The Upgrade Finder has a new, special search for ranking Shadowlands legendary powers. It works a little differently than other Upgrade Finder searches – please read this so that you understand the rankings and get the most out of them!
Note: we are still improving and tweaking these rankings as we lead up to the first raid. You may see them shift slightly over the next couple weeks. And as always, whenever Blizzard does any kind of balancing patch, we will update these rankings within a day or two.
How is it different than other Upgrade Finder searches?
Most of the Upgrade Finder searches are very straightforward: if you were to get the item in question and equip it with all of your other current gear as-is, would it be an upgrade, and by how much?
The legendary ranking is different: you generally want to plan ahead. Which legendary has potential to be the best for me down the line, when I have more gear, a fully unlocked soulbind tree, and a bunch of conduits?
That’s the question we answer with the current ranking, and the ranking that we think most people actually want.
Which settings impact the legendary ranking?
Since we’re doing a different kind of ranking, not all of your Best in Bags settings influence the ranking. The only settings that matter for the legendary ranking are your:
- Chosen gearing strategy
- Talents
- Covenant
None of the other settings influence it (and most of them would have little to no impact anyway).
How do we calculate the legendary rankings?
Unlike other Upgrade Finder rankings that are calculated on demand for your character and setup, the legendary rankings are pre-calculated based on a very large amount of data. We run a specialized set of simulations and optimizations to try and explore the potential of each legendary – give each one a “fair shake” based on other available gear, conduits, stat distributions, etc.
We do this analysis for every combination of talents and covenants. This is one of the coolest things about these rankings – they adapt to how you want to play. Most of the other “best legendary” lists that you’ll find out there have tons of hidden and very rigid assumptions, e.g. that you will always be using a very specific talent build or covenant. We want to give you good rankings no matter what you choose.
What about the suggested slot and stats?
You’ll notice that we recommend which secondary stats to put on your legendary, and which slot to use for that legendary.
These are just suggestions.
In general, which slot and stats you use for a legendary are far less important than which legendary power you use. If you want to put it in a different slot or change one of the secondary stats from our recommendation, you will barely be able to tell the difference (if at all).
That said, our recommendation is based on a pretty extensive set of optimizations that try each legendary power in each slot with several combinations of stats. You can’t go wrong with the recommendation if you don’t have a preference one way or the other.
Why does it only show one item level of reward?
We do this to simplify the display. The item level of a legendary only changes the amount of stats on the legendary – it has no impact on the legendary power itself. You should craft the highest item level version that you are willing to pay for.
Getting the best legendary power is more important than which item level version of the item you have. Also remember that each upgrade in item level is 5 less than the previous, so upgrading a 190 to 210 is the most cost effective, then it goes down from there.
