WoW Head guys have built a Profiler that does everything an Armoury tool should, and includes a 3d model of your character. Its worth a look as it gives you a great summary of the character.
Its a damn fine tool. By way of (selfish) exmple here is Mortigen my Death Knight.
A huge amount of the final stage of Warcraft is progression at end game. You can do dailies, or RP to your hearts content, but most players are trying to get the even diminishing returns that comes with improving their gear.
Knowing what gear you should be aiming for is critical; which requires understanding of stats and a bit of math.
Percentages of Ratings, tweaks in dps stats, and all sorts of figures and interrelated numbers that make the small but noticeable difference. Some awesome bloggers, forums, and webpages publish “Best in Slot” or “new to 80s” gear lists. Others even tell you where to find the upgrades. This is golden advice and very often easy to follow.
However if you want to verify an item, dig for what more subtle upgrades you need next, or even just qualify that what you have is reasonable; you’ll need a personal-gear-advice-slave, or some skill with a gear website.
Q. But what if you want to do it yourself, but fear the math?
A. Well you can read on to find out how I do a series of simple steps to create lists of items that are desirable. Teach a man to fish….etc. However the best results are gained if you embrace a little theory, and start crunching.
Warning: This is a long article.
I’ve been looking at WWS for how my runs are performing, and by golly its good to use a tool to keep you honest. It saves on guessing about your input to a run, is a measurable way to see performance, and can be used to make all sorts of sharp value judgments on players (grin).
I’ve been able to:
The free version’s reports only stay active for a week or so on WWS; but that is plenty of time to check-up / flex your e-peen. Certainly a better way to discuss the run afterward than just using impressions/hunches from all the players.
By way of practical example I was debating the difference between having Expertise 5 and 6.25, for my Death Knight. I compared a recent run in H Naxx with a run a while ago and I can say without question that the extra expertise is the thing keeping my DK competitive. The increase from 5 to 6.25 was a bump in dps; and I’m pretty sure that hitting the magic 6.5 number will be a good thing. Although getting the extra 0.25 will be a pain on other stats at the moment.
World of Logs does the same thing, in a more graphical way. Same upload process, slightly different quirks. Its worth checking out both and see which you prefer. Out of the two I think I’ll use WWS for a while longer, then switch to WOL for a solid few months. Both give you all basics.
Go grab, review, and use: http://www.worldoflogs.com/ and http://wowwebstats.com/
Being AFK gives me a chance to write up thoughts on the content we’re progressing on, so here are some altogether scattered Ulduar thoughts. Short version: get into Ulduar if you have not yet. Its great.
Apparently Patch 3.2 will lower the cost, increase the speed, and lower the level requirement for mounts.
Linkage via WoW.com, and the WoW Forums.
That is great; bring it on. Especially the speed increase for normal flyers. Nothing but win for anyone leveling at the moment. I’m happy about this even though I purchased normal riding yesterday on an alt. Continue reading
Nothing suspect about a level 1 warrior pinging all classes and such. His name seems to be gibberish. Nothing at all. What strikes me as odd is how (after how easy the interface is) this guy couldn’t even use a macro properly. Fail.
So hard to get good help these days. I reported him just to be sure, and at least that keeps his spam from interfearing with Topper and Miller’s spam.
Q. What happens when your mates group with you in WoW?
A. All sorts of stupidity, see screen shots below after the fold.
Warcraft Empire Online are thieves. They may also be snivelling creepy bastards, but I have no proof of that. They might be perfect humans too, but no proof of that either. But they are content thieves. Continue reading
Looks like patch 3.1.3 is going live, and there is nothing huge in this for my Death Knight or Priest. Linkage to the wow.com site; go read. If not, well then this is a preview of what I think anyway.
My highlights are:
* The noise of me snubbing my nose with my tongue out at the rest of the community who whine about Death Knights.
** But oh please, waste all the bandwidth on “who is the best {class} on the server” or “@{playername} the ninja” posts. That never gets old.
*** Another class gets an adjustment, and there is no bad language. Note please this is the way to handle this; or at least not mention it officially (like the Warrior buffs – grats guys).
**** I’d kill Arthas, the new King of Stormwind, and several hundred cute baby seals for my own suit of Voltron armour in WoW. Give me a hero class of Goblin Mech-o-War. /drool, and we can use the sounds from the ABC Warrior in the Judge Dread film.
My plan over the weekend was to put a few levels on my alt Hunter, get a heap more badges and stone keeper shards, and do some instances on my Death Knight and my alt Priest. Simple enough plan, but I did not count on the Dread-Pug-o-Fail.
Friday evening was nice and slow
Friday night was ok, in one run with some guys from an old guild (/wave Exile on Nagrand folks) we were lamenting how easy the heroics are now. We did heroic Violet Hold quickly, easily, with no deaths. The mobs and bosses died so fast it was like doing it on normal.
One mate and I lamented the easy mode, and both agreed that the new 5 man coming better bring a huge increase in difficulty. It was pretty close to be an elitist prick moment, but when you can rofl-stomp an instance that fast, you do get cocky.
Then Sunday made me humble
Again I queued up for heroic Violet Hold. Pug group this time, but they seemed ready. Most folks had a nice blue and purple mix of gear, and nobody was stacking the wrong stats. It looked totally doable.
First pull was a bit of a mess, as a few of the team were not quite ready, even after saying “r” in chat. We go through the motions, no deaths; shitty performance by a few but we continued. Portals 2-4 were ok with a slightly smoother approach and cleaner result; but the kills were still taking ages, and my average geared Shadow Priest was doing way too well on the damage meter. Then it all went to shit.
I was aghast, and just standing thinking “great, incoming boss with 2x missing dps and a healer who only had 15 minutes to begin with”. Pug runs shit me. Had I not spent the swear jar money, there would be more coins flying into it.
So I guess I’ve not learned my lesson about pugs yet. I still expect players to be considerate, on time, and communicate. Pug players it seems are still totally too casual and do not consider it inappropriate to waste other people’s time.
I will still try to approach Pugs with optimism, but I now use a mod that tracks the toons I’ve grouped with; and allows me to up and down rank them. This means that my optimism will eventually be tempered with a statistical body of knowledge on who is a total waste of oxygen.
If I meet Captain-Boom-Less, Mr-No-Heals-Mom, or AFK-w-Skinning I will know, and drop group immedietley.
TyphoonAndrew's - Eye of the Storm 