiding and you always have a dirge in your group, currently every point of MA over 85% is wasted (until DoV and the multi attack changes go live). But if you are soloing, grouping, 85% would be too low to get the maximum out of your character.
That is just one example of a myriad of different conditions the player has to take into consideration when choosing gear.
Whenever I get an upgrade I have to redo alot of my other item gear, sometimes switch one or two aa points around and re-adorn.
No “GearScore” could ever do that for me.
Just to clarify, Gearscore in WoW is an add-on and I dont think its officially supported by the game.
But iLevels for gear were added a few years ago and have been around a long time, basically levels for gear so a Tier 1 raid item would be a lower iLevel then a tier 2 raid item. They recently have taken note of a players average gear ilevel in Cataclysm and track it since its used as the key to get into their heroics now (you need an average of 330 ilevel gear, 329 and you have to stand outside as you obviously have no chance 🙂 ).
To answer the questions though…
1) Do you think a GearScore system would negatively affect grouping or raiding in EQ2?
With the way its available presently, not really. If the game does start specifically gating content based on it though, then yes, I thought the WoW model of heroic dungeons requiring a specific number sucked balls.
2) Would another player’s GearScore be a significant factor in deciding whether you wish to group with someone?
To be honest, there have been times when I’ve put a group together that I’ve wanted to make sure we had a chance in some hard content. If I knew someone was poorly geared then I wouldn’t have taken them, not because I wanted to steam roll some content, but so I didn’t put together a “doomed to fail” group.
But looking back every time I have put together a “doomed to fail” group its been because the players were just bad (one had a few uber geared players that decided they were above the scripts in Guk, we cleared it with some lower level non raid geared players the next day!), or because no matter how easy Deep forge is 4 fighters (some below the level) and a healer was stretching it too far (that run hurt, and was my fault for forming the group :D).
So overall I don’t think knowing the players gear would have improved the groups I did form.
3) Do you think GearScore is something that EQ2 should add?
Overall no. Because the essential idea it gives is false. Two items with gearscore 130 are not equally good for a player, a tank with only offensive stats will have just as good a gearscore as a well thought out geared tank.
Even for upgrades an item with +20% crit and ilevel 110 vs an item with no crit but instead crit damage and ilevel 120, here and the player cannot make an intelligent choice with the gearscore. For the gearscore to be useful like this they need to dumb all the gear downto effectively one stat, or have every stat on it with every stat going up at the same time which would be the same thing.
In the end the only thing the gearscore tells the player is that this item is higher level and thus more valuable, so it would encourage players to be greedy aquiring gear they cannot or should not equip yet.
The last use for gearscore is for evaluating players for dungeon finder, but there in WoW players already fool it, for example by grabbing some cloth to bump up their gearscore if they are a plate tank. As a player though I already do evaluate people with a much simpler method, e.g. for a tank just looking at their health+mitigation+avoidance tells you if they have a chance or not, with that method I dont care if the player has a high gearscore or not.
So in my opinion its not needed or wanted, EQ2 tooltips are too long already and could do without this clutter which should be hidden for devs only.
I am a little split on the idea:
1) It would have saved me inviting pug members who were not up to an instance standard gear-wise (which often – but not always – meant experience-wise too).
2) GS tend to become the be-all and end-all stat for games like this and soon it’s all people are using to rate others.
I would probably rather know how the current systems work with accuracy and figure the rest out myself.
Gearscore like this doesn’t work:
In order to do it accurately an item with a 6 potency and 6 crit bonus would need to have a different gear score depending if worn by melee or caster in comparison to an item with 12 crit bonus 0 potency.
This is one (albeit a large one) of many mechanics that do not affect all classes in a similar manner.
As a raid leader, this would be nice. However, I am generally against over simplifying the game for people.
I’ve seen in other games like DCUO and WoW there is a part at the bottom of the inspect equipment area that says “equiping this item will increase your strength by 15 points and so on”. If that is what they have in mind, I’m game for it.
