Zul’gurub adds some powerful enchants for the head, leg, and shoulder slots.
Gear in WoW Classic can be a challenge, but we have several tools to help you out.
If you’re new to our website, keep reading for an overview of each of the features, followed by links for the full tutorials.
It’s also worth checking out “Tips to optimize Classic like a pro” – even if you are familiar with our features already. All tanks, healers, Warriors, Mages, and Rogues should definitely read it, as you all have special handling in the Classic optimizer.
If you’re new to best in bags, it’s a bit like Best in Slot, but using gear that you currently own.
“Back in the day, I built several of the spreadsheets that floated around on Elitist Jerks. Over the years, as the tooling has improved for gearing recommendations (thanks to you all), I’ve become addicted to the Best in Bags functionality. I feel it can be extremely useful in classic – especially if the recommendations change based on player talent choices and chosen roles.”
– Response from our Classic survey
The Best in Bags tool looks at all of the items in your inventory and chooses a best set for you right now. It takes into account your race, talents, and any personal preferences you set.
Mr. Robot does this for all of your specs at once, favoring the best items for your primary spec then optimizing your off specs with the remaining items.
Click for a larger picture
On the left is this player’s currently equipped gear. On the right are Mr. Robot’s suggestions:
Locking in an item turns the lock icon orange.
Speaking of personal preferences like trinkets, you can lock in any item and Mr. Robot will optimize around it. Click on any item in the list to select it and the lock icon will turn orange as shown above with Carrot on a Stick.
This player also probably doesn’t have enchants because they are still farming gear. Best in Bags can accommodate all sorts of personal preferences in the setup step. If this player doesn’t want enchants, they could set the “Enchant Quality” filter to None as shown below. Mr. Robot will keep any enchants you have (removing them would be silly), but he won’t add any new ones.
Once you are happy with your Best in Bags gear recommendations, you can export it to our addon. Get a more in-depth walkthrough for all of these features on Best in Bags tutorial for WoW Classic.
The feature does exactly what you’re thinking: it tells you where to find upgrades around the vast world of Warcraft. You can search several sources from PvP rewards to crafted items to boss loot from dungeons and raids.
Upgrade finder – find best sources for gear upgrades
Below is an example of what results might look like for a search with Onyxia, Molten Core, and Blackwing Lair.
Sample results gear upgrades from Onyxia, Molten Core, and Blackwing Lair
Get the full Upgrade Finder Tutorial.
You can find any number of BiS lists for Classic. We have one too, and it is completely customizable.
“Isn’t BiS simple though, there’s just one list?” Glad you asked – yes and no! Yes, a list can be mathematically determined. But what’s best changes as you deviate from the assumptions used to make a static list, for example:
Below are the filters we let you set to generate a BiS list tailored to you. It also automatically takes your talents into account (which you can also change).
Customization options for your BiS list
As you can see, our Best in Slot list isn’t a static list, it’s a tool. Customize it how you want and Mr. Robot will tell you the best gear to get.
Warcraft has added a lot of nice things to help us manage our inventory throughout the expansions. So going back to Classic Warcraft makes inventory management much more important.
“Bag space is more limited in Classic. I need to know what works best so I can toss/sell/DE the rest. ”
-Response from our Classic survey
The Worst in Bags feature is here to help: Mr. Robot identifies items you don’t need so you can safely disenchant or vendor them.
You can customize the aggressiveness of this list with options like “guaranteed to be junk” which finds exact duplicates that you aren’t using, or “very likely junk” which looks for items that are lower iLevel and not ranking well.
Learn more on the Worst in Bags detailed writeup.
You can start using AMR Classic with a free 1-week trial (no credit card required). If you like it, and we hope you do, you can upgrade with the $10 one-time Classic Upgrade payment.
Both Classic and Retail are covered by the same subscription ($12 a year, or $2 a month). So if you are already a subscriber, you just need to make the $10 one-time payment.
