Dwarrow asked a very good question in the comments on one of our previous posts, and because I was a bit late in responding in the comments, I’d like to take some time today to address the question more thoroughly. Dwarrow asks:
I have wondered about higher color equipment with, say lower agility than a lower “color” piece. For example, does a blue piece of armor with 10 Agility and 250 armor take precedence for a hunter over a green piece with 20 Agility and maybe 175 armor? In other words does the level, or color, of the piece automatically trump some of the stats? One old-timer on here told me that blue was always better than green. Any help you can give me?
We’ve got you covered, Dwarrow.
Item Quality
Item Quality, or Rarity, determines it’s “color”: Gray (poor quality), White (common quality), Green (uncommon quality), Blue (rare quality), Purple (epic quality) or Orange (legendary quality). Here’s what WoWWiki has to say about Item Quality:
While these are a good guide, it generally isn’t a wise idea to judge an item’s worth purely by its color. The item color system was substantially devalued during The Burning Crusade expansion, with epics becoming excessively plentiful, and blues often actually being more useful items.
Aside from set bonuses, one of the primary defining characterstics of epics is that they tend to offer bonuses to a larger number of different stats than do blues or greens. Therefore, although in order to ensure that your character has balanced stats, it is usually a good idea to go for epics whenever they are available, there may be times when blues will offer a larger amount of a single stat, and depending on what you’re doing, for a few pieces at least, that may be more useful. (For example, Agility in the case of a Survival Hunter.)
Basically what all this boils down to is: higher quality items are usually better, but not always. We’ve already spent some time talking about which stats are important for Hunters to look for in our previous entry, so you’ve already got a handle on which stats to stack and which ones you can ignore. Now, it’s important to be able to tell the difference between items of differing quality.
Choosing an Upgrade
To start, let’s use Dwarrow’s example:
You have a green item with 20 Agility and a blue item with 10 Agility. Which is better?
The color of the item alone provides no distinct benefit to the player. What I mean by that is, item color in and of itself does not provide any boost to your stats. The only exception to this rule is vehicle combat (like on Flame Leviathan) where your average iLevel is used to determine your character’s performance. Otherwise, higher quality items are not inherently “better” than any other item. What makes them better are the stats the item has.
For all intents and purposes then, you can ignore item color and focus entirely on the stats of the item.
With that in mind, to continue with Dwarrow’s example, we now have an item with 20 Agility and an item with 10 Agility. Which is better? (This is where you say “Duh, Lass! The item with more Agility is better!” Very good, class.)
Now, the observant among you have no doubt noticed that armor values were included in Dwarrow’s example, and I’ve completely ignored them. If you can tell me why that is, you get a gold star for the day.
Why Bother With Quality?
Having said all we have on item quality now, some of you are no doubt wondering: “If item quality is irrelevant, why have it?”
There are two parts to the answer. One, because higher quality items are usually better. Not always, but usually. The quality of an item can serve as a visual cue to the player to look more closely at the item to assess it’s value to them compared to the items they’re already wearing. Two, because higher quality items usually come from more difficult content, and many feel there should be a visual representation of their achievements, delineated by the higher quality items they possess. Higher quality items are considered a reward for completing more difficult encounters or quests.
Going Forward
As you progress through content, identifying solid upgrades becomes more difficult. The items you encounter begin to have more stat boosts on them and more widely varied stats available. Some of the world’s best players often spend hours comparing different pieces and sets to determine which will provide the best performance, but for the (mostly) casual player, simply getting back to basics can help you decide which pieces are better for you. Which stats were important to you as a baby Hunter first making your way through Azeroth? The importance of those stats never changes. Use the basic things you learned as you leveled, experiment as you go, and you’ll have little difficulty finding better items and tackling challenges of ever-increasing difficulty.
And remember: in terms of stats, item color itself means very little.
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“Now, the observant among you have no doubt noticed that armor values were included in Dwarrow’s example, and I’ve completely ignored them. If you can tell me why that is, you get a gold star for the day.”
Because it doesn’t matter. Hunters are after the effects of a amour or weapon and if you get that close you are dead?
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http://elitistjerks.com/f15/t44718-item_level_mechanics/
For basically all WotLK gear the relevant part is:
Uncommon:
itemLevel = 101.18*ln(itemSlotValue) – 292.23
Rare:
itemLevel = 97.632*ln(itemSlotValue) – 287.14
Epic:
itemLevel = 106.29*ln(itemSlotValue) – 344.36
So a blue item is effectively 1 tier lower than an epic item of the same level (213 Blue ~= 200 Epic). However the two curves come together at iLevel 352ish and the gap narrows from the 13iLevels (1 tier) slowly and will be about 8 iLevels in Tier 9 top end gear (258), and ~6 iLevels in T10 (285ish top end).
So a Blue will always have less item points to spend than an epic for all percievable content, but the gap is narrowing and the epic may not be well designed.
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@2ndnin — I’d be willing to bet that none of that would make any sense to a casual player just starting out. Casual or new players have no familiarity with item budget. What they want to know is: is this blue that just dropped better than the green I’m wearing now? (Which is precisely what was asked.) The answer is: maybe. It depends on the stats on the item, not the color. iLevel and quality are largely irrelevant in terms of simply deciding which item is better. iLevel and quality simply determine, as you pointed out, an item’s stat budget. However, a higher stat budget != better stats, necessarily.
