# Pawn

Pawn calculates scores for items to help you easily find upgrades for your gear. It's completely customizable, and applicable to any class and situation: for example, it can help you decide whether to equip the ring with a higher item level but one stat you don't want (say, strength for shamans), or the ring with the lower item level but all good stats. It's that level of customization that makes it very different from more general mods like GearScore and more specialized mods like TankPoints.

Pawn can be used by new players right off the bat without needing to change any options, or by advanced players who plan out their gear upgrades, build Excel spreadsheets, install Rawr, and read Elitist Jerks.

I welcome your feedback—see the Notes section.

## Installing Pawn

Pawn is installed like pretty much every other World of Warcraft mod on the planet. Extract the contents of the zip file to World of Warcraft's AddOns folder, generally located in one of these locations:

`C:\Users\Public\Games\World of Warcraft\_retail_\Interface\AddOns`
`C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\_retail_\Interface\AddOns`
`C:\Program Files (x86)\World of Warcraft\_retail_\Interface\AddOns`

## Comparing items

You can use Pawn to easily compare two items. Open the Pawn UI and click the Compare tab. Then, place an equippable item from your inventory in the empty box in the upper-right corner. Once you do this, Pawn will automatically fill in the slot on the left with whichever item you currently have equipped in that slot. (For example, if you put a cloak in the right slot, Pawn will automatically put your currently equipped cloak in the left slot.) In the case of trinkets and rings, you can switch between both equipped items using buttons in the lower-left corner.

The Compare tab shows you a breakdown of the two items by stats, and makes it easy to tell which item is better by showing the total Pawn value for each item, and highlighting the item with the higher value. Only stats in the currently selected scale appear in the stat breakdown, so if you're viewing two DPS axes but have a frost mage scale selected, the stat list will be pretty empty since your frost mage probably doesn't care about agility and expertise.

The Compare tab always compares the base versions of items, ignoring currently socketed gems and enchantments. (Items with empty sockets will get points based on the gem that Pawn suggests putting in those sockets.)

#### Comparing an item that just dropped to what you currently have

If you're deciding whether to roll or bid on an item, you can't pick it up and put it in a slot in the Compare tab, but you can still easily compare it to what you already have. Just right-click on an item's icon in the roll window to put it into the Compare tab. If it's an upgrade the Loot Upgrade Advisor appeared, you can click anywhere on the big yellow tooltip. Or, if the item was linked in trade chat, click on the link to open the item link, and then right-click on the window (tooltip) that appears.

#### Comparing items in AtlasLoot and other mods without clicking

You can also compare items without having to click on them, which is useful for items you see in mods such as AtlasLoot. To do this, you'll need to set up key bindings to Compare left item and Compare right item in the Key Bindings window. Pawn will try to bind the [ and ] (left bracket and right bracket) keys to those commands if those keys aren't already bound to something else, but you can customize the key bindings to whatever you want.

Once you have key bindings set up, hover over the left item and press the Compare left item key [, and then hover over the right item and press the Compare right item key ]. (This doesn't work on "unsafe" items with a red border in AtlasLoot.)

- You can use Compare right item to evaluate an item upgrade that drops from the boss you're about to kill. Pawn will automatically fill in the left item with whatever you have equipped.
- You can use both Compare left item and Compare right item to see the stat difference between two different badge rewards or the current PVP season's Pendant of Dominance and Pendant of Subjugation.

## Notes

If you're interested in customizing Pawn further, check out the Options tab of the Pawn UI.

### Contacting the author

I'm interested in knowing what you think of Pawn, and what you use it for. Bug reports and suggestions are cool too. The best way to contact me is through Facebook or on the Pawn page at Curse, which I check daily. You can also contact me through in-game mail: Vger on Azjol-Nerub (US), Horde. (Just make sure that you keep a character on my server and check your mail, or I can't respond!) Also, check out my official site, where you can find links to all of my mods.

### Reporting bugs

When reporting bugs, it's helpful to be as specific as possible. Does the problem always happen for you, or just sometimes? Can you think of any mods that you're running that might be related? Does the problem still occur if you disable all your mods except Pawn? What item does it happen on?