The Classic Upgrade lasts a lifetime. This means if you cancel your subscription, if you later re-subscribe, you still have access to Classic. You will not have to pay the $10 Classic Upgrade fee again. Below is a screenshot of how your account’s billing page would look if you had a monthly subscription and paid for the Classic Upgrade.
I wrote a blog post that talks about the process of making Classic and the decisions behind the pricing for those of you who are curious.
For nearly a decade, we’ve offered premium features to help you gear up in Warcraft. Best in Bags was first launched with Cataclysm to help reforge your gear. Even though we’d been personally playing the game since Vanilla, our site wasn’t around then, so we didn’t have anything to revive for Classic’s relaunch.
We also didn’t think there would be a need for a gear optimizer with Classic – everyone already played it, gear was simpler (or so we thought), and we figured there would be enough information for people to make decisions.
We were wrong.
“In Retail, AMR has been my go-to app for helping me optimize and prioritize gear. I would love to use it for Classic in the same capacity; while folks say the game systems are “simpler”, there are absolutely subtleties best handled by programming.”
-Classic player
Shortly after Classic launched, it became clear that gear wasn’t as simple as it seemed and Best in Bags would actually be pretty darn handy. So we decided to make it for Classic.
Our entire company is just 3 people: a developer (Yellowfive), a designer and theorycrafter (Swol), and me (Zoopercat), a researcher and data guru. We already work full-time on retail Warcraft, so supporting Classic was going to be a massive undertaking.
It seems easy to support Classic – just add in a few stats like Spirit and Hit, remove Azerite, change the talents, etc. It’s never that simple though, is it? Of course we already knew it wouldn’t be easy, but the devil is in the details.
For example, when you load your character, we need to know your ‘spec’ in order to apply the right optimization. Retail WoW has specs built right into the game, Classic does not. Instead, we have to infer your build for Classic by identifying key talent choices. Incorporating those assumptions into the optimizer wasn’t enough – what if someone builds differently than the standard builds? To accommodate everyone, we had to add a way to customize your ‘spec’ in the Classic optimizer.
Situations like this were so common that half way through creating Classic AMR, we ripped so much code apart that only the most basic building blocks from our Retail code were useful. It was like our remodel project required taking the house down to the studs.
But taking something down to the bare bones is often a good thing. Sure it took us way more time than we wanted, we cursed a little along the way (ok, a lot), but the end result is worth it.
As a consumer, I often wonder how companies come up with their pricing on products. Is the more expensive product worth it or just marketing hype? Is a product more expensive because it costs more to be climate-friendly? How much of the cost of this product goes into marketing and advertising?
At Ask Mr. Robot, we aren’t selling grass-fed beef or Gucci belts, our website is way more serious than that 😉 I thought it would be interesting to share how we price our premium features.
We launched premium in 2011 for $12 a year. That price has never changed and we’re proud of that. It has taken a lot of work over the years to keep the price low.
As a recent example, when Corruption was introduced in Patch 8.3, the number of combinations of gear in your bags exploded. It wouldn’t have been a problem if we could have just equipped all of the best items, but then you’d be at 150 Corruption. More combinations = more computing power = increased server costs.
In order to not pass that extra cost onto you, we had to get clever with our optimization algorithm and make it even faster. A faster algorithm means we could keep the computing power at a stable level and not increase costs.
This type of thing happens every expansion. That’s part of our job and your $12 subscription pays for our ongoing work.
Classic will have ongoing work as each phase is released, so our first instinct was to create a second subscription for Classic.
However, in a survey of over 2,000 Classic players, we found most of them were also playing Retail. With this information, separating the site into two subscriptions seemed less than ideal. Doubling the price didn’t seem right either – we don’t have double the ongoing work.
What we did have is a lot of up-front work from creating Classic AMR. That’s a one-time thing, so a one-time payment mades a lot of sense: a one-time Classic Upgrade payment.
We set the price at $10 because it’s our best guess at covering the cost of our work to create Classic AMR. It’s possible we go in-the-hole, but I hope not. It’s also possible we end up with extra money which will allow us to add more Classic features.