However if what they plan to do is like what Windows 7 does called “System Rating”, which mine is currently at 3.1 but i don’t see how a rating system as flawed as that is relevant to anything. I mean it would be 5.0 if not for the issues i have with windows aero. Which i don’t even use. I’m sure something stupid like that would get in the way of a gearscore thing too. For example. Your intelligence isn’t high enough so your score is 3… 3? But I’m a guardian. I don’t even need that stat! lol
as someone that plays both wow and eq2 i can say in wow i have yet to join a grp that asked for gearscore, i dont raid in wow but i can honestly say it doesnt effect grp play.
For me, this would be pretty nice.
As someone mentioned above, you’d have to take the score with a grain of salt since comparing an item with 6 potency and 6 crit bonus to an item with 12 crit bonus would be fairly subjective.
(Begin totally made up number mode)
Let say though that each crit bonus, potency, etc. was worth 1 point. Lets say each of your items had a total of +12 between all the bonuses giving them a gear score of 12.
Helm, cloak, shoulders, bracers, gloves, chest, legs, feet, necklace, charm x2, ring x2, bracelet x2, earring x2, weapon slot x2, and a ranged weapon gives you 20 possible slots (doing this from memory so forgive me if I forgot some, won’t matter for these purposes anyway).
20 possible slots x gear score of 12 each = 240. If I bring someone into an instance and their DPS is pathetic, I can check out their gear score. If it’s sitting at 50, I know their gear sucks and we need to work on getting them some upgrades. If it’s sitting around or above 240, which is what mine is at, and their AAs are comparable, I know we need to work on their AA spec, casting order, positioning, spell upgrades, etc.
(End totally made up number mode)
Also, a lot of my guild-mates are altaholics, myself included. I’ve got 5 level 90s, and my level 88 coercer only needs 10% for level 89. He’ll be 90 soon. When we run a zone, it’s sometimes a challenge to make sure we don’t take too many poorly geared alts with us. Depending on the zone, you can take a poorly geared tank (within limits) with an uber geared healer. Or an uber geared tank with a poorly geared healer. Or a medium geared tank and healer with uber dps. Go too far though and take too many poorly/medium geared toons and you’re probably not finishing the zone. Gear score would be an easier way of getting a ballpark idea of how good/crappy the gear is on a given alt.
Would it tell you how well a given toon can perform? Not really. But someone with maxed AAs and all masters with a gear score of 50 isn’t going to perform as well as the same person playing the same toon with a gear score of 240. It’ll give you a ballpark idea of the gear, but that’s about it. It would still be fairly nice for my situation.
Would it be good for the game? Don’t know. I can definitely see the messages in the chat channels: “Zone X group needs tank then gtg. Minimum gear score: 240.” That might not be a bad thing though. Would give the high end players a quick way of finding other high end players, and would give the casual players an easy way to avoid the high end players if they chose to do so. 🙂 Gotta kid the raiders occasionally. 🙂
As a raiding/grouping druid I’m extremely limited by how geared my groups are, if people get oneshotted due to bad gear I can’t do anything. So from this point of view having a easy system to tell wether or not a person is ready for a group or not would be good.
This wouldn’t work well in EQ2, however, as for example hp adorns and survivability specced people in T1/T2 raid gear is almost preferable to people in T3 raid gear that think the gear is enough to keep them alive.
I think the only way to get a GearScore to work would be to limit the players options to customize their characters too much.
I don’t think that a GearScore would be a good thing to add. Different specs require different stats, so a player might be extremely effective in an unusual spec where their score would not be as high. Skill still counts for more than gear, and there’s no way to account for skill.
i think gear score is a bad idea. its reducing everything to gear. skill ability AA is not taken into account . which is like a kind of tunnel vision approach to grouping and raiding. i have seen people in horrible gear do amazing jobs in raids and i seen people in great gear awful jobs in raids. is there a player ability score? that would be more interesting.
i think to set up a gear score system will exclude new people i think, and will set up this members only kinda approach to groups and raids. you will need a good gear score to get a group in conservatory even though its a easy zone . people will abuse it im sure and the drama will ensue
Very dumb. You are basically looking at a score to determine if they can instanced?
