Item Rating Stat

[Jaedaddy]

I am new to the game (not to MMOs), and the queue for hard modes at 50 says average item rating of 126. Only to find out 10 minutes later this has to be guesstimated by the player and the game has no Stat for this.

 

This should be an easy addition .

 

A stat that calculates the average value of your gear. Should be a simple calculation of average item rating of mods/armor/etc divided by number of mods/armor etc.

[Styxx]

What`s wrong in just hovering the mouse over your armor and checking for yourself if you are around that average?

[Jaedaddy]

What`s wrong in just hovering the mouse over your armor and checking for yourself if you are around that average?

 

You just made my point.

 

Why should a player have to hover his mouse over all of his gear and calculate an average item rating. It should be a built in stat like every other MMO.

[eartharioch]

If you can''t tell whether or not your gear is good enough, it isn't. That said, if everything is >= recommended level, than the average is >= the recommended level.

 

Also, there is no real concept of "average" -- some pieces of equipment are more important than others. If your main hand and off hand are 5 levels below average and your belt bracers are 5 levels above average, you are going to be much worse off than if that was reversed.

[Jaedaddy]

If you can''t tell whether or not your gear is good enough, it isn't. That said, if everything is >= recommended level, than the average is >= the recommended level.

 

Also, there is no real concept of "average" -- some pieces of equipment are more important than others. If your main hand and off hand are 5 levels below average and your belt bracers are 5 levels above average, you are going to be much worse off than if that was reversed.

 

Earth, good point! This is why it should be an incorporated stat. The "average" item rating is a bit more complicated than what I stated above. It does usually prioritize Main Hand/Off Hand, then Chest/Legs/Helm over Bracers/Belt. It should give a player a general idea of how well their gear is scaling.

 

1) This is not a new concept

2) It would still be easy to put into the game

3) Takes the tediousness and ambiguity of checking out of overall gear stats especially for new players

 

No one on the Forums thinks this is a good idea? or people just played SWTOR so long that they wouldn't find it useful?

Edited May 12, 2014 by Jaedaddy

[Styxx]

It is redundant, as we all have been to school and can average some numbers. It will only help the idiots and I mean it in the literal sense. I don`t think we are at that point... yet.

 

No need for any extra mechanics to make up for the eye inspection.

Edited May 12, 2014 by Styxx

[Jaedaddy]

It is redundant, as we all have been to school and can average some numbers. It will only help the idiots and I mean it in the literal sense. I don`t think we are at that point... yet.

 

No need for any extra mechanics to make up for the eye inspection.

 

Trolls are going to troll...

I'll have to re-post later at a later date, albeit the suggestion was initially poorly worded.

But since that's all this post is fetching atm, I will respond for fun!

 

Really Styxx... you went to school? we all have? you can average some numbers? Tell me this, why do they even bother adding your primary stat, endurance and put the other values on there (crit %, crit multiplier, etc). This should have went WITHOUT saying, but it's for convenience and gameplay. When you switch a piece of gear over, you should be evaluating how it effects your stats, if not readily apparent (which is the cases you really need these values). An item rating is even more complicated than summing primary stats. The game currently gives an item rating of 112 to a piece of gear with 112 armoring, and 140+ mods/enhancements. Only an idiot would say that is good averaging!

 

What kind of idiot posts on the suggestion forum that he can do math? They should take out all the stats for you, and let you add/average to your hearts content!

Edited May 12, 2014 by Jaedaddy

[Starglitter]

Mmm...

 

Having organized a raid or two, i see value in the question and proposal thus offered, but I would go a step further...

 

The game should automatically calculate and post for you gear value as a whole, to allow raid organizers to decide if they want you or not. The value, would be easily read as part of your character window "C" key, and thus you can easily check on yourself, and know not to apply to an announcement if not being able to measure to the standard.

 

I can see where some organizers, who may have inexperienced players for that particular OPS to raise the gear value to compensate...

 

Sue

[Lord_of_Stone]

To be honest, an "Average item rating" wouldn't be a bad idea on gear. That being said, it wouldnt be a very good indicator of the actual strength of the gear itself. As mentioned above, MH and OH should be weighted more than belt/bracers etc, but thats really only for dps and healers. More over, you have the actual stat distribution themselves. Take a fully augmented BiS Dread Forged player, then take a 100% comm gear story mode grinder with no augments. Their item rating average would be the same; 180. The BiS player would have a HUGE advantage over the other though.

