Pointscore, Weights, and Updates

The site has been through a pretty large update today. First, there are new filters pertaining to group size. You can now filter by 10 man, 25 man, and items not found in either.

The backend of the site has been recoded to parse Wowhead's XML item feeds and automatically find healing stats relevant to holy paladins. What this means is that a "pointscore" can be calculated based on item stats. This is calculated via weights. I have some default weights in the website (mostly how I rank the items with some wiggle room). It's important to note that items are still manually ranked by me. The stat parse and pointscore are not absolute, because sometimes items have certain color sockets or meld differently at the level of gear the item is at. For example, the Plague Scientist Boots score highest, but they're rated under mp5 alternatives manually because other ilvl277 items are only available without mp5 and the balance of gear shifts to not favor wearing those boots.

If you don't agree with that, then you can enter your own weights and sort the item slot pages based on the pointscore by clicking the column. The format of slot pages is different, though the old layout still remains as an option if you want to view it that way (see link at the top of slot pages).

Weight values are limited to positive values under 10 (under 100 for sockets) so you can put pretty large gaps in stats if you want. I suggest writing down your preferred weights if you find some nice ones because the site stores your values based on session variables and is not permanent. To find out more on the Pointscore, like the formula, visit the pointscore page. Weights aren't shown on the main index because those items are determined only via filters and manual rankings. You'll have to visit the slot pages to see pointscore comparisons.

If anything's broken or weird email me via the contact page. I hope this allows people to view holy paladin items ranked how they prefer stats more accurately.

About Leggings

If someone who works at Blizzard sees this post, I'd love to know the reasoning of having SIX versions of sp/haste/crit itemlevel 264 leggings in the game while there are zero versions of this at itemlevel 277. Our choices for leggings at the heroic 25man level are abysmal, with crit/mp5 being the only choice. Not to mention there's only 2 (one being tier). You had it right with the ToC mail leggings (haste/mp5) but none of those exist in the entire Icecrown zone.

Lich King Items

Lich King weapons added. Pretty disappointing if you're a HL paladin and have a Val'anyr as there's really nothing for you to see on the Lich King's loot table at all. I'm not going to run the math on if the heroic sword/mace are better than Val'anyr in the long run, but I have a feeling it still won't be worth it to upgrade due to the unique Val'anyr proc and the fact that it helps us immensely with our nuke heals. I was expecting trinkets on LK personally, and I was hoping for one with intellect.

Differences going from Val'anyr to

Bloodsurge, Kel'Thuzad's Blade of Agony:
+44 intellect (including socket)
+5 crit rating
+22 haste
+272 spellpower

We're talking some serious numbers. I'm really considering the weapon, and I'd love for a theorycraft guru to dig in and see if this weapon is finally the breaking point of Val'anyr.

Frost Wing Items Live

In preparation for tomorrow, the Frost Wing items minus Lich King are now set on the "available" filter.

New BIS Item Filters

I have redesigned how I filter the items in my site's database. There are currently 4 useful filters on items, including:

1. Available
2. Not Available
3. Hard Mode
4. Normal Mode

You can combine these filters. For example, you could look at only hard mode items that are available. You'd see a lot of TOC exclusive items since ICC hardmodes aren't out yet. It should be noted if you uncheck all difficulties it will reset to the default, and the same goes with available and not available. Since the site does not parse the items themselves (the names/etc are entered by hand) this prevents filters regarding to item stats. If I pursue that further there may be bigger things in store.

You can of course access these filters on the top of all item listing pages and the main index.

Blood Wing Items on "Now Available" Filter

I'll be moving the new blood wing items that are available tomorrow to show up under the "available items". This will happen today so you get a little preview of tomorrow.

Good luck on Blood Princes and Blood Queen!

New Site Feature: Sort by Available Items

As the ICC wings are released I am tagging items if they're actually available ingame or not. You can now click the filter on the list to change to available items only instead of showing the super hardmode items that aren't out yet.