Pawn / SimCraft Set Up

Disclaimer

For this tab, I am not going to go into depth on how to manage the addons that you've installed to customize your user interface. That will entirely be on you to go through the settings and establish what you like and dislike about location, size, shape, etc. The idea is to make it your own.

Instead, I will be explaining how to use other websites and resources to help set up your character build, including a few of the ones I listed in my helpful addons tab.

So let's get started!

Pawn & SimulationCraft

     (TL:DR Below)

After you install both of these, you may notice that some equipment in your inventory possibly has a little green arrow on it. When you put your mouse cursor over it, it should display whether or not that piece of gear is better than what you are currently wearing. It may also show if it's better suited for a different talent specialization than the one you are running. These are the default settings. However, there is a way to make it more specific to your actual build and not a generic guess, though, it will require a few steps.

Step 1: While logged in to World of Warcraft, type /simc in to your chat window. A box filled with numbers and stats will pop up. You want to select and copy this entire window. These numbers relate to your currently equipped armor, talents, and stat goals.

Step 2: Open up your internet browser and go to RaidBots.com. Here, you will see a few different options. The "Top Gear" section will allow you to paste what you just copied into it, and manually compare the equipment and talents that you have access to. However, the one that you will be selecting right now is the "Stat Weights" button.

Step 3: Once you open the "Stat Weights" tab, you will see a box where you can paste the script that you copied from the /simc command. Do this, and then hit the "Generate Stat Weights" button below it. This will run a prompt that calculates a multitude of variables based on what you have compared to what you should have.

Step 4: After the calculations finish, you will see a few things pop up in this new window. The top will display your character, your average damage per second, your currently equipped armor, and your average item level. The second box will show the calculated recommendations for your class specific target numbers. And the third box will show you what is called the "Pawn String." What you do for this step, is click on "Copy to Clipboard" just below the "Pawn String" box and then go back to World of Warcraft.

Step 5: When you are back in your game, type /pawn in to your chat window. This will bring up the options management for Pawn. On the bottom of this window, click on "Scale," and then click on "Manual." This will open up a bunch of new things. What you are looking for is "Import" right in the center of the menu. Click this, and then paste that Pawn String into the box and hit okay.

Note: On the left side of your Pawn window, you will see the default weights automatically imported for your class by the addon. Below that, you will see other scripts that you have manually added for other classes. Because of this, I highly recommend that you rename anything that you import to something similar to your class and/or build. (Ex. Fury Best) It will help you after you've imported a few different ones, and you can keep them organized. You can rename a string by selecting "Scale" again at the bottom of the menu, highlighting the one you just added, and then selecting "Rename." You can even change the tooltip color that it will display as when inspecting gear upgrades.

When you are all done, it should look something like this when you mouse-over an item.

Note the green arrows in the inventory and on the tooltip, the renaming of the new import, and the difference in percentage between the imported one and the default setting. I would recommend doing this every few levels, or whenever you get a few item upgrades at max level.

TL:DR
Step 1: Type /simc in to the chat window while you are logged in to WoW and copy the entire selection.

Step 2: Go to RaidBots.com, click on "Stat Weights," and paste the selection into the window. Click "Generate Stat Weights."

Step 3: Copy "Pawn String" and then go back to WoW.

Step 4: Type /pawn in to the chat window. Select "Scale" at the bottom of the menu, select "Manual," then click "Import" and paste the Pawn String here.

Step 5 (Optional): Click "Scale" again, select the scale that you just imported and rename it to something class specific so that it doesn't get lost later on if you do this on multiple characters.