01-17-2008, 10:25 AM
I think it's more of a sliding scale. Gear covers the minor mistakes the most normal guilds make, when they are geared enough. When they aren't geared enough, minor mistakes snowball into wipes.
To take an example which probably most people have seen, Hydross. Last week, we had a hunter have a FD resisted... but he kept autoshooting ("I stopped using specials!!"). He pulled her back across, then the tank pulled her back across again - 12 elementals loose. The elemental tanks rounded them up for the most part (in gear that hasn't improved much), but only pro heals, dropped by people with tons of +heal, and a lot of mana in the tank because their regen is totally outgearing the encounter kept the tanks up through a lot of damage. The DPS out gearing the encounter meant that when called to do it, they could burst down the last 12% or so of Hydross before we completely lost control of it. When we were learning the fight, healers were running dry 2/3 through the fight and begging for innervates. There's no way they could have recovered from the extra elementals if they didn't have tons of mana on hand.
It's obviously technically possible to do this game without a lot of gear, the chinese have proved it. Gear helps compensate for the mistakes. If everybody only makes one real mistake per hour (sounds like pretty good playing), you have less then a 10% chance of getting through a fight without a major mistake. That's when your 40hr/week raid schedule kicks in - more attempts means more chances at hitting the lucky 10%.
To take an example which probably most people have seen, Hydross. Last week, we had a hunter have a FD resisted... but he kept autoshooting ("I stopped using specials!!"). He pulled her back across, then the tank pulled her back across again - 12 elementals loose. The elemental tanks rounded them up for the most part (in gear that hasn't improved much), but only pro heals, dropped by people with tons of +heal, and a lot of mana in the tank because their regen is totally outgearing the encounter kept the tanks up through a lot of damage. The DPS out gearing the encounter meant that when called to do it, they could burst down the last 12% or so of Hydross before we completely lost control of it. When we were learning the fight, healers were running dry 2/3 through the fight and begging for innervates. There's no way they could have recovered from the extra elementals if they didn't have tons of mana on hand.
It's obviously technically possible to do this game without a lot of gear, the chinese have proved it. Gear helps compensate for the mistakes. If everybody only makes one real mistake per hour (sounds like pretty good playing), you have less then a 10% chance of getting through a fight without a major mistake. That's when your 40hr/week raid schedule kicks in - more attempts means more chances at hitting the lucky 10%.