@Sigrdrífa — I’d have worded it slightly differently, but that is the gist.
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One major factor would also be where you got the items as well. For example, epics in TBC are out-geared by some greens/blues in WotLK after a few levels. If you’re talking purely about one section of game content (just vanilla WoW or just TBC, etc) then yeah, quality is part of the determining factor in which item is better, but when you cross the expansion content boundaries, things get iffy. That being said, I’m leveling a warrior and he’s got this level 30 quest that seems extremely time consuming but it unlocks more quests for more blue gear. On wowhead, someone linked some green gear that is crafted but has nearly the same stats. That’s just more proof that quality of an item doesn’t matter.
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lol, thanks Lass. Didn’t have my coffee until after I sent it and realized, hey, thre are some mistakes in spelling (I’m not in Britain for one) and added letters.
Nothing against 2ndnin, Lass (and 2ndnin) but item budgets – that just doesn’t make any sense to me and I am not new. What are they and how do they work – hey, another article for ya!
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Generally the best rule is find the 1-2 best stats for your class, and take the item with the biggest number in those (for a Ret paladin Str > all basically, and for levelling its a pretty good measure of effectiveness, saying that I was wearing healing plate from TBC > WotLK gear uptill 73 at least because the 3 gem slots in it with str gems was more than I could get from a similar item budget in WotLK).
I tried to explain iLevels and such like to indicate that the difference between a Blue and an Epic item is actually not that much and its getting narrower. While we are unlikely to see Blues in T10 they would basically be similar to the T10.10 vs the T10.25… not a lot really when you think about it. The major point is how well optimised a slot is, and that requires you to know your class mechanics to understand which.
As for item budget it is fairly simple:
Each stat on an item costs a certain number of points, and these have an item budget something like points^1.7 (so an item with 4 well spread stats has more effective stats than an item with 3 well spread stats, and both have more than an item with a large number sunk into 1 thing). The iLevel of the item is then based on these points.
This is why you get plate DPS classes rolling on leather DPS gear, the Plate gear has:
Stamina
Strength
Hit/Expertise
Haste/Crit/Something
The leather will have:
AP
Agility
Hit/Expertise
Haste/crit/Something
Stamina
Each value will likely be lower on the leather, but the overall effect of the item points formula makes it stronger as a piece. Making it worse the plate DPS gear has a very high stamina normally (and gem slots count as a gem added onto the highest stat making them proportionally worse for plate users).
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2ndNIN – Though I still don’t understand, I will take your word for it.
I guess, I should explain, I am a pretty casual player who (because of what I do for a living) doesn’t want to dwell into the math of this game. I know, I know, those who do equate it to “know how to play their class”, but to me (and a whole lot of others out in the world) it’s a game to be enjoyed. I like “21″ too, but I don’t count cards. Lass’s article was written to my level and it happen to open up a whole ‘nother universe of thinking, which got you involved and for that I thank you in taking your time and patience in explaining.
I will never see T anything armour. I have 2 purples made for me on my Death Knight (80) and none on my Huntress (who is still 72). I don’t pvp (though I have kills), never been in an arena, nor in Northrend instances and I don’t raid – never had the time. But I have been trying out what Lass has written for the last few articles on my orc hunter “Sarfu”(39 last night). Does it work? I know I have only died when I fell off the edge of things or taking on mobs 6+ levels higher
so, i am going to say – yes, yes it does. Paying attention to armor attributes (yes, staying away from spell power, lol), concentrating on AGI,AP,INT,and STA in that order, not worrying about green versus blues versus the rainbow, I’ve been making headway and going solo into instances and not dying and it is nice. Now to see what today brings. And thank you again, 2ndNIN and Lass, you folks are great!
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Thanks to Lassirra for the thoughtful answer to my question. I thought it might be too much of a noobie question and I apprecite her time and everyone else’s comments too. I have only been in Azeroth for about 5.5 months and it is really great to have a place like Hunters Mark to help with my “maturation.” My cat SnoCone and my bear Tatters thank you all too.
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hi Dwarrow – so you are the cause of all this
Thank you too for asking the questions. And OMG, what great names for pets – SnoCone and Tatters! I have lived far too long inside the box with trying to figure out names. I think Miss Alpha and Miss Meggie will forgive me (those are the two ferrets in my icon, who both passed away last year within 3 months of each other) and let me use other names, now to figure some out. If you are ever on Vek, say “hi” if ya see me!
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There’s no such thing as “too noobie”! We’re always happy to answer any question we get, no matter how basic it may seem. Glad you found it helpful!
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There is nothing too noobie……..
This is why I love this site so much!
The forums seem to be a dangerous place to ask anything these days
is it just me?
Happy Hunting everyone!
The weekend is almost here
/goes back to watching the cubical clock….
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nothing to noobie… nice answer lol most people wouldnt say that. great post BTW but for me i stack up on as much agi as possible lol.
@Garfunkel: ya it does seem a bit more omnious then it use to be mabe thats because its theamed after the real blizz forums and as everyone knows has the most forums troll out of any wow forums. lol
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