Rawr!

In an effort to re-assess my gear and my 'over the cap' defense rating, I've been playing with a program called Rawr. This program allows you to compare gear for Bears based on mitigation (avoiding damage; i.e. dodge) and survival points (taking damage; i.e. health and armor). After playing with it some, I decided to write about it and give my likes and dislikes.

Likes

• Can quickly download your character, gear, enchants, and inscriptions from the Armory. No need to enter all that data.
• It's like a virtual dressing room, you can change out gear to achieve stat goals so you know what items to target.
• Will search the Armory for possible upgrade items.
• Can select from a variety of enchants for specific gear to compare stats without having to do math or farm/spend gold on mats.
• Can change gems in socketed items to compare stats.
• Can easily enter in new items by typing in Wowhead's item number.
• Can enter in raid buffs so you can see your stats come raid time.

Dislikes

• Doesn't (or, at least, from what I could tell) recognize defense cap and suggest items with an alternate stat.
• Recommends items with the highest combined mitigation and survival points rather than letting the user specify they stat(s) they want to increase.

Overall

Overall, I like the program and will continue to use it for gear analysis. I liked that I could change out enchants and gems most especially and see the changes in my stats without the in game expense. I also liked that it can grab data from the Armory and that new items can be easily entered with a number. It is still in Beta, so hopefully, he will make some changes like the recognition of the defense cap. In his write up on Druidwiki, he states that it does recognize the armor cap (I did not test this), so hopefully the next version will bring in the defense cap as well. Maybe even take care of my other dislike by allowing the user to select which stat they want to increase and recommending gear for that.

My Defense Cap Issue

Well, after assessment, I've decided not to worry about being a bit over the cap. All my defence comes from my that I will need until and when I get the T4 chest and leg pieces. Once those are replaced, I'll then need to incorporate defense gems to get me back up to par.