Gankbang: For those times you really need an ego boost
by Alex Ziebart 
Feb 2nd 2008 at 3:30PM
While not a new site, Gankbang has recieved a push on a few different realm forums recently and it seems few know about it. A shame!Gankbang pulls character stats from the Armory and compiles them into a fun little searchable tool. It gives you the option of breaking down your search by class, talent spec and specific stats. You can also choose to search by specific realms, factions and battlegroup. You don't have to pick through those things if you don't want to, a WoW-wide search works as well.
The most obvious use of this tool is to stroke your ego when you come up in the top ten of a search. I'm pretty sure everyone who's been to Gankbang before has done that at least once. Another good use of the tool is to find the players of your particular class who either know what they're doing, or at least are doing really well in the end-game. As a shadow priest, it was fun to do a few searches(shadow damage, spell haste) to see who's on top, and use their Armory profile to see what's available to me. If you're on a friendly, homely server, those people on top might have some good advice for you too, if you're in need of it.
It has a few issues, though. Due to Gankbang's update frequency and that of the Armory, your stats may not always be current if you have multiple sets of gear. In addition, while Gankbang strips most buffs when grabbing character data, there are a few things that slip through. For example, a search for melee crit on warriors has the number one warrior listed with 116% crit.
Oh, by the way, if you're not showing up on a search? You can add yourself manually by using the link at the top of the Gankbang website.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
mike Feb 2nd 2008 8:00PM
sounds cool
jaxson_bateman Feb 3rd 2008 12:55AM
Gankbang is ok, but it has one major flaw. It only shows the overall stats of the gear you're using, and not the gear itself.
Why is that a flaw? Case in point. Player A and Player B are both paladins. Player A has 1800 healing, and Player B has 2000 healing. So Player B has a victory party as they have the superior healing. A closer inspection of Armory would reveal that Player A had equipped a 2H weapon without any +healing for soloing, whilst Player B had logged out in their healing mace and shield.
Personally, I almost always log out in my soloing gear - it's not very different to my healing gear, but as my example above showed, due to my weapon it gives me around a 350 healing handicap when looking at Gankbang.
In short, it's ok as a rough estimate, but don't take it as gospel.
Isambaard Feb 5th 2008 1:31PM
lol, thats minor compared to logging out fully raid buffed. Or even better raid buffed and trinketed. I could move from my reasonably justified 20-22 position for +heal for resto shaman on my server to number 1 just by manipulating how I look when logged out.
Since I usually spend 30-40 minutes chatting while flapping 5' off the ground in shatt after raids before logging I normally log out fully unbuffed, but don't think I haven't contemplated stroking the epeen with a well timed logout.
Fel Feb 3rd 2008 3:34PM
Wowza. On my new server the highest-rated Hunter in Ranged DPS has almost twice as much as the second place fellow.
I've gotta get some tips from that guy.