Meanwhile, the subscription price stays at $12 which covers both Retail and Classic.
First, I’d like to point out that everyone gets a 1-week free trial for Classic (no credit card required). Once you decide to upgrade, here are some answers to questions that might come up:
Here’s a screenshot of what your account billing page would look like if you had a monthly subscription and paid for the Classic Upgrade.
Best in Bags finds the best set of gear from items you already own, with the click of a button. Importing gear from the addon makes this process really easy and automatic.
Best in Bags will function nearly the same for Classic as it does for Retail. There are a few differences worth noting:
Below is a starting tutorial for Best in Bags if you are not familiar with it (or want a refresher). We also have a post with extra tips & tricks to get the most out of the optimizer.
This tutorial is long because it gets into specifics. But I want you to keep one thing in mind: using Best in Bags is super simple and fast: you copy gear from the addon, paste it into the site, press a button, and get recommended gear.
The tutorial goes into specifics of making sure your spec and options are set up how you want them. After you do that, you won’t have to touch that again unless you want to change them.
I have a video to show this process – it’s from retail but the functionality is the same (only very minor UI differences for things like talents and filters).
Next up, I have a couple of screenshots of the UI with explanations on what they do and how to use them. Click for larger images (don’t strain your eyes!)
Let’s jump into the specifics of each feature next.
The first time you import your character from the addon (addon tutorial), we will auto-detect your spec based on your talents. Our guess at your spec is just that – a guess, based on your chosen talents. (In Retail WoW, we don’t have to guess because specs are built into the game).
If we guessed right, you are all set.
If we guessed your spec wrong, you will want to change it. To do that, click on the correct spec at the top of the page and you will see a second spec added to your list. Then delete the old spec, as shown below.
You can set up multiple specs and Mr. Robot will optimize them all.
But there is one really, really, really important note: the order of the spec list matters (the list on the left side).
It’s important because the highest priority spec gets all of the best gear and enchants. Then leftover gear is used for the next most-important spec. Items can be shared between specs, but the enchants stay locked in with what’s best for the higher priority spec that is sharing it.
Next, pick your options.
Here’s an explanation of the different options you can select:
The various buffs (and innervate) that you select are all factored into optimizing your gear around the best stats. So be sure to customize it.
Now that everything is setup how you like, you click the green “Find Best in Bags” button and get your results. They will look something like this:
The currently equiped gear is on the left. The suggested changes are on the right. Notice changes are also crossed out on the left side, followed by a little green arrow to show you what to change it to.
Sometimes, you just want to make sure Mr. Robot keeps your favorite trinket and works around that. No problem! He’s happy to oblige. This is where locking comes into play.
Every lockable thing has a lock icon next to it. Click the lock icon to bring up a list of items or enchants. Choose the one you want and it will lock in. If something is locked, the icon turns orange. Click it again to unlock.
There might also be an item you never want picked. If this is the case you can exclude it by clicking on an item to open the item list (list shown below). Click the ‘no’ sign to the right of any item to exclude it.
After optimizing, you can send your gear to the addon. Click the green send-to-addon button below your Best in Bags results.
When you export your setups to the addon, all of them get exported. You can equip your gear right from the addon. Once you equip one of the setups, our addon also creates a gear set in the in-game equipment manager.
There’s a difference between unexpected and incorrect. If Mr. Robot suggests an item that is 15 iLevels lower, there is a good chance he is correct, even though it is unexpected.
Since all of your gear is evaluated when trying to find a best gear set, an uncommon combination can be found, that us mere humans wouldn’t have even considered. This is one of the reasons this tool is so powerful. Below is an example with some unexpected, but correct, results.
This player had no enchants, but lets ignore those for now as this was probably leveling and questing gear. But the gear suggestions are worth looking at for some unexpected results.
Note for Feral Druids: the iLevel 34 Manual Crowd Pummeler mace crushes other Feral Druid weapons. The on-use that increase your attack speed by 50% for 30 seconds is incredible. So if you see me recommending it over an iLevel 60 weapon (for example), I am doing so with good reason.