WoW now hides interface error information from you by default. Reenabling it in Interface Options would be helpful; the error text includes useful information about where the error occurred. Any information you can provide to help Vger track down the bug is great.

Also, when reporting bugs, please make sure that you mention which language you play World of Warcraft in.

### Slash command

You can also open Pawn by typing /pawn into a chat box.

### Key bindings

In addition to the options in the Pawn UI, you can also set a key binding to open and close the Pawn UI. Look for it in the list of key bindings under "Pawn." There are also key bindings for putting the item you're currently hovering over into either slot of the Compare tab.

### Making a backup

You can back up all of your custom scales. Just type /pawn backup in the chat box, and a window will appear. Press Ctrl+C to copy its contents to the clipboard. Then, create or open a file on your computer where you'd like to save the backup, and press Ctrl+V to paste your scales to that file. Save the file, and now you have a backup of all of your custom scales in case you accidentally delete them, or just want to share them all with someone else.

Note: The scale Import feature only lets you import a single scale at a time, so to restore your scales from this backup you'll have to copy and paste them one-by-one.

You can also back up your SavedVariables file. Open your World of Warcraft folder, and then in that location there is a folder named WTF. Open it, and then the folder inside it with your account name, and then the SavedVariables folder. Look for the file named "Pawn.lua" and save a copy of that file to a safe location.

### The starter scales

#### Hiding

(In Automatic mode, which is the default, this is handled for you automatically when you change specs.) It's easy to hide any of the starter scales that you don't like from your tooltips. Just select a scale from the list and then uncheck Show in tooltips on the Scales tab. Or just shift-click the scale.

#### Resetting

It's possible to customize the colors of the starter scales. If you'd like to undo any changes you've made to the starter scales, you can execute these two commands at a chat window:

/script PawnResetProviderScales()
/reload

### Developers

If you have a World of Warcraft mod that you'd like to integrate with Pawn, please consider getting in touch with me. I may have suggestions that will make your life easier. I've also made it possible for other developers to create their own "scale providers" that can feed stat weights into Pawn just like the Wowhead scales. If you'd like to create your own scale provider, take a look at Wowhead.lua, and contact me if you have any questions, or suggestions on ways that Pawn could be improved to work with your mod better. (I can't, of course, guarantee that I'll make changes, but I might be able to help.)

## Item valuation notes

Here are some notes that may help you while you're setting up your Pawn scales.

### Gems and socket bonuses

Pawn assumes that you'll fill in any item that has sockets with appropriate-level gems that will maximize that item's value, whether it's using the best gems of the correct colors to get the socket bonus, or gems of all one color and ignoring the socket bonus. (In past versions of Pawn it was possible to manually set a value for sockets, but Pawn's smarter now and that manual override is no longer present.) There's no way to fine-tune what Pawn considers "appropriate-level" gems, but in general it's what you'd expect—a blue-quality or better Mists of Pandaria item will use blue-quality Mists of Pandaria gems when determining the value of the item, Wrath of the Lich King epics will use Wrath of the Lich King epic gems, and so on. You can use the Gems tab and type in a specific item level to see exactly which gems Pawn suggests that you use for a given scale and item level—the items that it suggests there are the same ones it uses in its calculations, and they're the same ones that it suggests in the socketing advisor that appears when you shift-right-click an item.

#### Base versus current values

The socket values based on the gems that Pawn suggests for you only apply to the base version of an item. No points are awarded for empty sockets in the current version of an item. (You should gem your items and not be such a scrub!) So, for items with empty sockets, the current value for the item will be lower than the base value. This makes it easy to compare socketed items with non-socketed items based on their potential stats—just always compare the base values of the two items. The Compare tab already does that for you. (In almost all cases you always want to compare the base values of items. The only time you really want to compare anything else is when answering the question "should I equip this item right this very moment before I have a chance to gem, enchant, and reforge it?")

