Pawn

Pawn assesses the value of items for you to make it easy to decide which items are better than others.  It's similar in purpose to mods such as Tank Points, but completely customizable, and applicable to any class and situation. You can use it to help create multiple gear sets, or decide whether to take that weapon with higher DPS or the one with more crit rating, or decide between a necklace with MP5 and one with bonus healing.

Pawn is a mod for hardcore World of Warcraft players—you may not like it if you're not the sort of person who agonizes over stats and itemization.  You can use premade Pawn "scale tags" that other people make and post on forums to set up Pawn for your spec without any extra effort.  And, if you're the kind of person who goes through Wowhead and Lootzor looking for exactly the items you want for your gear sets, builds Excel spreadsheets, installs TheoryCraft, reads Elitist Jerks... well, Pawn might just be right up your alley.

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 your Add-ons folder, generally located here:

C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Interface\Addons

How Pawn works

Pawn works by reading the tooltips for items in-game, and annotating them with some useful information, based on your personal preferences.  Let's say that you're a shaman, and someone links the once-popular Molten Core tank shield Drillborer Disk in trade chat.  With Pawn installed and set up, you might see the following when clicking that link:

There are a couple differences between a Pawn-enhanced item tooltip and the normal one.  The most obvious is the set of numbers at the bottom.  I've set up Pawn to calculate two different values for each item I come across: one for my "healbot" gear set, and one for my "PvP" gear set.  When I'm healing in raids, I don't care too much about my armor, or my block stats.  So, this tank shield isn't very useful to me; it got a rating of 31 points.  In contrast, in PVP and solo combat, I care a lot more about armor—maybe someday it will help me manage to get a spell off versus a rogue before I die.  The value of this shield to me in a PVP situation is considerably higher: 292 points.

What are these points?  They're exactly what I like them to be.  Pawn lets you set up arbitrary valuation "scales" for every item you come across.  For each scale, you get to assign a point value to each of a wide variety of stats.  Pawn will then analyze the item for you, and quickly come up with a number score based on the criteria that you've set up.  Without having to configure anything, Pawn will create a scale for you called "Pawn value" that mimics the way that Blizzard values the items.  If you just want a quick overview of how many stats an item has, the default scale might work well for you.

Not every possible property of an item can be given a value.  For example, the Drillborer Disk reflects 3 arcane damage to each enemy who hits the shield.  This isn't a common property for items in World of Warcraft to have, and Pawn doesn't know how to value it.  It tells you this by adding an asterisk (*) to that stat on the tooltip, and then adding a helpful message to the bottom.  When making the decision of whether or not to use Drillborer Disk, you'll need to keep that in mind; if you find another PvP shield that also gets a rating of about 292 points, then you should choose Drillborer, because it has an extra stat that wasn't taken into account for the rating.

Let's get started.  First, log into your character, making sure that the Pawn mod is enabled.  Once you log in, start hovering over items in your inventory, or click links in the trade channel.  When you hover over things like herbs and ores and quest items, you'll notice that the tooltip doesn't look any different than it used to; that's because those items don't have stats.  When you hover over equipment that you're wearing, though, you should see a new line at the bottom that lists a "Pawn value."  Without any input from you, Pawn is assigning a score to every item in your inventory, using a formula somewhat similar to what Blizzard uses when creating the items in the first place.  (For more information on item level, check out the extensive WoWWiki page on the subject, which I used when developing these default settings.)

It's possible to use Pawn right "out of the box," but it's more likely that you'll want to customize its behavior after you try it out for a minute.  So, without further ado, let's talk about customizing Pawn.

Scales

Each of your characters has a unique set of options for Pawn, and can have any number of valuation scales, which often (but not always) represent different sets of gear or situations you find your character in, or different talent specs.  A valuation scale has two things: a name, such as "Pawn value", and a list of stats and how many points each stat is worth.

The first thing you'll need to do is decide what you'll do with Pawn.  The important thing to remember is that Pawn doesn't decide which stats are best for your character!  You need to make this decision for yourself, and tailor it to the way that you play.  Once you "tell" Pawn which stats you like, it does all of the math to tell you which items are better than others, exactly according to what you think of each stat.  Here are some suggestions to get you started:

• One possibility is just having Pawn calculate the total attack power that an item will give you.  A feral druid in cat form gets two points of attack power per point of strength, one point of attack power per point of agility, one point of attack power per point of attack power on the item (of course), and no benefit from ranged attack power.  This druid could set up a scale called "attack power" that adds those numbers up automatically: Strength = 2, Agility = 1, Attack power = 1, Feral AP = 1, and Ranged AP = 0.
• Healers need to balance a variety of different stats to maximize their healing output: intellect, spirit, +healing, and mana per five.  They don't care about strength and agility.  So, a "healbot" valuation scale could be Strength = 0, Agility = 0, Stamina = 0.5, Intellect = 1, Spirit = 1, Healing = 0.5, Spell damage = 0, and Mana per 5 = 3.5.
• Hybrid classes often need totally different gear for their different specs.  A resto shaman needs healing gear, but an enhancement shaman needs melee DPS gear.  If you're a resto shaman, but when possible you try to collect some enhancement gear so you can respec in the future, you might have two scales: one for healing gear, and one for enhancement gear.  Even when you're healing the instance, you can see if those bracers that nobody wants are worth picking up for your enhancement set.  Pawn will show you both numbers on each item you come across.
• Many people have a set of resistance gear, but deciding between an item that has 15 resistance and another that has 10 resistance but also a bunch of nice stats can be hard.  You can set up a scale that helps you decide whether those extra few points of resistance are worth sacrificing all of those stats.
• Similar mods to Pawn exist for more specialized roles.  For example, Tank Points is a popular mod for warriors that helps balance different types of gear.  TP has different functionality from what Pawn provides, but you can make similar sorts of decisions about tanking gear in Pawn using the same system that you'd use for all of your other characters.  Remember, Pawn does a lot of math for you, but it won't tell you which stats are more desirable than others; that's for you to decide.

Or, maybe, someone has already shared a Pawn scale tag with you, so that you can use a scale that they created or found themselves.