However, it is possible that a solution you get is incorrect (oooooh, don’t tell Mr. Robot I said that!). If you believe this to be the case, report it on our forums and we’ll get it fixed right away (bugs rarely last more than a day after being reported). How to report it:
Tanks, healers, all Warrior specs, Rogues and Mages should read “Tips to optimize Classic like a pro,” as all of these roles and specs have special handling.
The Upgrade finder for WoW Classic works just like the one for Retail.
This tool gives gear suggestions for any content you want to do. For example, Mr. Robot will give you advice on what bosses drop the best loot for you.
I have a super short video from Retail, but it still does a good job of showing you the different searches and filtering. The video has no sound (no, your speakers aren’t broken). If you don’t want to view the video, I have screenshots below, so keep reading.
First, you’ll need to pick the Best in Bags setup that you want to do the search for. This is required because Mr. Robot needs to know what setup you want to consider when evaluating gear.
The screenshot above shows that Frost is selected. If I want to search for items for my Fire spec, I select one of those that I’ve set up. I also selected to find upgrades from Rep Vendors.
You can also search through this list to narrow it down.
There is no way for us to import your character from the Armory for WoW Classic. Our addon takes care of that for you.
It’s pretty simple, it just takes a quick copy & paste from the addon to the website.
1 – Get our Classic addon, titled AskMrRobotClassic. Don’t have it? Get it from Twitch.
2 – Open all of your bags and bank (you only need to do this one time after installing the addon). This lets the addon pick up all of the gear you own.
3 – Then open the Mr. Robot addon (click on the minimap icon or type /amr show). Go to the “Export” tab in the addon. Copy the text in the box on that screen.
4 – Go to the Ask Mr. Robot Classic website. Click on your character’s name to open the character picker. Paste the text in the addon section, as shown below.
5 – After you paste it, your character automatically loads with all the right gear.
Anytime you get new gear you can repeat step 3 and 4, where you copy the text-string from the addon and paste it into the site. No need to open your bags or bank again since Mr. Robot is tracking all of the new stuff you get.
After Mr. Robot finds your Best in Bags, you can export the results back to the addon. That saves you the trouble of finding every item in your bags and equipping them manually.
1. After you run Best in Bags, click the green “Send to Addon” button under the gear list as shown below.
2. A box opens on the website with text in it – copy that text.
3. Now you paste that text into the addon. To do that, go in-game and open the addon. Go to the Gear tab and click the orange Import button on the left side (shown by yellowy arrows in the picture below. A box pops up, paste the text-string from the website there.
That’s it – now you’ll have you gear in game. Once you equip it from the addon, it will also make a setup in your equipment manager (built into the game’s UI in the character window).
This process is the same for Worst in Bags, which lets you get rid of items you no longer need.
If you run into trouble, stop by our forums.
If you are wondering how Corrupted Gear works, the first section explains it. If you’re already familiar, you can skip the first section and get into the details of how Mr. Robot helps you pick the best corruption items.
Item drops in 8.3 have a chance to be Corrupted with a random bonus effect. For example, you might get an increase to Crit as shown below in purple.
Continue readingThe Upgrade Finder gives gear suggestions for any content you want to do. For example, Mr. Robot will give you advice on what bosses you should use bonus rolls on. Or help you figure out what you can get in your Mythic+ cache.
Here’s a 1-minute video showing you some of the ranked lists and their customizable features. The video has no sound (no, your speakers aren’t broken). If you don’t want to view the video, I have screenshots below, so keep reading.
First, you’ll need to pick the Best in Bags setup that you want to do the search for. This is required because Mr. Robot needs to know what setup you want to consider when evaluating gear. For example, you might be looking for gear for your healer spec, which would be different than gear for your DPS spec. Same goes for a Raid setup vs a Mythic+ setup.
Find upgrades for each spec
The screenshot above shows that chose to look at Balance. If I want to search for Feral items, I select Feral. I also selected to find upgrades in Regular Dungeons, set to Normal difficulty. Here’s what the results look like for my not-quite-120 alt.
