Elitist Group

If you are like most people, ever since Patch 3.3 went live you have been running heroics with random people from LFG. Looking at someone's gear as they zone in the heroic is not easy to do, especially if you don't know other classes very well. Many people have pointed to Gearscore as the solution to this problem, but today I want to take a look at a more useful addon, Elitist Group. Elitist Group is an addon developed by Shadowed that moves the focus away from an arbitrary number generated by a formula that isn't easily visible to an overview of a person's gear, gem choices, enchanting choices, and their experience in other dungeons.

The first screen that you can use is a character profile screen, which allows you to see anything you could want to know about the player (Target someone and type /eg to open it). A list of current items is displayed in two columns, showing you what type of character is is for. If an item is not for the players current spec, type type will turn red. If the item is not enchanted, gemmed, or improperly gemmed, a warning will display under the item type. Mousing over the item will allow you to see what is wrong with it, from missing and improperly enchanted to ungemmed or using the wrong type of gems. So far the gem types all seem to match up just fine with the specs, but Shadowed has been very quick about fixing things that turn up misclassified.

The profile screen also shows you an average item level, which can be compared to the list of suggested raids. A players experience based on how many achievements or runs they have completed in raids or heroics is available to the right, providing a very easy to achieve 100% experience rating in most content. How old the data is, the current spec, and who you got any notes from is displayed as well. Notes are currently still in the early stages, but more functionality is coming for them soon.

The last part of the profile screen is the database list, which will show you every character in the database. You can search by name or server to narrow down the list and anyone currently in a group or raid with your is displayed at the top of the list and denoted with a [Group] tag in front of their name. This feature is still rough around the edges and could use a few UI enhancements to make it easier to use. Tickets are already filed for this and we can expect improvements as development continues! A new feature that was just added recently adds the Item Type, Enchant, and Gem information to the regular inspect screen. This allows you to inspect players like normal and see information about their gear choices instead of using the profile screen.

The second screen is the summary screen, shown when you zone in or request it (/eg summary). It shows each players name, spec, average item level, enchant and gem percentage, each being color coded. It also shows the position of a player in the inspection queue and the ratings you have given the player, if any. Mousing over the percentages for gear, enchants, or gems will tell you what item is wrong and why it is wrong. The raid summary list can be sorted by any of the percents or average item level by clicking on the column headers.

All of these features come at a very small performance hit, storing the addon and man characters in only a few megabytes of memory. The addon is an improvement over Gearscore on almost every level, and is well worth your time to try out. The only downside are the occasional bugs in the alpha releases and the need for frequent updating for now if you want to keep getting the new features. Once the addon is feature complete, it will not need to be updated as frequently. This addon is invaluable for quickly evaluating everyone's gear, gem choices, enchanting choices, and experience levels. Hopefully the ticket in to show everyone's experience percent for the current instance you are in is implemented quickly!

You can download the addon from Curse or WoWInterface.

Blue Posts

10/12 - Recent In-Game Fixes

Prince Keleseth will no longer melee players. So if you get knocked into Keleseth or happen to move by him, he won't swipe in between his casts and kill a non-tank.

The first Shadow Resonance should appear earlier in the fight, which will allow the Keleseth tank to have more orbs on him or her if Keleseth is empowered second instead of third. We didn't want which Blood Prince was empowered second to be a major element of the difficulty in the fight.

We reduced the melee damage for the Princes by 10% for the 10 player difficulty. They were doing less damage than the 25 player before the hotfix, but this change lowers the damage further.

Empowered Flames will now run out of power after shooting fewer firebolts in the 10 player difficulty. We did not change the initial impact damage.

The Blood-Queen is no longer spawned until the Blood Princes dies. This will prevent any unfortunate entry of her highness while a raid is fighting the Blood Princes. The initial hotfix for this causes the Blood-Queen to not spawn at all in a particular circumstance, but this was also fixed last night.

We increased the duration of Essence of the Blood Queen to 60 seconds in 25 player difficulty, and 75 seconds in 10 player difficulty. A strategy developed for managing the

Essences throughout the fight that involved intentionally killing a player, and this change addresses that strategy. The new timing does interact with some of her other abilities in new ways, but there are methods that players have to lessen that impact.

Tier-10 Tank Armor Changes

We recognize that many plate tanks are making their gear choices based on the amount of armor they’re provided, as this is currently the most preferred stat. In order to make the tier-10 plate tanking sets more desirable, we will be adjusting the stats on the gloves and chest pieces in order to inflate the amount of armor they provide in the next minor patch. This will apply to all item levels of the tier-10 death knight, warrior, and paladin tanking gloves and chest pieces.

Similar items crafted or purchased with Emblems of Frost will continue to be very good and will compare favorably to all but the Heroic difficulty boss loot, so you shouldn't despair if you recently acquired any of those.