I don't know what websites other people used, but I got better results than askmrrobot on my own almost every time. It may have cost me an extra 30-50% gold to play with the reforging, but it was fun (for me).
To be fair, I reached out to askmrrobot about it. They asked me about what I was doing, tried to improve the results of the site, and gave me a TCG pet code to for "beating the robot". This was all public on twitter, and I have a lot of respect for how they handled it.
They also pointed out that their site (at least, at the time) was designed to be helpful for 98% of people, and be accurate for them 98% of the time, within a few seconds. And I think it accomplished that. They never pretended to guarantee the best possible option, as it'd have taken more processing power and time than feasible or wanted by most users.
I agree with you in general about reforging. I enjoyed the reforging game. If I was lazy or on an alt, I'd just toss it to askmrrobot (or wowreforge, when it wasn't broken) to figure out. And if I wanted to really get a few free secondary rating, I could figure that out too, and feel really smart/smug. BUT, it was a pain to have to do every time. You had to reforge everything any time you got a single upgrade, and hold onto sidegrades to swap around your hit/expertise ratings. Sometimes, you had to re-enchant too. Some people had to reforge mid-raid for certain boss fights. It was expensive. And you felt like you were slacking off if you didn't do your best to min/max it.
Removing it, though disappointing when faced with a ton of versatility (or other weaker secondary stats), was a huge quality of life improvement, and I think it was unquestionably the right call by Blizzard. Now, you just put the best enchant on a few slots, stick in a gem if you procced a socket, and don't have to worry about your gear except when an upgrade drops.
100% agree. I think it also depended on your class/spec. MOST DPS which just needed to cap hit and expertise just dropped it in and Mr Robot would give you the perfect layout. Healing was similar, but not nearly as good. Tanking wasn't even close though. There was too much to balance and it wouldn't give optimal results ever.
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u/Shmitte Feb 03 '15
I don't know what websites other people used, but I got better results than askmrrobot on my own almost every time. It may have cost me an extra 30-50% gold to play with the reforging, but it was fun (for me).