/shout looking for dps with score of 300+!
Gear Score is pointless. All it would do is make more people less able to understand what their class needs, and think because 500>300 they are good.
It’s a long term detriment.
They would be better off showing the actual changes in damage, heals, damage taken etc.
Like item has +10 str 5 crit.
It would show Damage(101-102[100)]
Critical chance (5%[102+1*1.5] Chance)
A: I am afraid that gearscore would widen the already significant divide between “cutting edge” and “regular” players but as Dethdlr says above it may not be a bad idea. I think that a gearscore could change a lot in especially casual guilds and maybe it could be a good help for casual guilds to set attainable raiding goals and that way reduce burnout.
B: I already think it is to hard to find groups, I will not care.
C: I do not know, it may be very useful in helping regular players understand the sometimes VERY complicated information of EQ2 gear IF it is done right. This is one of those things that may be very good or just meh.
One thing to add, I think I confused the issue between gearscore and item levels, my post was purely about item levels. The gearscore though would analyse each stat on each peice of gear and give a rating based on the class equipping it.
But that’s not a lot to do with item levels, there all it says is that the item is acquired from harder content/higher raid tier etc. So the item levels will only tell you about the quality of the item itself, not how good it is for a certain class to equip.
Hence I’d just ignore it and look at the stats we have already that matter – mitigation, health, avoidance, resists etc. Just looking at 2-3 of them would get a more consistent and accurate picture of the players gear then any item level system could give.
In WoW the gearscore is NOT a mod. It is created by Blizzard and when you inspect people or look them up on the armory (witch functions…) you can see that player equiped item level.
I can see this in chat all the time … will be more annoying than the Chuck Norris crap …
G1: Labs group looking for tank GS 320 MIN and gtg
T1: Tank GS 318 looking for group
G1: Sorry T1 – you’re too little
R1: Tox pickup raid looking for chain healer GS 390 and plate tank GS480
T2: Tank GS 485 looking for raid
then 10 mnutes later
R1: Tox pickup raid looking for tank GS 486
At least there will be some comedy … lol.
“Would it be good for the game? Don’t know. I can definitely see the messages in the chat channels: “Zone X group needs tank then gtg. Minimum gear score: 240.” That might not be a bad thing though. Would give the high end players a quick way of finding other high end players, and would give the casual players an easy way to avoid the high end players if they chose to do so.”
Sorry Dethdlr, do you really think segregating the community is the way to go?
The only way “gearscore” can work is if gear has only one stat. As soon as there’s a reasonable tradeoff between two stats, gearscore would have to not be a number attached to the item, but a calculation based on your current stats… at which point, you don’t need a gear score, you need a character-score.
If I’m an illusionist with 20% crit bonus from items (so 50% total, with my 30% innate crit bonus) and 40% potency, then an item with 10 potency is better for me than an item with 10 crit bonus. If I instead had 60% potency, then an item with 10 crit bonus would be better.
Now try to figure that out for a melee character, where the proper bonus/potency tradeoff also depends on their CA damage, weapon DR, and casting order…
Nevermind trying to one-number the tradeoff between threat/DPS and survivability for a tank item, or the effectiveness of more crit mit for players without knowing what type of content they plan to play against…
So yes, if eq2 had gearscore, it would change nothing. Thoughtless people will still gear up thoughtlessly, and people building PUGs will have a new mostly-meaningless number to attach to their recruiting, rather than just asking for “high” DPS or “solo” healer or “solid” tank.
Adding gearscore to the current level_80-89 chat would probably just make it go something like this:
PUGger tells level_80-89 “OV hot zone need chanter, GS 300”
(repeat for 5 minutes)
PUGger tells level_80-89 “OV hot zone need chanter, GS 250”
(repeat for 5 minutes)
PUGger tells level_80-89 “OV hot zone need chanter or high DPS, GS 250”
(repeat for 5 minutes)
PUGger tells level_80-89 “OV hot zone looking for one to go, any class”
(at which point they zone with with their 6th man, a GS 202 monk with 147 AA.)