### Weapon speed

Weapon speed can work a little differently than the other stats. Some people value weapon speed based on how much faster or slower a weapon is than a particular speed. The "speed baseline" stat (which isn't really a stat, per se) lets you choose this baseline speed, instead of 0, which is the speed baseline if you don't pick a different one. For example, to give an item 1 point for every tenth of a second slower than 2.9 seconds per swing (useful for, say, enhancement shamans), set speed to 10 (10 = 1 / 0.1) and speed baseline to 2.9. If you value faster weapons, pick your preferred speed baseline and then set the value speed to be negative, because higher numbers for speed are bad for you.

Speed baseline shows up in the "special weapon stats" category.

### Special weapon stats

If you want to value different types of weapons differently, don't use the regular DPS, minimum damage, maximum damage, and speed stats; instead, use the ones in the "special weapon stats" category at the end of the list. For example, if you're a hunter, you might value ranged DPS much higher than melee DPS, since most of your damage comes from ranged attacks.

You won't want to use all of the weapon min damage, max damage, and DPS stats all at once.

- Do you care about top-end damage only? Use the max damage stats. (max damage, 1H: max damage, Ranged: max damage, ...)
- Do you care about damage per second only? Use the DPS stats. (DPS, 1H: DPS, Ranged: DPS, ...)
- Do you care about only melee weapons in general, but not which hand? Use the Melee stats. (Melee: min damage, Melee: DPS, ...)
- Do you care about the top end damage of all melee weapons that fit in your main hand? Use MH: max damage and 1H: max damage.
- If you use the specialized versions of stats, don't also use the general ones. For example, if you use Melee: DPS, don't also use DPS. If you use Melee: min damage and/or Melee: max damage, you probably don't want to also use Melee: DPS.
- The OH: DPS stat and other off hand-related stats do not take into account the decreased damage and hit rate of off-hand weapons. The information is, as always, pulled straight from the tooltip.
- If you care about average damage versus minimum and maximum damage, take the value you would have assigned to average damage if it existed as a stat, and add half to minimum damage and half to maximum damage. For example, if you wanted to set Ranged: average damage to 10, but then found out that Ranged: average damage doesn't exist, set Ranged: min damage to 5 and Ranged: max damage to 5 instead.

### Normalizing values (like Wowhead)

With the "Normalize values" option disabled (the default), Pawn calculates values by multiplying each stat on an item by the value of that stat in each of your scales. If you enable this option, Pawn will take that number and divide it by the sum of all of the stat values in each of your scales. This helps to compensate for how some scales might use numbers that average out to about 1.0, and others use numbers in the tens.

For example, if your scale were ( Stamina = 1, Intellect = 2, Crit = 1 ), then Wowhead would divide the item's total value by 4. An item with 10 Stamina, 10 Intellect, and 20 Crit would have a value of 50 with this option off, and 12.5 with this option on.

### Special effects and set bonuses

Pawn doesn't have a value, for example, for "Equip: Increases the effect that healing and mana potions have on the wearer by 40%" because only a few items do that. Also, set bonuses are completely ignored by Pawn. You'll need to take those special effects into account manually when deciding between an item that would give you a bonus and an item that would not, as they won't be factored into the upgrade % numbers shown by Pawn.

## Mod support

Have a favorite mod that doesn't seem to work with Pawn? Let me know. I may not be able to add support for your favorite, but I might be able to suggest a replacement, or update Pawn to work better in a future version for popular mods.

### Mods that have been tested and work with Pawn

This is not a conclusive list. If any of these mods doesn't seem to be working with Pawn, please make sure that you have the latest version of both it and Pawn.

- Ackis Recipe List
- ArkInventory
- AtlasLoot
- Armory
- CowTip
- EQCompare
- EquipCompare
- FuBar
- ItemSync
- Link Wrangler
- LootLink
- Mendeleev
- MobInfo-2
- MonkeyQuest
- MultiTips
- Outfitter
- RatingBuster
- Skinner
- Spyglass
- tdItemTip
- tekKompare

#### ArkInventory

When you have ArkInventory, ArkInventoryRules, and Pawn enabled, you can use the `pawnupgrade()` rule in ArkInventory to run a Pawn comparison on items in your inventory for sorting. This will return true if the item is an upgrade and false if it is indeterminate or not an upgrade. To determine if something is not an upgrade, use `pawnnotupgrade()`. This rule will return true if the item is definitely not an upgrade, and false if it is indeterminate or an upgrade. This can be used for auto-sell rules, such as `bind(3) and pawnnotupgrade()`.