Pawn Scale Tags

Scale tags are a handy way that you can share your Pawn scales with other people, similar to how you can share talent specs with others just by giving them a link to the WoW talent calculator.  A sample scale tag looks like this:

( Pawn: v1: "Total fire damage": SpellDamage=1, FireSpellDamage=1 )

Generally, they're considerably longer than that, but the overall format is still the same.  A scale tag includes the parentheses ( ) on the ends and everything in-between.

It's possible to use Pawn along with scale tags that other people have created and never have to do any custom calculations or work yourself.  Here's how you can use scale tags to share Pawn scales.

Adding a Pawn scale that someone shared with you

You can easily add Pawn scales that someone else shared with you as a scale tag to your own copy of Pawn.  To access the Pawn configuration UI, open your character sheet and inventory (the C key) and click the Pawn button in the lower-right corner.  Or, type the following slash command:

/pawn

From this screen, click Import.  A window will appear where you can paste the entire scale tag that you got from someone else.  Press Ctrl+V to paste a scale tag from the clipboard into this window.  Once you're done, click OK, and that scale will be added to your copy of Pawn.

• You can't import a scale tag if the scale has the exact same name as a scale you already have.  For example, if you have a scale named "Pawn value", you can't import a new scale tag named "Pawn value".
• To copy a scale tag from your web browser, highlight the entire scale tag with your mouse, and then press Ctrl+C to copy it.  Make sure that you get the whole thing, including the "(" at the beginning and the ")" at the end.

Sharing a Pawn scale with others

You can share one of your Pawn scales with others by exporting it from the configuration UI.  Click the Pawn button on your character inventory window, or type the following slash command:

/pawn

From here, choose the scale that you want to export (if you have more than one) from the Current scale list, and then click Export.  A window will appear containing your entire scale tag, but most of it will be scrolled off to the left where you can't see it.  Press Ctrl+C to copy the scale tag to your clipboard.  Then, switch to your web browser or an instant message window, or wherever you'd like to share your Pawn scale, and press Ctrl+V to paste the tag to that window.

Finding more Pawn scales

You can find more Pawn scales on the unofficial Pawn Scales Resources Forum.  Or, try the Pawn page at Curse or WoWUI.IncGamers.

Setting up a custom Pawn scale for one of your characters

You can customize your Pawn scale in the Pawn configuration UI.  To show it, click the Pawn button in the lower-right corner of the character inventory window (the C key), or type the following slash command:

/pawn

Nobody thinks all statistics are created equal.  Warrior tanks don't care about intellect and spirit.  Priests don't care about strength.  You can customize Pawn to only look at the stats that you care about.  Let's do it now.

The Pawn configuration UI has everything you need to make changes to your scale, as well as import scales from other people, export them so you can share yours with others, and create multiple new scales for different situations.  Right now, the "Pawn value" scale is selected and ready to be modified.

On the left, you see a long list of all of the different item stats that Pawn understands.  They're grouped into categories—the primary stats like Stamina and Intellect are at the top, weapon stats are another section, spell-related state are another, sockets for gems are another, and so on.  The default Pawn value scale that was created for you has a value for almost every stat.

So, let's make some changes.  Let's delete the stats that we don't care about.  If you're a melee class, you can get rid of intellect and spirit.  To do this, click on Intellect in the list on the left (it's near the top).  When you click on a stat, you see a little description about the stat to the right (there's not much to say about intellect), and a box where you can type a new value.  To get rid of intellect, either delete the number from the box, or replace it with 0.  Then, choose spirit from the list and delete it too.  You can delete any stats you don't care about, and you can change the value of any stat in the list.  (If you find yourself removing a lot of stats, you can also create a new empty scale and start from scratch.  That would probably be easier than deleting everything individually.  The downside is that you don't get to see the starting values we suggested for each stat.)

Cool.  You don't have to do anything complicated just yet; that should be fine.  Your changes will take effect immediately; you can hover over new items or click links in trade chat and you'll see updated values based on your newly-modified scale.  Once you have thing set up the way you like them, Pawn will be customized to exactly what you care about in items.

If you ever manage to really screw things up, you can click Delete to delete the scale you're working on, and then click New default to create a new scale from the defaults.  If you name it "Pawn value" you'll be right back where you started.

Setting up a second Pawn scale

You don't have to have one scale called "Pawn value"; you can set up as many as you like.  To do this, go into the Pawn configuration UI and click New empty to start a new scale with no values for any stat, or New default to start a new scale using the defaults as a starting point.  When you have two different scales, Pawn will show two numbers on each item you hover over or click in chat.  You can have any number of scales; just choose the one that you want to work on in the configuration UI before you start making changes to the stats.

Notes

Well, hopefully that's enough to get you started.  If you're interested in customizing Pawn further, check out the Options tab of the Pawn UI, and rest of this document.

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 on the Pawn page at Curse or the Pawn page at IncGamers.  I check both roughly 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 and VgerCore?  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.  Installing a mod like Swatter can provide even more useful error information that can help Vger track down the bug.

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."

Item valuation notes

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

Socket bonuses

Socket bonuses are factored into the value of an item, even if the sockets are empty.  Since gems can be readily purchased for very low cost, it's assumed that the player can easily socket the proper gems in order to get the bonus, or get better statistics from socketing different gems.  For example, let's say you have an item with a red socket.  Your scale says that a red socket is worth 4, and strength is worth 1.  If you socket a gem that gives you +4 strength in that socket, the value of the item will stay the same: it lost a red socket worth 4 points, and gained 4 strength each worth 1 point.  If you socket a gem worth anything other than 4 points, the item value will change.

In the default Pawn scale, sockets are worth four base stats, since you can easily purchase vendor gems that give you four of a base stat upon first receiving a socketed item.  You may wish to value sockets more highly, since jewelcrafters can produce nicer gems for a nominal fee.  The following table summarizes how many base stats each "tier" of gems has:

Pawn is smart enough to notice cases when the socket bonus isn't worth socketing inferior gems, too.  For example, let's say you have a PVP scale where you value stamina and resilience rating at 1 point each.  You might value a blue socket at 12 points (for Solid Star of Elune) and a yellow socket at 8 points (Mystic Dawnstone).  Now, imagine one of the S3 Vindicator's Pendant items, which have a yellow socket and +3 Stamina socket bonus. Previous versions of Pawn would value that socket and bonus at 11 points: 8 for the socket, and 3 for the bonus. Now Pawn is smart enough to notice that it would be better to ignore the socket bonus and just socket a blue gem, so it values it at 12 points.  If you turn on the Show debug info option, Pawn will make a note of this in your chat log.