 

And on top of that, you still have the balance of secondary stats, tanks with alacrity (or anything but healers with alacrity really), healers with accuracy, too much crit, augments themselves (the fact that if included in the average they would bring down the number even if it technically increases the strength of the gear, AND it can get screwed up by inexperienced players), and bad distribution of idea tank stats.

 

In the end, rating alone means diddly. The true value of a players gear is by inspecting the pieces themselves and seeing what they have actually done with it. If you are setting up a PUG and you dont care about BiS or anything, and just want bodies with the recommended gear, just check their health. I'ts often a good indicator of relative gear level.

[Lednew]

{points in horror} It's... It's... G-g-g-gearscore!! Aaauuugggh! {runs away}

 

All kidding aside, it seems counter-intuitive I know, but there are a lot of unintended consequences with ideas like this. Most notably, good players being excluded from group content without having been vetted for competence, while poor players are included solely on the basis of their equipment. It promotes farming and shortcuts and de-incentivizes learning to play your class. Personally, I'd rather see an Ops leader say; "I'm just too damn lazy to calculate Joe Newguy's gear rating, let's just bring him in and see how he does."

 

To paraphrase the good Doctor King; "I have a dream that my poor little noobs will one day play in an MMO where they will not be judged by the rating of their gear, but by the content of their skill."

[Khevar]

Earth, good point! This is why it should be an incorporated stat. The "average" item rating is a bit more complicated than what I stated above. It does usually prioritize Main Hand/Off Hand, then Chest/Legs/Helm over Bracers/Belt. It should give a player a general idea of how well their gear is scaling.

Unfortunately, it's even more complicated than that.

 

The gear gotten from comms is Endurance heavy. Meaning the stat budget available at that particular gear rating (e.g. 162) has very little main stat, power, crit, surge, defense, shield, absorb, etc. etc.

 

If the purpose of a calculation is "do I have enough gear to run X?" than some sort of average rating is not really useful. Perfectly optimized gear at one tier is better than poorly optimized gear at the next tier.

 

I ran into this recently on my new(ish) Assassin Tank. I have a mix of 66/69/72 gear, but every single mod and enhancement is the low-endurance, high-mitigation variety. Back when my Shadow Tank was in gear like that I was able to Main Tank HM TfB and HM SnV no problem. But someone saw my "low" health (33K), thought I was a scrub, and didn't want me in their pug.

 

For some sort of "gearscore" to be valid for my tank, it would need to ignore the "item rating" but instead look at actual values of Defence, Shield and Absorb. Its the same thing for dps and heals.

Edited May 12, 2014 by Khevar

[Starglitter]

Mmm...

 

As a Raid HM class healer, I can not possibly agree more with the poster, I absolutely hate t obe repsonsible to heal a tank with huge hit points at the expense of mitigation, for myself I would much rather have a tank with fewer hits and a lot of damage mitigation.

 

The getting a player score, gear score, pick a name, is needed as a courtesy to the raid leader and other folks willing to be part of a PUG raid. This is needed in order to save time in organizing a group, sadly I find organizing a raid team takes longer than actually doing the raid itself.

 

If doing SM raids, gear quality and choices tend not to be that impportant, but when you move to HM raids, the friendliness and school feel of SM very quickly comes to an end, and Nightmare mode; let just leave it at the word "Nightmare".

 

The developers, I would venture, know the value of each mod, augment and what nor for each class at each of its possible manifestations: DPS, Heal and Tank. Despite that the armor sets sold at vendors are often incredibly bad.

 

It seems to me that any weighing of mods for any class and its stated manifestation can be all handled "behind the screens", for all I care give the player a numerical score, like a credit rating, no need to average mods or what not, and then post the suggested "credit rating" scores needed for tanks, healers, and dps for each OPS per difficulty. For instance a healer with defense would gain no value towards his "credit rating" from their defense stats.

 

Sue

[Styxx]

Trolls are going to troll...

I'll have to re-post later at a later date, albeit the suggestion was initially poorly worded.

But since that's all this post is fetching atm, I will respond for fun!

