UPDATE for 11/18: This thread auto-locked at 300 posts. Discussion is now at http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=2968113034&postId=29492088024&sid=1#0
UPDATED 10/31: Beta 8 posted!
TLDR version: Scroll down to the links, click a few, if you like what you see, click the last link to download it. GIVE ME FEEDBACK!
A while back, I started working on a small windows application to fill the role of the bear theorycrafting spreadsheet, but also solve all its problems. My goal was to reduce the amount of 'managing' of the spreadsheet that you had to do, and make it easy to play with your gear and potential upgrades. What gear you're wearing could be looked up from the Armory, along with what gems and enchants you use, and data about each item, along with icons. As new items are added to the game, adding them to Rawr is as easy as typing in just the item ID (the number in the url when you look at an item on alla, wowhead, thottbot, etc), and it would grab the latest data for it. What buffs you have are easily added and removed with a panel of checkboxes. All of your relevant calculated tanking stats, like final dodge chance, miss chance, health, armor, etc, are accurately calculated.
Let me give you a quick walkthrough of Rawr.
http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/6072/29329119gg0.jpg
Here's what it'll look like when you first open Rawr. The left half is your character. Stats, Enchants, and Buffs are in the tab control in the middle, and around it are the slots for your gear. You can start filling it in by clicking on each slot and choosing an item from the menu that pops up, OR you can start from your own character...
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/9071/46963753ni8.jpg
In the file menu are typical items like Open, Save, Save As, but also Load From Armory. When you choose File>Load From Armory..., you'll see this little dialog, which asks for the region, name, and server, of the character you want to open. Here I've typed in my info.
http://img67.imageshack.us/img67/2062/72922604kf9.jpg
After a few seconds of chatter between Rawr and the Armory, and Allakhazam, you'll see all of your gear show up, along with the stats for you. You can see my gear there. No comments about being crittable, please; I use Ironskin Elixirs when it matters. We'll get to those soon. On the right side, you can see the item comparison view. I have the Head slot selected at the top, so it's showing the helms I have loaded in the app, with a Mitigation (red), Survival (blue), and overall rating for each, in a nice graph.
http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/5108/25285540cg0.jpg
Here you can see the tooltip that's shown when you mouse over an item. In this case, you can see the stats of my Breastplate of Malorne, in which I have Glinting, Shifting, and Delicate gems. Rawr deals only with the mitigation and survival of your bear, not threat generation, so +hit rating, +str, +ap, +crit, etc, are all ignored.
http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/8157/86913115wp4.jpg
And this is what you'll see when you click on an item. Note that my cursor is over the Merciless Gladiator's Dragonhide Tunic, but the screenshot didn't include the cursor. You may also notice that Heavy Clefthoof Vest is shown 3 times. That's because I've got 3 different gem selections defined. The stats shown there are the stats including gems, including socket bonus if the gems match their sockets. Enchants are not included, as those would be the same on any piece of gear for their slot.
http://img67.imageshack.us/img67/9854/23232419ld7.jpg
Speaking of enchants, here's the Enchants tab, where you can choose the enchant you want to use for each slot, from a dropdown list. Only high end enchants with tanking stats are listed, of course.
http://img67.imageshack.us/img67/7637/89852101si8.jpg
And here's the Buffs tab. When you start a new character, or load one from the armory, it starts unbuffed. Be sure to fill this out with what buffs you typically tank with. Set bonuses aren't handled (yet?), so if you have either Malorne 4-piece bonus, or Gladiator 2-piece bonuses, check them here.
http://img67.imageshack.us/img67/9789/84557222wi1.jpg
After checking the buffs I typically tank with, notice the significant difference in the ratings of various gloves on the right. In this case, these buffs, combined with my current gear, put me over the armor cap against boss mobs, so the extra armor on some of these items is worthless, and Rawr accounts for that. Once again, the multiple listings, in this case of Gloves of Dexterous Manipulation, are due to having two different versions of the item loaded, with different gem selections.
http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/2905/66104508uh4.jpg
If you want to modify what gems are in an item, or if you want to add or remove some items, you can goto the Tools>Item Editor... menu item, and this dialog will appear. Here you
can modify the stats of items, though most users shouldn't need to. If you want to add a new item, you can click add, type in the item id of an item, and it'll load the data for that item from allakhazam. However I expect many users to use the Gems section, where you can change what gems are in an item, through a popup menu just like you change items on the main screen.
