Sydera wrote a comment asking "If you only do Naxx once, how are you going to get the gear to do Ulduar?". Later she told "I am looking at Ghostboci's armory page and your gear ... wouldn't get you a very good performance in Maly 25 or Sarth 3D of either raid size ... Ulduar has some gear checks, and your current kit won't cut it."I'm sure that it's not just her. I hear people all the time saying they need gear for this or that. I disagree, so let's make some calculations!
The picture above shows how big a rejuvenation tick is for different resto druids in tree form, with all talents but no raidbuffs or consumables. I got 1-4 bars by removing gear from myself. I made more points than 4, (1 for each removed item) forming a perfectly fitting (R=1.00) line at 485.32 + 0.6457*SP. I got bars 5-6 from this equation, using armory data, of course adding spirit*0.15 to SP. The bars are:
- naked
- M&S in random greens, 1200SP
- Enchanted, gemmed blue quest rewards, 1600SP
- Myself, 1913SP
- Sydera, 2234SP
- Tjani from Ensidia (Nihilum + SK), 2367SP
You don't see huge differences? Me neither. Even the "smart beginner", in enchanted, gemmed quest rewards can provide 75% of the No1 guild's member. Is 75% too low? If you want world firsts, definitely. If you want hardest achievements like Sarth+3, maybe. But otherwise? Blizzard want to open raiding to everyone. Do you think they set 5-10% gear margin? There are even achievements to do the content with 20% less people than full or in 40% less time than enrage! How could these achievements be earned if there wouldn't be at least 40% error tolerance in the original enrage timer?
Remember that Ensidia cleared HC Malygos 3 days after WotLK release. It was completely impossible for them to clear Naxx more than once, so could not get much gear from there. There were not enough high level materials available in day 3 to craft any BoE epics or even to level tradeskills that high, including enchanting. So all they had was lvl70 stuff, some quest rewards with green WotLK or epic BC gems, BC enchants with a few slvl390-400 WotLK enchants. Even my gear level was way out of reach for them. Yet they cleared it in a small amount of tries.
My gear is capable to do 85% of the output of the Ensidia druid. I am geared for Ulduar, and maybe even for the next raid too. If I am incapable to clear it, than I'm skilless. Of course one can outgear the challenge to cover his lack of skill. If you always crash your car, I'd suggest to get some driving lessons. Sydera may think grinding for an M1A2 type car would be better.
Now let's see how much effort exist behind these gears and rejuv bars:
- leveling up
- above + questing and using the rewards
- above + doing full questlines, group quests, doing normal instances during leveling, 1000G on gems, enchants
- above + craft some BoE, spend 1000G more on better gems, enchants and clear Naxx once
- above + raiding every single week, enchanting upgrades, organizing a raid guild with all its terrors
- I can't even imagine what effort needed to be in the No1 guild
I think the point is obvious: larger and larger effort for smaller and smaller improvements.
There are two consequences:
PS: tanks a bit different from others as they must not be critted or one-shotted during silence effects. If DPS is 20% lower: fight is 20% longer. If tank has 20% less mitigation/HP: raid may wipe. That's why several raids let them gear before others.
PS2: I'm not advocating wearing full blues. I'm just saying hunting for best-in slots, grinding an ilvl 213 to replace an ilvl 200 epic is pointless.
There are two consequences:
- Damaging/healing less than 75% of the No1 person can not be explained by "I'm not as geared as him". Even in full blue you must be in the 75% range. If you are not, you are either skilless, slacking or simply (despite "bring the player, not the class" nonsense), your class/spec does not fit to the fight/raid composition and the raid leader made a mistake (or had no other choice) bringing your class/spec.
- The common belief saying "you must grind this tier for gear to be able to raid next tier" is completely wrong. To answer the question: "am I geared enough?", all you have to do is open the armory of a topguild member, and check his stats. If you are in his 75% range in the key stats, you are good to go!