### Incompatible addons

- FreeUI
  - FreeUI changes a bunch of text on tooltips that makes it impossible for Pawn to read some stats off of them anymore. For example, it redefines ITEM_MOD_CRIT_RATING so that what would normally be "+25 Critical Strike" shows up as "Crit +25". Pawn doesn't support any addon that does that.
- Combat Numbers Separator + Titan Panel Artifact Power
  - These addons change the way that numbers are displayed on tooltips, which causes Pawn to misread item stats. Right now I don't have any way or plan to support them.
- Undermine Journal
- TipTac
- TradeSkillMaster

## Updates

### Version 2.5.21

- When using the option to ignore gems while leveling (which is enabled by default) on Burning Crusade Classic, Pawn will now no longer suggest that you use gems on items with an item level below 100. This means that those items will get lower values, and also that Pawn will no longer suggest using green-quality gems in any item by default. You can restore the (approximate) previous behavior by disabling that option on the Options tab. (That option affects all characters.)
- Added support for more items with spell crit in English and French Burning Crusade Classic.
- A few Shattered Sun / Sunwell gems that don't appear until Burning Crusade Classic Phase 3 have been removed from recommendations, since they're not available yet.
- Fixed a bug where socket bonuses would always be ignored on items in Traditional Chinese Burning Crusade Classic.
- Fixed a bug on Burning Crusade Classic where the Compare tab would show a socket bonus even when it would be better to ignore the socket bonus and only use your best gems. (Item values and upgrade advice were not affected; this was just a display issue.)
- Fixed a harmless error that would appear when logging in on Traditional Chinese versions of WoW.
- Slightly improved performance on Italian Shadowlands.

### Version 2.5.20

- Pawn should finish its item calculations about 5% faster now.
- Added support for more types of items with melee and ranged crit rating in French, Latin American Spanish, European Spanish, Korean, and Simplified Chinese Burning Crusade Classic.

### Version 2.5.19

- Fixed an error that could appear when hovering over an item ("attempt to get length of field 'Values' (a nil value)").
- Added support for more types of items with different amounts of spell damage and healing on the same line of the tooltip in Russian Burning Crusade Classic.
- Added support for more types of items with MP5 in French Burning Crusade Classic.

### Version 2.5.18

- While leveling in Shadowlands (non-Classic), Pawn will now suggest potential upgrades to heirloom items that used to provide an experience boost, since those items no longer do and there's less of a downside to replacing them.
- Added support for more types of "the Sorcerer" items in Burning Crusade Classic in several languages.
- Added support for more types of items with MP5 in Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese Burning Crusade Classic.
- Added support for more types of items with different amounts of spell damage and healing on the same line of the tooltip in Traditional Chinese Burning Crusade Classic.

### Version 2.5.17

- I'm trying out a new workaround for a couple of game bugs that caused Pawn to work much more slowly on Classic Era and Burning Crusade Classic.
  - Other than just still not being fast enough, the most likely thing that might break with this change is Pawn missing some of the stats on items that appear in green text, such as ratings in Burning Crusade Classic. (I haven't spotted any bugs with those—but if anything did break, it's probably that.)
- Additional performance improvements that affect all versions of the game.

### Version 2.5.16

- Added support for more types of items with crit rating on German Burning Crusade Classic.

### Version 2.5.15

- Added support for more types of Wrath items (Fiery Wrath, etc.).
- Added "Thrown weapon" to the list of weapon types that you can add values to (or mark as unusable) on the Values tab for Classic Era and Burning Crusade Classic.
- Classes that can't use thrown weapons have them marked as unusable in the default scales, so by default they won't show as potential upgrades.
- Added support for more types of items with spell damage and healing on the same line of the tooltip, and more with MP5, on English Burning Crusade Classic.
- Added support for more types of items with crit rating on Russian Burning Crusade Classic.
- Fixed a couple of bugs causing health regeneration on items to not be recognized on French versions of the game.
- Further improved the formatting of how some item IDs are displayed.