You can also search through this list to narrow it down.
This Upgrade search gets some extra special features.
The setup screen lets you choose things like the Mythic+ level and the raid difficulty you’ll be doing that week. You can also expand the raid, dungeon, and world boss section to select specific bosses. Let’s take an example from earlier in the expansion: Say you wanted to clear Normal Uldir and then kill first several bosses on Heroic. You could set it up like this:
Now let’s look at the results because I have a couple things worth pointing out.
Let’s start with the big yellow arrow pointing at the Boss Ranking Method, set to “Biggest Upgrade” in the screenshot. There are three ways to sort the ranked list:
You can also expand any boss to see the items it drops and how big of an upgrade each one is (and you can also see how many are downgrades). You can click anywhere on the boss to expand the list (but I highlighted the expand arrow with a yellow circle, because if you see this anywhere on the site, it means you can expand it for more stuff).
If you are already premium, a huge thanks. As a 3-person small business, we really appreciate every person who upgrades. We get to make this site as our ‘day jobs’ and that is only possible because of people like you.
If you haven’t upgraded yet and like the features, Best in Bags and the Upgrade Finder save you a lot of time and give you really accurate gear advice based on simulations custom to you (that we’ve already done for you).. It’s $12 a year, or $2 if you want to pay monthly. You can upgrade here.
Everyone gets a free trial (no credit card is required, because that is just trickery and we don’t do that). You might have used up your free trial in a previous expansion. If you would like it reset so you can try the features for BfA, use the contact form on the website and send us a message. I will personally reset your free trial. I know you’ll love the features and I want you to see them for yourself.
Patch 8.2 has a lot of new items and gearing mechanics. First things first, let’s jump into the current status of optimization on our site.
Also hop on over to our developer’s forum post to easily track status.
Update on Thursday, June 27.
The remaining special effects for Vision of Perfection are implemented for all classes now, including healers and tanks. The simulator is fully functional for all gear, including raid gear. (With an exception: the special effect for Cursed Lover’s Ring probably won’t be implemented).
Gear rankings (optimizations) are continuing to run and we hope to have the majority of the classes live at the end of the weekend.
Update on Wednesday, June 26.
Status as of Tuesday, June 25, 10 AM PST
Outstanding items as of June 25.
Note: Initial testing makes it look like a handful of the special effect items are noticeably over (or under) powered. We anticipate balances over the next few weeks, as well as within a few weeks of the dungeon and raid release, as Blizzard gathers real-game data for analysis.
Fun fact: 8.2 added as many ‘special effect’ items as the launch of BfA and all previous patches, combined. We’ve been working hard on testing them in-game to make sure we know how every proc works in order to implement them. It’s taken a bit longer than expected because there are just sooo many. Continue reading
Everything has a cycle, even guides for a video game. Back in the day, guides and opinions were everywhere and hard to find – if you didn’t know the name of the fan-site for your class, you didn’t know where to go. After years of this, we all just wanted a way to get everything in one spot, regardless of the class. So sites like Noxxic and Icy-Veins were born.
With each expansion, guides have gotten even more consolidated – to the point that many of the Icy-Veins and WoWhead guides are written by the same person, who also happens to run the class Discord. While this consistency has the advantage of giving you confidence in making a decision, it has a downside as well: a lack of diversity for alternative, viable ways to play.
96% of players surveyed want guides to offer more choices.
We want to show you multiple ways to play that are also good enough to get you a top rank. We do this by sharing data so that you can make an informed choice. Sharing data also has some side benefits: it improves build customization and helpful interactions between teammates.
Our guides don’t explain every little nuance of how to play – other guides exist for that. Instead, we focus on the following:
Each section of our guide draws from those things, and we hope you find them helpful. You can check our our new World of Warcraft guides here. But if you have some time to spare, keep reading this post for more in-depth information, a mini video about the Talent Build compare tool, and an overview of the rotation flow charts.
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