If you don't like this new behavior, you can force Pawn to use the old behavior and always use the correct color of gem instead of trying to maximize the value of an item.  This setting can be set individually for each scale.  To change it, select the scale you want to modify, and then select one of the three colored gems from the list of stats, and then choose the appropriate option in the list that appears.

Healing and spell damage

Note: The individual healing and spell damage stats are no longer applicable in Wrath of the Lich King and WoW 3.0.  They have been replaced with a single common stat, "spell power."

The way that healing and spell damage work has changed since previous versions of Pawn.  Now, those stats more closely reflect the numbers shown on item tooltips.  An item that says that it does 75 damage and healing (such as a staff for a mage) will have 75 of the spell damage stat and 75 of the healing stat.  An item that says that it does 300 healing and 100 damage (such as a nice healing weapon) will have 300 of the healing stat and 100 of the spell damage stat.  An enchantment that gives 50 bonus fire and shadow damage will have 50 of the fire spell damage stat, 50 of the shadow spell damage stat, and none of the typical spell damage stat.

Resistances

For resistances, there's an "all resistances" stat and individual resistances.  The +3 All Resistances cloak enchantment would add three points of "all resistances" to the cloak, but no points of "fire resistance."  If you're putting together a scale for fire resistance, give points to both "all resistances" and "fire resistances."

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.

• Do you care about top-end damage only?  Use the max damage stats.  (max damage, 1H: max damge, 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 Lootzor)

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 causes Pawn to generate the same sorts of numbers that Lootzor does.

For example, if your scale were ( Stamina = 1, Intellect = 2, Healing = .5 ), then Lootzor would divide the item's value by 3.5.  An item with 10 Stamina, 10 Intellect, and 20 Healing would have a value of 40 with this option off, and 11.43 with this option on.

This option is not particularly useful for the default Pawn scale, as it includes too many stats.  It's more useful if you use more focused scales, especially if you want to be able to compare values from two different scales.  The numbers will not be exactly the same as you see on Lootzor in all cases, because Lootzor and Pawn still work a little differently.  For example, Lootzor picks gems to socket for you, whereas Pawn lets you pick an explicit value for sockets.

Unrecognized stats (*)

It's normal for certain rare item characteristics to be listed with an asterisk (*).  You need to decide how important that bonus is to you yourself.  For example, Pawn doesn't have a value for "Equip: Increases the effect that healing and mana potions have on the wearer by 40%" because only one item is like that, and the value in Pawn comes from the fact that even though each item is different, the stats on items are mostly the same.  But, if you come across an item that has a standard statistic, such as intellect, crit rating, or spell power, or fire resistance, and Pawn marks it with an asterisk, you might want to let Vger know—take a note of which item has the problem, and which statistic on the item that Pawn didn't understand.  You can use the Show debug info calculation option (see "The Options tab" below) to learn more about how Pawn is calculating the stats for your item.  Also, be sure to check the "known issues" section at the bottom of this document; I might already know about the problem.

Set bonuses

Set bonuses are an exception: set bonuses are never counted for any stats, whether you qualify for them or not.  However, they don't get asterisks, mainly just because all set items would have a bunch of them and it would just be a lot of "noise."

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.  Also, many of these mods will require updates for WoW patch 3.0, which may affect how they operate with Pawn.

• Ackis Recipe List
• AtlasLoot
• Armory
• CowTip
• EQCompare
• EquipCompare
• FuBar
• ItemSync
• Link Wrangler
• LootLink
• Mendeleev
• MobInfo-2
• MonkeyQuest
• MultiTips
• Outfitter
• Rating Buster
• Skinner
• Spyglass
• tekKompare

Wrath of the Lich King

This version of Pawn should work on both the live realms and on the Wrath of the Lich King beta.  If you run into problems on the Wrath beta, please let me know, and I'll try to correct them in a future version.  There are a couple differences in the way that Pawn works in Wrath of the Lich King that you should be aware of.

How Wrath affects your scales

Since stats work differently in live WoW versus Wrath, you may need to maintain two slightly different versions of your scales if you're affected by these itemization changes.  When patch 3.0 goes live, the corresponding version of Pawn will automatically update your scales as best it can, so you shouldn't need to worry about these things too much if you're not in the beta.

• Spell power—In Wrath of the Lich King, caster items simply have spell power (spell damage and healing), and items that give only healing have been converted to give both.  The conversion is roughly as follows: spell power = .7 * damage + .3 * healing, rounded down.
• Hit, crit, and haste—In Wrath of the Lich King, caster items that gave spell hit rating, spell crit rating, and/or spell haste rating have been converted to give a generic hit/crit/haste rating stat that works for spells, melee, and ranged attacks.

Release history

Version 1.1.2

• Added support for account-bound (gold-quality) items and more new things that appear in WoW 3.0.
• Fixed an error message that could appear when using some item links from sites like Wowhead.
• Armor penetration works once more on WoW 3.0.

Version 1.1.1

• Fixed Link Wrangler compatibility, which was broken in Pawn 1.1.
• Items that have at least one recognized stat (normally marked with an asterisk) will be marked as such in the Compare tab.  (This feature existed in 1.1 betas but did not appear in the final version.)
• Added support for Lake Wintergrasp items and the Scourgestone.

