TherionSaysWhat, Assassin Reject wrote:
I tend to be very wary of sites like that because they value each item in a vacuum, not in relation to other pieces. Which is why they tend to over-value hit and expertise, etc. They weigh stats as if your toon is naked apart from the piece they're valuing.
Seems to me that if you know enough about your class mechanics, looking over just a basic list here or on wowhead would be just as useful but without the stat weight biases inherent in the system they're using. And if you're not particularly knowledgeable (or, let's face it, if you're lazy) the prioritized list can be misleading and can lead to poor itemization choices.
Or is there something I'm missing about this particular site? Some feature I'm not seeing? Honest question.
Ther, I tend to use it for mainly 2 reasons ... and it's purely based around the gear listing database they have. I like being able to select a whole bunch of checkboxes identifying where the gear came from, and then have it present a list of the gear from those sources (5 mans, quests, crafting, etc) which could be of interest to me.
Usually, what I do, is feed in my stats, they will then come up with a list of gear, in an order based on a statweighting, that would be rank the gear from the sources I've selected. I find the piece of gear I have in the list, have a look at the gear 5 steps above, and 5 steps below, then go and do my own comparisons in a spreadsheet which I trust a bit better.
So I use it as a starting point for my search for gear. True, I could use wowhead to do the same thing, but the way maxdps presents the lists, and the ease with which I can include and exclude sources of gear, makes me use maxdps a bit more.
All that being said ... I generally find that, true, the weights they apply to hit are normally skewed (and to a lesser extent, expertise, as it suffers from the same conditions), but if you know that you're ok in the hit department, and a piece of gear is ranked above another based on the amount of extra hit it has ... use your noggin - make the call based on the assumption the hit wasn't there at all ... chances are, you'll find the other piece of gear is better, but the chances are also good that that first piece of gear won't slip more than 2 or 3 places without that +hit on it ... making the gear list still a fairly good approximate view of what's available.
If, however, you're trying to min/max your dps, you shouldn't be looking at "approximation" lists and generalisation sites like maxdps, you should be making use of spreadsheets that some people have gone to a lot of effort to produce in order to facilitate your min/maxing efforts, as those are much more flexible in terms of catering for hit caps et al.
In reference to the comment about it misleading certain individuals if said individuals are not knowledgeable enough about the nuances of the class, and the concept of hit caps - yes, you're right, it can be misleading for those individuals. I am, however, hoping that the posters who come here and discuss class mechanics and choosing gear for enhancing raid performance know better than to take a number presented on a website as a hard and fast rule, and can at least make an informed decision for themselves ... or do I assume too much ?
Edited, Jan 29th 2009 1:21pm by robertlofthouse