If you've been playing Epic Seven for a while, or if you watch E7 content creators on Twitch and YouTube, then you've probably heard the term "Gear Score" being thrown around a lot. 

Here's a summary of Gear Score (GS) in a nutshell:

• GS refers to the quality of equipment substat rolls
• The maximum possible GS is 81 for a Lv. 90 equipment
• The maximum possible GS is 72 for a Lv. 85 equipment
• GS doesn't care about the spread of substats, so be sure to keep that in mind. 
• Main stats are not included when calculating Gear Score. Use the formulas below for substats only.

Gear Score Formula:

ATK% + HP% + DEF% + EFF% + ER% + (CC% × 1.5) + (CD% × 1.1) + (SPD × 1.9) + (Flat ATK / 10) + (Flat HP / 50) + (Flat DEF / 6)

• Note #1: To simplify your calculation, you can round SPD to 2 instead of 1.9.
• Note #2: For flat stats, the above formula is an approximation based on average hero stats. To be more accurate, if you know what hero you plan to use a piece of gear on, just divide the flat stats by that specific hero's base stats to convert it to a percentage and add that to the total gear score. 

Jump to an explanation of these formulas →

Online E7 Gear Score calculators →

What is Gear Score?

Gear Score (GS) basically tells you how well a piece of equipment rolled.

More specifically, it's a number that represents how close a piece of equipment is to having the highest possible substat value. Higher substat rolls means a higher GS, which implies that the equipment is more valuable and useful. 

An epic (red) Lv.90 equipment with a GS of 81 is theoretically "perfect" in terms of maximum substat rolls. On the other hand, an epic Lv.90 equipment with a GS under 50 is below average and probably not worth keeping.

One important thing to note is that Gear Score doesn't take into account the spread of substats. Equipment with more synergy between substats (e.g. DPS gear with ATK%, CC%, CD%) is often worth more than equipment with high GS but bad substat synergy.

Some players choose to ignore irrelevant substats (e.g EFF% on DPS gear that they plan to use on a hero that doesn't use debuffs). In that case, they just count EFF% stats as 0 when calculating their gear score. 

That's up to you and how you plan to use Gear Score to make decisions. 

If you're using GS to evaluate how close to perfect your build for a specific hero is, then you might ignore the useless substats. If you're using GS to decide whether to reforge or toss equipment you got from hunts, then it's usually better to count everything objectively.

How Gear Score is Used

You'll often hear people talking about Gear Score in different ways, so it's important to understand the context of how it's used. Here are 3 common scenarios where GS can help you make decisions: 

1. Evaluating the quality of reforged Lv.90 gear for different hero builds.

Reference gear score ranges for Lv.88 and Lv.90 equipment:

• "Good" GS is 50
• "Great" GS is 60
• "Excellent" GS is 70
• "Perfect" GS is 81

When you hear people talking about how they built a certain hero with 420 GS, that just means they're using 6 pieces of equipment with an average GS of 70 (6 × 70 = 420). 

If you're using Gear Score in this context, you'll probably want to ignore any irrelevant stats (like those random rolls into ER%, for example) when calculating it. 

2. Deciding whether or not to keep or reforge a piece of Lv.85 (or lower) equipment at +15.

Reference gear score ranges for Lv.85 equipment:

• "Good" GS is 40
• "Great" GS is 50
• "Excellent" GS is 60
• "Perfect" GS is 72

3. Deciding whether or not to continue upgrading a piece of Lv. 85 (or lower) equipment.

For example, if you upgraded a piece of gear to +9 with 30 GS and you only want equipment with GS over 50, then you don’t need to waste the resources upgrading it to +15. Even with 2 maximum rolls at +12 and +15, the final result can only reach 46 GS.

You can use Gear Score to come up with your own rules to help you figure out when to stop upgrading certain equipment. That's totally up to you and what kind of Epic Seven player you are.

How Gear Score is Calculated

Gear Score assigns each substat roll with a maximum value of 8 (for Lv.85 gear) and 9 (for Lv.90 gear). 

You can compare that value to the maximum possible for fully upgraded epic (red) gear to evaluate how good it is. The maximum GS for Lv.85 gear is 72 (9 possible rolls × 8 max value), and the maximum GS for Lv. 90 gear is 81 (9 possible rolls x 9 max value).

