Gear's certainly important--don't get me wrong. The game revolves around getting better gear as you progress through the levels since better gear aids your gameplay. It does not replace your gameplay however, and "better" gear can be hard to determine. You can't just say that blue gear is better than green. It isn't always. As you already know, the perfect wand for a level 30 priest isn't the perfect wand for a level 30 warlock. Or even for a level 35 priest! Things change. Good gear becomes less good. What is good for my character isn't good for yours. How do you decide the best gear for your current situation? How do you even know what gear you can use?
First, know what gear your character can use and what, if anything, they can make. To do that, research your character class and profession. I like to start at WOW Wiki's descriptions of classes and professions. Taking the druids as an example of a class, you see that they can only use cloth and leather armor, and are able to use daggers, staffs, maces and pole arms . So if you come across a nice shield while playing as a druid, the only thing you can do is sell it or give it away to a friend or a guild bank. You can't use it yourself. That assumes that our hypothetical shield is not Bind on Pickup (BOP) which means once you touch it, it is yours whether you can use it or not. No one else can use it. When it comes to choosing a profession, figure out what you can make and who can use it. There's no sense in becoming an engineer if you can't sell or use the stuff you make and only a limited range of your alts (if any) can use it either.
http://www.wowwiki.com/Class
http://www.wowwiki.com/Professions
That is the first step: know yourself and what gear you can use or make.
The second step is cheating by using all the game resources available to you. Become familiar with the blogs and websites that talk about the characters you like to play. Often the writer will post about their gear choices and how well they worked out. Take advantage of their knowledge in choosing your own gear. The drawback to this approach is that your playing style may not be exactly the same and the writer may not know what they are talking about. Probably the best places to look at the websites focused on one class as many folks contribute information. This site, for example, has a feral dps druids gear methodology. To search for other class gear listings use the upper left hand corner search box and type "gear" and your class. Whatever I've found and saved on Blog will show up.
http://druid.wikispaces.com/ToskksDPSGearMethod
Here a hunter talks about item level and using iLevel to choose the best gear to play as a hunter. Note that this information is now visible in Blizzard's normal UI but that wasn't always the case. The followup article in the second link below which gives examples.
http://www.wow.com/2009/06/11/scattered-shots-what-you-see-is-not-always-what-you-get/
http://www.brigwyn.com/2009/06/15/so-lets-talk-more-about-upgrades/
Now how do you choose exactly what sword out of hundreds that you want given your class/profession/level? There are a lot of tools available to help you sort through gear. Knowing what they are and how to use them is the third step in managing gear. First and foremost of all the resources is the Armory which is Blizzard's database of all the stuff in the game. You can look up anything here.
http://www.wowarmory.com/
However, the Armory is limited to What and Where information. It does not tell you what gear is best for you. It just describes the gear and where it can be found or bought. There are many websites that take the Armory information and make it more useful for the player looking at gear.
The Popularity Contest for Gear
Interested in the most popular gear sets? Armory Data Mining is for you. Most high levels and classes are listed on the right hand side. Click and look. This is a popularity contest, though. Do you really want to use the gear that 3,000 teenagers on your realm choose because it looks sick? Or because they read about it on a website? Besides, Zardoz started pulling this together with the higher levels and if you have a fairly new character, your information's not here yet.
http://armorydatamine.wordpress.com/
GEAR COMPARISON WEBSITES
There are many sites that compare gear. Let's start with Gear Wishlist. Plug in your character and realm information and it'll recommend what gear you should look for. The gear recommendations are based on gear rankings pulled together from many sources. It's useful, but doesn't take the nuiances of your character and playing style into consideration. The list you'll get is fairly comprehensive and is divided into chest, back, fingers, etc. The drawbacks of using this site is that you may be given ten blue items without any way to tell which might be the very best and sometimes there is no location information. If it is a quest item, you are not told which quest so you'll have to look that up elsewhere. However, move your mouse over an item and a little window with details about it pops into view.
http://gear-wishlist.appspot.com/
Lootzoor is one of the sources Gear Wishlist uses for its ranking. It gives you gear options for each slot. Whether you use Gear Wishlist or Lootzor is probably personal preference although Gear Wishlist may have a better ranking as it draws from multiple sources. Then again, maybe not.
http://www.lootzor.com/
Quick Armory works the same way as Gear Wishlist. Plug in a character's name and realm and you'll see the current gear for that character. This is useful when you want to check out the gear of that mage that is knocking off everything in sight. It's great for looking up someone's stats. Note the new bar chart ranking added to the results. The Solo MMO Player thinks this might be buggy so don't depend on it exclusively.
http://www.quickarmory.com/
Quick Armory differs from Gear Wishlist in that it has has Quick Armory Stats (next link below) to compare gear you are curious about. Again, this doesn't take one's playing style into consideration which is important if the gear you are comparing is very close statistically.