Version 1.1

• This version of Pawn has been tested on both the live realms and on the Wrath of the Lich King beta, and includes tons of fixes to make Pawn work correctly on Wrath servers, and to support new stats and types of items that appear in the expansion content, including new stats, new gems, encrypted items, colorless sockets, and more.
• Pawn now sports a new tab, Compare, which lets you see two items side-by-side to compare their stats in more detail.  Check it out!
  • You can compare any two items in your inventory or a merchant's inventory by dropping them in the slots.
  • If the left slot is empty and you drop an item in the right slot, your currently equipped item will automatically be put in the left slot.
  • In addition to dragging and dropping items, all of the following shortcuts also work:
    • Clicking either of the "currently equipped" shortcut buttons that appear in the lower-left corner once there is an item in the right slot.
    • Hovering over an item in your inventory, another player's inventory, a vendor's inventory, an item link window, AtlasLoot, or other locations, and pressing the "[" or "]" key.  (This key binding is customizable in the regular key bindings interface.)
    • You can also right-click item link windows and item icons in loot roll windows to immediately compare the item with your currently equipped item.
• The first time you run Pawn after upgrading to 1.1, Pawn will automatically bind keys to its commands if you aren't using those keys for other things.  By default, "P" will open and close the Pawn UI, and "[" and "]" are used for item comparisons.  If you later unbind those keys or bind them to other actions, Pawn won't try to rebind them.
• Fixed a bug where Pawn values didn't show up on item link windows if you only had unenchanted numbers visible, not enchanted numbers.
• Fixed a problem where error text would appear in the chat window when hovering over recipes in Ackis Recipe List and possibly other similar mods.
• German users rejoice!  When entering stat values you can now use a comma instead of a period as a decimal separator—for example, "0,5" now works in addition to "0.5".
• In this version of Pawn, I've significantly reorganized a lot of the code that reads and annotates item tooltips.  This, coupled with other changes in Wrath of the Lich King, is likely to cause some conflicts with other mods.  If you run into problems with Pawn, please remember to try to reproduce the same problem with no other item-related mods installed.  I still may be able to fix the bug if it turns out that the bug is related to another mod, but I need to know which mod to download and try.

Version 1.0.4

• Fixed a bug that would prevent Pawn from working properly if one or more of your scales didn't assign a value to the spell damage stat.
• Updated the value of the armor penetration and spell penetration stats in the default Pawn scale to match current itemization.  Existing scales are not changed.
• Pawn will no longer try to assign a default value to spell damage (WoW 2.4) if you use a scale that contains only spell power (WoW 3.0).

Version 1.0.3

• Added an entry in the Interface Options dialog to launch the Pawn UI, in case you hide the Pawn button and forget how to get it back.
• You can now assign a value to the Wrath of the Lich King "spell power" stat to your scales.  It uses the same values by default as the "spell power" stat in Pawn 0.7.4, and your existing scales will be assigned a value for the stat automatically.  Your scales will still have spell damage and healing stats in them, but they won't be used for anything.
• In Wrath of the Lich King, the stats that currently appear as melee hit rating, melee crit rating, and melee haste will also apply to spells, and the spell hit, crit, and haste rating stats are not used.  Existing scales will not be modified at this time.

Version 1.0.2

• When Armory is installed, added support for showing unenchanted values on the item comparison tooltips that appear when holding down the Alt key.
• Added support for the stat-only components of Surefooted, Cat's Swiftness, and Boar's Speed.  (The run speed and snare resistance effects are ignored since there are no Pawn stats for those.)
• Fixed a bug where if you clicked a link for an item that had an icon and then a link for a spell that did not have an icon, the item's icon would not properly disappear.
• Fixed a bug with reading certain items with multiple stats on the same line that was causing problems with the French translation in progress.
• Removed a bunch more asterisks from various items.

Version 1.0.1

• It's now possible to force Pawn to always calculate an item's value based on the correct color of gems (Pawn 0.8 and older behavior) instead of maximizing the item's value by potentially using the wrong colors and ignoring the socket bonus (Pawn 0.9 and later behavior).  To change the option for one of your scales, choose that scale in the UI and then choose one of the colored sockets from the stat list.
• Added support for socket bonuses (and possible future gems) that give melee haste rating.
• Added shaman healing scales based on the popular Elitist Jerks thread to the sample scales document that comes with Pawn.

Version 1.0

• Restored compatibility with Link Wrangler, which stopped working in Pawn 0.9.
• Added support for showing Pawn values on Link Wrangler's "compare equipped items" tooltips.
• Added support for showing inventory icons next to Link Wrangler tooltips.
• There's now a "getting started" tab to gently remind new users to read the Readme file.
• Takes advantage of new WoW 2.4 functionality to show inventory icons next to item link windows in a few situations where it couldn't before.
• Various other UI and text tweaks.

Version 0.9

• Pawn is now smarter about the way that it values sockets and socket bonuses, which in some cases will slightly change the values of certain items, both with and without gems.
  • If you've already filled all of the sockets on an item and you don't qualify for the socket bonus, Pawn no longer counts the socket bonus stats, since they're not actually there.
  • If you can get a better value by socketing the wrong colors of gems and ignoring the socket bonus, Pawn will now do that when calculating item values.  (When the "Show debug info" option is enabled, Pawn will tell you which color gems it used.)
• Pawn now remembers all of the stats from several of the last items you've viewed so it doesn't have to always recalculate them.  This should help your framerate when rapidly hovering over many items in succession, especially when an equip compare mod is also installed.
• You now have to type the word "delete" to confirm that you really want to delete a scale.
• You can now make a copy of an existing scale by clicking the new Copy button.
• There is now an option to hide a specific scale from tooltips without having to delete it (and, most likely, export it and paste it somewhere for safekeeping).
• Pawn will no longer look for stats on quest, spell, and ability links in WoW 2.4.
• Fixed a bunch of UI bugs that occurred when deleting your last scale.
• Pawn no longer adds unnecessary asterisks to Black Temple instance-bound items, such as Naj'entus Spine.
• Added support for Reckless Noble Topaz and other gems with spell haste rating.

Version 0.8.2

• The Pawn UI now displays the current Pawn version number on the last tab.
• Pawn now supports addons that modify the Inspect window when it is first shown instead of immediately upon login, such as Spyglass.

Version 0.8.1

• You can now hover over the Pawn button on the inventory window to get a grand total of the enchanted values on all of your equipped items.
• There is now a disabled Pawn button on the inspect window that you can hover over to get totals for all of another player's equipped items.
• Fixed a bug where all on/off options that defaulted to being on (show enchanted values, show unenchanted values, and show tooltip icons) would automatically turn back on after logging out and back in.
• Fixed a bug where sometimes disabling enchanted values would cause unenchanted values to also not be displayed.
• Fixed a bug where the word "Projectile" on stacks of arrows would get an asterisk, and their DPS would not count as ranged DPS.
• Fixed a bug where negative values would not be exported in scale tags.  (Negative stat values are most common with weapon speed.)