For simplicity, some people just use an approximate formula, multiplying SPD by 2 instead of 1.9 or multiplying CD% by 1 instead of 1.1.

That's fine when you just need a quick approximation, but it can result in your Gear Score being a couple points off.

ATK%, HP%, DEF%, EFF%, and ER%

Percent-based substats for Attack, Health, Defense, Effectiveness, and Effect Resistance have a maximum roll of 8% for Lv.85 gear and 9% for Lv.90 gear. 

Therefore, you just need to add these up.

CC%, CD%, and SPD

At Lv.90 (fully reforged), Critical Hit Chance has a max roll of 6%. To correspond with the GS scale of 9, you multiply CC% by 1.5 before adding it (6% CC × 1.5 = 9 GS).

Critical Hit Damage has a max roll of 8% for Lv.90 gear, so you multiply CD% by 1.1 before adding it. 

Speed is a bit tricky. After reforging, you get +0 for the base SPD roll, +1 for the 1st SPD roll, +1 for a 2nd SPD roll, +1 for a 3rd SPD roll, +1 for a 4th SPD roll, and +0 for a 5th SPD roll. Averaging that out, the expected max SPD value for Lv.90 gear after reforge is approximately 4.7. So to correspond with the GS scale of 9, you multiply SPD by 1.9 before adding it.

For simpler math, some people just multiply SPD by 2, which is fine but you may end up overvaluing speed gear by a few points.

Flat ATK, Flat HP, and Flat DEF

Flat substats are even trickier than speed. 

That's because the value of flat substats varies greatly depending on the base stats of the hero you plan to use it on.

For example, 35 defense is equivalent to 7% for a hero with 500 base defense, but only 5% for a hero with 700 base defense.

Ideally, as "Anonymous" pointed out in the comments, you should calculate the gear score of flat stats based on the base stats of the hero you plan to use it on. You do this by dividing the flat stat by the base stat, which converts it into a %, which you then add to the total gear score.

But that can be too time consuming, especially if you're rolling a bunch of gear and trying to quickly decide what's worth rolling and what to sell or extract. So instead of figuring out the exact flat-to-percent conversion based on a specific hero, you can use the formula to get a quick estimation based on average hero stats.

To make it simple, we based the GS formula on the median base stats for all of the heroes in Epic Seven:

• Attack: 1000
• Health: 5300
• Defense: 600

To equate Flat ATK to ATK%, we divide the flat stat by the average base attack of 1000 and multiply by 100 to make it a percentage. In other words, divide Flat ATK by 10 to get the (roughly) equivalent ATK%.

To simplify flat stats when calculating Gear Score, we use:

• Flat ATK ÷ 10 = ATK% for the average hero. A max roll of 42 Flat ATK roll is equivalent to around 4% ATK, or 4 GS.
• Flat HP ÷ 50 = HP% for the average hero. A max roll of 202 Flat HP is equivalent to around 4% HP, or 4 GS.
• And Flat DEF ÷ 6 = DEF for the average hero. A max roll of 35 Flat DEF is equivalent to around 6% DEF, or 6 GS.

If you wanted to be more accurate, you could calculate the GS of flat stats based on a specific hero or class.

For example, Thieves have an average base defense of 473, so a max roll of 35 Flat DEF is around 7%, while Soul Weavers have an average base defense of 672, so a max roll of 35 Flat DEF is only around 5%. 

The average base stats corresponding to each class are:

• Warriors: 1000 ATK, 5542 HP, 583 DEF
• Knights: 821 ATK, 6289 HP, 648 DEF
• Thieves: 1081 ATK, 5138 HP, 473 DEF
• Rangers: 1005 ATK, 5299 HP, 553 DEF
• Mages: 1159 ATK, 4572 HP, 645 DEF
• Soul Weaves: 621 ATK, 4900 HP, 672 DEF

Gear Score Calculators for Epic Seven

If you struggle to remember the GS formula, or you don't want to do the mental math in your head, here are some online tools you can use. 

Some of these tools use slightly different formulas, so the Gear Score values may differ slightly.

• Needlebot Gear Score Calculator
• Meowyih Gear Score Calculator
• Fribbels Epic 7 Gear Optimizer