Fun and games with the new Armory
by Dan O'Halloran 
Jun 7th 2007 at 9:00AM
Poking around the new and updated Armory, I found a whole new way to obsess about equipment upgrades for my feral druid. The versatility of the new functions is quite mind blowing. Here are few tricks I found to get the most out of this new tool.
Say you are heading into Mana Tombs with a pick up group. You can instantly search the boss drops so you know what may be in store for you. Nothing new there, right? But now you can filter the search specifically for your class. Not good enough? Hit the "predefined filters" button and you will see a drop down menu of filters based on your classes available specs. For example, as a druid, my predefined filters are:
- Druid Tank
- Druid Melee DPS
- Druid Caster DPS.
- Druid Healer
Or would you rather see the loot table for Black Temple? Come on, you know you want to click it. One limitation of the system can be seen in this list. It only displays drops that have shown up in game. Since there has been limited clearings of Black Temple so far, you won't see a lot of Illidan loot on the list yet.
Or say you want to find trinkets for rogues only from quest rewards. Or shoulder pads for enhancement shaman that only drop from Heroic bosses. Or epic enchantments from any source in the game. Heck, you can even search for mounts, non-combat pets and keys.
There is some functionality lacking to this system. When a quest item is displayed, there is no information about what quest it comes from. The drop rate information is a vague low, medium or high. Profession based searches aren't implemented. But this is Beta after all, right?
The official site also gives a tip if you are using the upgrade feature from your character page: make sure your toon doesn't have any buffs active when you look for upgrade for best results.
Now it's your turn to dig in and let us know if you find any new and interesting ways to search for what you need.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Antheril Jun 7th 2007 9:38AM
The only thing I've noticed is that when using the finad an upgrade feature, if any of your gear is of the class of items that has random enchantments (of the Bear, of the Eagle, etc.), the upgrade tool can't compare your item to the items in your upgrade search.
Why doesn't it compare to the actual item I have equipped, rather than the entry in the main database that lists it as having "Random Enchantment"? I mean, the data is clearly there, as it's listed in my character profile...
Other than that, I've been loving the new additions.
cynthias Jun 7th 2007 9:40AM
Wow, this sounds like the answer to my prayers. Can't wait to use it.
Addie Jun 7th 2007 9:41AM
The filters look a whole lot like the wowhead filters. Did they buy the technology and dress it up? I'm remembering a story or a rumor or something - help?
Wowhead is still cleaner and faster tho' (and so far, accessible from work.)
Patrick Schriner Jun 7th 2007 9:44AM
Biggest issue I have is the web site´s speed. Wowhead is by far faster, though this is (in large parts) due to Armory´s XML / XSLT based implementation (very nice proof of concept, yet lacking in speed)
eMarkM Jun 7th 2007 10:22AM
@4, lacking in speed? It's absolutely abysmal to the point of being nearly unusable. At least the times I've tried it. I'd love to check out all of these new features, but in the time it takes me to see and sort upgrades for myself, I could open WoW, pull up AtlasLoot and handcraft my own spreadsheet of upgrades. I love the Armory, but it's ridiculously slow.
Mel Jun 7th 2007 10:39AM
Type in search request.
Go and knit a pullover, cook coffe, and clean the kitchen.
See that the result page still hasn't loaded.
Go and clean the rest of the house.
/golfclap
Well done, Blizzar, well done. Load the site with tons of useless shit to make it even more slow than it already was.
rogue Jun 7th 2007 10:44AM
@3 There was an April 1st joke on the wowhead site that they were bought by Blizzard. That's probably what you're remembering.
Slayblaze Jun 7th 2007 10:51AM
I agree that it's slow to the point where the usefullness is negated, although hopefully it can be optimized at some point.
Also, you can't get the gear upgrade suggestion to work if you log out while buffed. And I ALWAYS log out while buffed, if nothing else self-buffed at the very least. That gives anyone browsing your toon a "real-world" idea of your power...plus some buffs are really nice to still have on when you first log in or were expensive (flasks, elixer buffs). Why would I want to cancel all my buffs just so I can browse gear upgrades on the armory? I'm sure blizz could make suggestions taken from your base stats and then compare that to the gear you have on.
Silverfire Jun 7th 2007 11:03AM
Good thing they still have that 'Beta' label attached to it, cause any company that released a final product that slow/buggy should be ashamed of itself. Here's to hoping they can improve the speed and stability before too long.
Kryptonls Jun 7th 2007 11:07AM
The new armory changes seem like a great idea - it'll be nice when they make the final changes and it comes out of Beta! ^_^
Sylythn Jun 7th 2007 11:19AM
Oh wow...I'm LOVING the new "upgrade my piece" feature, item searches (I was able to specify +dmg only, instead of +dmg and crit, AND specify that I'm a PVE warlock...wow, that's intuitive and awesome), and that new Pin Profile thing is a godsend.
The thing that keeps me from using this all the time, as others have mentioned is the speed. Sure it looks pretty, but Blizz needs to either beef up the system it runs on or tone down the fancy stuff so it actually runs requests at greater than 1 search per 2 minutes.
theRaptor Jun 7th 2007 11:27AM
Everyone has learned from Google that attaching "Beta" to a product is an excuse for never polishing it. Any problem? "It's still in beta".
At the speed it is running at it is pre-Alpha at best.
jaypee68 Jun 7th 2007 11:59AM
Something I would like to see is the required level on the tooltips of the results of an item search, or a search criteria that lets you specify a level range.
For instance my Warlock is level 35 so I would like to search for all quest drop wands for character levels 30-40
Paw Jun 7th 2007 12:02PM
It looks like it will be a useful tool someday...when it is working...
Slow is not quite as strong a description. And after a very long load cycle, I get timeout errors. Of course, I'm at work...which only runs IE. Maybe when I get home and can try it on Firefox it will work better.
Quoi Jun 7th 2007 1:26PM
@12
No, crashing your browser would make it pre-alpha. Lack of server bandwidth does not have a bearing on readiness of software for open usage.
Also, I've never had a problem with it.
Rysc Jun 7th 2007 2:37PM
armory is slow. You can speed it up in firefox if your on dsl or better connection. Try this:
- Type: "about:config" in the address bar & hit enter
- Type: "pipe" in the filter
- Double click "network.http.pipelining" so that Value = true
- Navigate back to the armory
Should be a bit faster.
MartinC Jun 7th 2007 3:32PM
Not bad, but all this information is already available with tools like Cartographer instance maps, and sites like the wow-loot gear planner.
I'm sure Blizzard got their ideas from these places, so let's hope they can improve on them in the speed department. Slow azzz AJAX FTL :-(
theRaptor Jun 7th 2007 8:58PM
@15 Who said it was lack of server bandwidth? My guess given how slow the blizzard site generally is, would be that it is inefficiently coded. Blizz sure love the "Web 2.0" bells and whistles but can't seem to code them so they don't take fair to much CPU time for the effort.
And in fact it does crash my browser, if I have the temerity to have anything else but a simple web page open (about half the time it freezes then crashes, using the latest version of FireFox, it could be one of my plugins but I don't have many).