Version 0.8

• The Pawn UI now has an Options tab that you can use to set all Pawn options.
• Almost all of the Pawn slash commands are now unnecessary, and have been removed.  You can still use /pawn to open the Pawn UI, and /pawn debug is still available as well.
• Tooltips have been added to pretty much everything in the Pawn UI.
• You can use the new calculation option "Normalize values" to divide all of your scale values by the sum of all of the numbers in the scale.  This causes Pawn to generate the same sorts of numbers that Lootzor does.  (See the appropriate section in the readme file for more details.)
• You can now change the text color for your scales individually from the Pawn UI.  You could, for example, make your healing scale show up in white and your DPS scale show up in red.
• You can now bind a key to the Pawn UI.  Look under "Pawn" in the standard key bindings list.
• Added support for the Fiery Weapon enchantment; Pawn counts it as 4 dps.
• Fixed a bug where sometimes tooltip icons would not appear for items that had never been in your inventory.  (This includes most links in trade chat.)
• Fixed a bug where if you clicked on an item link for an item, and then a tradeskill recipe (such as [Alchemy: Super Mana Potion]), the icon for the previous item would stay since the recipe did not have one.
• Fixed a bug where if you had set custom colors for your scales, scales would no longer always be sorted alphabetically by name on item tooltips.

Version 0.7.5

• Pawn now shows inventory icons next to item link and item comparison tooltips, so when someone links an item, you can also see its inventory icon.  You can turn this feature off with /pawn icons off.
  • This feature works with the built-in WoW functionality, as well as a variety of other tooltip mods: EquipCompare, EQCompare, and MultiTips.
• When /pawn ids on is active, Pawn now displays the item IDs of all applicable enchantments and gems in the tooltip as well.  For example, if looking at item 123 with no enchantment and gems 45 and 67 socketed, you would see "Item ID: 123:0:45:67".
• You can now have Pawn align item values (and IDs and levels, if those options are on) along the right side of the tooltip with /pawn align numbers right.  Some people may find this easier to read; others may find it more difficult.
• A new category of stats has been added, "weapon types," which is primarily useful for racial abilities and talents.
  • For example, orcs get a passive 5 expertise bonus when using axes.  So, you might give a weapon a few bonus points just for being an axe.  At level 70, 5 expertise costs 78.8 expertise rating, so you might value "being an axe" as high as 78.8.

Version 0.7.4

• Pawn plugins for FuBar and Titan Panel are now available as separate downloads.  You can get them at Curse.
• The old "spell power" stat made sense before patch 2.3, but it was particularly confusing to healers after that patch, so I've removed it, and replaced it with easier-to-understand "spell damage".  Now, the healing stat only includes healing, and the spell damage stat only includes spell damage.
  • Now, Light's Justice, which says that it increases healing by 382 and damage by 128, has 382 healing and 128 spell damage, exactly as you'd expect.
  • Pawn will automatically upgrade your existing scales and any scale tags that you import.  Please double-check the value of the spell damage stat after importing to make sure that it's what you intended, as in this version Pawn does not read your mind.  The upgrade process will give correct results for typical cases (DPS casters who don't care about healing; healers who valued spell power at least as high as healing, as they should have), but may not give the results you expect if you had a strange scale (healing but no spell power).
  • As always, the default Pawn scale has been adjusted to accommodate these changes.
• A new slash command /pawn enchanted has been added to let you turn off the enchanted item values, showing only the unenchanted, unsocketed values for items.  (You can also use /pawn enchanted off along with /pawn unenchanted off to temporarily hide all Pawn values.)  This option may not be compatible with all of your favorite tooltip mods, but it should work in all cases where you currently get unenchanted item values today, which is most everywhere.
• The Pawn button has a new, unique look, instead of being a regular red WoW button.
• The Pawn button now appears in a more reasonable spot when the character inventory window has been skinned using a mod such as Skinner.
• A new slash command /pawn button has been added to let you move the Pawn button on the inventory window, or hide it completely.  (If you hide the button, you'll need to type /pawn to open the Pawn UI, or use the Pawn plugin for FuBar or Titan Panel.)
• Added a new option to the /pawn asterisks slash command, /pawn asterisks no text.  Using this option is the same as /pawn asterisks auto, except the "* Pawn gave no value to some stats" warning text is not added to tooltips of items with at least one (*) unrecognized stat.

Version 0.7.3

• Added a button to the inventory window to show and hide the Pawn configuration UI.
• Pawn now supports Armory and EquipCompare working together with the "/eqc alt" option to show comparisons with your alt's gear instead of your current character's.
• Added support for the unusual items with negative stats, such as Kreeg's Mug, which gives -10 Intellect.
• Added support for Braided Eternium Chain and other non-weapon items with weapon damage as an equip bonus.  It shows up as minimum damage and maximum damage, but not DPS—it's not a weapon, so there's no speed, and therefore no DPS.
• Fixed a problem that would frequently show up when using Pawn with CowTip, causing an error message to appear in chat when hovering over an item and then an empty inventory slot.
• Fixed a problem where sometimes an open item link window would not be immediately updated upon making scale changes.
• Minor changes to fix some issues when running a German version of Pawn on the German WoW client.
• Updated the samples scales document with newer versions of Emmerald's feral combat models and ShadowPanther's AEP model, and added scales for Malan's Elitist Jerks EP for shamans.

Version 0.7.2

• The special weapon DPS stats now work.  I had broken them in either 0.7 or 0.7.1.  Existing scales will automatically be corrected; you should not need to re-enter values for those stats.

Version 0.7.1

• If the item link window is open when you make changes to your Pawn scales, it will now be updated immediately, so you can see how your changes will affect the value of the item.
• Added spell hit rating and spell crit rating to the configuration UI.  (Oops!)
• Corrected a typo in the description of the melee and ranged crit rating stat.

