
The item sets tab is out and for the non-genius-level-player (or even for someone who is, perhaps), this can highly change your conception, understanding, and playing of the game. It can also be a huge timesink.
So, yay or nay? I’ve spent a bit of time playing around with it and have some suggestions on pitfalls and how to maximize its usefulness.
Limitations
The first unfavorable thing I noticed is that the actual tool isn’t friendly to people who don’t know the items well as it’s a single column only to show them all. Unlike in the actual game, there’s no way to look at the items in a big grid format, which makes it a pain to find the items while in this tool. For that reason I highly recommend you play and think about builds elsewhere. There are better spots online for playing and thinking about item builds where you can access the items more quickly or see a bigger selection of them. Even a legal pad can be a better canvas for creating builds.
While the items are out of date, http://s3.microtony.com/ lets you look at the in-game items and more importantly, lets you see the current recommended items to let you see how much you wish to keep and how much you wish to discard. Keep in mind that the recommended items list is still going to be accessible for any character. If recommended items has the majority of the stuff you’d use anyway, building a tab is not worth the effort.
The second unfavorable thing is that the sets are machine-side and not server-side. This means that if you make an item set, it is only on the computer you made it on, not your account. This doesn’t affect everyone, but if it affects you you’ve obviously noticed and been hesitant to make too many tabs.
A program that lets you rip builds from another person and put into client is coming down the road. And a place that lets you see other people’s build and how they’re arranged should be out within a week or two if it isn’t by the time this article is posted. You can save yourself a lot of time waiting for other builds to come out and sticking those in.