Ask Mr. Robot: What gear should you get?
by Matt Low 
Feb 9th 2011 at 9:00AM
I'm not the best person when it comes to really optimizing and min-maxing my characters. I read up on the theory, but much of it goes way over my head. I'm just not that great when it comes to numbers. But hey, there is a new site out there for players like me who have difficulty with this kind of stuff. If you're looking for a gear optimizer, go ahead and Ask Mr. Robot. If you're not sure which item is the best you can get for the content you're doing, you can use Ask Mr. Robot to show you what the optimal drops are. Not only that, it even tells you how you should gem, enchant and reforge.
Let's take a closer look.
Let's take a closer look.
I'll take the jump and throw my character up here as a guinea pig. The import process is a breeze. All you do is enter your server name and character name before it pulls up your character information. If you don't want to import your character from the armory, you can always create a gear list for different classes and specs.
On the left side, you can see a list of my current gear. If I wanted to, I can hit the switch for the best in slot tab and load up a list of items Ask Mr. Robot thinks is best for me. If you're not much of a raider, there are a few checkboxes that let you limit the pool of items (from heroic raids, raids or dungeons). If you want, you can exclude items from archaeology, the Darkmoon Fair, random world drops or anything too expensive.
On the right side, you can see the gems I'm using, my enchants and any reforging that I've done. A red border indicates the enhancement isn't the most optimal choice. If you're not sure where to find the item in question, hit the drop location tab, and it will tell you exactly where to go to get a certain item.
But here's the real beauty of this tool: If you press the optimize button, it will give you the recommended gems, enchants and stats to reforge based on stat weights. For you theorycrafters out there, you can adjust the stat weights however you like. There's a feedback button in the event you feel the stat weights or gear lists are wrong.
Matticus: After
This is what is recommended for my character after optimization. It turns out I've been doing it all wrong. It might be time for me to make a few adjustments to my gear!
If you need a hand with your character, give Ask Mr. Robot a shot and just try it. Oh, before I forget, you can always come back at a later time and load up your character again. Ask Mr. Robot remembers recent characters that you've loaded for a quick reference later.
This is what is recommended for my character after optimization. It turns out I've been doing it all wrong. It might be time for me to make a few adjustments to my gear!
If you need a hand with your character, give Ask Mr. Robot a shot and just try it. Oh, before I forget, you can always come back at a later time and load up your character again. Ask Mr. Robot remembers recent characters that you've loaded for a quick reference later.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 7)
Baba Feb 9th 2011 9:08AM
In my experience Mr Robot isn't very accurate, every bleeding edge tank right now is stacking Mastery > Dodge > Parry for avoidance, whilst being hit-capped.
Mr Robot, however, advocated for me to take every single stat I had and convert it into Parry rating, even though this would uncap me in both Hit and Expertise...
Zuhd Feb 9th 2011 9:15AM
Mr. Robot seemed pretty good for fury though, let me get rid of ~10 wasted points in exp. Was impressed that it already has the new stat weights from 4.0.6.
Sejarki Feb 9th 2011 9:22AM
Not every bleeding edge tank is maintaining hit/expertise caps. Sorry Bob ...Baba... (lolthreat)
Daveg Feb 9th 2011 9:36AM
You only need to be have the extra hit/exp if your running heroics. For raids, hit/exp right now for tanks is a lost cause. I don't know very many tanks that are even over 3% hit and above 10exp. For raids there is more adds and running around for the dps/heals so the tank doesn't have to be hit capped.
Skrotus Feb 9th 2011 10:07AM
Dodge and parry are stats you want to have at similar values due to the way diminishing returns work. So if your dodge is much higher than your parry it should be telling you to reforge to parry wherever you can't reforge to mastery. As others have said hit and expertise caps aren't considered to be worth gearing for currently.
I don't really like it, missing attacks just feels sloppy, but that's what all the theorycrafters all seem to be saying.
revulva Feb 9th 2011 10:23AM
There is not a consensus in the tanking community on exactly which stats to go for. We have an ongoing discussion of tank stat weights on our forums, if you would like to weigh in on it:
http://forums.askmrrobot.com/index.php?topic=764.0
The stat weights are editable, so you can always customize the optimization to your tanking preference.