I guess grouping impact really depends on visibility of said gear score to others.
For me, I doubt it would make much difference since the score reflects the TOTAL amount of stat/effect on the item.
Consider a crafted resist piece with a score of 200 versus a legendary piece with balanced stats of 190. I’d rather have the legendary piece unless I’m dying from lack of resists.
All up, I think the intent is to rate how much “potential” an item has and won’t offer much to help decide useful stat amount (unless the stat was broken down categorically).
People can inspect you already and that’s a better indicator of how good or gimp your gear is.
Now, gear score will only really effect the high level 90 stuff if we had it. I find, below 90, you don’t give a damn about gear so long as you can get some groups to level faster.
At 90, I tend to have the same group of people I group with. Another thing I use is guilds for quality. If you come from one of the high end guilds, Equilbrium etc, I know you are gonna be pretty good or have some nice gear.
Now, there are only 2 times I have come across someone who wouldn’t let me in a group cause of gear, both of them in TSO. One was for Guk3, because I didn’t have my mythic, and the other one was for DF when I had just hit 80. Most of the time, I’m asked about DPS/Tanking ability.
All I think this gear score would end up doing is making people reliant on the numbers and not the reason behind the gear choice. Everytime I look at a new piece of gear I weight it up to work out if it is best to use it or not. Sometimes for armour the answer is very simple. I have the seals, so T2 is better than T1. For things like jewellery it is harder cause of the different effects and I like to mix and match gear. If I am in a mage group, I will put on my gear with Unchained on it to increase their DPS and stonewill so the healers can focus on keeping them alive, not me. If I am MTing I will go for every piece of defensive gear I’ve got and whatever resists I need.
@Zizzu: You don’t think they’re segregated now? You don’t think there’s a great divide between the high end raiders and the casual group players? I’ve seen cella cleared in about 6 or 7 pulls. I’ve seen research halls easily 4 manned with a necro tank. Was it any fun? Not really. When the mobs barely scratch you, but you can look at the mobs and they fall over dead, there’s not much of a challenge. Would a gear score change anything about that? Probably not. If I joined a group, looked around, and saw everyone had gearscores WAY above mine, I’d probably speak up and warn them that I may not be quite what they’re looking for. Also, if I see someone advertising in channels for someone with a minimum gear score, that would be a pretty good indicator for me to avoid that group since chances are we don’t have the same mindset/playstyle. 🙂 Yeah, you can look at their gear today but there’s, what, 20 slots for gear? Looking over 20 gear slots on 5 other players isn’t as quick as a single gearscore number would be. But that’s just me and how I would probably use the number. Large ballpark numbers. Using my made up numbers above, comparing a score of 230 to a score of 250 would be pointless. As others have said, depending on the needs of your toon, you swap gear around that would potentially lower your score. But comparing gear scores of 100 to 240 to 400, that would probably tell you something about that toon and where they’ve been/what they’ve bought.
But to answer your original question, do I think segregating the community is the way to go? No. But I think SOE did that when they made the divide between instance gear and high end raid gear as big as it is. I don’t think a gearscore would have a significant impact on things one way or the other.
Well, I disagree. Gearscore just furthers the gap. Accepting this is just saying: I only want to play with people who only raid.
You are basically killing off the section of people who play casually from everyone else. EQ2 has a hard time enough trying to get more people into the game. Now, why don’t we just push a system of stats that only make look inferior, but simply cut you off from potential game content. The game is already dying as is and why don’t we just push a little further.
You go ahead and fly the banner of more segregation. I, for one, will not.
Actually, if anything, I’m saying the exact opposite. I only want to play with casuals. I used to raid but don’t anymore so my playstyle is pretty much working my way through the instances. Still haven’t cleared palace but we’ve cleared everything else by working our way through and gearing up in the instances. The group instances are our progression. When you hit those group instances with a group mainly wearing raid gear, it’s not really a fair fight and not as much fun IMO. I get no sense of accomplishment from clearing a group instance with people wearing raid gear. It’s like bringing a gun to a knife fight. Nothing against the raiders, but their progression is in the raid zones.