PS: tanks a bit different from others as they must not be critted or one-shotted during silence effects. If DPS is 20% lower: fight is 20% longer. If tank has 20% less mitigation/HP: raid may wipe. That's why several raids let them gear before others.
PS2: I'm not advocating wearing full blues. I'm just saying hunting for best-in slots, grinding an ilvl 213 to replace an ilvl 200 epic is pointless.
38 comments:
100% agree. Gear is an excuse, nothing more, unless you are aiming for world first kills like you said.
If you had 5000 spellpower on your druid you will just have 90% overheal. A 200 mp5 trinket just means you end up with even more mana leftover than you do now.
Very well said but sadly there are many raiders who will somehow still believe that it is all about the gear.
Generally speaking, I agree, but one comment regarding your tanks vs. DPS comment at the end. In many cases, there is actually a strict cutoff for DPS: enrage timers. At some point, if the DPS is low enough, you won't be able to kill the boss before they enrage, and that's a wipe. So just as with tanks, there is a minimum threshold for acceptable DPS gear in many fights.
That said, I totally agree that that minimum bar is usually set pretty low; you don't have to have a full set of epics from the previous tier in order to progress.
Average DPS at T4 = 800.
Average DPS at T6 = 1600.
Average DPS at Sunwell = 2200+.
Yeah, sooner or later, your little one-shot deal just won't be able to cut it.
Blizzard always has ways to punish undergeared raids:
DPS: Enrage Timers.
Tanks: Boss hits harder.
Healers: Limit healing throughput (i.e. silences or require major movement) or drain mana.
@pzychotix
I was the top dps in our raiding guild, often by a very large margin. But I very rarely reached 1600 dps. But we cleared everything including Illidan pre-nerf with no issue whatsoever, which should have been impossible according to your standards. Most of our dps consistently did 1000-1200.
There are very few hard gear checks in WoW. But there are many idiot checks. The problem is the idiots that fail then blame it on the gear :P
As Gevlon said, Blizzard isn't going to design a raid that guarantees failure for you unless you have 2500 spellpower.
Actually: http://wowwebstats.com/tp3we6a1kpeic?s=146728-175615
That's just one of our SWP raids back in TBC and you'll see that ~2200 is not even that far off, as that's when we hadn't farmed SWP that much.
And to "confirm" the ~1600 region for mid-BT:
http://wowwebstats.com/p4jxhkkhfhbf1?s=222248-235101
I took Gorefiend and Brutallus just as example seeing that they are easiest to assess dps-wise.
But anyways, gear is heavily overrated most of the times. It does help, especially when you are dps it makes it a bit better to see that you were not there just taking up a raidspot. But if you know that I was using 2 pieces of t4 when we were killing Brutallus, then you know that skills > gear anytime :). (But, when having full t6, Brut did went down faster of course).
I have two issues with that:
First is that raids that aren't PUGs or in progression often have significantly more healing than they need, so a lot of the healing can end up wasted or unnecessary.
Second is this:
"Even in full blue you must be in the 75% range. If you are not, you are either skilless, slacking or..."
A player in enchanted quest blues will only be able to do 75% of the damage/healing of a top PvE player if they're as skilled as that player. If a player's skill level only allows them to do of what a Nihilum core raider could do in their gear (to be generous, 65-70% or the full Nihilim value), they're still pretty good. I'm just saying, a zero tolerance for sub-top-of-the-game skill won't take you far.
I wouldn't be surprised if they did add a "gear check" boss.
For tanking, be one shotted if you're not in t7.5 gear. For DPS, a hard enrage timer. For healing, I have no idea, you might be excused.
As for going from blues > good epics. I did around 2.000 with the first set, 5.000 with the second. I did 40% of the DPS with blues.
Its not just about gear and enchants but the player as well.
We had a guy join our guild when we were doing SSC and TK a mage called CDP.
