Bad Gear Suggestions

[Zygor Admin]

With Patch 6.0.2 our Gear System isn't working as reliably as it used to so we're working to improve this feature. You can help us speed things up by reporting any bad gear suggestions you come across in this thread. It would be most appreciated so we can get this feature working properly for you guys again.


If you see any bad suggestions please take the following steps to give us the most information possible.

1. Click on the gear icon on the gear suggestion window.
2. On the window that opens click the Addons tab at the top and then click the words Zygor Guides Viewer on the left.
3. Click on the "Create a bug report" button.
4. A new window opens up, ignore the areas to type in and click the View button in the bottom left.
5. Now click somewhere inside the new window that opens to get the cursor in there and then press Ctrl + A to highlight all the text, then press Ctrl + C to copy all of the text to the clipboard. On a Mac this should be Command + X to select all and Command + C to copy it to the clipboard.

Once you do that then please come here and create a reply to this thread, then press Ctrl + V to paste the clipboard into your post (for Mac this should be Command +V). If you get an error about the post being too large you can delete some of the text near the bottom that has a timestamp on it until you're able to post the message. An alternative would be to paste the bug report into a text file and then attach that text file to the post so you don't have to play games with the character limits.

[siofral]

Still have a huge crisis of faith

WoWScrnShot_111214_093643.jpg

That's an awfully huge hit to take to stack mastery when her main stat is int.

[alow]

suggest best gear?

I have most the guides for the horde side. Although I like the guides, there is one that is making mistakes. Well I believe it is, I have a Monk with two spec's mistweaver and windwalker.
Why when I am in DPS spec, I am told the put on Intel gear. Then when I am Healing the Guide suggests I use agility gear?
Never used to do this before the WoD patch.

[toliman]

They haven't worked out how to calculate a relative value for gear with the new stats.

The wowhead/pawn/simcraft values won't work in the gear comparison, because the system for comparing gear in ZG works differently to those programs. has done so for a while now.

Part of this is the WoD changes, that all gear you can equip is viable, because they have aggregate stats, ie, plate would have intellect, strength and stamina as primary stats, with one being unused unless you change spec to a healing plate wearer. This allows a Plate wearer to also have PvP gear, which converts to PvE gear ,and vice versa

What this does to the old "best stat is best gear" model is basically break all of the recommendations.

When it compares two items, each are given a score, and usually a wanted stat is given a boost, while the unwanted stats are usual given a *lower boost*.

The current system does not give low results if the item you are looking at does not suit your spec, but more importantly, the negative values are set incorrectly, so it is not penalising the stats that are not in use when it compares them.

This allows healing gear with slightly more Crit, to ignore the problem of all the other stats on the DPS option being useful, ZGGC is picking items by the highest value it has in the secondary stats.

And it's an easy mistake to make. This used to affect the way gear comparison worked in Wrath of the lich king, by using ranking metrics that are set on a 1.0 +/- 0.1 scale value, back when agility was still around on plate gear and items sometimes had no secondary stats, they skewed the ranking systems and the recommendations. BoE items with 300 spellpower and 150 stamina/intellect, put all of it's secondary stats into that one value, creating an unusual situation where it was both worse, and better than other gear (until a certain point)

What this did, was create the Gearscore "problem" of people picking the best items with the most stats, because there was no way to figure out what DPS each item contributed. it also led to people wearing cloth gear as tanks just to get into the door of a heroic dungeon because of the GearScore or recommendation systems used in Early LK. still viable tanks, but ask the older healers how they went.

fixing the recommendation can be done in 2 ways, by lowering the values it uses on 'unwanted' stats, or by creating 2 different recommendation values, one for "everything" on the item, and one for "only what i can use right now", (which is trickier to implement), and then working out the percentage based off the differences between the 2 items.

normally, the ranking value should be doing the job of the 2nd recommendation, by looking at the useful stats, and also the overall stats.

but if the ranking is off, it will start to push items forward that are only good because one value is much more beneficial and ranks much higher.

The reason you include the unwanted stats (or the stats you can't use or won't really use) is that they can affect the gear level or have a tertiary effect on damage in situations, i.e. versatility, mastery, leech, multistrike can be useful as a DPS or healing value in situations that aren't normally useful.

And the reason you have a relative strength in those values i.e. setting them to 0.8 or 1.05 or 0.3, etc. is so that you don't get into the weird situation where it's recommending strength items to healers because it has incredible crit.

Now with WoD, comparing 2 items, one with versatility and one with multistrike, it has to figure out which is going to be better, which is debateable. For melee, multistrike is usually better, but a healer could be both (monk, paladin)

Pawn, used to do this with relative values calculated by what secondary stat was better and calculating the ranking for 2 items with similar but different types of stats, eg. Crit vs Haste vs Mastery bonuses for all 34 specs. Handily it's more complicated now, because we have 3 new secondary stats that nobody knows how they interact with the best DPS, and a couple of tertiary stats/effects that can be enchanted, or randomly generated by the gear drop system, which used to be "warforged" gear from raids, but quest drops and crafting can also drop this forge quality bonus.

