Sift: Loot Advisor

Sift looks at every rare-or-better piece of gear that lands in your bags and answers one question: what should you do with it? One word and a reason. It never acts for you.

The five words

• Equip. Better than what you wear for your active spec, by the numbers.
• Hold. Keep it. It wins after upgrades, completes a tier set through the catalyst, or needs a level. The panel says what it is waiting for and what that costs: "after 2 upgrades, 40 Champion crests".
• Sim it. Too close to call, or a trinket. Sift would rather say so than guess. Healers see "Your call", since Raidbots does not sim healing.
• Send. An alt on file wants it more than you do. The verdict names the alt, with the runners-up in a note.
• Dispose. Nothing you or your alts can use. Vendor or disenchant.

How it decides

• Stat weights, not item level. Paste your Raidbots weights and Sift uses them. Otherwise it uses defaults generated from SimulationCraft's profiles for the season. Gems and empty sockets count.
• A margin of error. Every comparison knows how sure it is. When the gain sits inside the margin, the answer is "Sim it" with both scores shown, not a coin flip. Your own weights narrow the margin.
• The long run. Sift knows every upgrade track's item levels and crest costs, and asks which piece owns the slot in a month, not which is ahead today. A piece that your worn gear, or something already in your bags, will beat once upgraded is a dead end, and Sift says so even when it is ahead right now.
• Tier sets and the catalyst. A piece that completes your 2-set or 4-set is a Hold for the catalyst. A piece that would break a set sitting on its threshold is never an Equip, however good its stats.
• Alts. Sift remembers the gear of every character you log into and scores warbound pieces for each of them. Press "Will send", drop the piece in the warband bank, and the alt's panel knows it is coming. Any bank reminds you what to deposit and what is waiting for you.

Where it shows up

• Tooltip. One line on every piece you could equip: the word and the reason. Hold Shift for the math.
• Panel. /sift, the minimap button or the addon compartment. Everything waiting on you, grouped by what to do next.
• Chat and toast. One line per new verdict at a safe moment: out of combat, no keystone running, no boss in progress. The toast goes wherever you put it in Edit Mode.
• Loot rolls. A word beside every Need and Greed window: Need with the gain, Sim it when close, Greed when an alt wants it, Pass when it is a dead end. Nothing is rolled for you.
• Great Vault. A ranking of the offers while the vault is open.
• The guide. Four pages at first login, and /sift guide after.

Every surface has a switch on the settings page, which also lists every /sift command with a button that runs it.

What it never does

Sift never equips, sells, moves, rolls on or catalyzes anything. It touches no protected frame and reads no combat data. Everything it knows comes from item tooltips, your bags, your characters' gear and the currency window. Everything it says is advice.

Notes

• Midnight 12.1 and later. No dependencies. Built and tested on the English client.
• Your own weights beat the defaults. Open /sift weights, paste a Raidbots stat weights string, and Sift asks for a fresh sim when it goes stale.
• Source and issues: https://github.com/ChaseIngersol/Sift. In game, /sift feedback builds a report you can paste.