How Ready Are You?
A friend of mine told me about a great website that objectively rates your gear and shows you which instances and raids that you can expect to do well on currently. It also shows you which instances and raids you can expect to get upgrades from.
When you enter your character name and realm, it looks up your current gear based on what is in the wow Armory, and compares it to what you ought to have.
When I checked out my main character on this site, it listed three issues for me to look at. The first was one low-level item, the second was upgradeable enchants, and the third was one unenchanted item. This gives me a really good idea about what I should go for in terms of my gearing.
For instance, I know that the next thing I need to do in terms of reputation is to get myself revered with Knights of the Ebon Blade. They have an enchantment for the head slot that will give me extra attack power. This is the one unenchanted item that I have, and thus it is the most important thing that I can do to improve my enchantments.
Second, my worst item is a trinket that I am already working to replace. Only after both of these items are done will I actively seek to improve other gear. Of course, if I end up getting better gear I will accept the upgrades, but it won’t be what I am actively working towards.
The assessment also takes a look at sockets and gems, and looks at hit rating. In my case, my gems are fine but my hit rating still needs 92 more to cap.
There is an area on the report where it says that talent builds and talent checks are under development, so presumably it will also at some point begin to check your talents to determine whether you have chosen correctly. I am not sure how this will be implemented, but I am looking forward to seeing it.
At the very bottom there is a summary of your gear given in both numeric and graphical form. The numeric is simply displayed as a PVE gear score, which in my case is 318.29. The graphical display is in two parts: the top part shows you which raids and instances you should expect to get gear upgrades from, and the bottom part shows you which raids and instances you should perform well in based on your current gear. In my case it shows me that I should be ready for the first three 10 man raids, and that I should also expect to get upgrades from here.
What I really like about this site is that it gives us an objective rating that we can show to Guild mates to explain why we think they are ready for something or not. More than this, it also shows us precisely what they can improve giving them clear objective goals.
The only thing that I would like to see different on this site, is for the grass to begin with the lower five man instances. Perhaps it does so for lower-level characters, meaning below 80, but I have some Guild mates at level 80 who simply aren’t ready for most of the instances below this. It would be nice to pinpoint exactly where they ought to be, but at least we can see which slots they most desperately need to improve. And the truth of the matter is, they really don’t need to be doing five man instances in order to get upgrades. They can do so by grinding reputation like the rest of us have.
We are looking at implementing this site as the means of a objectively rating whether or not people are ready to run instances with us at this level. Of course, what this site cannot do is objectively determine how well the player can actually play the game. You can be geared to the nines, and still play stupidly and cause a wipe in even the lowest instances. There is no website that can possibly check that — at least not now.
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