NOTE: The armory isn’t showing upgraded gear, but we have a workaround.

What should I upgrade first? It’s different for every character!

There’s a lot of generic advice out there, like weapons should always be upgraded first, chest and leg upgrades are equal, etc. But in reality, it’s specific to each character and depends on a lot of variables. Mr. Robot will tell you exactly which item upgrades give you the most bang for your buck valor. Here’s a few questions he can answer, specific to each individual character:

• Should I upgrade those warforged bracers or the normal helm?
• Should I upgrade the 553 weapon or my heroic pants?
• How much of a boost do I get by upgrading an amplification trinket? Is it better than upgrading my weapon, helm or warforged items?

Mr. Robot uses ‘teh mathz’ to tell you exactly how big of an increase each upgrade will get you… taking all of the guesswork out of your decision. And in some examples below, you will see that seemingly sound advice, like upgrading your weapon first, doesn’t always hold true. 

How to get started

1. Load your character into Ask Mr. Robot.
2. Click the purple “Find Upgrades” button.
   
3. Choose the “Currencies” option, then select “Valor Points.”

 

 

 

 

4. Review your item lists. A lot of advice leads you to believe you should always upgrade your weapon, legendary cloak and trinkets first. In this example for Yellowfive, you can see that only 1 of those 3 things is correct: the cloak. The trinket is #9 on the list and the weapon is #11. That’s why the math is helpful – it’s different for every character and every role! For example, tanks tend to not fall into the ‘weapon first’ category.

5.  Decide if you want to show the “Largest Improvement” or “Most Cost Effective” for sorting.

• Note that items not upgraded at all, which are eligible for +16 item levels will show up as a larger upgrade under the “Largest Improvement” sort than an item that can only be upgraded an additional 8 times because it was already 2/4.
• Whereas the “Most Cost Effective” sort will show you the best bang for your buck valor. The score in the “Most Cost Effective” column is calculated as the increase to your optimized score per 100 Valor points spent.
• In the example below, you can see how the shoulder (upgraded 0/4) looks like a huge improvement under the “Largest Improvement” sort. But once you factor in that it would cost 1,000 Valor points to get all 4 of those upgrade levels, that score increase isn’t very effective (as shown in the 2nd column under the “Most Effective” sort).

If all of your items were already maxed out at +8 before the patch, you won’t see a difference between “Largest Improvement” and “Most Cost Effective.” When “Largets Improvement” is selected, you can see direct score comparisons, for example, the Main Hand will give this player a +1000.42 score increase, compared to the legendary cloak with a 434.33 score increase.

Load your character now!

Bags full of gear and wondering what to upgrade? Best in bags can help you with that too! Be sure to choose the “always upgrade” option.

Want to upgrade? You can do that here.

Wondering what we’re up to for WoD?

Check out our Combat Logging (currently in alpha)