WTF Gearscore

Though not exactly answering the original question, this post was brought about by a question posed by Brigwyn from The Hunting Lodge on Twitter.


I don't really know when this started to be the "in thing," to check Gearscore before inviting people to a group. I don't know who started it or why. I just want to say, in my humble opinion (that you obviously wish to read as you're on my blog), that this is the stupidest thing I've ever seen.

There are multiple sites and addons that check the Gearscore of yourself and other people, and none of them do it the same way. So where on one you have a Gearscore of 5k on another you'll have a score of 2k. When someone asks you for your Gearscore, saying one could get you blocked while another could get you invited with stupidly high expectations of what your gear will turn out to be.

As far as I can tell, the Gearscore math works off of arbitrary numbers assigned to gear ilevel, gem rarity and enchant level. From what I've seen, there's nothing there about actual itemization, talent choice, experience...

What a useless, arbitrary mechanism.

I was in a ToC 25 where someone freaked out and left the raid because our raid leader didn't have a "good Gearscore." Though according to wow-heroes he did, apparently this guy's addon said otherwise. So he left, and we one-shot everything in ToC 25 with our PUG and our bad, bad Gearscores.

What in the world is the point of this Gearscore shenanigans? None of it matches up, you can trick it by just throwing on your vehicle-driving gear set. In fact, the only fights which Gearscore could be applicable would be Flame Leviathan, and even then...it's such a push-over without towers that there's really not even a need there.

I understand what it's trying to do. It's trying to streamline the process of accepting people into PUG groups so you don't have to go to the armory and check out their gear and specs and achievements yourself. But, really, there is no substitute to making sure, yourself, that the person who you are inviting is someone relatively competent in gearing, spec'ing and itemizing.

So, hey, stop being lazy and relying on a broken, arbitrary scoring system to make your decisions for you. And stop asking me about my "GS." I don't know it and I'm not looking it up.

To end on a positive note, if you still want to be super lazy, check out the Elitist Group addon. It's a little more in-depth than Gearscore tripe, but it's still no substitute for actually knowing what to look for in a PUG member.

Using Full Recount Potential, Part II

Go to: Part I

Last time, we talked about the straight healing meters and their expanded properties. Now, it's time to talk about the less obvious meters that play an important role in figuring out what is going right and what is going wrong during any boss pull.

Recount Meter #2: Healed By Meter (Expanded)
This meters is most effective for judging the effectiveness of tanking assignments. This is only effective as an expanded meter. You click on a name on the meter, and up will pop your friendly window with another pie chart detailing where this person's heals have come from, and in what amount. Highlighting a name in the list will show just what skills were responsible for the heals, in order from most to least healing done.


This chart should tell you who is healing your tanks, plain and simple. If the healers you assigned to the tanks are not on the top of the charts, you have an obvious problem to be addressed. The same goes for if you have two healers assigned to a tank and three healers doing a relatively equal amount of healing. Why is that healer switching to the tank? If their tank is going down, they need to be told not to split their focus. If their tank is staying up but this tank with three healers has been struggling to stay alive, something may be wrong with your tank.

Recount Meter #3: Overhealing (Expanded)
It's time to look at Overhealing, that fickle, weird little meter. What can it actually tell you? By itself...not much. Since downranking went the way of the dodo, everyone has to use their max heal when healing anyone, and healing for less is a waste of time and mana. However, there are certain rules about overhealing; namely, your Druids should have a low amount of overheal. This isn't due to whether or not they have a large amount of skill, but rather because of HoT mechanics. If your Druids are spamming Regrowth and Healing Touch and Nourish a lot, their overheal will skyrocket.

Overheal meters have to be taken with a grain of salt. With your Paladins casting Holy Light as much as possible, they'll get overheal from crits, the AoE portion, and Beacon of Light. With a lot of Druids, other healers can be pushed off by HoT ticks. Fights that have to mitigate intense amounts of damage tend to have high overheal due to healers frantically trying to mitigate damage preemptively. While in BC these meters could tell you which of your healers had more skill with downranking, now they are probably the least important of meters.

Recount Meter #4: Dispell Meter (Expanded)
This meter is one of the best at providing information without being expanded (though expansion is still helpful). After any encounter in which dispelling is a necessary function, looking at this meter will show you two possible things: who is or isn't doing their job, and who is the fastest at reacting to dispelling situations. When your curses are staying on far too long, looking at the meters to see that one druid or mage or spec'd shaman has been doing the majority of the work will put it into perspective. One person cannot get to everything in time with the GCD, even with it reduced by haste and talents. It's time for your other healers (and maybe even your DPS!) to pick up the slack.

Expanding the dispell meter by clicking on names can give even more information. Who is dispelling what? How are they doing it? Mass dispell will get rid of more problems than a single target spell will, and Abolish Poison will cleanse poisons as they are applied (hence why I roll it like a HoT on poison-heavy bosses). Understanding why someone is cornering the market on dispells can also keep you from losing face from berating your other dispellers without cause.

That's all the meters, but we're not done yet. You cannot just look at one meter alone and make decisions. Part III, which is coming soon, will detail how to use all the meters together to make judgments, decisions and adjustments for healing purposes.