So there you have it, a whirlwind tour of Rawr. Please keep in mind that it's still a beta, so I expect you guys to find a bug or two, but it shouldn't be too bad. Any bugs that you do find,
PLEASE let me know, by e-mailing me (
cnervig at hotmail dot com), or posting here. You'll need an internet connection and a Windows XP or Vista machine with .NET Framework 2.0 installed to use Rawr. Regarding a Mac version... I'm a Mac addict myself, but work on PCs, and only know how to write software for PCs. I plan to port it to OSX eventually, but haven't started on that yet. For anyone concerned about Rawr doing anything malicious,
I've included the full source code in the zip! It's written in C#, in VS2005.
DOWNLOAD: http://druid.wikispaces.com/space/showimage/Rawr+b8.zip
FAQ
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Q: I launched Rawr, but I just see a black window with some red text on it. Has it hung?
A: No, just let it go for a min. On the first launch of Rawr, it will download all the icons for items it knows about, from the Armory. This can take 1-2 minutes, possibly more on slow connections. If anything goes wrong, it'll display an error message. Just be patient, please. :)
Q: I get an error on load, "To run this application you must first install..." or "The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000135)." How do I fix this?
A: Install .NET Framework 2.0 from Microsoft. If it still doesn't work, uninstall .NET Framework completely, reinstall .NET Framework 2.0, and try Rawr again. Download link for .NET Framework 2.0 from Microsoft:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=32168
Q: There's an item missing! Can you please add [Some Item]?
A: No, I designed Rawr so that I wouldn't need to update it with new items every time a new tanking item was found. You can add items to it yourself, very fast, and very easily. Look the item up on wowhead or thottbot, and remember the item ID # from the URL on wowhead or thottbot. Goto Tools > Edit Items, click Add, type that item ID # in, hit OK, and *poof*, you'll have the item. Another thing you can do, after loading your character from the Armory, is choose Tools > Load Possible Upgrades from Armory. This feature will take *a while*, like 5+ min, but will download all the items that the Armory thinks are potential upgrades for you, and Rawr agrees are potentially upgrades. It's a good idea to run this a few days after a major content patch.
Q: Can you make it, or does Rawr work for Cats, Moonkin, or Trees?
A: Right now, no, my focus is on Bears. Once I'm fully satisfied with Rawr's support for Bears, I'll probably start on Cats.
Recent Version History
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Beta 8:
- Rawr now records and displays item quality (rare, epic, etc). If you reuse your ItemCache.xml from a previous version, you'll need to refresh the item data for each item you want to see the quality of. Thanks to Wicks for this functionality!
- Added support for Finger enchants.
- Gems in the comparison graph now show up highlighted in their color.
- Left clicking on an item in the comparison graph will popup the context menu for it, not just right clicking.
- When loading items from the Armory, Rawr will now retry 3 times if it fails. This should solve the errors caused by intermittant Armory problems. Additionally, if it still fails, it won't close Rawr.
- Fixed some display problems in the item editor. Also, if you add an item with an ID that doesn't exist, it'll offer to create the item as a blank item, for you to fill in.
- Clarified the tooltip for anticrit when you're uncrittable. (Defense over the cap isn't totally wasted)
- Attempting to refresh the data of an item with an item id that doesn't really exist will no longer delete that item. It will alert you to the fact that it could not find item data for that item, and revert to the current data.
