We really do a lot of research when writing articles here at DYS.  Sometimes the information we would like to add to an article just doesn’t exist, which means that the facts have to come from in-game analysis.  As you can probably figure, that can take a lot of time.

I recently had the idea based on a comment on the article about how soon will you be replacing gear after WotLK on a peice about farming honor gear.  It turns out there really isn’t a succinct guide for that anywhere so I have been forced to grind it out myself to put it into a readable and reasonably usable formulation for our readers.  And it’s going to take me a month of working at it a few hours a day.  You see, I just won’t put anything up here unless I’m certain that it is as factual and accurate as I can possibly make it before you read it.

In this vein, there used to be a really neat tool at Alakazam where you could look at all the different builds for all the classes and see what was the most popular.  When they changed their site format it just dissapeared, completely killing a terrific article I had already written.  Since that time, I have been searching for something that gives the same info, but to no avail.  However, I found something that comes pretty close.

So today I just wanted to introduce you to a neat little blog site you’ve probably never heard of.  I found it while browsing through the Wow wiki via a relatively obscure link on a build page, and it has maybe 90% of the info I used to use.  It may come in handy from time to time for you if you like big lists of facts like I do.

The site is Armory Musings and can be found at this address: http://okoloth.blogspot.com/ This guy has written a spider script that mines information from the WoW armory, and it can really show you some nifty stats on just about everything you could ever want to know about what players really use in the game.

On the first page, you will see a series of updates (with a LOT of scrolling) that show the balance of characters on every single realm by class.  While interesting, it’s not all that useful most of the time.  The real data is in the specific class links at the top of the page.

You can click on any of the class names here to take you to a class-specific page with a whole lot of useful data on your class of choice.  Let’s look at some of the information on the druid page.

You will see that he will break down the entire class by spec, and even give you the average stats that each spec has.  It should give you an idea how you rank according to the overall averages for your class at level 70.

Next, he shows you some averages for some other specific information from the character pane including mele, defense and spell stats so you can see how your toon stacks up against all the other 70’s on all realms.  He even has stats for the most popular professions and even profession combinations for all the classes listed.

But the part I really thought was cool was the next, and largest section.  The big list will show you the top 5 gear choices for all level 70’s broken down by builds.  He has even included the wowhead tooltip so you can hover each one and get the game tooltip, or you can click the link to go to wowhead and figure out where to go and get all this great loot.

Wondering what your Balance druid should be wearing on your wrist? Here is what the data says:

14% [Bracers of the White Stag]

followed by:

10% [Shattrath Wraps]
9% [Windhawk Bracers]
5% [Veteran's Wyrmhide Bracers]
5% [Mana Infused Wristguards]

So you can look at the choices thousands of other druids have made to determine what is easiest to get, and what may just be by far the best choice.  You can see that this might be extremely useful if this is an alt, or if you just haven’t played long enough to know what all the best gear choices may be.  So both noobs and pros should find this information really valuable.  (You’ll have to excuse me if I didn’t include all the HTML for the tooltips and links – that’s why I’m pointing you to the site!)

And if you’ve ever wondered exactly what gems you should be putting in all those sockets, there’s even a breakdown of the 5 most popular gem choices, which I found fascinating as well.

Again, he breaks this down according to base talent builds, which should take any guesswork out of selecting the right gems for your build choice.

Overall, I love the information at armory musings.  There are other things I would like to see added to the data.  And, of course, a blog format makes it pretty difficult to present these types of tables, so the presentation is a little sketchy at times.  But overall it will be a site I visit fairly often when I start working on end-game spec and gear for all those new toons I have hitting 70 with the refer a friend program.  I sure don’t want a pro inspecting my gear and giving me the loser chant.

You should be able to tweak your overall knowledge of any class in the game at armory musings based on great breakdowns of an absolute avalanche of data directly from the armory.  It’s a great resource to use and a tool that just might help you put the final touches on your toon of any class to go Dominate!