I've just purchased a second spec for my prot warrior. I lost interest in her after switching mains to fill a much needed gap within one of the servers top raiding guilds some years ago, but out of respect for her as my first max level character, she has always been one of the first to reach the new max levels as they roll out. Wrath of the Lich King however has provided us with a far greater gap between "just hit 80" and "raider" and time restraints that come with every day life have left her wanting.
It very rapidly went from tanking the odd heroic of a night for others of my gear level, to trying to tank for those with an average item level of 250+ in 200 gear, and failing. So I bit the bullet and did what I always said I'd never do... Get a second spec.
Now I'm perfectly happy to use this spec to gain emblems and so on until I'm able to appropriately gear my prot spec to meet the demands within groups, but I'm far from the only one suffering at the hands of these demands.
In short, Warcraft as it stands today has lost sight of all that was good about it. They've taken out the sense of achievement, and replaced it with... achievements!
No longer do you get into a raid by being a good player, by demonstrating that you know your class and it's specific role. You get into raids by showing that you gained an achievement, and you've spammed your way through heroics to get emblems, or by being carried by your friends, at the expense of others in the raid.
Gearscore, the addon that everyone loves to hate has it's plus sides. It certainly shows that someone has made it through at least some instances, it gives you an indication that they've geared to an appropriate level for the position they are asking to fill, but as we've all seen, it says nothing about the player as a person, or they're ability to fulfil said role.
ICC10 man with my resto druid, a holy paladin and a holy priest saw me top the meters by a clear 20% healing, with the paladin coming in second, and the holy priest 10% behind him. Based on gearscore alone, this paladin shouldn't have been allowed anywhere near the instance, while the holy priest outshone me gear wise by a mile. Obviously at the end of the run, people took a quick glance at the gear and congratulated the priest on carrying the raid... Thankfully, I don't do it for the credit, I actually enjoy working hard to achieve my in game goals.
Is it any wonder that with people playing to such a terrible standard that we're entering a time where we see raid leaders demanding 5.4k gearscore for things like ToC10? Hardly, but then, it's hardly fair on those who can play, have demonstrated it time and time again and are rejected for not meeting some silly number chosen based on the failings of those in the previous raid.
I can only hope that with Cataclysm on the horizon, Blizzard wake up and make enough changes to provide a workable distinction between the player and their gear so that we can stop relying on gearscore and achievements which carry their own set of issues to determine who gets to do what.
Blizzard once had a saying, "Bring the player, not the class" it's high time they adopted another... "Bring the player, not the gearscore"
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