http://www.epgpweb.com/help/gearpoints
WOWhead's Item Comparison does the same thing as Quick Armory's quick armory stats page. It doesn't look quite as detailed as Quick Armory's Stats but it has a nice description of how to use the comparison tool that makes sense to the casual user.
http://www.wowhead.com/?compare
There are other databases which relate to gear but don't rate it for you. Want to see what loot is available for your class? Click on one of the icons at the top of the page to get started. The downside of using this database is that this is out of date as it is current as of patch 3.0 and we are on patch 3.2.2 now.
http://www.wow-loot.com/
There are addons that judge in-game players and their gear like the addon NVgearscore. Use them at your own risk. After all, you often haven't a clue if the person you are scanning actually knows how to play the game. They look great but their gear might be inappropriate for their character and playing style, or they may not know how to use it. Don't you remember the old "don't judge a book by its cover" saying? It didn't get to be a cliche by being untrue.
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/nvgearscore.aspx
PAWN and RAWR
These two are addons for comparing gear specifically for your own character. They take information from your character and its tree and evaluate and compare gear that will work for you. The Solo MMO Player chooses his gear based on PAWN. Many folks don't want to clutter up their UI with addons that have to be maintained and reloaded after every big patch, but the Solo MMO Player finds PAWN worth all the trouble. It is based on statistics for the various classes, which means I am constantly scouring the World Wide Web for scale tags, which is what PAWN calls those stats. (All those I've found are posted somewhere on the Solo MMO Player blog. Search on scale tags in the upper left hand corner's search box to see what I have gathered.) Here's a bit about how PAWN works.
http://www.wowinsider.com/2009/01/05/compare-gear-easily-with-pawn/
You can download Pawn at Curse.com. Note the link to the unofficial Pawn forums where you can grab scale tags to plug into your calculations.
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/pawn.aspx
The ReadMe information for PAWN is spelled out here.
http://worldofwarcraft.filefront.com/file/Pawn%3B83933
Here's a detail explanation of how to use it with screen shots. Click on the tiny thumbnails to get a better view.
http://flameshock.blogspot.com/2008/07/softcore-pawn-how-to-use-loot-ranking.html
Here is the Pawn forum.
http://pawnmod.trenchrats.com/viewforum.php?f=1
Here's information about installing the addon and where the documentation lies.
http://pawnmod.trenchrats.com/viewtopic.php?t=2
How do you install PAWN?
just like every other addon: exit your WoW, and copy the PAWN-folders into your Interface\Addon-Directory. (e.g. D:\World of Warcraft\Interface\AddOns\)
be sure you got TWO new directories:
- VgerCore
- PAWN
now restart WoW again.
More about installing all addons and how to check for errors.
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/pawn.aspx
Now for RAWR. Here is the RAWR site. The second link is to the Druid WIki with further RAWF information. RAWR started out being just for druids so it is a particularly good tool for the druids.
http://www.codeplex.com/Rawr
http://druid.wikispaces.com/Rawr
Here's a review by Big Bear Butt Blogger, who has used RAWR for a long time. Make sure you read through the comments as some folks believe it overstates usefulness of some items or is less useful for some classes.
http://thebigbearbutt.com/2009/06/12/as-long-as-im-repeating-myself/
Other addons--Tank Points is another gear comparison addon with the guide to using it in the link below. The drawback to this addon is it seems slanted towards tanks and death knights. It is not as popular as PAWN and RAWR.
http://deathknight.info/2009/06/gravitys-guide-to-using-tank-points/
GEAR TIP
WOW Insider documents a tip they apparently have mentioned in their podcasts--as of Patch 3.1, when you are in your character screen you can hold down Alt and see all the gear in your bag that sits in that slot. Details here.
http://www.wow.com/2009/05/26/tip-show-possible-slot-gear-on-character-screen/
CONCLUSION
I hope all this information helps you evaluate and assess your own gear and that you might be able to get in the game. Use these tools and you can decide for yourself just how valid The Great Gear Myth is.
Interested in the most popular gear sets? Armory Data Mining is for you. Most high levels and classes are listed on the right hand side. Click and look. This is a popularity contest, though. Do you really want to use the gear that 3,000 teenagers on your realm choose because it looks sick? Or because they read about it on a website? Besides, Zardoz started pulling this together with the higher levels and if you have a fairly new character, your information's not here yet.
http://armorydatamine.wordpress.com/
GEAR COMPARISON WEBSITES
There are many sites that compare gear. Let's start with Gear Wishlist. Plug in your character and realm information and it'll recommend what gear you should look for. The gear recommendations are based on gear rankings pulled together from many sources. It's useful, but doesn't take the nuiances of your character and playing style into consideration. The list you'll get is fairly comprehensive and is divided into chest, back, fingers, etc. The drawbacks of using this site is that you may be given ten blue items without any way to tell which might be the very best and sometimes there is no location information. If it is a quest item, you are not told which quest so you'll have to look that up elsewhere. However, move your mouse over an item and a little window with details about it pops into view.
