If you are reading WoW blogs you are probably trying to squeeze the last drop of DPS/Heals/Threat etc out of your gear.
You possibly use Rawr or the plethora of gear advisory websites. You may even read Elitist Jerks religiously.
If you are 80!
If you are yet 80.
If you are somewhere between 1-79 you are probably feeling a little neglected.
Be Neglected No More!
I’m going to tell you how to min/max your pre-level cap character!
Min/Max =/= Min/Max
Most importantly, the further you are from 80, the less the traditional Min/Max definition applies.
Traditional: Minimizing less important/irrelevant stats, while maximizing the important ones, the ones that will give you the last dps/hps/tps.
Gnomeaggedon’s definition of pre-level cap Min/Maxing:
Expending the minimum amount of effort/gold to achieve the maximum gear result.
Some rules to gear by when leveling.
It doesn’t matter!
- There is a good change that you will replace your latest “epic” with the next quest handin/drop. So don’t worry about the small stuff.
- When aiming for upgrades look for anything 3,5 even 10 levels ahead – especially quest rewards. The speed at which you can level these days means that you will most likely out level an item as you hand in the quest.
- You can live in starting gear. It’s been done before. People have leveled to max level in their starting gear, or even naked. So don’t worry too much if you are level 60 wearing level 50 gear.
- Sometimes the old gear is as good, if not better than the new. High end Vanilla gear is better than early Burning Crusade. High level BC gear is better than early Northrend gear.
BUT, it may not be worth the effort to get it! - Sometimes an item looks too good to be true… It’s a quest reward? How easy can that be! Just check that it isn’t a reward at the end of a long chain – you will probably be 3 levels past it and into the next expansion before you get it!
Tools
I’m the kind of guy that is happy to abuse his tools. If I have a hammer in my hand and a screw driver in the shed, I will use the hammer to get that screw in.
You are going to be doing a bit of that with these tools, so don’t be a perfectionist!
- Wowhead
- Spreadsheet (Excel, GoogleDocs, whatever)
- Character Profiler
- Rawr
Wowhead.
Until around level 70, Wowhead will be your tool of choice. You could use Rawr, but it is tuned for 80 and Northrend. Sure it has legacy Vanilla and BC data, but now you are using a sledgehammer for get that screw in.
You don’t need a spreadsheet for this stage, but I find it helps to keep it “all on one page”. You are only using it for copy & paste… Don’t panic if you don’t know how to use them!
How to Wowhead your gear into shape.
- Create a profile
- Refresh from armory
- Right click on the item and find upgrades
- Tune the filter
- Go shopping
Create a Profile
You can create a profile after you get yourself a (free) Wowhead account. Do it!
Just search for your character and save it.
Refresh from armory
If you are returning to your profile, you will probably need to resync your character. Sometimes I find this a little buggy, so to force it to refresh, I search for my character again.
Right click on the item and find upgrades
If you right click on any of the items you will get a menu which includes searching for upgrades.
Tip: Middle click on that option to open it in a new tab – that way you can repeat the process and have all your slots ready for review, while keeping your original page.
Tune the filter
You will find that the filter is already pretty much tuned for your class and spec. Some things to change…
Level required: 0-x (x being your current level).
You want to be looking ahead, so change the x to a few levels ahead, leave the 0 as that includes quest rewards which don’t have a level requirement (quests do, quest rewards don’t)
Additional filters
Some worth considering:
- Available in: BC, WoLK (this will exclude the stuff that’s out of your zone range and harder to get items from previous releases)
- Source…
- Quests, Honor, Crafted by… etc. Understand that with this choice you are really cutting down your options – but maybe, just maybe that’s what you need to do.
Go shopping
Get the items that give you the best bang for your buck. Ignore the items that are too hard/expensive etc.
Get items ahead of your level if they are cheap at that point of time, but be prepared to AH, Shard, Vendor items by the time you can use them as you may have found something better – and you will out level it very very fast.
Dual Spec Delight
If like Squidly and Gnomeaggedon, you are dual spec’d you can flick the Spec selection and refresh the search to find gear for your other spec.
This is where having a spreadsheet helps, because your currently equiped item will have different value based on your spec, so being able to track down the spec-specific item’s wowhead value from last time is handy.
OK, enough for today, I should be able to finish the guide off next time as there is less setup required.
- Min/Maxing gear before 80 part 1 (you are reading it!)
- Min/Maxing gear before 80 part 2: Introducing Rawr
- Min/Maxing Gear Before 80 Part 3: Eyeballing the upgrades
Gnomer and Out, Squidly and Stout!
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/11/26/minmaxing-gear…fore-80-part-1/
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