He came in pretty much full blues when other mages were in full epic and he out dps them everytime, i would have a good geared person who plays great than a great geared person who plays good any day.
Honestly, Rejuv ticks just show you a small and distorted picture. Sure any idiot can meet a HPS check if they faceroll heal buttons, but they will be out of resources well before they down a boss. Higher SP means only that you can do more healing with the same investment of mana then the guy next to you. The higher tier gear offers a ton more regen, thus more resources to work with. Alot of people are in for a rude awakening when they see the 3.1 mana regen changes. Lets go back to BC here: You are not prepared.
One, you are not Ensidia. You are not a world-premiere raid guild. In most cases, skill > gear. But if you can't survive a Malygos vortex because you only have 12k HP or something you are detrimental to your raid.
Second, tanks need to be at a certain level to survive a boss. DPS has to kill a boss within a certain amount of time. Why would a tank that's geared enough to properly tank a boss group with a healer who won't gear up more because you think you don't need to?
Third, Blizzard has the bar set higher for Ulduar. If you think it's going to be a nice little stepping stone just up from Naxx you might be surprised.
You are correct. Sydera's post seems to assume that you are playing this game alone, and obviously in a raid you are not.
You could easily take a naked character through all current raid content and have them gain every achievement (except Undying).
You could probably do it with them on follow. Your character would be dead most of the time, but that doesn't mean you couldn't do it, as long as the rest of the raid was making up for your deficiency.
No-one knows for sure how hard Ulduar is going to be on release, so the point is moot. PTR is not release.
Me agreeing with the Goblin? Huh?
Only on the point that 'You need this gear or you fail'.
Bringing bad gear, no matter how skilled you think you are, just means that at some point you'll have to be carried by a player with skill who's willing to work for the gear.
I'm sorry to say this, but this post puts you firmly in the category of morons and slackers you're always complaining about- a skilled player can always get decent (above the minimum level for the gear check fights) gear if they're willing to work at it for a bit. The fact that you're not willing to do so means you're willing to let these pick up players you always deride carry you through content that's designed to exclude people like you. That makes you a slacker.
I suppose the morons are the people who continue to work with you in pug environments...
Euripides
outdps.wordpress.com
How many Rejuvenation ticks do you have in a fight? WoW is a game about numbers. Just compare the runed bloodstone (7 spellpower) to the runed scarlet ruby (19 Spellpower). It's "just" 12 Spellpower but if you have a couple of gems and do a number of casts this adds up very fast (with the Wotlk-version of the bloodstone, too).
Ensidia did farm sunwell and had the best equipment they can get. The gap between heroic drops and sunwell gear is not that big. Plus they are dedicated to the extreme which makes up for a lot of gear (unless you really need it to beat an enrage timer or something^^).
Gear is a tool to overcome errors. If you are an extremly skilled player, greens will work. If you are dumb epics won't save you. But do you invite "All-blues" to your raids?
@Pzychotix: The age of challenge in WoW is over
Sunwell: 0.2% if the players before 3.0.2
Naxxramas: 85% of the players
@Jezebeau and others reminding me that I'm not a Nihilum-class player: I know, but than I shall PRACTICE skills instead of grinding gear
@Carra: if you increased from 2000 to 5000 that's mostly increase of skill and not gear, both in your part and raidmates (bloodlust pressed in the proper time makes difference)
@Doug: properly itemized gear means all stats are at the equal level, so MP5 matches the SP. I've seen a "tank" with 35K HP, in some "of stamina" greens. I did not even attempted healing him :-)
@outdps: there will be a post to answer that
@chaoskas: I DID invited a(n almost) full-blue player in Naxx. He had all the enchants, gems and a crafted epic weapon. He was second on DPS (turned out to be a fresh 80 alt of a topguild member). You can guess skill looking at the gear.
I believe that its just that because its all numbers, you just need to find the best spec, the best rotation and the best duty to your habilities according to the fight: a raid healer, tank healer, adds killers, etc.
