How the TBC BiS Lists work
The lists the audits grade against, browsable on their own: every slot's pick for a spec and phase, with its enchant, its gems and where it drops. Short page — most of it is about what a runner-up number is claiming, because that is the part it is easy to read wrong.
What the lists show, and what a runner-up number means
The TBC BiS Lists show the same saved lists every audit here grades against — they cannot disagree with a checker's verdict, because they are the verdict's source. Item icons are Blizzard's own, downloaded once at build time and served from this site's bucket, so your browser fetches them from nobody else; if one is missing, the row simply shows its text.
The drop-down under each slot ranks the runners-up, and the badge beside each one is one of three different kinds of claim, shown three different ways:
- A bordered badge was measured by simulation — the list's own outfit, then
that runner-up swapped into the one slot, both run in the standard buffed 25-man. It has a
verifylink showing both figures. Where the gap comes out inside the margin of error the badge says “too close to call” instead of a number: that is a result, not a missing one. This exists wherever the precompute covers the pair. - A number with a
~is an estimate, for items wowtbc.gg never ranked — mostly crafted gear their lists skip. Both sides are priced with this spec's own fitted stat weights, so the comparison is at least one scale. - A plain number is wowtbc.gg's stat comparison: a stat total, useful for "what do I chase next". A stat total cannot price a proc — which is exactly why the simulated number exists, and why the audits prefer it where they have it.
Set pieces, and why two runner-ups do not add
A set piece's row names the set, how many of its pieces this list wears, and which bonuses that count reaches — the bonus text as wowtbc.gg publishes it, and the words “not reached” for a tier the count falls short of. Two pieces of a three-piece set get the line, because a reader might expect a bonus there; a lone piece keeps only the set name on its hover card.
A runner-up's bordered number already includes losing that bonus — the whole
outfit is simulated, with the set's other pieces still on — so two runner-ups for two pieces of
one set do not add: each contains the same loss. That holds for a bonus the simulator has code
for; it has none for eighteen of the sets these lists wear (Latro's Flurry, Felstalker, and the
healer sets among them), nor for every tier of a set it does model (Aldor Regalia's 2-piece, the
Gladiator sets' resilience), and there the number prices the bonus at zero. The
reverse trap exists too: where one swap keeps a bonus that two swaps would lose (three Onslaught
pieces, say), neither badge contains that loss and their sum understates the
pair; the badge says so. The
badge's hover text and its verify dialog say which count moves and which of the
two it is. A plain wowtbc.gg number is no measurement of
the bonus either way: their score folds set context into some set pieces (about 300 of the
1,000 set-piece rows they publish, several tier sets and Primal Mooncloth among them) and not
others (the Warglaives), and nothing they publish says which.
Where the two hands are the pieces of one set — the Warglaives — a third line under the set line measures the pair itself: both hands swapped for each hand's best runner-up that is not a piece of the set, in one simulated run against the same baseline, bordered and verifiable like every other measurement. Under it, each hand's row answers the question a player actually has: what getting this glaive is worth first, with the runner-up still in the other hand, and what it is worth second, completing the pair. Those two steps are ratios of the three runs already on the row (both hands swapped, and each hand swapped alone), not new simulations. Fury P3 reads +0.3% for the first glaive and +4.0% for the second: one glaive is nearly a wash against its runner-up, and the 2-piece bonus is almost the whole of the pair's value — which is why the two per-hand badges each carry most of the pair's loss and are not two halves of it.
What "Pre-Raid" means here
The Pre-Raid tab lists gear you can get without setting foot in a raid — five-man dungeons and heroics, quests, reputation, vendors, PvP, and crafting. It is a statement about what you can reach, not about which patch something belongs to, so a Karazhan drop never appears on it even though Karazhan is the same content tier as the dungeons beside it. It also stays with launch-era content: later gear you can get without raiding — Sunwell-era reputation and vendor pieces, say — belongs to its own phase tab.
Crafted gear has to clear the same bar. A recipe is no use to you if the reagents only drop in a raid, so anything needing Nether Vortex — the endgame crafted weapons, mostly — is raid gear wearing a crafting recipe and is left off this tab. What we cannot check is where every pattern is learned: that is not in the data anywhere. So a crafted runner-up here is one whose materials you can gather pre-raid; if its pattern turns out to drop from a raid boss, the row will still show you the profession and the full material list, and it is still marked an estimate.
Ads, and what they pay for
There are two ad slots: one in the side rail on wide screens, one below the results. They are never put between a raider and their data, they hold their space so nothing jumps under your cursor, and the side one disappears on narrow screens rather than squashing the table. All of that describes what happens once an ad unit is approved. None is, so today neither slot is filled and neither one takes up any space at all.
They pay the bills. Simulating a full raid is a couple of minutes of computing time per report, and that costs real money. There is no paywall and no account, and nothing about the audit changes depending on whether an ad loads — block them and the tool works exactly the same.
Credit where it is due
The audits, the checks, and every choice about how a number is read, labelled and shown are this site's own. The raw material underneath has earned its credit: every dps number here is produced by wowsims' simulator — their simulator, their rotations, their talent builds — and the item database comes from them too. It is open source under the MIT licence, which is what makes a tool like this possible at all.
The best-in-slot lists and item scores are wowtbc.gg's. Where their score and their own pick disagree, this tool goes with the pick — they chose that item knowing what it does.
Game data and item art come from Blizzard Entertainment's official API. World of Warcraft and Burning Crusade Classic are trademarks of Blizzard Entertainment. This site is not affiliated with or endorsed by Blizzard, wowsims or wowtbc.gg.
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