Version 0.7

• Pawn now has a configuration UI!  To access it, simply type /pawn in the chat box.  (To see the help information that used to be available when you typed /pawn, type /pawn help, or click the /pawn commands button in the configuration UI.)  You should no longer need to manually edit your SavedVariables files to configure Pawn.
• The configuration UI is now the official way to make all changes to your Pawn scales.  Some of the slash commands that existed in earlier versions of Pawn are gone, since they're no longer needed: /pawn list, export, import, delete, rename.
• Eliminated that bug where sometimes unenchanted values would disappear from items after a while.  The problem seemed to be most commonly linked to use of the world map, but also could occur after zoning or showing the interface options window.
• Scales now appear in alphabetical order on item tooltips.
• Pawn now works with tekKompare and LootLink.
• Fixed a bug where the value of resilience rating in the default Pawn value scale was 0 instead of 1 as was intended.  Scale tags that call resilience rating "Resilience" instead of "ResilienceRating" will now be imported properly.
• The value of ArmorPenetration in the default Pawn value scale is now 0.1, based on the latest information on WoWWiki.
• Includes VgerCore 1.0.1.

Version 0.6.3

• Added support for items in the guild bank vault.
• In some cases, you can use mods that create fake item tooltips like AtlasLoot and ItemSync along with mods that mangle item tooltips like Rating Buster, and Pawn will now still work.  No guarantees that your favorite combination of mods won't break Pawn, but this should help a lot of people out.
• Finally fixed that bug where items with both durability and an Equip: or Use: line that Pawn didn't understand would get asterisks on the wrong lines.  (For example, Stalker's Helm of Second Sight has this problem.)
• Added the /pawn space command, which adds a blank space before the item values it adds to tooltips.
• Added a special "stat" called SpeedBaseline.  SpeedBaseline isn't an actual item property, but rather a number to be subtracted from weapon speeds before they're multiplied by your scale values.  For example, if you're an enhancement shaman who wants to give weapons 1 point for every 0.1 second of speed slower than 2.9, use Speed = 10 (1 / 0.1) and SpeedBaseline = 2.9.  Weapons slower than 2.9 would instead lose points at the same rate.
• Adjusted the value of the FeralAp stat in the Pawn default scale from 0.5 to 0.4 so that feral items in 2.3 will have roughly the same values as they did in 2.2 with the old Pawn default scale and so that the Pawn default scale still roughly mimics item budget formulas.  I do not necessarily recommend that you change values in your own scales; your items have been buffed, so it makes sense for their values to go up.
• Weapon skill rating stats have been removed from Pawn and the default Pawn scale, as they've been removed from the game in the patch.  Existing scales will not be automatically updated to use ExpertiseRating.
• Added Pawn values to gems in the socketing UI.
• Fixed the amount of healing and spell damage received from Teardrop Tourmaline and possibly other gems that previously only gave healing.
• Added support for the new Chaotic Skyfire Diamond.
• Now displays a more readable error message when the embedded mod VgerCore is missing or failed to load.
• Fixed several problems introduced in 2.3:
  • Fixed a problem that appeared in 2.3 due to the new way that set item tooltips look where Pawn was putting asterisks all over the name of the set, the items in the set, and the set bonuses.
  • Fixed a problem that appeared in 2.3 where stats on meta gems weren't always being counted due to requirements now being displayed on gems even when socketed.
  • Fixed a bug that appeared in 2.3 only where certain gems and random item properties would appear very strange, such as "+45 Stamina|cfff1a1a1a", and Pawn would not understand them.

Version 0.6.2

• Fixed a script error that appeared the first time a recipe was clicked since logging in or resetting your UI.
• Pawn now includes VgerCore 1.0 embedded within the mod; you don't need a separate VgerCore folder in your AddOns folder.

Version 0.6.1

• Supports the 2.2.x live realms and the 2.3 PTRs.  (Healing-to-spell-damage and expertise require 2.3, of course.)
• Support for the healing to spell damage conversion.  Items that say that they increase healing by 300 and spell damage by 100 will be reported as Healing = 200, SpellPower = 100.  Recall that SpellPower includes healing, thus your scale's value for SpellPower should always be equal to or greater than the value for Healing.
• A new value of .255 was picked for the value of Healing in the default scale, down from .455.  With this value, items that had 1/3 of their Healing converted to SpellPower (default value .855) in 2.3 will have the exact same values in 2.3 that they did with the old scale in 2.2 (ignoring rounding errors).  Of course, you can and should customize your Pawn scales to fit your needs; generally, healers should not adjust their scales to deal with this change.
• Support for the new ExpertiseRating stat, valued at 1 in the default "Pawn value" scale, same as the existing weapon skill stats.  Existing scales will not be adjusted to include this stat.  If you haven't customized your scales and want to reset them, use /pawn resetscales.
  • Weapon skill ratings are currently still supported so you can use Pawn 0.6.1 on the live realms too.  They'll be removed in a later version.
• Support for many more healing enchantments, inscriptions, spellthread, and so forth.
• Craftable items for which you can learn recipes from trainers will now get Pawn values.

Version 0.6

• Fixed a problem introduced in beta 1 where Pawn would display an error message in the chat window whenever hovering over a ring with Enchant Ring - Weapon Might.
• Added the ability to customize the colors that your scales will use when printed.  For example, you could have your DPS value show up in orange, and your healing value show up in green.  This is an advanced feature that probably will never get its own UI or slash command.  See the section titled "Changing the color of a scale" for more information.
• Importing a scale tag that has the exact same name as a scale you already have will update the old scale to match the values in the scale tag.  All of the values in the old scale will be deleted.  (In previous versions, Pawn would just fail and warn you that you can't overwrite an existing scale.  There is no longer a warning.)
• Weapon stats have been overhauled!  Old scales will work, but now advanced users have a variety of new options for assigning values to weapons.
• New stats: MeleeMinDamage, MeleeMaxDamage, MeleeSpeed, MeleeDps, MainHandMinDamage, MainHandMaxDamage, MainHandSpeed, MainHandDps, OffHandMinDamage, OffHandMaxDamage, OffHandSpeed, OffHandDps, OneHandMinDamage, OneHandMaxDamage, OneHandSpeed, OneHandDps, TwoHandMinDamage, TwoHandMaxDamage, TwoHandSpeed, TwoHandDps, RangedMinDamage, RangedMaxDamage, RangedSpeed, RangedDps.  Generally, you'll only use a few of these, and not give values to all of them.
• New stats: MinDamage, MaxDamage, Speed.  If you don't care about which slot or weapon type it is, just use MinDamage, MaxDamage, Speed, and/or Dps.  Dps is now calculated to full precision (say, 41.333 instead of 41.3) instead of rounded to one decimal place.
• Added support for weapon damage enchantments (Striking and Impact).
• Added support for ranged weapon scopes.
• Fixed a problem where certain items with suffixes would show unusually low unenchanted values (their stats would be read as 0). For example, Chimaerascale Legguards of the Bandit exhibited this problem.
• Added support for Black Morass instance-bound items (beacons).