How its all numbers and gear its just a small part of those numbers, i.e if you do your homework you can do a lot of damage.
Gear its just a part of the equation, the rest its math (talents and rotation) and the skill to do things without screwing up.
Not screwing up and do what you are supposed to do isnt that hard, thats why you dont need to tolerate people who stand in the fire (and all its variations), people who make drama, people who just dont do what they are supposed to do.
@Daniel
I think YOU might be surprised at how easy Ulduar will likely be. Have you played on the PTR? My guild has had face time on at least 2 of the encounters, and we already learned the strategies for the V1 of both. Method and several other guilds defeated all of the encounters.
@ Gevlon
"The age of challenge in WoW is over
Sunwell: 0.2% if the players before 3.0.2, Naxxramas: 85% of the players."
This is not the case; Blizzard has let it be known many many times in the last 12 months that Naxxrammas will be an entry-level raid - not comparable to Sunwell pre-3.0.2 (which I cleared through M'uru and then KJ afterwards).
I could go on but Cheesycraft of Premonition (Top 3 World guild) says it so much better than I could. The next tier of instances, Ulduar and Icecrown, and whatever else will likely be progressively more difficult. The "hard-modes" will be significantly harder I feel. Ulduar alone will have 14 encounters, 11 of which will have these modes. It's a dynamic model that we need to get used to.
Here's the link to his post, scroll to the bottom:
http://www.premoguild.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-2495.html
@Gevlon
"@Jezebeau and others reminding me that I'm not a Nihilum-class player: I know, but than I shall PRACTICE skills instead of grinding gear"
But how can you practice said skills without actually raiding?
Also Sunwell type raiding is still in the game, just as options within the raid. Uldar bosses will have hard modes, much like Sarth 3-drakes (and perhaps some hard mode only ones). I'm sure that many people will see these as the benchmarks to measure successful raiding against. Much like how people don't consider it successful if you can run heroics, but fail at Nax now.
Gevlon, I agree with you in a way and I think you will be able to achieve your goal. And it will right but only for you.
One thing I do disagree with is that just doing the content once will help you build enough skill. Especially if your stratagy is to do only that content until you are able to do it at that gear level. Either you will a. finish it fast and get insuficient experience, or b. finish it slowly and beat your head against a fight out of pure stuborness. Yes you got to your goal but in a very inefficent way. (not that I recomend constant grinding for better gear, there is a point when it provides little to no benifit for the effort and you must stop)
Here is a little metaphore for the above which you will probably shoot lots of holes in. You can find a single niche which makes your fortune quickly, but a niche which is devalued as the market changes, and leaves you without connections to spread into other aspects of that niche. Or you can sell a single product and ignore cost effectiveness of that product, ignore ways of increasing effectiveness at a lower effort cost.
Gear is required for a raid made up of average players because average players die during a boss encounter. That's why such a large margin of error is allowed, so people can stumble through each boss with half the raid still alive.
@pockie:
BT was a joke.
Honestly. Guilds zoomed through that place way too fast.
T4-T5-T6.5 all challenged both skill and gear. BT/Hyjal was a frolic in the woods in comparison.
@Gevlon:
What kind of comparison is that?
Compare T4 to T7 if anything.
Good for you, Gevlon. I approve of this challange and if I were on your server I would take up the challenge with you.
I like how you pointed out that the top guilds cleared the raid content in a week. People tend to forget that they only had BC epics and maybe some Lich King leveling blues.
It is also apparent that some of your readers believe you are striving to clear everything in only one trip. I think you are aware that you will NOT clear most bosses with one pass. I think your skill will improve with each attempt far more quickly than your gear.
The thing here is that YOU are on a mission and are willing to improve your skill to achieve your goal. Most players just want to hang out and have a good time.
You are not always correct in your varied topics, but here at least, you are an inspiration.