Jake Feb 9th 2011 11:35AM
How in the heck are you able to get hitcapped? I'm a druid tank in all pre-raid gear all 346 and a handful of epics. I reforged everything to dodge (as every single pre-raid list seems to advise) and I only have 5.96% hit and 1.5% expertise. Even this Mr Robot recommends my gear ideal pre-raid gear has only 2.39% hit and 4.78% expertise. I dunno how you got to both the hit and exp cap without sacrificing like a ton of avoidance.
Outdatedkero Feb 9th 2011 12:36PM
A lot of problems as a rogue, biggest and most obvious is it doent filter the ranged slot to thrown only for us, since fan of knives requires a thrown. This thing is based purely on stats. And its tables are not caking caps and things into correct account. How can it tell your talents?
Recommendation: If a fine program to give you an idea on 90% of your gear, even enchants and gem hints. But as always take it with a grain of salt and look closely. You may actually be hurting yourself if you trust a program to much to think for you!
GL gearing everyone!
Matt Feb 9th 2011 1:22PM
Outdatedkero, I've been using Mr. Robot for a while. It's definitely taking caps into account and loading your talents. If you look at the stats page and it says, for example, that you have 15% hit, that is including the hit you got from Precision.
As for the ranged weapon, you are right, but you can always manually select the one (!) 346 throwing weapon available if you want to stick to thrown. I would imagine most Rogues do, so that would probably be a good option for the tool. "Throwing weapons only."
revulva Feb 9th 2011 2:27PM
If rogues always want thrown weapons, that is a very easy change for us to make. I'll look into it and we can either add an option or just always default to thrown.
Rayon Feb 9th 2011 9:28AM
Ya hit cap my not be a real big prob, but realy Mr. Robot all my gems need to be +Stam?!
You can tell my healers why im getting hit so hard
JT Feb 9th 2011 10:42AM
Yeah, and the weird thing was that it rated Dodge and Parry at 100, Mastery at 91, and Stam at 90.
And yet it still told me to stack stam.
Silly robot.
Mike Feb 9th 2011 10:56AM
@JT; with those weightings, that's not even that strange, since pure Stam gems offer +60 Stam, while pure Mastery/Dodge/Parry gems offer only 40 of their particular poison: 100*40 < 90*60.
However, especially for tanking I would heartily advocate:
1. finetuning weightings to your own preference and tanking style (and the problems YOU face when tanking the content YOU are tanking (getting overaggroed in HCs requires a different stat weighting from being flattend in HC Raids).
2. taking the robot overlord's suggestions with a healthy helping of salt and own theorycraft
3. continue to do your own thinking, and see this for what it is: an easy visualisation of suggestions for your set.
Skrotus Feb 9th 2011 11:16AM
You're forgetting that stamina gems offer 60 stam while the other gems only offer 40. So the stamina gems are still quite clearly in front given those stat weightings. I don't think stat weighting really gives the whole picture when it comes to tanking, unlike for dps, and you don't necessarily always want to gem straight stam. But that's really a bit beyond the scope of a spreadsheet application.
Skrotus Feb 9th 2011 11:18AM
doh beaten to it by mike
JT Feb 9th 2011 12:43PM
Wow, great point about the 60/40 difference.
That makes a ton of sense.
Man, there goes another 1kg to some lucky JC on my realm.
Yellowfive Feb 9th 2011 7:53PM
In response to tank stat weights:
I'd like to tweak some of our defaults to be less stamina-heavy. I'll be researching that over the next couple days.
Mr. Robot has two really cool "automatic" features for tanks:
1. Diminishing returns are automatically applied to parry and dodge stat weights. The default weights (and any weights that you enter) are pre-DR weights, then the code handles dynamically reducing the weight as you get more and more avoidance. Handy!
2. Parry and dodge are automatically balanced to reduce the effects of diminishing returns -- you don't have to bother doing it manually by messing with the weights.
These two features are extremely handy, and should both save you a lot of time and produce better sets of gear.
Nina Katarina Feb 9th 2011 9:29AM
They didn't completely update their database for the new patch information yet - the Mandala of Stirring Patterns now grants an intellect proc instead of mastery, which changes its stat weight significantly for most healers.
revulva Feb 9th 2011 10:26AM
I missed the Mandala of Stirring Patterns in the update. It will be fixed in an update this afternoon or tonight at the latest, sorry about that.
The site is also still loading the +100 intellect off-hand enchant, but when you optimize it replaces it with the new +40 intellect version. That will also be fixed in an update today.
Snowfeather Feb 9th 2011 9:40AM
Why change to Mr Robot when Rawr has been the staple? Rawr is also web based now, so mac users can use it.