It's going to be a while before the gear system has new metrics, because the gear has changed. That said, Pawn the addon has been solid before, use that in the meanwhile, it will give you the ranking % of upgrade per spec on each item it hovers over.

[ZG Support 1]

We've always ranked the gear based on all spec relevant stats on an item. We even have it in place now for all the new stats on items they are weighted appropriately per spec. There are other factors contributing to the bad suggestions that we are trying to find to get them fixed. One possibility is that it's trying to suggest gear for your off-spec, but we're not sure yet. Still looking into it to find the exact problem and get it fixed.

[toliman]

We've always ranked the gear based on all spec relevant stats on an item. We even have it in place now for all the new stats on items they are weighted appropriately per spec. There are other factors contributing to the bad suggestions that we are trying to find to get them fixed. One possibility is that it's trying to suggest gear for your off-spec, but we're not sure yet.

i'd say the weighting/ranking is out of proportion/scale. and this probably shouldn't be in the support thread, but i'll explain my reasoning.

without changing too much, ZG can be fixed to rank/weight better by including more values to check.

It now looks a lot better than it did from yesterday's version which had hit/crit from MoP. The system is still very different to simcraft/wowhead scale values, which is the reason i don't call it a weighting system. Also in how you're using the rank values by a higher than normal margin/index of strength. 20 vs 12 is different to 2 vs 1 for a weighting system.

Items that are calculated in this scale won't be relative, because there's not enough balancing out of the "bad" values in the evaluation. it's just how ZG does it that's different to other systems.

WoD hybrid gear values are going to change based on spec and environment as well, and still be a little bit "best stat = best gear" in the new changes.

This might not work so well with level 10 to 80 gear, because the values they use are newly squished. old values are rolled into the new pieces, and the 'bad' stats are going to be inflated or merged as well.

in WoD it will work as expected, but it's a bad evaluation that makes mistakes through only looking at the best stats. E.g. i'll use wowhead. it's a good testbed, it has the new gear changes and can do a rank/weighting from custom scale values.

i.e. http://www.wowhead.com/item=37721 and http://www.wowhead.com/item=44192, both 200 ilevel, both 80 gear. One's a drop from novos in LK, the other's from hodir rep.

easy Caster vs Melee comparison

21 - 40 Damage Speed 1.60
(19.22 damage per second)
+20 Stamina
+8 Critical Strike
+12 Haste
+155 Spell Power

69 - 130 Damage Speed 2.60
(38.44 damage per second)
+17 Stamina
+12 Critical Strike
+9 Haste
+6 Attack Power

Without using the "real" scoring system for brevity, i'll just use the secondary stats. Weapon's a terrible choice, but it's illustrative. Wowhead probably has a whole lot of items you could insert the ZG values into and compare.

ZG rates the first with 8 * 18 for crit, 12*16 for haste (144+ 192) and 12*18 for crit, 9*16 for haste (216+144),

i'll leave the DPS alone for the sake of argument, because it's going to pick the 2nd weapon, its much higher in crit and double the DPS. but it's still very, very close. only 24 points out, a difference of about 1.5% just on crit/haste.

if those numbers were swapped on the item, it might go the other way. for example a neck/ring/wrist item, with higher haste for the DPS spec item, might not get over that 1.5% difference in the new score system.

here's the wowhead comparison. http://www.wowhead.com/items=4.-2?fi...:16:14:10:10:4

second in the list for the windwalker DPS spec, is a healing ring from halls of stone. 7th ring that's a crafted ring for casters, beats a Naxxramas 10 man drop which is in the middle of the list.

edit: in context, the best rings in this example, are still agility and crit, but 2 in the top 10 are also healing options without agility at all, and 4 in the top 15 choices are int/caster choices at that ilevel, including a strength ring as well.

edit 2: here's a stat rank using int/spirit/strength as 1,
http://www.wowhead.com/items=4.-2?fi...:10:10:4:1:1:1

and as -1

http://www.wowhead.com/items=4.-2?fi...:10:4:-1:-1:-1

the results do shift, but not as noticeably. the strength ring is still higher than an agility ring, and the caster ring is now #3 and #7

when ZG picks it up to evaluate each item as a windwalker DPS monk, it can ignore the Int, and process it, or remove the item from comparison because it has int. there's not a middle ground.

if i use a monk, and shirk the LUA ... the ZG "weighting" system is now more similar, but still skewed for a higher "value" choice in situations below level 90.

e.g. the itemscore from ZG (yesterday there was still hit/crit, so i won't be harshh, and i'll use these values as temporary)

BREWMASTER-TANK
AGILITY={weight=20},
EXTRA_ARMOR={weight=18},
STAMINA={weight=16},
HASTE={weight=14},
CRIT={weight=15},
MULTISTRIKE={weight=12},
VERSATILITY={weight=12},
MASTERY={weight=10}
DPS={weight=6}
badstats = { INTELLECT=1, SPIRIT=1, STRENGTH=1 },

MISTWEAVER-HEAL
SPIRIT={weight=20},
INTELLECT={weight=18},
HASTE={weight=16},
MULTISTRIKE={weight=14},
CRIT={weight=14},
MASTERY={weight=12},
VERSATILITY={weight=12}
badstats = { STRENGTH=1, AGILITY=1, EXPERTISE=1, EXTRA_ARMOR=1 },

WINDWALKER-DPS
AGILITY={weight=20},
MASTERY={weight=14}
CRIT={weight=18},
HASTE={weight=16},
MULTISTRIKE={weight=10},
VERSATILITY={weight=10},
DPS={weight=4}
badstats = { INTELLECT=1, SPIRIT=1, EXTRA_ARMOR=1 },

in comparison, this is what pawn is using currently ... which hasn't been adjusted for WoD.