I agree with the basic premise - it's called diminishing returns: is a $10,000 bottle of wine that much better than a $1,000 or the $1,000 vs the $100. Or pre-iPod a $20,000 stereo vs a $500. ...
But I would like to correct the "is pointless". It is of little technical benefit - you can't say zero since enough RNG and that 1% will matter.
But it matters in two other ways.
Salesmen have a saying "Don't confuse getting the business with doing the business." Better gear might have a slight effect on your performance. But whether you get invited to the run/guild/... is yes/no and if you are competing with someone for the slot, it can matter. If "everyone" believes you need x to do y, then it may be easier to get x than trying to make the rest of your server rational. Besides, intelligence, ability, and desire are factors of success and it is so much easier to measure desire. By your logic, showing up without 2 gems in a socket won't significantly change raid performance. But looking at an unknown applicant would you take the ungemmed? Nobody says wearing a tie improves job performance directly but it is hard to imagine many applicants who would be successful not showing up dressed as to expectations. It is not a matter of whether the tie helped DPS, it was caring enough to research what was expected and doing the effort to get it.
The other is whatever pleases / motivates you - being my best, vanity, epeen, compensating for physical inadequacies. This is not a Goblin motivation, yet you spend considerable effort at playing well. Even though it provides no material benefits. That's not wrong, it's entertainment. And some people enjoy getting better gear. You get your emotional payoff by thinking yourself more skilled than the people you ridicule. ( I do not know your skill but I suspect you are more skilled than most of them) Now a Goblin would say that a M&S who understood the system, was less skilled than you, and saw the content and ended up with better gear was more efficient than you. Your wanting to play well is noble; just not Goblin.
Now make a similar graph showing how much skill adds to your damage output. It'll probably look similar, with your favorite "M&S" having a 75% bar, and a player in Ensidia a 100% bar. But in the middle of the graph there are more variations possible: People could have a bit more gear, and less skill, or a bit less gear, and more skill, and the sum of the two would be the same. Only, the skill part of the equation is invisible, while the gear part can be checked with the Armory.
So imagine you are a PuG raid leader, and two rogues apply for your last dps spot, both claiming to be able to do the same amount of damage per second. One of them is much better geared than the other. If they both say the truth, the other is more skilled, and compensates his lack of gear with that superior skill. But are you really going to believe him? Or are you taking the better geared on, because even if he is at 75% skill, he'll still be guaranteed a bigger minimum dps?
"The age of challenge in WoW is over"
... so did you miss the part where they said over and over and over again that the current raid content is SUPPOSED TO BE EASY, or was it the part where they said over and over and over again that the current raid content is SUPPOSED TO BE EASY?
But no, I'm sure you're right; nothing in WOW will ever be hard again, simply because the stuff that is SUPPOSED TO BE EASY is in fact - easy! (/rolleyes)
Well, I have to disagree with you again on this one.
Can your current gear handle Naxx-10? Yes. Can you get through Naxx-25? Probably. Malygos-25? Nope. Furthermore, could you clear any of that content if the entire raid shared your level of gearing? Probably none of it but for Naxx-10, even with skilled players. You're going to need a geared main tank at least, and DPS that can beat timers. Output for a Rejuvenation tick is one thing; how long you can keep 'em coming, or if you can survive the splash damage to do so - that's a whole different aspect. Basing your argument on that tick is no different than your tank in "of Stamina" gear, it's a one trick pony in a place where a well-rounded player is required. In fact, the analogy I'd make (using more familiar content, as Ulduar is an x-factor presently) would be this: you could take a fresh 70 in crafted / quest Blues into Karazhan successfully. The same player in Zul'Aman? Not so good.
