Post by anywherenotes
That site is useful.
However don't trust everything it says.
As any similar website, it attaches weights to stats. So for example str=2 and ap=1 for a warrior. However if a warrior is buffed, than str=2.2 ap=1
So than if item has 100 str, it's as good as an item having 220 ap.
That's all fine and good, but now we get to +hit/+expertise
What's their worth? well it depends if you're hit capped or not. If you're not, it's good. if you are aleady hit-capped, than the weight is 0, but website doesn't do that, it just has some arbitrary weight assigned to those stats.
So I started making fun of some guildies when they look at maxdps each time an item drops, but most of them do, and it's not the battle I want to fight.
Basically if you know your class, you don't need that website. There are very nice addons which give you the delta per stat between yours and the new item. So when you click on it, you don't have to figure out the delta yourself. That is very useful.
Edit: You can actually look up weight scales for druids here:
http://www.wowhead.com/?forums&topic=101759&p=1167711
Post by Darkwraith01
MaxDPS.com is useful, but more as a rough guideline then actual upgrade list. The same goes for the "Find and Upgrade" option in wowarmory.com.
Another useful source is RAWR. It's free and easy to download.
It will take some time to use it well, and some experience with other classes buff abilities too. However, after you get the hang of it, configure it correctly, you can do a lot of useful things, such as:
- Optimize your rotations
- Optimize what gear works best for what class/spec
- Optimize enchants and gems
- Find out what stat has the greatest impact when talking about upgrades
RAWR allows you to plot scailing charts for attack power, spellpower, haste, crit, etc. Those are very useful, because you can see clearly when a stat starts hitting diminishing returns, for example.
You can get RAWR here:
http://www.codeplex.com/Rawr
Post by anywherenotes
I dunno wtf you are smoking but MaxDPS totally does hit cap. There's a little checkbox.
despite that, it isn't perfect. It's a tool, and that's it. Only as good as the user.
Maybe I'm just tired, where's the checkbox:
http://www.maxdps.com/paladin/retribution.phplet me know what to search for, or which part of the page to look at.