How good is gear advisor really?

[KarlT]

So I picked up https://classic.wowhead.com/item=944...crowd-pummeler yesterday.

At the time, I was using https://classic.wowhead.com/item=15464/brute-hammer

From what I understand, and from speaking to others, they also seem to agree. Manual Crowd Pummeler is a significantly better weapon for any type of feral druid than Brute Hammer.

So why is it that the gear advisor is indicating that Crowd Pummeler is a 56% (I think that was the exact figure) downgrade? Item scoring is set to Druid Feral TANK with the following statweights (Which are the default the guide has set)

Capture.PNG

So ye, i'm wondering how inaccurate it's actually been with other item suggestions, or if there's logic/justification for advising that one of the Best in Slot weapons for a Feral is a downgrade on a pretty common lower level green?

[cythean]

As you can see in the stat weight, str is .2 weighted while agi is .48 weight, so the logic is that the crowd pummeler is better by a bit. I'm not sure where the default stat weights come from, but you could surely grab new weights from whatever guide you like and plug them in, or change the weights yourself.

That being said, you're wrong that the brute hammer is BIS over the crowd pummeler, and your guide probably didn't figure it into its weapon progression because it's a dungeon rare drop. Crowd pummeler is absolutely fantastic for feral druid and that weapon use ability is usable while in-form afaik.

[KarlT]

I think you misread. Crowd Pummeler is better than brute hammer by some way is what im saying, yet the gear advisor states that its 56% worse than the brute hammer (so the advisor is telling me to stick with the brute hammer instead of using the pummeler)

[cythean]

Oh I see the problem, crank down the stam weight by quite a bit, feral dps druid doesn't need a 1 weight on stam compared to .48 for agi, that should fix it. I'd but the stam weight somewhere around .3/.35 I think.

[mhemphill619]

There is an element that no item guide will pick up on about Crowd Plumer and feral druids. "Use: Increases your attack speed by 50% for 30 sec." for 3 uses. Even lvl60 raiding druids will farm multiple crowd plumers to reuse that on use ability over and over. It is one of the "secrets" of feral. Farm a bag full of those and go raiding, basically throwing them away once all 3 charges are used.