Take Patchwerk-25 for instance. He's chucking ~25k hits into a HS tank every second in 25-man. If those tanks are geared enough, then not only is that number going to drop through mitigation, but actual avoidance numbers will be higher as well and more of them will miss. However, tanks at your level of gearing are going to get mowed down like grass unless you have 7-8 healers - weakening DPS via the sheer fact that you need more healing. On top of that is the issue of absolute mana; since DPS at your gearing level is going to be brushing up against the enrage timer, it's a 5 minute plus fight. Can you chain cast for that long in order to produce the healing throughput necessary to keep those HS tanks up, or are you going to go OOM? Forget the 5SR, because Patches is one fight that you can't be standing around for - either you have the mana or you don't. Thus, unless you've got at least a few people who are more "geared", this one can be tough.
Another one to consider is Thaddius, which is not only a stupid check (easily passed), but also a DPS check. He's easy to heal, so let's say 4 healers, 1 tank, and 20 DPS. With his 6 minute enrage, you'll need to mow through 30,000,000 health to down him in time. A prot tank at your gearing level is going to do ~1000 DPS for a single target like him. We'll up it to 2000 for argument's sake, to compensate for the charge buff. 6 minutes = 360 seconds = 720,000 damage dealt by that tank - leaving ~29,280,000 to be handled by the remaining 20 DPS. That breaks down to 1,464,000 points of raw damage dealt (each), or 4066 DPS per raider. Considering that, while some classes can certainly perform better than others in that level of gear, and 2000 DPS is an attainable baseline, you will again need to have near-perfection from your raid to pull this off - or, you will need a few people with better gear that have completed Naxx-25 a couple of times.
Maybe you get through those; after all, it's not really that tough of content, and most of the boss tricks have been seen before. You've still got Kel'Thuzad, and he's going to test your endurance - not only because the lower DPS will stretch this fight out to in excess of 10-11 minutes (counting the first phase), but because he's going to mana burn you. On top of that, once those adds spawn (he's still got a tidy 5.6 million health at that point), you're on a soft enrage to get him down due to the stacking buff that's hitting your offtanks harder and harder, at a time late in a fight when your lesser mana regeneration capabilities are working adversely against you - because the majority of your healing output for this fight comes in the last 30% or so.
Obviously, it can be done. Those guilds that set landspeed records and did it within a week of WotLK dropping? How many times do you think that they practiced on 40 man? Plenty, I'd wager - and they're clearly all star players to boot if they're 80 in 3 days from release anyhow, and good luck *ever* being lucky enough to get more than 3-4 of those players in any PuG (no matter who you are, or where). With regards to your steadfast aim to clear this all in lesser gear just to prove something? At some point, I'd have to ask the question, "who is boosting who?"
Your maths is flawed because you're not looking at the whole picture.
85% worse gear spread throughout the raid does not mean 85% effectiveness
Your tanks will have 85% life, 85% of the mitigation, 85% of the avoidance.
Damage they take is increased because of their bad gear: 38.4% more damage taken while having 85% less life and being healed by 85% heals cast with only 85% of expected haste bonus sustained by 85% mana pools.
In addition the boss takes much longer to kill because although your peak dps is 85% your actual sustained dps is reduced by the mana-using dpser's bad mana pools.
Now if you move all those liabilities into a situation where a well-geared guild would spent most of the night wiping to attempt to produce that flawless attempt just to get a very difficult boss killed you have a raid that simply can't do it. Sartharion already has a hard mode that would prevent an entire raid geared to ilvl 200 from ever beating it.
I honestly think this is a case of wish fulfilment. You want the content to be accessible to you despite your not being in a good guild and therefore you're thorycrafting reasons why raids of under-geared people can beat content. But it's just theory.
To test your theory do some pvp in blue +resilience gear against guys with Deadly and Hateful. If your theory is right the difference in gear won't matter and you'll do well.
Lastly you are making the huge assumption that there are many low geared people of great skill available for your pugs. I don't play on your server but I'd be astonished if this is true.
