We decided to try out the upgrade finder with just “base” items this time around.
The “smart” mode that would upgrade items until they were an upgrade was always confusing to most people. You can still rank the warforged/titanforged version of any item in the per slot rankings on the Gear Check or BiS tool.
Our thinking was along these lines: Since all loot is personal loot now, you will get a wf/titanforge item… or you won’t. Once you get it, you will want to know if it is an upgrade, which Best in Bags will tell you. Actually searching out bosses to farm for titanforge drops seems like a use case that most people weren’t really interested in, especially with the reduced rate in BfA compared to Legion.
We are collecting feedback on all the features right now - so if there is a significant desire for some sort of search involving upgraded items, we can certainly discuss adding that in some form that is a bit smarter than before (where lots of items got ranked that no one cared about, slowing everything down).