Ranking your new loot
by Mike Schramm 
Dec 10th 2008 at 3:16PM
Our good friend Kestrel reminds you that as you're leveling up and getting all this new gear, there are quite a few good tools out there to let you know what's what in terms of what gear is best for you. Lootrank is the one Kestrel mentions most -- you can put in your own stats and check off which ones are most important to you, and it'll recommend and rate your gear from there. We've got our own list of other sites which will help, too -- Kaliban's great class loot lists (at wow-loot.com) have been all updated for Wrath, and of course ShadowPanther has lots of Rogue updates as well (though DruidWiki doesn't appear to be completely updated yet).MaxDPS.com is a very popular site for seeking and tracking gear upgrades as well, and I remain a fan of the simplicity of Gear Wishlist -- it doesn't get any easier than tossing your info into a form and having the site spit a huge list of gear options at you, based on the rankings from mulitple other sites.
But no matter how you do it, there are plenty of ways to figure out which way to head for your next upgrade. There's a whole continent of new gear out there -- go get some.
Filed under: Items, Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Blizzard, Leveling, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Silverstar Dec 10th 2008 3:24PM
Very cool, I'll have to check those out.
Beatphreek Dec 10th 2008 3:27PM
If you want somethign similar in game, PAWN will let you add a tooltip to items that has as scale that you can set a weight to. Or you can import someone elses' scales. It's pretty slick and will let you get a really quick over view if an item is worth looking into further.
Derek Dec 10th 2008 3:29PM
Similar to Pawn is "GearDPS". It adds a line to the Tooltip for an item with a score based on the default values for each class or your own values if you choose to customize.
vanye111 Dec 10th 2008 3:32PM
For another addon, Ratingsbuster will show you what and how much is changing if you were to equip a new item...and will show you what changes you'll get from food (such as roasted worg being a 1.38% increase in haste, for example...)
Sarius Dec 10th 2008 3:39PM
Just installed this the other day. Ratingbuster so far is the best addon I've found to help you make informed decisions for gear upgrades.
jbodar Dec 10th 2008 6:20PM
Ratingsbuster is awesome. Kaliban's site is great for planning your upgrades, too as far as what quests/instances to do to gear up.
thundrpants Dec 10th 2008 3:46PM
Geez, a couple of these have exceeded bandwidth already. Way to go WI! =P
Dave Dec 10th 2008 4:06PM
Rawr has been invaluable to me.
PvtDeth Dec 10th 2008 4:15PM
I've just discovered Rawr also and I'm somewhat surprised it's not in the article. I've found it to be amazing.
Schadow Dec 10th 2008 6:24PM
Rawr is really cool, but doesn't have support for minimum values in its optimisation. For example, as a tank I don't want any gear set-ups where the defense rating is under 540.
I ask for max health and that's what it gives me - fair enough. But while it doesn't care if I am crittable, I most certainly do.
chipersoft Dec 10th 2008 4:23PM
There was another site I used to use for this sort of thing, but now I can't remember the name of it (I stupidly didn't bookmark it). It showed every gear slot, with a column for each enchant and gem slot. It then ranked the gear and your enchants, and gave you recommendations for better options in each of them.
It was a really useful site... damn my memory.
Alas, everything you guys just linked is broken.
Bratack Dec 11th 2008 7:10AM
I believe your referring to http://www.warcrafter.net, you just insert your character name and realm and off you go.
Anye Dec 10th 2008 4:26PM
Just have to agree with some of the others here and say that both Pawn and RatingBuster are great addons to pick up. I don't tend to make long lists of "loot to score" ahead of time--just the pieces I most need to upgrade at the moment--so these addons save my life. I can roll on loot quickly to help keep the raid moving fast, and I never have to worry about rolling on something that was really just a wash for me, when it might've been more useful to somebody else.
Kestrel Dec 10th 2008 4:51PM
Thanks for the plug, Mike. :)
Since writing that article (which was originally a post on my guild forums for our healers, as the priest CL), I've installed Pawn and I love it.
I've been using RatingBuster for ages (after seeing a recommendation from BRK), and while it is great at comparing items, it differs from Pawn or LootRank.com in that it doesn't actually "score" the gear.
The biggest obstacle to using any of these scoring methods is to establish a logical and effective rationale for assigning points. As I mentioned in my article, I relied on http://dwarfpriest.com (Dwarf Priest), but modified her scheme to put the same weight on both Int and Spi (for Holy Priests). The differences in our results were pretty negligible (although I haven't done a slot-by-slot, piece-by-piece comparison).
The point is, though, that by determining what your stat preferences are and applying those to Pawn, LootRank, or any similar program/site, you'll have a much better idea of whether a particular piece of gear truly is an upgrade.
Now, who has a good formula for a BM (51/10/0) hunter??
Lenny Dec 10th 2008 4:52PM
I love doing the number and gear crunching on sites like this!
Sadly, as our (wow players) numbers grow, the more we are slashdotting websites :P
Bonkers Dec 10th 2008 5:01PM
Thanks for the mention, gear-wishlist is holding up better this time around. (: I added a new feature to filter result sources, type the source(s) you want in the box at the top, e.g. "emblem,naxx".
Since traffic is spiking I also added a shameless plug for my guild's recruiting efforts! (:
Skyrei Dec 10th 2008 7:22PM
Hmm.. i think the lootrank page is dead
Nomadigin Dec 10th 2008 11:50PM
Am I the only one who read it as Loo Trank?
Malgayne Dec 10th 2008 11:02PM
I'm a little offended no one mentioned us! :(
Wowhead.com has been ranking loot for a while now. Check this out:
http://www.wowhead.com/?items=4.4&filter=ub=2;gm=4;gb=1;wt=42:20:21:44:45:22:46:43:119:77:96:123:41;wtv=100:96:88:80:79:76:76:52:50:25:23:20:9
You can also use it to compare two items:
http://www.wowhead.com/?compare=44180;43972&weights=Mage%20-%20Fire;119:96:53:123:103:23:61;100:55:49:49:47:35:15
I promise our website won't go down!
Guernia Dec 11th 2008 12:49AM
It'd be nice if WowHead allowed the user to save custom stat weight profiles to their own user account. Bookmarking a custom one is suboptimal, and the Item Comparison tool doesn't allow you to bookmark custom profiles at all (that I can figure).
Add those and it'll be awesome.
That said, I use it for all my loot ranking. The above would just make it more awesome :)