### Version 2.5.14

- On Classic and Burning Crusade Classic, Pawn will no longer suggest mail as upgrades for hunters and shamans or plate for warriors and paladins before level 40 in some places.
- Added support for additional types of items with shield block rating and dodge rating.
- You can now use Enter and Escape to close the popups that appear when using the Scale tab (export, confirm delete, etc.).
- Pawn will now claim that fewer items have "special effects" on the Compare tab if the "special effect" is something at the top of the item tooltip like "Mythic." (This doesn't affect item values or upgrade advice in any way, just the orange diamond on the Compare tab.)

### Version 2.5.13

- Fixed a problem where Pawn was suggesting random items instead of cut Golden Draenite gems. (The item values and upgrade advice were correct; it was just showing the wrong item name. I apologize to anyone who tried to shove a two-handed mace into a yellow gem socket.)
- Fixed a problem where shamans were being treated as if they could dual-wield on Classic Era.

### Version 2.5.12

- Added support for items with spell penetration in Classic Era. (They're already supported in Burning Crusade Classic.)
- Added support for the handful of armor penetration items that will appear in later phases of Burning Crusade Classic.
- Worked around a bug in the Russian and Latin American Spanish versions of Burning Crusade Classic that would cause Pawn to show errors if you had items with a healing enchantment or random property.

### Version 2.5.11

- Included several gem cuts that were missing from suggestions, including Runed and Teardrop—sorry, casters!
- Fixed a problem where many of the gems suggested on Burning Crusade Classic were being suggested based on stats and colors that they had at different points in the game's history (Wrath or Cataclysm). You should see more sensible suggestions in the socketing advisor, and the values of socketed items may slightly increase.
- Added support for "of Healing" and "of the Prophet" items on Burning Crusade Classic. (Thanks to neaves for tracking down the items and a suggested fix!)
  - On Latin American Spanish and Russian, "of Healing" items currently don't show the spell damage granted. Once that bug is fixed, Pawn will need an additional change to handle those items properly.
- Fixed an error that would occur on Burning Crusade Classic when looking at an item that has sockets but no meta socket. (Thanks to ahakola for a suggestion and the many people who reported this.)
- Fixed a minor issue with how some item IDs were displayed (a missing colon).

### Version 2.5.10

- Meta gems are now supported. You can manually assign a weight per scale to the special meta gem effects such as "Minor Run Speed Increase" or "1% Spell Reflect"; the stat portion of a meta gem will be calculated for you. (A good starting point is 36× the value of your primary stat.)
- Fixed a problem where Pawn wouldn't work at all on Italian Shadowlands.
- Fixed a problem where feral attack power wasn't working on English Burning Crusade Classic.

### Version 2.5.9

- On Burning Crusade Classic, when determining a socketed item's value, Pawn will now decide whether the item's value would be maximized by following the socket bonus, or ignoring the bonus and using all of the same type of gem.
  - The socket bonus will also be taken into account for the advice given in the socketing advisor popup.
  - The socket bonus will also be shown on Pawn's Compare tab whenever the item's value would be maximized by following the socket bonus.
- Fixed a problem with wands that deal holy damage on all Russian versions of WoW.
- Fixed a problem with some items that grant mana-per-5 on Russian Burning Crusade Classic.

### Version 2.5.8

- Pawn now includes colored sockets in the value of an item like it does for prismatic sockets. Colored sockets are assigned a value automatically based on the best gems that fit that socket's color of an appropriate quality level for the item. Like prismatic sockets, there's no way to manually override the value of a colored socket or to fine-tune the quality level of the gem used in the calculation.
- Colored and meta sockets are now shown on Pawn's Compare tab.
- The socketing advisor will now appear for socketed items in Burning Crusade Classic.
- Added support for more items with spell hit rating on Burning Crusade Classic.

