How do you come up with the Gear Score?

[Elisha]

Alex, first off, awesome. Our guild has posted this in our forums as a tool our members can use and it has been well received.

First question. I have tried to back into my own score but have not been successful. I first attempted adding up the total assigned value given to each item and then divide by 4....which was close in my case, but when I attempted the same guesstimate on a guildie, it wasn't. So how do you come up with the gear number?

Second, and less important, I do have some of the items listed as upgrades yet when I equip them, my score goes down. The enchants are the same so the difference is the assigned gear score.

Again, great job and thank you for your time and efforts in creating this tool for us.

[DarthStrom]

I would also be interested in how you come up with the gear score. Also, how do you come up with the suggested raids?

[Alex]

Alex, first off, awesome. Our guild has posted this in our forums as a tool our members can use and it has been well received.

First question. I have tried to back into my own score but have not been successful. I first attempted adding up the total assigned value given to each item and then divide by 4....which was close in my case, but when I attempted the same guesstimate on a guildie, it wasn't. So how do you come up with the gear number?

Second, and less important, I do have some of the items listed as upgrades yet when I equip them, my score goes down. The enchants are the same so the difference is the assigned gear score.

Again, great job and thank you for your time and efforts in creating this tool for us.

Awww, thanks a lot really

Well, all I can say at this moment is that gear score depends on:
- ilvl of your item. That number will be replaced with "real" item value at some point, but for now, item levels are taken into account
- value of that specific item (trash, common, uncommon, rare, epic, legendary)
- resilience found on each item (resilience is useless in PvE 99% of the time, so if that specific item got its ilvl with resilience included, it should have slightly lower ilvl). Yes, I know that some PvP weapons are just as good, if not even better than some PvE items, I'll look into that problem soon.
- few more factors which shouldn't have any big influence on the overall gear score

Now I'm sure I'll get flamed now for "why don't you remove penalty from .... and put penalty for ..... etc, etc" but as far as I see, this formula does the job fine most of the time. I'm not saying it wont be changed at some point, maybe even very soon, I'm just saying how it is at the moment.

[Alex]

I would also be interested in how you come up with the gear score. Also, how do you come up with the suggested raids?

Suggested raids are calculated according to your gear. The main point is:
- if you have blues or worse, go to Kara and get ilvl 115-125 items.
- if you have (all of) those, go to SSC/TK (in the meantime, stop by Gruul and Maggy, do not pass Go - do not collect $200 ) and get ilvl 128-141. If you don't have so many raiders, go to ZA ofc.
- if you have those, visit the old tree in MH, and mr. "you are not prepared" in BT and try to get more shiny stuff - ilvl 141 - 156
- farming BT/MH? go to Sunwell

[Elisha]

Sorry to bug you again Alex! I have read the ilvl information over and over again and think I have a decent handle on it now. I can really see the difference in whatever calculation you are using to reduce the gear score for PVP items. Even though suggested upgrades go off of ilvl, PVP upgrades do not bring your score up. For example: I have the vengeful chestpiece...ilvl 146's I believe and the ZA chest piece, ilvl 128. I score higher when wearing the ZA piece. Last night, I picked up the ZA shoulders (ilvl 128) and replaced my PVP S2 shoulders (ilvl 136) and my score skyrocketed (like 50 gear points).

Now, I am not complaining. For PVE, PVE gear is better. I do not use some 'other sites' (names omitted out of respect to what you are doing) because they do go, as far as I can tell, strictly off ilvl. My gear score has dropped on those sites as I replace PvP gear that was being used in PVE (side note for readers, Holy Pally's can pick up very good healing gear thru PVP...I wont be replacing my gloves or neck any time soon with any PVE stuff....but that is not the point here....that is another discussion entirely).

I do see you brought up resilience in your first responce to me. Can you share just how much PVP gear gets reduced by in your calculation?

Again, great site! Hope you are getting some spare time to actual play they game you are helping us with!

[ALRules]

resilience is useless in PvE 99% of the time, so if that specific item got its ilvl with resilience included, it should have slightly lower ilvl). Yes, I know that some PvP weapons are just as good, if not even better than some PvE items, I'll look into that problem soon.

Now I'm sure I'll get flamed now for "why don't you remove penalty from .... and put penalty for ..... etc, etc" but as far as I see, this formula does the job fine most of the time. I'm not saying it wont be changed at some point, maybe even very soon, I'm just saying how it is at the moment.

A quick mention about resilience for future reference, but it's very much a useful stat for Druids, and to a lesser extent any tanking class, you'll find an awful lot of Druids who collect a set specifically for PvE.
Other tanking classes get some benefit from resilience, but for Druids it's at least as good as defence.
This has been discussed a lot in other ranking type sites and tuned accordingly.
Perhaps I should have posted in the Druid forum about this, but it was easier to quote here.

[Elisha]

Where's the Hijacked thread smilie when you need one.

[oldmanwam]

I really like this site. I don't necessarily know whether one purple is better for a class than another, so as a quick calculator, when putting together a PuG Kara or ZA, I can query the toon here, and say "ah look. Yes, you have all epics, but your PvE rating is in the 400's. You're not good enough for ZA."

... for example.

This doesn't always work though, because certain set bonuses are *amazingly* powerful. For example, on my warlock it's better to have the 2-piece T4 bonus and equip the T4 chest and head together, than it is to break that bonus and equip say the T5 chest and the T4 head. Or the T4 chest with the Hood of Hexing from ZA.

I recognize it'd be a lot of work (work that I'm not willing to do, so I can hardly expect *you* would be willing to do it) to somehow recognize, rank, and score 2, 4, or more set bonuses for all the Outland sets for all the classes ... but it'd be pretty sweet!