Version 0.5.4

• Added support for haste rating and spell haste rating, which were added as passive item bonuses on Black Temple equipment. (Iron Counterweight is also supported.) These two stats (HasteRating, SpellHasteRating) are valued at 1 each on the default Pawn scale; existing Pawn scales won't be affected. Use /pawn resetscales to delete all of your scales and replace them with the default one.
• Added support for armor penetration ("Your attacks ignore X of your opponent's armor"). This stat (ArmorPenetration) is not valued in the default Pawn scale.
• Added support for Karazhan, Stratholme, and Tempest Keep instance-bound items.

Version 0.5.3

• Added support for the new gold profession recipe links in WoW 2.1.  (Pawn won't try to read them or put asterisks all over them.)

Version 0.5.2

• Added working support for the Savagery weapon enchantment, and untested support for Potency, Soulfrost, and Sunfire.
• Added support for EquipCompare 2.10.  (This may break compatibility with older versions of EquipCompare; please use the latest version.)

Version 0.5.1

• Updated for WoW patch 2.1.
• Added support for Blizzard's new Currently Equipped functionality (shift-hover an item).
• LinkWrangler support.
• Fixed a bug where stats in certain situations (gems with multiple stats on one gem, socket bonuses, etc.) wouldn't get shown in the /pawn debug on output.  This did not affect calculation; it was just a debug display error.
• Expanded the amount of information Pawn returns in the debug output.
• Added support for Enchant Boots: Vitality.
• Slightly updated a few of the default "Pawn value" scale's numbers.  This will not affect existing scales, even if you haven't changed any of the defaults.  If you want to get the new scale, you can wipe out your existing scale(s) with /pawn resetscales.

Version 0.5

• Requires VgerCore 0.4. (This is included with the mod. Pawn will warn you if you are using an older version of VgerCore.)
• Pawn can now show unenchanted values for items in addition to the regular enchanted values, and this is enabled by default.  You can turn it off with /pawn unenchanted off.  This feature only works for real tooltips, and not fake tooltips from an item database mod.
• Added an option to control the number of digits of precision Pawn uses to display item values in tooltips.  By default this is 1 ("3.1"), but you can set it to any number between 0 ("3") and 4 ("3.1416") with /pawn digits #.
• Corrected the value of frost resistance in the default Pawn scale to 1 (was 4).
• Pawn scale tags now have spaces inside of the parentheses by default.  This is to prevent certain scale tags from turning into emoticons when posted to certain forums.  (For example, if your scale tag ended in "RedSocket=8)", the 8) would turn into an emoticon on certain forums.)  Old and current versions of Pawn will accept the scale with or without the extra spaces.
• Lots of work was done to prepare for Pawn translations into other languages.  I may have made a mistake in this conversion and introduced cases where (*) shows up where they didn't before; hopefully not.

Version 0.4.1

• Added support for gun, bow, and crossbow skill ratings.
• Added support for MultiTips.
• Added support for items that list stats as "Stat +X" instead of "+X Stat", namely the epic gems.  Gems that only provided primary stats, such as Seer's Chrysoprase, already worked, but others such as Rune Covered Chrysoprase didn't work until this change.

Version 0.4

• Added scale tags!  Scale tags are chunks of text that you can use to share Pawn scales with friends, guildmates, and others on forums, similar to how you can share talent specs today by passing around a link to the WoW talent calculator.  You can copy a scale tag and then post it on your guild forums, and then another player can copy that tag and paste it into their game to automatically add your scale to their copy of Pawn, without logging out of the game or changing files in Notepad.  To export a scale tag so you can share it with others, use the /pawn export command.  To import someone else's scale tag and add it to your own scales, use the /pawn import command.
• Added new slash commands: /pawn list, export, import, delete, and rename.  See "Slash commands" in Readme.htm for more details.
• Added support for weapon skill ratings (including unarmed and feral combat).  (They have been added to the default Pawn scale, but if you care about weapon skill ratings you must add them to your custom scales manually.)
• Fixed the /pawn resetscales command so that it would delete all of your scales before recreating the default one named Pawn value, as was intended.

Version 0.3.1

• Hovering over an enchanted Item X immediately after hovering over an unenchanted Item X will now recalculate the values for the second item instead of just displaying the ones for the first item.  This should work for all pairs of items that differ only by enchantments and gems.

Version 0.3

• To read statistics, Pawn now makes a copy of the tooltip and reads from that whenever possible, which allows it to read tooltips that have been mangled by other mods.  Examples of mods that do this are Mendeleev and Rating Buster.  (Certain mods that use custom tooltips, such as ItemSync, don't support this; Pawn may still conflict with mods that modify those custom tooltips.)

Version 0.2.2

• ItemSync support, including using ItemSync with AtlasLoot.  Pawn will calculate and display values for ItemSync's tooltips.
• EQCompare support.  Pawn will calculate and display values for EQCompare's tooltips.
• Item level display should work just about everywhere now, instead of just in certain places.  (In previous versions, it worked for inventory items, but not chat item links.  Now it works on both.)
• A new option has been added to display the item ID for items you come across, /pawn ids on.
• The default is now to hide the asterisks (*) from items that don't have any values for any of your scales.  So, for example, Hearthstone and potions won't display the asterisk.  You can change this behavior using /pawn asterisks [ on | auto | off ].

Version 0.2.1

• Fixed a problem in 0.2 where Pawn wouldn't work if you'd never used version 0.1 before.

