All Class Loot listing

[Rowah]

This was pretty nifty, dont know if others have seen it but seems to utlize the data from a bunch of of the cool sites to show you what upgrades are available.

http://gear-wishlist.appspot.com/

Much nicer than me maintaining a list

[Yamason]

I have used Rawr and am pretty happy with it. For folks that aren't familiar with it, it's a theory crafting tool for gear ranking.
http://www.codeplex.com/Rawr

[Rowah]

Yeah that Heory crafting stuff is nifty, but I uh am a simple southern boy I just need a list to say "this R gud" and you can get  it from here!

[Alysandir]

I find these things to be of mixed usefulness because quite often they are based on either unsound theorycrafting or misassumptions.

Perfect example....both Rawr and Gear Wishlist say that this badge shield [Protective Barricade of the Light] (Naxx10 badges, no less), is better than my current shield, [Aegis of Damnation]. Comparing them head-to-head, this is what I would gain if I went with their recommendation:

+ 18 stam
+ 15 mp5
- 5 int
- 11 spell crit
- 1 spell power
- 28 haste

So, this is a "better" shield, even tho it has worse stats in all the key categories.  What gives? I'll tell you what. Their theorycrafting is completely predicated on maximizing throughput over a 10 minute fight. The only problem with this is that A) there really aren't too many 10 minute fights so far in Wrath, and B) paladins aren't a throughput class that generally has to worry about mana. We're all about burst healing. But under the premise of their theorycrafting, mp5 is huge and spell crit and haste are marginalized, which is the exact opposite of what it should be.

Just saying, take it with a grain of salt.

-Alys

[Rowah]

When I check out Aly and use wowhead for the gear check it says [Voice of Reason] is better than what you have and does not even list the one you had in the top 5 as being better than current slot.

[Krystalus]

Yeah a complete grain of salt. The gear listed doesn't take into account that some specs seem to like certain gear over others. Trinkets would be a good example of this. There is a blue haste trinket from a heroic that is better than most other trinkets for a hunter if you have a max hit cap already, but it doesn't list it as being all that valuable. My damage meters would disagree, +400 haste procing all the time vs some AP or another boost procing every so often doesn't compare.

[Rowah]

All the time eh KRyst?

[Saean]

I find these things to be of mixed usefulness because quite often they are based on either unsound theorycrafting or misassumptions.

Perfect example....both Rawr and Gear Wishlist say that this badge shield [Protective Barricade of the Light] (Naxx10 badges, no less), is better than my current shield, [Aegis of Damnation]. Comparing them head-to-head, this is what I would gain if I went with their recommendation:

+ 18 stam
+ 15 mp5
- 5 int
- 11 spell crit
- 1 spell power
- 28 haste

So, this is a "better" shield, even tho it has worse stats in all the key categories.  What gives? I'll tell you what. Their theorycrafting is completely predicated on maximizing throughput over a 10 minute fight. The only problem with this is that A) there really aren't too many 10 minute fights so far in Wrath, and B) paladins aren't a throughput class that generally has to worry about mana. We're all about burst healing. But under the premise of their theorycrafting, mp5 is huge and spell crit and haste are marginalized, which is the exact opposite of what it should be.

Just saying, take it with a grain of salt.

-Alys

Bah I show top 3 shields for you being [Voice of Reason], [Shield of Assimilation], [Aegis of Damnation] at the default settings (and after applying raid buffs).  The defaults show it expects a 6min fight and it expects you to use holy shock somehow....strange.  There's quite a few options in Rawr now for healadins (in particular burst scale looks funky and cool!)

Absolutely you need to understand what the tool is trying to do do before you trust it implicitly but as rowah suggests sometimes a simple list is what you need...sometimes something more complicated.  As Kryst suggests however be sure if you are trusting something more complicated you understand the limitations (proc's in general are very poorly modeled by most of these).

I love the idea behind how Rawr is developed (at least for ret paladins) so I'm a huge fan.  I think some of the other class/spec options are very good as well but I do know a few are...not.

[Alysandir]

When I check out Aly and use wowhead for the gear check it says [Voice of Reason] is better than what you have and does not even list the one you had in the top 5 as being better than current slot.

No idea. When I checked it out, Voice of Reason was at the top (where it should be, I agree it's best of slot), but my current shield was like number 5, and the badge shield I listed number 4.

-Alys

[Alysandir]

OK, I see what happened. My results came from "Lootrank", where it looks like you guys were examining the results of "Wowhead". The two are very diffrent it appears, which is sort of my point, in that everyone theorycrafts differently.

-Alys

[Rowah]

Yeah, each one seems to result in varying lists Some better define based on class/spec than others.  The idea is, no list is perfect, thats why Rawr is so nifty, it can theorycraft it out to show you what "your" best in slot is.

[Taniko]

That is one heck of a website, Row!  Thanks for the heads up.  It really lets you know when to put that huge enchantment on, or not.

Nice discussion.

/hugs,
Tani