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 playersyou 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.
Check out the Pawn scales that people have posted to the Unofficial Pawn forums.
Translated versions: German, Russian, French. (The Chinese translation appears to be out of date.)
Alpha and beta versions of Pawn are occasionally available on CurseForge.
Version 1.2.5
* What used to be called the enchanted value of an item is now the current value, and what used to be called the unenchanted value is now the base value. The word "base" now also appears on tooltips. (No functionality has changed; this is just a terminology change.)
* Fixed the error that occurred when hovering over Brewfest steins.
Version 1.2.4
* Fixed an error that occurred when hovering over profession recipes.
Version 1.2.3
* You can now select what quality of gems to use for each of your scales on the Gems tab: uncommon, rare, or epic. Each scale can have a different quality level, so your main spec scale can use epic gems, and your offspec scale can use rare gems.
* By popular request, enchanted values of items now no longer include any points for sockets on the item, since the enchanted value is meant to reflect the current state of the item. This means that before you put gems in an item, the enchanted value of an item will be lower than the unenchanted value.
* Fixed a bug where occasionally items that weren't enchanted would show two equal values, such as "123.4 (123.4)". (This was only a display issue; the values were being calculated properly.)
Version 1.2.2
* Pawn will now calculate correct socket values if you have the "normalize values (like Wowhead)" option enabled.
Version 1.2.1
* Fixed the "attempt to perform arithmetic on field '?' (a nil value)" error that some users were experiencing in Pawn 1.2.
Version 1.2
* Note: Upon installation, this version of Pawn will automatically make adjustments to each of your scales' socket values. To avoid this, you can turn off the option for each scale to always correctly match gem colors.
* By default, Pawn will automatically choose the best rare-quality level 80 gem of each color and use the value of that gem when calculating item values. Most people will no longer ever need to manually set values for red, yellow, or blue sockets.
* There's now a new Gems tab in the Pawn UI. This tab shows you the best rare-quality level 80 gems that are available for any of your scales. Never again will you wonder which gems to have cut for that new boss drop.
o The Gems tab also displays suggested meta gems, but take these with a grain of salt; Pawn ignores the special effects on the gem.
o The Gems tab only considers rare-quality level 80 gems. I'll add support for epic gems very soon in an upcoming Pawn update.
* Pawn will now add a tooltip to the item socketing window displaying the suggested gems to use when socketing that item for each of your scales. In addition, the window now has a Pawn button that takes you directly to the Gems tab for more details.
* Meta sockets are now covered by two values instead of one: the old "Meta socket" value is now "Meta: stats" and covers the normal stat bonuses from meta gems. The new value is "Meta: effect" and covers the bonus effects from meta gems. Helms with an empty meta socket will get the values from both added to their totals. Helms with a filled meta socket will get the values of Meta: effect and the actual stats on the gem added to their totals. This reflects the fact that stat-for-stat, helms with meta sockets are clearly better than helms without them because of the added effects that meta gems bring.
* Adjusted the value of MP5 in the default scale to correspond with current itemization.
* Removed the Pawn feature to show item levels, as it is now built into the game.
* Fixed the "Could not parse the item link" error that appeared when clicking the links that items such as the Titanium Seal of Dalaran and Worn Troll Dice add to chat.
* Corrected the display of socket bonuses on weapons in the Compare tab.
* (English) Enchant Boots: Greater Vitality now works again.
Installation Guide
- Exit "World of Warcraft" completely
- Download the mod you want to install
- Make a folder on your desktop called "My Mods"
- Save the .zip/.rar files to this folder.
- If, when you try to download the file, it automatically "opens" it... you need to RIGHT click on the link and "save as..." or "Save Target As".
- Extract the file - commonly known as 'unzipping'
Do this ONE FILE AT A TIME!
- Windows
- Windows XP has a built in ZIP extractor. Double click on the file to open it, inside should be the file or folders needed. Copy these outside to the "My Mods" folder.
- WinRAR: Right click the file, select "Extract Here"
- WinZip: You MUST make sure the option to "Use Folder Names" is CHECKED or it will just extract the files and not make the proper folders how the Authors designed
- Mac Users
- StuffitExpander: Double click the archive to extract it to a folder in the current directory.
- Verify your WoW Installation Path
That is where you are running WoW from and THAT is where you need to install your mods.
- Move to the Addon folder
- Open your World of Warcraft folder. (default is C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\)
- Go into the "Interface" folder.
- Go into the "AddOns" folder.
- In a new window, open the "My Mods" folder.
- The "My Mods" folder should have the "Addonname" folder in it.
- Move the "Addonname" folder into the "AddOns" folder
- Start World of Warcraft
- Make sure AddOns are installed
- Log in
- At the Character Select screen, look in lower left corner for the "addons" button.
- If button is there: make sure all the mods you installed are listed and make sure "load out of date addons" is checked.
- If the button is NOT there: means you did not install the addons properly. Look at the above screenshots. Try repeating the steps or getting someone who knows more about computers than you do to help.
Translations
When you download a mod, please be sure that the mod is compatible with your translation of wow. Some mods only work on the US versions, while some only work on some of the various European versions. These variations are called "Localizations".
TOC Numbers (Out of Date Mods)
When Blizzard patches WoW, they change the Interface number. This means that all mods will be "out of date" unless or until the author releases a new version for that interface. Some people go into the .toc files and update the numbers themselves, but this is STRONGLY advised against as it will cause problems locating possible incompatibilities addons. When you log into WoW after a patch, you DO NOT have to delete your interface directory. All you have to do is simply tell WoW to ignore the interface numbers and load all the mods anyway. All you have to do is, while at the "character select" screen, look in the lower left corner and click on the "addons" button. A window will pop up listing all your installed mods.
If you look in the upper left corner of that window there should be a box that says "Load Out of Date AddOns". You want to CHECK this box. Now simply go into WoW normally and all your mods should load. As of the 1.9 patch, you will have to do this after EVERY patch/update that Blizzard posts! If you encounter any problems with a mod after a patch, please be sure to let the author of the mod know so they can fix it.
See also: About "Out Of Date AddOns"
Mac Support
WoW addons are not platformed based. As such, they can be used on either Mac or PC. You can extract both .zip and .rar files on a Mac using StuffitExpander.
Directory Structure
World of Warcraft
|_ Interface
|_AddOns
|_*AddonName*
|_ *AddonName*.toc
|_ *AddonName*.xml
|_ *AddonName*.lua
|_ (possibly others as well)...