Shadowlands Pre-Patch Gear Optimization

Make sure that your gem quality setting is set to Epic and not Rare.

Also, could you click “help” next to the big Best in Bags section header, and follow the steps to create a snapshot and post the ID here? With that I can try your exact case – even with the gem option set to rare, it shouldn’t replace an epic gem with a rare one of the same kind.

We did an update that fixed up some gem loading issues after the patch.

The addon can no longer handle duplicate azerite pieces for different specs. Without looking at the actual traits on the gear it doesn’t know which item to equip when I change specs, locking in the gear has no effect. Forcing the equipment change in game also doesn’t fix it either. The addon will always associates the same item with both specs when changing specs and equipping gear. Is there a workaround that might fix it?

Yeah I’ll have to give that some thought… I can’t think of any easy fix off the top of my head, since the imported gear setup doesn’t have any azerite traits chosen. The addon could tell that item A has different traits than item B, but it would have no idea which one you want to use in which gear setup.

In these cases you’ll probably have to manually equip the desired azerite item. When you import a set of gear, you can have the addon create an equipment manager set for you when you press the button to equip the set of gear. Then ensure the proper azerite items are equipped, and update the equipment manager set. Then use the equipment manager set to swap gear.

Sorry about that inconvenience… we figured it wouldn’t be that big a deal because the pre-patch was only going to last about 3 weeks… but it’s going to be a bit longer now.

58ff31c8f6894dcb9cf8ee8cf71e95df is the snapshot. i changed the threshold from rare to epic and it didnt try to change it to the rare gem, but its still trying to get me to put up the velens.

So with the squish, the difference between some of these items is pretty small now. The estimates we’re using are pushing velen’s up a bit higher than expected for that strategy. My guess is because the value of intellect is a bit too high, and/or the value of versatility is a bit too low (thus it’s not picking void twisted titanshard). I’ll see if we can tweak that.

But honestly… it’s not that terrible a trinket, lolz. It has 15 primary stat and 21 total secondary stats… probably not all that far off from some of your other trinkets in terms of estimated value.

lol after seeing it suggested i sat there staring at it for a while and comparing it stat wise to other trinkets and kept going “no this has to be a mistake, no this just cant be” but in the back of my mind was like “but really is it that bad?”

I just posted an update that should smooth out some of the stat rankings a bit and prevent unusual rankings like you saw. You may need to re-import your character and optimize again to see the change.

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Azerite trait optimization was actually one of the big reasons I pay to use the best in bags feature, feels like a rip off to have it just be gone now.

With Shadowlands coming soon, azerite will no longer be relevant – our website has always been (and will always be) designed for the current expansion’s content. That means going forward we’ll have full soulbind and conduit optimization as part of Best in Bags instead of azerite and essences.

It’s just too much work to maintain all of the mechanics for every expansion, and not many people worry about optimizing below max level/current content, so it would not be a good use of time/effort.

The pre-patches are always a bit awkward… it’s not really worth the effort to come up with in-depth gear rankings because they don’t last long enough and it would take half the pre-patch to come up with them, and the game is in a really unbalanced state anyway… that Blizzard tends to change often leading up to the next expansion.

The current azerite/essence recommendations that we show will stay up forever though, for anyone who wants to use them when leveling through BfA content. We felt that was a decent compromise – it’s not a full-on azerite/essence mathematical optimizer, but it’s actually maintainable and still useful.

Lame. Yeah I get it’s not a big deal, but if it was a feature that didn’t cost money I wouldn’t care as much. Shadowlands isn’t out yet so all that stuff doesn’t matter yet, and BFA stuff still technically does.

There is no good way to “optimize” azerite in the current state of the game. That is what yellowfive was getting at.

Some of the traits barely work in the current state. Many specs are missing key components of their kit because they are not obtained until level 51+ as higher ranks of spells.

It is not feasible to create a complete model of the pre-patch state of the game and a full model of the shadowlands state of the game all before shadowlands comes out. We are always forced to put in place a stop-gap measure for the pre-patch because people will care way more about the shadowlands optimizer being as complete and accurate as possible ASAP.

I understand that it would be great if we could have a complete optimization for pre-patch, but we just can’t do it :frowning: I think the total cost of the subscription is a very good value even with the slightly reduced functionality around the pre-patch. If you feel that you are not getting your $12 worth of value for the year, feel free to contact us via email and we can work something out.

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Oh, I gotcha, that makes more sense.

What you should have done is just show the azerite with the included powers for us to manually select. Just killing this off the way it was done just creates so many issues with selecting items and equipping them when changing specs. Almost every time I switch from tanking, to healing, to dps, my gear is messed up and I now have to remember to manually check that I have the right gear on before starting a M+.

Also some of the stat recommendations are just off. I preferred the previous method when I could use stat values on occasion if I preferred. I’ve read and understand the issues regarding stat values, but that doesnt mean I don’t like it as an option. The method of setting stat targets just doesn’t work when you have a better item level with better stats as compared to a lower ilvl with worse stats just to hit a certain threshold.

We have found that the stat customization feature is working really well for most people. If there is something specific that you are trying to do but having trouble, let us know and we can take a look at it. The best thing is to post a snapshot created via the “help” link next to the big Best in Bags section header, then give us a description of what you’re trying to do.

I’ll see what I can do to make the in-game addon recognize different versions of identical azerite items in the short term here.

Regarding the Azerite gear/powers, would definitely appreciate till Shadowlands launches.

As for the other option regarding stats, I refrained from saying something previously as I knew focus needed to be on new content. I will hold back on submitting anything until after Shadowlands development is near final and then will report any new/remaining issues at that time.

Specifically the issue I had was mostly caused from the problems coming out of Corruption and trying to build a Vers set for high lvl m+ (20s). That is no longer relevant obviously and until Sims are more mature, anything related to stats is just blindly swinging at things. I’m holding back for a few until things are more steady. Till then I am just overriding most gear recommendations with specific stats i am leaning towards.

Could you guys just please add, best in slot by level. With all the squish and leveling, and twinking potential. Please just add a best in slot for whatever level the character is, rather then restrict it to max level / current expansion style that it has been .

Yeah the pre-patch is sort of a free-for-all. We encourage people to just customize things to whatever suits their fancy. Our defaults should be fine for people who want a quick answer though.

The game isn’t even close to a balanced/final state – they are making pretty significant changes each week on the beta, so choosing gear in the pre-patch is a huge moving target right now.

@virtual The optimizer should work well enough for characters of any level, even if it’s not perfect the further you get from max level. If you have any cases where it’s not behaving, feel free to make a separate thread for your specific issue. We can’t promise to fix every potential issue for low-level characters, but if it’s something that’s not too big a deal we can add it.

I noticed that Twin Blades of the Deceiver for Havoc DH appears to be not scaling correctly in the pre-patch optimizer (AMR says they are Ilvl 107, but are actually 70 for me). Is there a way to account for this or is this a bug? Or maybe I just missed a setting? Not a big deal now, but could be an issue in a couple weeks now. Also sorry if this was adressed, I looked but did not see anything.

I’m getting the strangest error just trying to run through my bags (best in bags or worst in bags)
" Error The item locked in slot Head for spec ShamanElemental does not exist in the player’s inventory."
I’m a little baffled by this as I wasn’t having problems before.