Wowhead got you most of the way.
Rawr is now making the beat out of your bad gear situation, so what else is important?
Tell Me More… What’s Next?
So now you have optimized what you already posses, the time has come to see what you could aim for.
Back to the optimization window (Tools – Optimize), but this time press the button bottom right – Build Upgrade List.
This may take a while… It takes about 30 seconds for Squidly’s Resto gear and about 5 minutes for Squidly’s Elemental gear, of course my new PC will probably do that all a lot faster than my 4 year old one.
I Can Haz That?
The end result will be a long list of potential upgrades. By default this is the overall upgrade – no matter what the slot. You can change that to a specific slot if you want to… But why would you want to?
Export for Analysis
At this point it helps if you have some spread sheeting knowledge, but it isn’t essential. You could just use it as a more permanent list.
Tools | Copy to clipboard.
Paste this in a new page/tab of your spreadsheet.
Have a quick look through it and cut out the irrelevant rows.
Irrelevant Rows?
Pre-80 you really don’t care about the 0.08 upgrade. Likewise if you leave quests in your selection you will be presented with quests you can’t even receive let alone complete before 80.
Now you can see what is (according to Rawr) the best bang for your buck.
You just have to decide whether it’s achievable, affordable and sometimes wearable (instance drops might require a higher level than you possess).
Whatever the case you have now reduced the hundreds of thousands of items down to the tens – and you can clearly see which ones are better than the others!
Filter it out!
If you are using a spreadsheet tool like excel you can use filters. AutoFilter will do the job in Excel.
Once the filter is on, select the drop down for Source and select Custom…
You can put up to 3 filter conditions in here, so come up with some that suit you…
- Begins with “Purchased with”
- Begins with “Crafted by”
- Contains “ToC”
- etc
This can be handy as you enter an instance and you already have a customized loot list at your fingertips, filtered down so you know exactly what you want from this place.
I am including a link here to one of my spreadsheets that I used while leveling. It’s in GoogleDocs for your convenience, but I used Excel.
You will realize pretty quickly I haven’t done anything special. The spreadsheet just serves as a low overhead printable source of the info. If you would prefer to stick to Wowhead or Rawr… Don’t let me stop you!
- Min/Maxing gear before 80 part 1 (Setting the scene & the 1st 70 levels)
- Min/Maxing gear before 80 part 2: (Introducing Rawr)
- Min/Maxing Gear Before 80 Part 3: (you are reading it!)
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/2009/11/30/minmaxing-gear-before-80-part-3/
Sir, that’s an AWESOME bit of work you did here on these 3 posts.
“back in the day”, I did something very similar, but did it manually. The “system” you put together here is much more “automated” and the tools you used are SO much better.
THANKS!!!!
Slik/Balth
I just thought of an unlreated use for the Characterprofiler website: clutter management.
If you’re like me, your bank and/or bags have many different versions of Obscurium’s Widget of Unmemorableness. How many items do you have, that you held on to because it was needed for some quest or something, only to forget about it, or its use?
Happens a lot to me.
Being able to export a sortable list of your complete inventory OUTSIDE of the wow game means you can copy/paste the items into thottbot/etc and see what’s what. Don’t need it anymore? DELETE! Woot!
Again, great info Sir!!!
Totally… I have used it for that for years….
and rep grind planning, quest checking, AH/crafting planning.
Slightly differenttopic, but as it was you that pointed out my omission, I will reply here until I get the chance to edit the post…
Re: Character Profiler + Rawr
You don’t have to use the website, but it’s just nice for out of game planning.
What you are looking for is the characterprofiler.lua file in your “global” /account level WTF folder
WTF\Account\AccountName\SavedVariables
Rawr will remember the path in future even through updates
Woot grats on the Wow.com mention!
[...] Min/Maxing Gear Before 80 Part 3: Eyeballing the upgrades [...]
[...] Min/Maxing Gear Before 80 Part 3 [...]
Just a little advice and maybe an idea for another post: Maximizing your DPS its not always the best aproach for leveling purposes. You already have a mana regen set and a burst set… What kind of stats would you like to maximize when you are on your way to 80?
Keep the good job!!
Hey Krytus, good point.
I built those two sets because early on mana is an issue for Resto shaman, particularly in instances, but I wanted to keep a burst set for the more intense, but short fights…
The added advantage being that I wasn’t vendoring gear that would be more useful once mana ceased to be an issue.
From memory there is a 3rd option in Rawr for Resto Shaman optimization… I think it’s survivability. Elemental shaman had a lot more options.
Of course Rawr is built for end game raid optimization, so you need to use a bit of your imagination… still you are looking for spellpower (kill fast less damage taken and mana used), mana regen (less downtime) and of course stamina (make sure you survive).
I know that when leveling as Ele I went down that path. Quick kills and mana ( mana regen) to spare (using mana stream totem as well) for heals = no downtime.
Similar with my Mage. High spell power with (frost)fire spec meant I rarely got hit (dead mobs do no damage) and rarely stopped for mana.
Ohhh and this is blog comment #4,000… for once I get to score the big one.
Sent from my iPhone
[...] you want to know where the inspiration for those Min/Maxing gear before 80 part 1, 2 & 3 posts came from, then SlikRX (and his bound-to-be-lovely wife – she must be, she plays a [...]
Interesting, I only found this accidentally via a Google search. Thats why I am reading it only now.
I would like to recommend to install the “lootplan” addon via curse.com and then export to lootplan from the Rawr Upgradelist. Then in-game you can paste information into lootplan’s import form.
I recommend you do make a small patch to lootplan which is described in the last post here:
http://rawr.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=58041
In case its not the last post when you read it, you have to look for a message from “dbb1″ which describes how to make a useful change to lootplan.