Be confident in your gearing choices
Best in Bags looks through all of the gear you own to find your best setups. This is all based on simulation that we do for you, behind the scenes, so you don’t have to spend time setting up a sim and waiting for the results.
In order to get the most out of the tool, I thought it would be helpful to give a basic explanation on how it works behind the scenes. Then I jump into some specifics for each feature, including a UI overview, setting up Best in Bags for multiple specs, and locking in your favorite items.
I also have more in-depth tutorials for some of the Best in Bags features:
- Stat analysis / “stat weights”
- Multiple setups (for more than one spec, or Raid vs M+)
- Alternate Best in Bags setups (more than one way to gear)
- What if a Best in Bag suggestion looks wrong?
Best in Bags
How does it work?
There are a lot of ways to play and a lot of ways to gear. And a portion of those are so close in damage (or healing, or tank toughness), that they are considered equal. We find you possible solutions within that ‘top tier’ of performance. We even find alternatives that perform just as well, in case you want a different play style, stat preference, or Conduit preference. (See “Alternate Best in Bags.”)
The process of providing top sets of gear is quite complex. You see… what if one legendary is great, but only with a high-crit build? What if two trinkets interact really well, amplifying the effect of each other?
Simulation can answer this, but not as easily as you might initially think. The entire set of gear has to be evaluated in order to decide what is best. And there are a lot of combinations just sitting in your bags right now. If you had just 3 items per slot to choose from, that’s almost 5 million combinations of gear (which would be about 25 billion simulation iterations). You’d have to wait a loooong time for that simulation to finish!
Mr. Robot solved this problem with Best in Bags. You click 1 button and get an answer in seconds.
I just said simulating this would take a long time, so how can we get you such a fast answer?! First, we simulate all of the relevant combinations of gear, including trinkets, souldbinds, and conduits for your character. We do this over thousands of computers and it takes about 2 weeks to get through every spec, including simulating tanks and healers.
Then we store that in a database, so we can quickly look it up when you want to run Best in Bags. That lets Mr. Robot search through all of them with some fancy logic and machine learning, all so he can pick a best set(s) in seconds.
Best in Bags Tutorial
Best in Bags is really powerful and customizable. So even if you are familiar with the feature, the tutorial images below might reveal something new and helpful.
First, here’s a short 2-minute video to give you a quick rundown on how to import and export gear between the addon and website.
Next up, I have a couple of screenshots of the UI with explanation 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:
Stat Analysis
This feature tells you what stats you should focus on for your next few items. Because we’ve simmed everything for you already, it replaces the need to sim your own stat weights. Now you can spend all of that time playing the game instead of simming the game. Learn more about how it all works on our Stat Analysis article.
Let’s talk about the Stat Analysis in the context of Best in Bags and start with an example:
- Pretend Haste is your best stat.
- Pretend that Crit should be 80% of your Haste (so for every 100 Haste, you’d want 80 Crit).
- There’s an awesome Legendary Power that scales really well with Crit.
So, what happens if you get a chest piece with that awesome Legendary Power that scales incredibly well with Crit? When you do Best in Bags, Mr. Robot checks all of your gear and sees if a high Crit build, paired with that Legendary Power, is better than the standard high-Haste build (in our pretend little example here). If so, he’ll suggest it. But because of this, there is no way for you to definitively say that one stat (Haste in this example) will always be best.
But you know what we can do? Aggregate a metric-ton of data and give you a really high-probability suggestion of what stats you should focus on next.
How does this work? First, recall that Mr. Robot has already simulated all of the necessary gear (and Legendary Power) combinations that you could get, and stored that in his database. So all he has to do is look up your current gear and then compare it to setups that do more damage (or healing or tanking) at your current iLevel.
He then analyzes all of the stats in all of those setups and looks for trends. He might find that 85% of them have more Haste and less Mastery, in which case, he would tell you to focus on getting more Haste and less Mastery on your next few items.
The advice shows up in this Stat Analysis section, followed by a graph. The graph shows the stats on your current Best in Bags gear, and the arrows tell you what to increase, decrease, and what should stay roughly the same.
While 85% of setups might have more Haste, that doesn’t mean only high-Haste builds are going to be better for you. In this example, 15% of the better-than-your-current gear sets don’t have more Haste than you do now.
You can also see a graph of the data Mr. Robot analyzed for you. This lets you see that, yep, a whole bunch of these are stacking Haste, but a few have relatively low Haste. Click the “View optimal stat graph” link to see the top performing stat distributions for your item level (or any item level).
Multiple Specs
People often want to do different Best in Bags setups, so we added in that functionality for BfA. For example: one for raiding and one for Mythic+. Or maybe you also want a second raid setup for bosses where you switch talents.
You can switch between any setup by clicking on one in the Setup List on the left side of the Best in Bags section.
When you export your setups to the addon, all of them get exported. You can switch between them in the drop down menu at the top of the Gear tab.
Once you equip one of the setups, our addon also creates a gear set in the in-game equipment manager.
For a more in-depth tutorial on creating multiple gear setups, check out this post.
Locking items, gems, enchants, and Conduit Powers
Sometimes, you just want to make sure Mr. Robot keeps your favorite trinket or Conduit and works around that. No problem! He’s happy to oblige. This is where locking comes into play.
You could always lock items, gems, and enchants during Legion and BfA. But it was a power user feature that was hard to figure out on your own. Since locking things in is a big part of customizing your gear, we’ve put it front-and-center.
Every lockable thing now has a lock icon next to it. Click the lock icon to bring up a list of items, gems, enchants, or Condiuts. Choose the one you want and it will lock in. If something is locked, the icon turns orange. Click it again to unlock.
Customize setups
After you get your initial Best in Bags recommendation, Mr. Robot provides you with alternate options that are just as good as the one he recommended. Since so many gear combinations are basically equal, this lets you choose a setup that matches your playstyle or is most fun for you to play.
To check out the customize options, look for the Customize tab after running Best in Bags.
For more information on this feature, including an explanation on the tiers, how to select an alternate, and how to reset it, read the Customize Best in Bags tutorial.
What if a Best in Bags recommendation looks wrong?
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.
However, it is possible that the suggestion is incorrect (oooooh, don’t tell Mr. Robot I said that!). If this is 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). For more information on what might be unexpected vs what might be a bug, check out this “Unexpected” blog post where I categorize unusual scenarios.
Upgrade to Premium for $12 a year
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.