Try Sartharion with one or two drakes up and I think you'll see your position is flawed
I think you can make up for not having great gear by having the exact correct type of gear. I have heard you say when forming PuGs that you look at their gear on the armory and do not accept some people because of their gear. But now I see you saying that gear checks are overrated and you can get by with lesser gear than most people think. I give you the benefit of the doubt that when you do not accept players for PuGs that you are mostly looking for stupid mistakes such as people with unfilled gem sockets, no enchants, or, say low hit rating when you are DPS. Sometimes when you are exact with the type of stats you need to function in a certain type of fight, you can get by with greens and blues when most think they need purples. But if you do this you need to be faultless in the type of stats you build up in your equipment. And I know from what I have read that there are some encounters on a timer where probably the DPS from green and blue gear just won't get the boss dead in time. Finishing content while "undergeared" is certainly something to brag about!
Well, Gevlon I was curious but you had a point. A skilled player usually has a well-rounded gear. A friend of mine has a couple of lvl80 alts and the moment they hit the mark they were equipped to do heroics by using quest rewards and BoE blues/epics from the AH or crafted. He just planned what he is gonna do when he hit 80.
M&S (now that I know what M&S stands for I like the abbreviation :D) will never plan what they do when they are at the lvlcap. Two days ago I joined a PuGfH for a quick Azjol-Nerub run. The healer was full T7.5 (and without him we would faced the second boss) and the bear-tank sported 31k live. Seemes like an easy run? After the first wipe I inspected the tank and prepared for the worst because he was wearing gladiator (yes, from S1!) gear and had a hard time to tank more than one foe although the DPS did focus well. At the endboss (billions of thanks to the great healer) he gratefuly took every single pond because he didn't realize he could run out of it (I guess I ended on his /ignore list because I keept shouting at him). M&S at it's finest (and to my dissapointment Anub dropped the plate girdle which my paladin was desperate to get *sigh*)
Just a quick one:
Why would you NOT want to be able to do hard mode encounters? To me, the content isn't clear if they're not all done the hard way. That includes Sarth 3D and achievements. I set the bar high for my raiders, and in a high-performing guild, how would you feel about being adequate, but lowest among the druids, all of whom have good skills?
I guess it depends on the goals you set for yourself and your play time. In my experience Sarth 3D takes everything you've got, and running analysis on one very efficient--but little used in the current content spell--isn't going to convince me that you would pull equal weight with your other 5 healers in that situation (or other healer, if it's 10-man).
Diminishing returns, yes? Every bit of effort you put in gives you a bit less reward than the previous bit.
So, if you're worried about gearing for the least possible effort, there should certainly be *a* point at which the returns are too small to justify the effort - but saying 'one run' blindly isn't so easy.
Let's talk about utility functions. You value new experiences very highly, and are down on repetition (except you're not, per se, because you're quite happy to engage in repetitive grinding of the AH, well past the point where the money isn't useful to you, to prove a point). Question is, how much repetition are you prepared to put up with in order to get to something new? Quite a lot, I reckon, since you levelled to 80.
So, question is, are you prepared to spend a few hours grinding Naxx in order to *appear* ready for the next set of raids? It's time there, or time spent LFGing, come patch time. Whether or not you *need* the numbers, they build a buffer against bad luck (and/or M&S behaviour), so people are going to take them if they can get them (and they can).
Looks to me like you've made it a point of pride to run Naxx only once, even if it would be better for you to farm a few more runs (in terms of time expended versus likely success at getting into a non-retarded Ulduar group). Which is just fine, but I don't see how that makes you any more rational than a guy on a Travellers' Tundra Mammoth.
(My stance on gear level: More gear is always useful, but how much more useful diminishes over time. A 20% drop in relevant stats across the raid can and will make it substantially harder. A 2% drop, not so much. How much effort would it take you to make that improvement? As a raid leader, I always pick on the basis of the player, not their gear, and have taken (justifiably) green geared players over purple geared for that reason before - but that's just a mechanism for avoiding the unwashed masses who like standing in the pretty glowing stuff - you'd better believe that I'm going to pick the better geared of two choices once I'm sure both play with their fingers not their nose. Also, of course, a lot of my goals in WoW are social, so a heavy performance focus isn't necessarily so essential for me...)