http://gear-wishlist.appspot.com/
Lootzoor is one of the sources Gear Wishlist uses for its ranking. It gives you gear options for each slot. Whether you use Gear Wishlist or Lootzor is probably personal preference although Gear Wishlist may have a better ranking as it draws from multiple sources. Then again, maybe not.
http://www.lootzor.com/
Quick Armory works the same way as Gear Wishlist. Plug in a character's name and realm and you'll see the current gear for that character. This is useful when you want to check out the gear of that mage that is knocking off everything in sight. It's great for looking up someone's stats. Note the new bar chart ranking added to the results. The Solo MMO Player thinks this might be buggy so don't depend on it exclusively.
http://www.quickarmory.com/
Quick Armory differs from Gear Wishlist in that it has has Quick Armory Stats (next link below) to compare gear you are curious about. Again, this doesn't take one's playing style into consideration which is important if the gear you are comparing is very close statistically.
http://www.epgpweb.com/help/gearpoints
WOWhead's Item Comparison does the same thing as Quick Armory's quick armory stats page. It doesn't look quite as detailed as Quick Armory's Stats but it has a nice description of how to use the comparison tool that makes sense to the casual user.
http://www.wowhead.com/?compare
There are other databases which relate to gear but don't rate it for you. Want to see what loot is available for your class? Click on one of the icons at the top of the page to get started. The downside of using this database is that this is out of date as it is current as of patch 3.0 and we are on patch 3.2.2 now.
http://www.wow-loot.com/
There are addons that judge in-game players and their gear like the addon NVgearscore. Use them at your own risk. After all, you often haven't a clue if the person you are scanning actually knows how to play the game. They look great but their gear might be inappropriate for their character and playing style, or they may not know how to use it. Don't you remember the old "don't judge a book by its cover" saying? It didn't get to be a cliche by being untrue.
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/nvgearscore.aspx
PAWN and RAWR
These two are addons for comparing gear specifically for your own character. They take information from your character and its tree and evaluate and compare gear that will work for you. The Solo MMO Player chooses his gear based on PAWN. Many folks don't want to clutter up their UI with addons that have to be maintained and reloaded after every big patch, but the Solo MMO Player finds PAWN worth all the trouble. It is based on statistics for the various classes, which means I am constantly scouring the World Wide Web for scale tags, which is what PAWN calls those stats. (All those I've found are posted somewhere on the Solo MMO Player blog. Search on scale tags in the upper left hand corner's search box to see what I have gathered.) Here's a bit about how PAWN works.
http://www.wowinsider.com/2009/01/05/compare-gear-easily-with-pawn/
You can download Pawn at Curse.com. Note the link to the unofficial Pawn forums where you can grab scale tags to plug into your calculations.
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/pawn.aspx
The ReadMe information for PAWN is spelled out here.
http://worldofwarcraft.filefront.com/file/Pawn%3B83933
Here's a detail explanation of how to use it with screen shots. Click on the tiny thumbnails to get a better view.
http://flameshock.blogspot.com/2008/07/softcore-pawn-how-to-use-loot-ranking.html
Here is the Pawn forum.
http://pawnmod.trenchrats.com/viewforum.php?f=1
Here's information about installing the addon and where the documentation lies.
http://pawnmod.trenchrats.com/viewtopic.php?t=2
How do you install PAWN?
just like every other addon: exit your WoW, and copy the PAWN-folders into your Interface\Addon-Directory. (e.g. D:\World of Warcraft\Interface\AddOns\)
be sure you got TWO new directories:
- VgerCore
- PAWN
now restart WoW again.
More about installing all addons and how to check for errors.
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/pawn.aspx
Now for RAWR. Here is the RAWR site. The second link is to the Druid WIki with further RAWF information. RAWR started out being just for druids so it is a particularly good tool for the druids.
http://www.codeplex.com/Rawr
http://druid.wikispaces.com/Rawr
Here's a review by Big Bear Butt Blogger, who has used RAWR for a long time. Make sure you read through the comments as some folks believe it overstates usefulness of some items or is less useful for some classes.
http://thebigbearbutt.com/2009/06/12/as-long-as-im-repeating-myself/
Other addons--Tank Points is another gear comparison addon with the guide to using it in the link below. The drawback to this addon is it seems slanted towards tanks and death knights. It is not as popular as PAWN and RAWR.
http://deathknight.info/2009/06/gravitys-guide-to-using-tank-points/
GEAR TIP
WOW Insider documents a tip they apparently have mentioned in their podcasts--as of Patch 3.1, when you are in your character screen you can hold down Alt and see all the gear in your bag that sits in that slot. Details here.
http://www.wow.com/2009/05/26/tip-show-possible-slot-gear-on-character-screen/
CONCLUSION
I hope all this information helps you evaluate and assess your own gear and that you might be able to get in the game. Use these tools and you can decide for yourself just how valid The Great Gear Myth is.
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Copyright Solo MMO Player at http://solommo.blogspot.com
