It's the principle of the thing revisted

Few days ago I posted about how I wouldn't want to raid with someone who just hit 80.

Michael, a commenter, pointed out that he meant a brand new 80 could get geared up very fast within a week's time if they focused on it.

I don't doubt it a bit. Someone who is serious about their contribution to the raids would do exactly that.

And it is very unlikely that anyone in greens (you get blue drops as quest rewards at the very least) would show up at a raid.

Yet that's exactly what happened to me recently. Our guild was attempting a new boss and I'm not sure how this person got in the raid, but there they were standing beside me in quest greens and blues and the occasional epic.

Here's where I disagree with Gevlon (or is it Tobold?). Because unless you are exceptional (and we all have to agree we in general aren't or there wouldn't be an "in general"), crap gear will only take you so far. Since the person didn't manage to outdps anyone in the raid, not even our tanks, they certainly weren't exceptional. So they weren't capable of doing the role they came for.

If we're doing a fun run with no expectations of success, then someone can show up naked for all I care. But we were attempting to make some progress on a boss and having weak links in an already brittle chain didn't help.

What hit a nerve is they kept standing in the wrong places. Since standing in the wrong stuff or not standing in the right stuff has the tendency to make things exponentially worse, you can imagine how fun the night was.

I'm not the type of person to call anyone a M *or* S, even though I realize that's how I come off describing it. Let's just say they were more S than M. And S is easier to fix.

In the end, all I want to do is raid progress with like-minded and like-geared people. And that's exactly what Michael and the shaman's point is - badges, VoAs, etc. make that possible. Just make the effort, the loot is there.