Rawr

Rawr is a stand-alone program (and soon to be Web App) for comparing and exploring gear for Bears, Cats, Moonkin, Healadins, Retadins, Mages, DPS Warriors, Protection Warriors, Trees, Hunters, Protection Paladins, Healing Priests, Shadow Priests, Enhancement Shamans, Warlocks, Rogues, Restoration Shamans, Elementals, and DPS & Tank Death Knights. Rawr has been designed from the start to be fun to use and helpful for finding optimal gear combinations and what gear to obtain.

It is currently strictly aimed at PVE, and takes the guess work out of deciding what gear to use, in what combination, when you should and should not drop set bonuses, etc. PVP modeling is not likely to appear due to the massive complexities and sheer number of variables involved.

Features

• Extremely user friendly, graphical, fast, easy to use interface.
• Automatically handles items. The ability to load your character from the Armory, automatically download info about items it doesn't know about, download info about possible upgrades, and download info about specific items you tell it to, ensure that you won't need to type in any item stats with Rawr.
• The most comprehensive, and most accurate system for calculating your character stats, and ratings for individual items, based on your current gear, enchants, and buffs.

Optimizer

• One of the most powerful features of Rawr, it lets the user simply specify the gear, buffs and debuffs available, click a button, wait a while, and the program calculates what the optimal gear set, spec, gems, enchants, glyphs etc is - making it easy to figure out when to drop a set bonus or change gems/enchants.
• Will also let the user Build Upgrade List - providing a simple list of gear upgrades, where they're from and how much it will improve your character.

Available models

As of Dec 2009:

• Rawr.Bear, actively maintained and fully functional, by Astrylian
• Rawr.Cat, actively maintained and fully functional, by Astrylian
• Rawr.DPSDK, actively maintained and fully functional, originally by Zurm now by Bloodysorc and Soraia
• Rawr.DPSWarr, actively maintained and fully functional, by Jothay (Arms) and ebs2002 (Fury)
• Rawr.Elemental, actively maintained and fully functional, by Lord_Helmchen
• Rawr.Enhance, actively maintained and fully functional, by Levva
• Rawr.Healadin, actively maintained and fully functional, by Ermad
• Rawr.HolyPriest, actively maintained and fully functional, by TNSe
• Rawr.Hunter, periodically maintained and partially functional, Needs an active developer
• Rawr.Mage, actively maintained and fully functional, by Kavan
• Rawr.Moonkin, periodically updated and fully functional, by dopefish
• Rawr.ProtPaladin, actively maintained and fully functional, by roncli
• Rawr.ProtWarr, actively maintained and fully functional, by EvanM
• Rawr.RestoSham, periodically updated and partially functional
• Rawr.Retribution, actively maintained and fully functional, by Ermad
• Rawr.Rogue, still in development, Needs an active developer
• Rawr.ShadowPriest, actively maintained and fully functional, by TNSe
• Rawr.TankDK, actively maintained and fully functional, originally by ebo now maintained by Shazear
• Rawr.Tree, periodically updated and fully functional
• Rawr.Warlock, still in development, Needs an active developer

Criticism of Rawr

Rawr needs new item mechanics to be reverse engineered, understood and modeled correctly before they will be accurately included in the database. Certain proc mechanics may take a week or two after they appear in-game before the combined might of the theorycrafters crack the code and unlock the secrets of how they really work.

• The BossHandler system is only partially implemented as of Dec 2009, and Rawr's basic recommendations are generally based on the now near-extinct static single-target bossfight.
• There is debate on the accuracy of individual spec models, and some models are more often updated than others.
• Not as user-friendly as advertised, with a massive amount of options but little guidance for the first-time user.
• Rawr3 is not expected to be available for Linux users without significant work-arounds.

New Developments

As of Dec 2009 Rawr will soon be moving to a web-based application called Rawr 3, containing the same functionality as Rawr2 but working in a Silverlight environment (think Java by Microsoft), which will also be available for download. R3 is currently in beta testing, email or pm Astrylian on the Rawr website for access.

Please do not post links to the Rawr 3 website until it is officially released in accordance with its developers' wishes.

Similar utilities

http://code.google.com/p/simulationcraft/ - Simulation Craft

http://druid.wikispaces.com/ToskksDPSGearMethod - ToskksDPSGearCalculator

http://druid.wikispaces.com/ToskksBearTTLCalculator - ToskksTTLBearCalculator

External Links

http://rawr.codeplex.com/ - Official site.

http://rawr.codeplex.com/documentation - Help & Documentation

http://druid.wikispaces.com/Rawr - Rawr at The Druid Wiki.