We raided with a new guild member last week, a frost mage all in blue items. He had the highest dps while each of our toons is about 75% epics/tier pieces.
I cleared Naxx for the first time with a group outside of my guild. Most of them had dps (about 1.7k) that was lower than the guildies I run with. My guild has yet to clear naxx, this group does it weekly.
This may not fit into gear or class skills as much as it does in the raid skill category. But then again, you still need raid skills to get it done.
Well, we are talking about gear in levels, but thats having the right gear, with the right stats and gemmed and enchanted with those stats. In that case, well gear difference isnt that important.
But someone who has no idea what stats are important for his class and spec, well its going to suck a lot.
Gevlon's refusal to grind out naxx in order to gear for the next level of raids basically make him one of the Slackers he so hates.
If you do not have comparable gear to the rest of your raid you are by definition being carried. At the very least by some of them... because I guarantee that if you get 25 people in the raid (or even 10) at least some of them will be as skilled at their role as you are at yours. If they are geared for it and you are not, you are being carried.
The problem is that you can't compare 90% performance to 100%.
it's:
90% (healing) x
90% (Sustainability of healing) x
90% (tank mitigation) x
90% (tank health) x
90% (slower DPS) x
90% (Lower DPS health, so faster raid healing required)
Adds up to much less than 90%, doesn't it?
That's the 80-20 rule.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle
Did it ever occurred to you that a 25% longer fight because of 25% less geared DPS leaves more room for mistakes and unlucky random events? Apply this to an entire raid of reasonable difficulty and you will see more wipes than you would have seen if the boss fights were shorter.
One potential flaw with your analysis.
You pick one stat only.
Assuming total healing capacity actually scales according to more than SP the difference in output will be much larger.
Not only does the top gear have 25% more SP, it has 25% more mana regen, 25% more total mana, 25% more HP, 25% more crit and some mathematically difficult to quantify amount of haste.
For DPS in particular these effects are multiplicitive. Each point of crit is more valuable when your SP/AP is higher.
Upgrading any one piece may get you a X% increase in stats (varies by slot obviously). But across multiple slots and knowing the the increase effects across different stats compound (especially for DPS) you get a massive change in total output.
Again this effect is less clear for healers, unless they start needing stam or resistances to survive fights at which point having 20% surplus stats lets you sacrifice a lot of MP5/SP to load up on survivability.
As previous comment said, effects multiply with each other. But not only with each other - there are a lot of raid buffs that provide % increase of stats or damage.
I just did some experiment. I have a enhance shammy dps simulation tool - enhSim - to calculate ep etc.
I haven't access to my current stats now, resto gear in armory. But i used stats from my fellow guildie, and it provides around 5,2k of simulated dps. It's not the number a shammy can do on boss - usually boss isn't Patchwerk, and usually you can't keep the perfect rotation all the time. Though i can pull this number, with slightly better - and slightly better choosed - gear.
Then i looked in armory for less geared shammy, and found one in some Naxx epics, some blues and 2-3 pvp pieces. I entered his stats and it provides.. 4,2k dps.
So gear does matter. It's not all - cause my guildie usually does 500-700 dps less than me, and out simultaion will differ with only 200-300. But still you can see that 25% is the difference for one lvl of gear, not for blues and naxx25. I'd say it would be like 40% difference for dps.
But as for healing you are right. There are almost no (Mimi is, but he's the one) bosses that will allow healer pull out all his hps. Usually there aren't soo much damage to make healer cast most hps-effective heals till he oom. That's why for healer stats are not so much change. Though it is - there's Mimi, there's Hodir hard (only 2 healers allowed), etc.
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