### Version 2.5.7

- Added the Gems tab in Burning Crusade Classic.
  - Gems with Haste are not currently visible, since they won't appear until Black Temple opens.
- The value of stamina in the Classic and Burning Crusade Classic default scales for DPS specs was too high and has been reduced to a more reasonable level.
- Added support for some additional caster enchantments on English Classic and Burning Crusade Classic. (This was accidentally listed in the notes for 2.5.6 in some places, but it's not fixed until 2.5.7.)
- Simplified the look of some item IDs when the Show Item IDs option is enabled.

### Version 2.5.6

- Fixed a few problems with items that give bonuses to a single type of magic damage in European Spanish Burning Crusade Classic.

### Version 2.5.5

- Added support for items with feral attack power on Burning Crusade Classic.
- Added support for more items with defense rating on Burning Crusade Classic.
- Added support for more items with hit rating on Burning Crusade Classic.
- Added support for more items with spell hit rating on Simplified Chinese Burning Crusade Classic.
- Fixed problems with weapon damage in Traditional Chinese Burning Crusade Classic.
- Fixed a problem with Outland items with melee and ranged crit rating on European Spanish Burning Crusade Classic.
- Fixed a problem with items with school-specific spell damage on European Spanish Burning Crusade Classic.

### Version 2.5.4

- Fixed the calculation of DPS of wands on Portuguese and Korean Burning Crusade Classic.

### Version 2.5.3

- Added support for more Outland items with spell crit rating on Burning Crusade Classic.
- Added support for more Outland items with the same amount of spell damage and healing on Burning Crusade Classic.

### Version 2.5.2

- Fixed a problem where Pawn missed crit rating on some Outland items in Burning Crusade Classic.
- Fixed a problem where Pawn couldn't determine the DPS of wands in French Burning Crusade Classic.
- Fixed many problems where Pawn missed stats in European Spanish Burning Crusade Classic.

### Version 2.5.1

- Added support for various items with hit rating and attack power that weren't being handled properly before.
- Fixed a problem where items with different values of spell damage and healing on the same line of the tooltip were getting the two stats reversed, even though I literally triple-checked that before releasing Pawn 2.5.
- Minor updates to the German translation.

### Version 2.5

Introducing: Pawn for the Burning Crusade Classic pre-patch.

Important: If you imported custom scales on Classic and are continuing to Burning Crusade Classic, you'll need to update your weights for all of the percentage-based stats when you get the pre-patch. If, for example, your value for Crit is 10, an item that gives 1% crit would be worth 10 points on Classic, but would be worth 80 in Burning Crusade Classic and the pre-patch, because that item will change to have 8 crit rating. Pawn won't make any automatic changes to your custom scales. But, if you're using the default stat weights that come with Pawn, you don't need to do anything.

- Added support for all Burning Crusade Classic languages: English, French, German, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Latin American Spanish, European Spanish, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese.
  - Known issue: The Spanish PTR currently has a bug where items are showing spell hit and spell crit as percentages instead of ratings. Pawn currently processes these items correctly, but once the bug is fixed, Pawn will need an additional adjustment to work again.
  - Known issue: The Russian PTR has the same problem with spell hit.
- Added support for new stats: Expertise Rating, Resilience Rating, Haste Rating, Spell Haste Rating, and Spell Penetration.
- Added support for new combat ratings present on Classic gear: Hit Rating, Spell Hit Rating, Crit Rating, Spell Crit Rating, Dodge Rating, Parry Rating, Block Rating, and Defense Rating.
- Added support for items that give different amounts of spell damage and healing on the same line (Amulet of Flowing Life, etc.).
- The default stat weights on Burning Crusade Classic have been updated to accommodate the combat ratings change.

### Older versions

See the version history document for information about older versions of Pawn.

## The fine print

© 2006-2021 Travis Spomer. This mod is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 license. In short, this means that you can use it, copy it, and share it, but you can't sell it or distribute your own altered versions without permission. By using the mod you agree to the terms of the license. For more information, click the link.