 

Really Styxx... you went to school? we all have? you can average some numbers? Tell me this, why do they even bother adding your primary stat, endurance and put the other values on there (crit %, crit multiplier, etc). This should have went WITHOUT saying, but it's for convenience and gameplay. When you switch a piece of gear over, you should be evaluating how it effects your stats, if not readily apparent (which is the cases you really need these values). An item rating is even more complicated than summing primary stats. The game currently gives an item rating of 112 to a piece of gear with 112 armoring, and 140+ mods/enhancements. Only an idiot would say that is good averaging!

 

What kind of idiot posts on the suggestion forum that he can do math? They should take out all the stats for you, and let you add/average to your hearts content!

 

Uh, you DO know that you CAN inspect a player`s crit / surge / accuracy and such, right? That is ALREADY in the game.

 

BTW, you are confusing gear value with gear rating, or min-maxing with the actual piece of gear.

 

If I have a piece of armor with a 140 armoring and 180 mod and enhancement I`ll have a LOWER armor value than if I`d use a 150, 162, 168 or 180 armoring, but I AM within the gear rating requirement nonetheless, ASSUMING I have 126 armoring with 126 mod and 126 enhancement. Makes no difference what my stats are or would be, since we are not min-maxing for top raids where every point counts, we are just loosely calculating.

 

SO, no, this idea doesn`t add anything new over a quick glance at armorings and mods and doing a rough evaluation.

 

Also, your new 180 / 180 / 180 alacrity heavy piece of gear for a tank WILL be poorer than my 168 / 168 / 168 full of mitigation, just to name ONE case in which your numbers mean nothing.

 

For orange text: That is between the player and the healers, since the armoring ONLY give armor value. If the player is not DPS or healer, makes no difference as long as he doesn`t step into hazards and healers agree to heal him, IF you really want to nitpick.

 

When you switch a piece of gear over, you should be evaluating how it effects your stats, if not readily apparent (which is the cases you really need these values)

Really?! Rating means only armor value for armorings. Some higher ones are inferior to lower ones if you are looking for your main stat. That is ONE problem. The other is the mods and enhancements, where min-maxing MIGHT ask a lower rating step if you need to drop a certain stat you don`t need - accuracy / alacrity / crit, etc and you can`t find equivalent but are going for percentage targets, like crit rate, surge, accuracy, whatever. So, an 168 might be better than an 180 for what I am trying to do - gain + 100 crit rating over gaining 50 main stat.

 

This is starting to remind me of the idiot in General on Red Eclipse earlier today which was claiming that 156 rated gear is not enough for Weekly Classic Operations.

 

Mmm...

 

As a Raid HM class healer, I can not possibly agree more with the poster, I absolutely hate t obe repsonsible to heal a tank with huge hit points at the expense of mitigation, for myself I would much rather have a tank with fewer hits and a lot of damage mitigation.

 

The getting a player score, gear score, pick a name, is needed as a courtesy to the raid leader and other folks willing to be part of a PUG raid. This is needed in order to save time in organizing a group, sadly I find organizing a raid team takes longer than actually doing the raid itself.

So, a tank with a gear rating of 180!, but with alacrity gear is better than a min-maxed 168, with close to target mitigation stats? Because that is what the OP is asking - GENERAL gear rating, since you already can inspect stats. Or, to answer directly, an 126 full of alacrity is better than an 112 with mitigation stats? You gain NOTHING past the general idea of the average of the ratings, which in practice means zero, as higher rating isn`t necessarily better.

 

[EDIT] And yes, I ran DF and DP in 16m SM with 140 everything, as gear goes and they are rated higher. Was never a problem.

Edited May 13, 2014 by Styxx

[Jaedaddy]

{points in horror} It's... It's... G-g-g-gearscore!! Aaauuugggh! {runs away}

 

All kidding aside, it seems counter-intuitive I know, but there are a lot of unintended consequences with ideas like this...

 

This was a hilarious and very well put rationale against having a "gear score".

 

Which is essentially what I am looking for in SWTOR. There will always be misuse of stats/gear priorities when forming groups. Even without a "score" Ops leaders will be inspecting and sifting out players they think aren't "qualified" due to gear alone. In any case, some content does have a minimum gear prerequisite.

[Jaedaddy]

So, a tank with a gear rating of 180!, but with alacrity gear is better than a min-maxed 168, with close to target mitigation stats?

 

This is a good point. No gear rating will replace common sense and/or correct allocation of stats on gear. To reiterate, this would be a convenience and game-play improvement, not a fundamental change to the game. As you have said several times, someone can spend a few moments and inspect if so desired.