Version 0.2

• EquipCompare support.  Pawn will calculate and display values for EquipCompare's tooltips.
• AtlasLoot support.  Pawn will calculate and display values for instance drops when Atlas and AtlasLoot are installed.
• Outfitter support.  Pawn will no longer conflict with the lines that Outfitter adds to tooltips of items used in one or more gear sets.
• MonkeyQuest support.  I haven't actually observed it happening in the past, but this change should prevent MonkeyQuest's item tooltip annotations from affecting Pawn.
• MobInfo-2 support.  Pawn will no longer conflict with the drop rate information that MobInfo-2 adds to items.  (This problem manifested itself both as unnecessary asterisks added to tooltips, and also as an "attempted to concatenate a nil value" error.)
• Added APIs to create and change Pawn scales while you're still logged in.  These will eventually be used to build a configuration UI.  If you really want to, you can use them from the chat box to change Pawn scales while logged into the game.
• Included a new file "Sample scales.htm" containing (you guessed it) some sample scales that you can use to get started creating your own. I'll add to this over time.

Version 0.1

• The first released beta version of Pawn.  The code is stable and the remaining bugs are mostly just to-do items.  I'll get around to them eventually.
• Not heavily optimized for performance.
• No configuration UI.  (Hope you like Notepad!)

Known issues and bugs

Check here first if you think you've found a new bug; maybe I already know about it.

• Weapon damage is actually stored in the game with more precision than is displayed.  For example, Gavel of Naaru Blessings says in-game that it does 16-117 damage, but according to the game files, it does 16.12-116.12 damage.  This causes Pawn to report its DPS as being slightly higher than the in-game tooltip says.
• It's been reported that Fiery and other weapon damage enchantments are only counting for the basic DPS stat, and not for the specialized DPS stats like melee DPS.
• Item links that you click that aren't already in your game cache show the message "Retrieving item information" and then when the item appears, there are no Pawn values until the next time you show that item.  This type of problem has existed forever, and also affects the Blizzard feedback UI line, but still I'd like to find a way to solve it.

Visual issues in Wrath of the Lich King

There are a few issues with the appearance of certain parts of the Pawn UI in Wrath of the Lich King that I won't bother resolving until around the time that WoW patch 3.0 goes live.

• The pretty white divider bars on the Compare tab are extremely faint on Wrath.
• The dark areas on the Compare tab are too dark on Wrath.
• The silver highlight that shows which of two items on the Compare tab is better does not appear on Wrath.

Future versions

There are many features that I'd like to add in future versions of Pawn, besides fixing issues listed in the "known problems" above.

• Tradeskill items in Wrath of the Lich King do not always get Pawn values right now; I'll fix this.
• Unsocketed gems currently cannot be placed in the Compare interface.  I will probably change this, unless I add a specific gem tab.
• Around Wrath of the Lich King's release, I'll increase the values of all sockets in the default scale, and add a similar value to colorless sockets.
• Additional ways you might be able to get to the Compare tab in the future:
  • I could add little Pawn buttons to item link windows.  I decided not to do this because I thought they'd be obnoxious.
  • I could add a "compare this item with what I already have" button to loot roll windows to make it more obvious than just right-clicking the icon.  Or, I could even just add a little comparison window that sticks to the side.
  • In addition to the "currently equipped" buttons in the lower-left, I could also remember the best 1-2 items you've ever equipped for a given slot type, and display those there too.  This helps those with multiple gear sets (for example, shamans with a resto set and an enhance set).
• Right now, the Compare tab only shows stats that have nonzero values in your scales.  I could add an option to show all stats, though that would make it a lot harder to use at a glance—weapons have a lot of stats, including 8-12 stats just for tracking damage and speed, plus any real stats on the item.
• I might change the Compare tab so that it still shows item stats even if there's only one item.
• I could improve the Compare tab to support comparing multiple sets of items at once.  (For example, an entire gear set versus another person's entire gear set.)
• I still haven't optimized some parts of Pawn for performance.  One thing that I could do is collect statistics on how often various item stats are used, and then reorder them in the files so that the most common stats are checked first, and the rarest stats are checked last.  That might be difficult and make translation much more challenging, though.
• I could add an option to hide values from items you could never equip.  For example, shamans could have values hidden on swords, sigils, plate armor, and wands.
• There are other things I could annotate tooltips with, but I'm not sure which things I'll do, since some might conflict with other mods or require a lot of configuration.
• I could enhance the socketing UI to show which colors of gems Pawn recommends socketing.
• I could improve compatibility with RatingBuster by looking for the color it uses for its text.
• I'd like to improve VgerCore so that the messages that Pawn occasionally displays that start with "ERROR:" only show up for me by default, or at least can be turned off.
• Pawn could keep track of the best item of each type (Helm, Bracers, Trinket, ...) that you've ever equipped, and then show you how the item you're hovering over compares to that.  There would be one "best item" per scale, per item type (two for rings and trinkets).  Or, it could just show a difference between the hovered item and the equipped item.  This would be useful for evaluating gear sets that you're not currently wearing—for example, if a DPS cloak drops but you're in your tanking gear.
• One very cool feature would be a way to automatically share Pawn scale tags with another player through an in-game whisper.  Something like /pawn share Vger <scale name>.  Or, there could just be a window where you could type another player's name to see their Pawn scales if they use Pawn... sort of like a Scalesteal spell.
• Long-term (and I really mean long-term... this would be a ton of work), I'd love to add a "shopping list" feature to Pawn.  When you saw items drop in raids, linked in trade chat, or browsed through item database mods, you could pick the ones you liked and add them to a shopping list.  Pawn would remember that item, let you see it whenever you wanted, and show you which ones were best for your various gear sets.  For example, Pawn could remember that you have the Sha'tar exalted healing mace Gavel of Pure Light, but you really want Shard of the Virtuous from Maiden.  Pawn could show you that the Shard would be 23.4 points better on your healing scale, and update that number whenever you change your scales.
• Down the road, I might also like to add a way for people to assign values to specific item effects and enchantments.  For example, Spellsurge is a useful weapon enchantment for casters, but Pawn doesn't give it a value.  Right now, you have to rely on the asterisks and intuition to properly evaluate Spellsurge versus another weapon enchantment.  I haven't decided how this would work just yet...  Is it part of a single scale, or a per-character option?  Does it assign stats (Intellect +30) or points (Score +30)?  And what's the point of assigning it a value when you'd generally use unenchanted value in these situations anyway?
• I could move scales and settings to be account-wide settings instead of per-character, and then scales and options could be shared between characters.  That would probably only be useful for bank alts.

The fine print

© 2006-2008 Green Eclipse.  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.