Help with gear

That title's a call for help, not an offer.

Pretty much all my gear is now of a similar item level and relatively similar stats. I've got a surplus of it, some with more haste than crit, some with more spirit than haste, and all with varying amounts of hit and spellpower. I know the weightings, but still my head hurts.

I'm firmly of the opinion that the differences are so small as to be academic. But what the hell, I may as well get it right.

So, what do you use to help you evaluate gear? Are there any models out there like I've seen for mages? Any speadsheets that work out stat weightings for me? Any sites I should be using, or addons? Pretty please?

Putting quests into perspective

If you've ever taken stock of the number and scale of the quests facing you in Outland and shrunk back from the task through sheer intimidation, a shadow priest called Apanthrone on the US Bleeding Hollow server might have exactly what you need.

The volume of quests in Outland is staggering. Three times I have managed to ding 70 without even stepping foot in Netherstorm or Shadowmoon Valley. On one occasion, I hadn't even made it to Blade's Edge Mountains. This is great for your bank account, as you rack up the gold instead of experience. But the quests lines at seventy are massive, dragging you all over Outland and into instances and raids. Unless you luck out and find a bunch of people on the same quest line at the same time, it's all a bit overwhelming. And when you are faced with repeating the same quests multiple times on different toons, you'd be forgiven for passing them over in favour of your bog-standard dailies: easier gold in less time.

At least, that's how I've always looked at it. Maybe if I'd stopped to consider the story behind the quest, it might have felt differently. But as it stands, one thing that has always put me off progressing with the end-game quests is the sheer scale of the task. Apanthrone's answer was to take all the major quest lines and put them in one brilliant chart. I've seen this done for raid attunement before but never full quest lines. If, like me, you find yourself grinding primals or finishing up dailies because you can't think what else to do, this could be your ticket back into the game. I love it.

Something to aspire to

I've updated my blog roll to reflect my reading habits. These are the elites of WoW blogging, the bloggers I want to be when I grow up. The latest additions are:

Big Bear Butt blogger — inspired tanking advice and game insights from a feral druid

Blessing of Kings — a great blog about the paladin class; informative and thought-provoking

Mania's Arcania — the genius behind petopia, a titan among bloggers (if you play a hunter)

World of Matticus — one of WoW Insider's newest columnists, Matticus writes brilliantly about holy priesting and raid healing

Making money

If you are an avid reader of WoW Insider then you will already know about this new blog — and if not, why not?

WoW Investor promises to boost your in-game finances with auction house and trade tips and suggestions. They say: "It should only take you about 10 minutes once or twice a day to make the necessary purchases and sales; and the only travel it involves is running between the auctioneers and your mailbox - easy right? and sure as hell beats mindless farming!"

Amen to that. I'm going to start by looking into their advice on spellthreads. I'm lucky enough to have both the scryer mystic spellthread and the aldor silver spellthread patterns by virtue of my reputational volte-face. I'm slowly scrabbling my way up to aldor exalted to get the golden spellthread too.

I wonder how universal their advice will prove to be. Auction house prices tend to fluctuate wildly by server, and there's a chance personal experience will not match the advice. Still, I appreciate any and all help I can get to boost my flagging funds and will be keeping a close eye on future tips.

Help with the rep grind

If I'm ever gonna get my hands on that gavel of unearthed secrets, I need to hit exalted with lower city. I'm not good with numbers so anything which helps me grind that rep is fine by me. This nifty calculator does just that. It takes all your Outland reputations and works out what you need to do to hit the next level.

I'm currently honoured with lower city and need 6942 rep to exalted. I see from the calculator that I need to clear shadow labyrinth 3.5 times to get there. I'd have to clear sethekk halls nearly six times for the equivalent rep, and auchenai crypts over nine which is a pitty, because I loathe lab.

The calculator rather usefully tells you how much rep is available from quests, and in which zones, although it can't tell you how many of those quests you have completed. And for factions with repeatable turn-in quests or with rep-per-kill, it shows how many turn ins or kill to the next level. (I noted rather grimly that I would have to kill about 1900 ogres to get mag'har exalted on my hunter, although I can turn in warbeads too once I've finished the grind with consortium).

One thing it doesn't do is go beyond the next rep level, which is a small shame. It just means I have to go back again after those lab/halls/crypts runs. But otherwise, a very use tool to have. Worth a side bar link even, I think.

How to be imba

If you are focused on improving your character and gearing up for end game, a new tool called Imba could be a good place to start. All credit to Zarah, the Pugnacious Priest, for sharing this with her readers.

Imba claims to be the first World of Warcraft character auditor, and from my early tests I'd say it's a pretty nifty little tool.

All you have to do is put in your server and character name for your report. It looks at your gear, gems, enchants and talent points to come up with an overall pve rating and suggest some instances in your range. It works for all classes, analysing things like hit, spell hit and defence ratings.

Here's my report.

No surprise to learn I have some low quality items and gems, and some gear not yet enchanted (why would I enchant low quality gear!?)

Interestingly, it also suggested I have too many points in shadow weaving. That's something I'll have to look into more closely.

It concludes I have an overall gear rating of 144.85 and should be looking at heroics and Karazhan, which is reassuring.

It would be nice to know what that number actually means — where on the Karazhan scale am I? How much higher would I need to be to be ready for further raids? What kind of improvement can I expect from swapping certain gems or enchants? But overall, it's a very useful tool. I'll be keeping my eye on it as I work to improve my gear, rack up some more enchants and maybe move a few talent points around.