Skill > Gear --- I dunno about that

I often hear people say Skill > Gear. I’m starting to think that’s a situational statement, during a normal boss fight you can have a great (play skill) mage in greens VS an average mage in all epics and it’s my belief that the average player would throw out more dps. I feel like Skill > Gear comes into play more in PVP than PVE. True there are some PVE fights where you have a lot of running around/placement, class specific actions, etc but in most cases I think most boss fights come down to a tank/spank strategy with namely one or two special things you have to watch out for which an average player can handle. The reason I’m even posting about gear is my damage taken compared to Lanorah and Honors on our Void Reaver attempt the other night. I was working on a post comparing the stats but Honors beat me to it, it’s a good post found here. Basically what it says though is that I took 7% more damage than honors and 9% more than Lanorah over all the boss fights. In this post I’m just going to comment on the last boss fight because that’s where I think I “tried the hardest”. Right from the beginning of that fight I ran out and had initial agro (more from my hunters misdirect than anything I did I think). Since I was up first and it was also our last attempt of the night I did everything I could possibly do to mitigate as much damage as possible while keeping up my threat. I guess what I’m pointing out here is that even though I tried my hardest, when I was hit I took more damage than honors and even though I popped my trinkets the second they were up I didn’t dodge as much as Lanorah. I’m pretty sure there was no different spell rotation or other player action I could have done to make a noticeable difference. That leaves me with nothing to fall back on except it’s the gear. I am now the least geared tank of the three of us, and it’s starting to show with me taking 9% more damage than our main MT. I have really stepped up my effort to improve my gear so hopefully I can get in on another hot streak in my next couple of runs. Also the badges have been raining down on me so as soon as I have 40 I’ll be buying the shield block trinket, then after that a shield, chest piece, or leg piece depending on what is needed the most. If I haven’t gotten lucky with drops then after I replace my trinket my shield is my main sore spot. I have tried every run a hundred times to get a better one, I just have no luck with a new shield. I should have just worked on my rep or badges and gotten an epic one a long time ago. Right now my shield works about as good as a stack of porn magazines strapped to my arm. Blizzard should change the graphic so people don’t get confused thinking it’s a real shield.

Here is the stats from our last attempt where I lived the longest(I didnt live as long as honors or lanorah or take as many hits so keep that in mind), I think I made a respectable showing of myself but still I didn’t do as well as my fellow warrior Lanorah.

Name Avg Hit Avg Crushing Parry % Dodge % Total boss missed % Dmg Mitigated Raydz: 3660 2% 5208 22% 22% 58.7% 6.1% Lanorah: 3667 2% 5903 24% 22% 62.3% 9.8% Honors: 3612 5% 5722 12% 18% 45.39% 5.9%

Raydz: Lanorah: Honors: Keep in mind though that this is just the last boss fight, overall I didn’t do as well as either tanks. Realistically I’m probably missing some key bit of information and I didn’t do as well as honors either on the last attempt. I’m really hoping once I get the new gear these numbers improve elevating me to thier mitigation levels, because if they don’t that means it’s some action im inadvertantly doing. I don’t want to face the reality of being a shitty tank because then I’ll have to get all depressed, move into my parent’s basement, masturbate to my porn shield while bawling like a baby, and no one wants that. Another observation concerning gear is that in our ZA group last night we kept fumbling with the bear boss. I feel like I can say the problems we had last night came 100% from the gear some guys were using. Even though these guys played their ass off their gear was less than what the instance needed and it showed, so now when I hear Skill > Gear, I don’t know if I always agree with that. This doesn’t mean I’m not going to invite someone to ZA because of their gear, who am I to tell someone no, but it does mean that the rest of the group might have someone else’s short comings to pick up and i dont know if it's fair to them either.