It Is Not The Gear

Last night we played a wipe fest on the Professor and of course people where getting frustrated.  One person started to say "We need better gear for this" and was even whispering me over and over about doing runs to get more gear for people and about choosing a group just to get things done so we do not have to wipe over and over again.

He is someone I know well and is a very good player but I must disagree with him and I let him now that much.  He was saying that a gear score of at least 5800 was needed for the Professor.  I do not know what universe he came from but that is outright crazy.  This is not 25 man, this is not the heroic version.  You do not need gear that is HIGHER then the content you are doing to do it.  He said that the gear would help the fight be more forgiving of mistakes.  I do agree with that, to an extent.

First let me address the gear issue from my point of view.

People where doing ICC and clearing him before they had a gear score of 5800, heck, back then no one had over 5500 being it was brand new content.
People where doing ICC and clearing him before they had the 30% buff, some did it when it was 5%, some 10%, some 15, 20, 25 and now 30%... at all levels of gear.
People are doing him with a group of people in all 3300 or less gear score.  Check out the under geared project from the Greedy Goblin.

With all that said... I do not give a flying fuck what you say.  Gear is not going to help.  It is not needed, there is your proof.

So he went to the skill aspect and said that the people that where there were not as skilled as others so they needed the gear to help them through their mistakes.  Okay, I will give him that.  Gear does help people in some cases.  A healer with slow reaction time benefits from someone being able to take more damage and them in turn throwing larger heals.  That someone is helped too being he knows he can take more damage.  Gear helps DPS as well.  Stupid DPS that can not figure out how to strafe out of the fire can take more damage and be healed through it.  It also helps with them in the DPS department.  They can do 5K now when they really should be doing 9K.  However being 5K is all that is needed to down said boss they are all happy they can do enough whereas someone with some skill would be doing 5K with their eyes closed and using only 1/2 their abilities.

Gear does help forgive some mistakes.  With gear you do not have to run out of the slime piles as quickly.  With gear you can do more damage making the fight quicker so there are less chances for error.  However no amount of gear is going to cover for the fact that people are not switching targets when they are supposed to.  They are not collapsing when they are supposed to.  They are not doing the little things that we like to call mechanics that they are supposed to.  Gear can help in some cases but when your problem is with execution of mechanics there is no amount of gear that can help you.

I will say what I heard so many times and it is so true.

Gear is an excuse that bad players use for not being able to do simple mechanics.

I would love to see what they would say if you asked them directly why they did or did not do some things during the battle and see if they can figure out how to get the word gear into their defense.

Being I am the good old Grumpy one lets see if I can try and answer some of the questions I might ask and make the excuse be about gear some way.

1) Why are you not having your pet attack the slime/ooze?
- Because it is not worth it, if I had better gear it would be worth having it switch targets however.

2) Why are you (melee) attacking the slime/ooze before it chooses it's target?
- Because my gear sucks and I need to get as much time attacking in as possible.

3) Why are you not collapsing on the skull to split the damage?
- Because my gear sucks and I can not take the extra damage.

Shall I continue?  No need to really.  I think my point is obvious. People using gear as an excuse is the reason we are failing on it.  I bet you anything you want, I am 100% sure that the groups that down it with no wipes do not make those mistakes I needed to ask.  I bet they have pets attack adds.  I bet they wait to target the adds.  I bet they split the damage.  They are doing it because they are doing what they are supposed to be doing.  Gear would have not helped anyway if people are not doing what they are supposed to be doing.  Would gear make someone have their pet target the add?  Would gear make someone wait to attack the adds?  Would gear make people collapse when they should?  No, no and no.

Gear is nice and all but gear does not make decisions.  The player makes the decisions and as long as the player makes the wrong decisions there is nothing gear can do to help you.

Gear shows the potential you have.  Nothing more.