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Item level is a bad tiebreaker. A 13-ilvl "upgrade" in a slot where you wear a well-itemized piece can lose to a lower-ilvl trinket that actually fits your spec, and tier or special-effect items break ilvl math completely. The only honest way to compare vault options is to simulate your character wearing each one.

Step by step

1. Open your Great Vault window in-game first. The SimulationCraft addon exports what's currently loaded — with the vault open, your vault choices are included in the export as comparable items.
2. Type /simc and copy the export (the text is pre-selected — Ctrl+C). Details in the getting-started guide.
3. Paste it into the simulator and switch to Gear Compare mode. Your vault items show up in their own "Gear from Weekly Vault" group, alongside bag items.
4. Select the vault candidates (and anything from your bags you're curious about) and hit Run. The result is a ranked table: each item's DPS against your current gear.

What if nothing is an upgrade?

It happens most weeks once you're geared. The conventional wisdom holds: if no item beats what you wear, take the most valuable fallback — usually the item that's best to hold for a future gear change, or the option your region's economy favors (sockets, catalyst fodder, tradeable pieces). What the sim gives you is certainty that you're not skipping a real upgrade — the expensive mistake is leaving a top-3 trinket in the vault because its item level looked unimpressive.

One more nuance: if you both raid and push keys, check your picks under both fight styles — an item can be a vault-winner for M+ and mediocre for raid. Here's how to sim for Mythic+.

Keep reading

• Free Droptimizer — plan which content to farm before the vault even fills.
• Stat weights & target error — how close is "too close to call" in the results.
• How to sim your character — the basics from zero.