GearSense

More damage. Clear decisions. Built for Classic Era.

GearSense turns gear bonuses into a clear recommendation for your class. See the arrow on the item, inspect the percentage in the normal WoW tooltip, and keep playing in the familiar Classic interface.

Classic Era 1.15.9 · All nine original classes · Client-language localization · No external addon libraries

A familiar Classic interface

Original Blizzard dialog borders, red buttons, gold lettering and native tooltip backgrounds give GearSense the same visual language as the game. Its own shield logo, stronger transparent arrows and monochrome stat icons keep recommendations easy to recognize. Upgrades receive a narrow gold frame with a slow pulse; dark arrow outlines preserve contrast on bright and dark item artwork.

• On the item: larger green upgrade arrows, red downgrade arrows and a neutral dash for equal modeled value. Equippable upgrades also glow gold around the actual item icon.
• Inside the normal tooltip: signed percentage where meaningful, Equip / Keep equipped, and direct green/red stat changes. No repeated brand, profile or damage headings. The chosen slot appears once for rings, trinkets and one-handed weapons; normal armor omits it.
• Beside it: Blizzard's equipped-item comparison appears immediately for cached items. No separate comparison window and no replacement character screen.
• At the roll window: explicit Need / no Need advice, including a useful upgrade percentage, equal or worse gear, and equipment restrictions. You always choose the roll yourself.
• For items you cannot equip: the requirement the client identifies, plus a separate gold hypothetical preview when item data and a legal comparison slot are available.

The comparison fix introduced in 0.9.1 is preserved: it waits synchronously until native item setters and TSM finish their tooltip lines, avoiding the premature comparison anchor caused by TSM's first Show call. It introduces no timed hover delay.

Damage first, with class-aware priorities

One shared engine follows the same order everywhere:

Relevant offensive value → regeneration → mana → health → defense

Each later priority only decides a tie in all earlier priorities. A Hunter's ranged damage takes priority; the melee DPS of its stat weapon does not demote a ranged upgrade. Melee classes use the relevant weapon and attack contributions. Spellcasters use a common offensive reference score. Extra useful Spirit or passive regeneration can win when offense is equal.

Rings and trinkets are checked in both legal slots. One-handed weapons are compared in each permitted hand; main-hand-only, off-hand-only and dual-wield restrictions matter. Two-handed replacements account for both items removed. Recommendations identify the chosen slot.

An unavailable item is never treated as ready to equip. Class, race, level, skill and reputation messages use information actually supplied by the client; ambiguous restrictions stay explicit. Its hypothetical preview uses your current character level and legal slots, not a simulated future character.

Optimize your bags

The normal character equipment page gains an Optimize button. One click starts a bounded sequence of eligible direct bag upgrades; each step checks the exact item and target slot again, waits for the game and then recomputes. Click again to stop.

Combat, an occupied cursor, transaction windows or confirmation dialogs stop the sequence. Binding, refund and incomplete-effect cases remain manual. Nothing is discarded, and the addon never accepts a binding dialog automatically. This is successive direct improvement, not an exhaustive search of every possible loadout.

Find auction upgrades within your budget

At an auctioneer, open the GearSense tab, choose a character equipment slot and set a budget. Search, compare offers and explicitly confirm a buyout. The search respects the game's query throttle and covers at most 20 pages / 1,000 returned offers. GearSense never automatically purchases or rolls Need.

Where item arrows appear

Adapters cover Blizzard bags, bank, inspect, loot and group rolls, auctions, vendors, quests, crafting, trade and mail, plus Bagnon and AtlasLootClassic. Other replacement interfaces may need a dedicated adapter. Cached items update on hover immediately; uncached item data must first arrive from the game.

Setup and languages

Fully exit and restart WoW after installing 0.9.2 so the new visual assets load reliably. The first-run assistant explains the model and priorities. Existing settings are preserved, with older profiles migrated once to the damage-first policy.

Open GearSense with /gs, the minimap button or Settings → AddOns → GearSense. Use /gs wizard for setup, /gs character for the native character screen, /gs compare to toggle equipped comparisons, and /gs ah at an auctioneer.

The client selects English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Korean, Simplified Chinese or Traditional Chinese. British English and Latin American Spanish use the corresponding English and Spanish catalogs. Unknown client languages fall back to English. The internal folder remains KlarGear to retain saved settings.

What the numbers mean

Damage percentages use the modeled change divided by the current relevant offensive baseline; they are not a percentage of the isolated item's weapon DPS. Health and mana tie-breaks use the corresponding total resource. Regeneration, defense, tiny changes and missing or invalid baselines receive a text verdict when a meaningful percentage cannot be shown.

The model includes AP/14, weapon and off-hand adjustments, attribute resource breakpoints, class-and-level Agility/Intellect crit data, and passive Spirit/MP5/HP5 recovery. Physical offense uses basic attacks; caster offense uses a common spell-power, hit and crit reference. Spirit mana recovery follows the five-second rule.

This is a consistent gear model, not a full combat simulation. Rotations, individual talent effects, pets, poisons, opponent values, hit/crit caps, school-specific bonuses, procs, enchants and set effects are not fully simulated. Known stats retain their verdict. The compact native tooltip omits repeated generic effect warnings; incomplete-effect items remain manual for automatic equipping. Missing data never creates an invented percentage. Included README and STAT-DATA files explain the model and data provenance.

Beta status

Lua 5.1 syntax, class and weapon rules, tooltip lifecycle, the installed Classic TSM wrapper, roll advice, icon handling, auction flow, optimization and localization are checked using stateful WoW API mocks. Gallery images are labeled rendered previews with illustrative data, not live game screenshots. A live-client playtest and taint check are still needed.

Target: Classic Era 1.15.9, Interface 11509. Retail and progression Classic are not supported. License: MIT.