Go to: Part I

Using Full Recount Potential, Part I

Go to: Part II

Recount. That lovely little addon, the bane and delight of number jockeys everywhere. It provides so much information, yet is often ignored for the majority of its knowledge and simply reduced to a DPS or HPS race. There is a lot of value for healers in what Recount has to offer, especially if utilized while in the process of raid progression (during pauses, loot, wipe recovery, etc). Please note, this guide is for those who already know how to set up recount (it takes very little effort and comes mostly set up for you), and is instead designed to give more insight into reading the meters. Utilizing all of Recount's meters can make you a better healer, if you adhere to certain rules:

1. In no way is any fight ever a "healing race." Trying to push your heals to the top of the meters often resorts in heal sniping and possible assignment negligence. The top of the charts almost invariably belongs to raid healers. Perform for your assignment, not for the charts.

2. Understand that the healing meters themselves are the least influential and telling of all meters. They are limited and deceiving.

3. Trash. Doesn't. Matter. Only use meters for boss fights. Boss fights have assignments, jobs and strategies. Trash is more often a heal fest and the quickest healer with the twitchiest finger and the best ability to raid heal wins.

4. The Ret Paladin is only outhealing one of your healers because it's a straight-forward tank-and-spank and his Judgement of Light is healing all your DPS smacking away at the boss. Don't take it personally.

5. If you ever say "the boss died, that's all that matters" you've never carried a raid, and you may even be being carried. Anyone who says this while being dead for any portion of the fight due to their own negligence should be railed at.

Do you have those down pat, engraved upon your mind and heart? All right then, let's go over types of meters and how to use them.

Recount Meter #1: Straight Healing Meters
Wait a minute, Bell, you said-

I know what I said. The straight healing meter's use is limited. But it is by no means useless. And, once they are expanded, they become far more influential.

To start with, you have the face-value ranking of who has done more healing. Ta da! What does this mean? More often than not, it shows who is raid healing. Raid healers hit more targets more often, and if you're assigning someone to raid it means more often than not, that healer's hands will be full. Whether they're compensating for a damaging aura, someone being dumped in a crotch pot or an immense hand swiping itself through the raid, someone always needs topping off. And in their downtime, it's not uncommon to have them tossing heals to your tanks, either (hey, they're in the raid, too)! This means less downtime, more effective healing, and less lost ticks or overheal to pre-casting and tank mitigation. When your raid healers do not come out on top, that's when you worry.

What a healing meter can tell you, as well, is who is just downright terrible, or if you have too many healers. Paladins often bear the brunt of this; if you have too many healers (especially if those healers are heal snipers), they can suddenly be left with nothing to heal and thus have little effective healing done. Their overheal skyrockets and they're left with nothing but a large overheal. However, if things are going awry and you notice someone with a low HPS and low overall healing, you may be dealing with a slacker who cannot prioritize for his assignment. Like all things, however, this may take a little exploring into meter synchronization (which will be covered in a later post).

Expanding Recount Meter #1: Effective Healing Skills
If you drag your cursor over the bars on your healing meter and click a name, a whole new wealth of information opens to you. By clicking the arrows in the top right, you can run through a range of information for the selected name that greatly improves the quality of the information to be gleaned. One of those details the effective healing spells for your character.


Why is this important? For many reasons, especially if you're trying to judge your own performance or, in the case of a heal lead (or someone itching for the position), the performance of another. Taking into account their assignment and seeing what healing abilities they prioritize over others can bring great insight into possible problems or areas for improvement. When thinking back over a fight, how often did you use Regrowth? How often does it show up on the chart as effective? Does it match up relatively well or are you wasting a ton of time and mana on ineffective healing? Helpfully, if you hover over or click on a spell, the bottom half of the window will detail hits, crits and ticks in percentage of healing done for that single skill, giving you a decent idea of the necessity of certain things, such as if the tank is really getting the benefit from applying Regrowth because, even if it's direct portion is wasted, you can see the ticks of the HoT portion having a good deal of uptime.

Expanding Recount Meter #1: Who Healed Who
Arrowing over once to the right from the first expanded window of the straight healing meters will lead you to the "healed who" meters. This will give an outline of who the healer was healing and how much of their healing percentage was used upon them. With a main tank assignment, it should show that the majority of their healing and time, proportionally, is on the tank. If they are on raid, there should be a more equalized pie chart with a little more emphasis on tanks or people who consistently are taking more damage, perhaps more than they should be.


This chart is especially helpful to see who is sticking to their assignment, who is straying from it, and who is just not doing it. If your healer has not spent the majority of their time on their tank assignment, it will show up here. Maybe that is why they went down? If the healer has overall high healing but their assignment keeps dying, the problem is revealed here. For even more detail, you can click a person's name and see what they were healed with. If your healer has an even pie chart but the raid keeps dying, you can see that those who were healed were being hit with Regrowth. Regrowth is slow and not at all suited for raid healing, but when it did hit it was helpful, hiding the problem. Thus, expanding the expanded window even further is much more enlightening.

Recount has a lot of meters, and I want to go over a large portion of them. I'm splitting this up to make it a bit easier to digest, and so people who wish to point out mistakes or what have you don't have to go through an intense wall of text to point out a minor thing. So, when we come back with part II, we'll look at Who-Was-Healed-By-Who meters, Overheal and Dispelling.

Go to: Part II