MonkBrewmaster,

["Stamina"] = 1,
["Armor"] = 0.5,
["BonusArmor"] = 2.4,
["Agility"] = 2,
["Dps"] = 5,
["Ap"] = 1.9,
["CritRating"] = 1.05,
["HasteRating"] = 1,
["MasteryRating"] = 1,
["Multistrike"] = 1,
["Versatility"] = 1,
["MovementSpeed"] = 0.1,
["Avoidance"] = 0.1,
["Leech"] = 0.1,
["IsPlate"] = -1000000, ["IsMail"] = -1000000, ["IsShield"] = -1000000, ["IsDagger"] = -1000000, ["Is2HSword"] = -1000000, ["Is2HAxe"] = -1000000, ["Is2HMace"] = -1000000, ["IsBow"] = -1000000, ["IsCrossbow"] = -1000000, ["IsGun"] = -1000000, ["IsWand"] = -1000000, ["IsFrill"] = -1000000,
["MetaSocketEffect"] = 160


MonkMistweaver,

["Intellect"] = 2,
["SpellPower"] = 1.9,
["Spirit"] = 1,
["CritRating"] = 1,
["HasteRating"] = 1,
["MasteryRating"] = 1,
["Multistrike"] = 1.05,
["Versatility"] = 1,
["MovementSpeed"] = 0.1,
["Avoidance"] = 0.1,
["Leech"] = 0.1,
["IsPlate"] = -1000000, ["IsMail"] = -1000000, ["IsShield"] = -1000000, ["IsDagger"] = -1000000, ["Is2HSword"] = -1000000, ["Is2HAxe"] = -1000000, ["Is2HMace"] = -1000000, ["IsBow"] = -1000000, ["IsCrossbow"] = -1000000, ["IsGun"] = -1000000, ["IsWand"] = -1000000, ["IsOffHand"] = -1000000,
["MetaSocketEffect"] = 160


MonkWindwalker,

["Agility"] = 2,
["Dps"] = 5,
["Ap"] = 1.9
["CritRating"] = 1,
["HasteRating"] = 1,
["MasteryRating"] = 1,
["Multistrike"] = 1.05,
["Versatility"] = 1,
["MovementSpeed"] = 0.1,
["Avoidance"] = 0.1,
["Leech"] = 0.1,
["IsPlate"] = -1000000, ["IsMail"] = -1000000, ["IsShield"] = -1000000, ["IsDagger"] = -1000000, ["Is2HSword"] = -1000000, ["Is2HAxe"] = -1000000, ["Is2HMace"] = -1000000, ["IsBow"] = -1000000, ["IsCrossbow"] = -1000000, ["IsGun"] = -1000000, ["IsWand"] = -1000000, ["IsFrill"] = -1000000,
["MetaSocketEffect"] = 160

[ZG Support 1]

One thing you should keep in mind is that our gear suggestion system was designed as a basic system to help people make gear choices when leveling and normally that gear is replaced pretty quickly. The more specific kind of scoring systems you're referring to are more for end game raiding specs. We're a leveling guide and just want to make sure people aren't picking gear that's not appropriate for them.

On a personal note, I've used Pawn in the past and while it generally has good recommendations there have been times when it suggested something wrong when you compared the scores because of the way it tries to do rounding. Because of that I've stopped using Pawn and now use WeightsWatcher when looking for my high end gear.

[siofral]

The gearing system as of this morning is still totally out of whack. Instead of a help it's an irritant. The math it's doing isn't even remotely correct.

WoWScrnShot_111814_084403.jpg

[wanderinj]

Not giving Draenor suggestions

I am struggling with the gear guide as well. I am a level 100 Resto/Ele Shaman. I.e. I want to know about gear in Draenor, but i get Jade Serpent dungeon suggestions. I feel like wasted my money at the moment. How do I fix this?

[ZG Support 1]

What you are seeing wanderinj is a bug that we have in our list to get fixed.

[wanderinj]

Ah, thanks. Be glad when its fixed

[novaguy85]

item suggestion bug

Re installed the guide already, and updated it 1 minute before taking this screenshot. Gear suggestion for level 90 beast master hunter, all thought i doubt it would matter. Suggestiong a 226 Wrath epic, over a 399 pandaria green seems a little off balance to me.

[rossasbill]

Here is another one.

[rossasbill]

And Another

[rossasbill]

and another