Mr Robot Optimizer

[Lockybalboa 618]

Wasn't it as recent as a month or so ago where a bug in SimC was giving false results for Affliction single Target?  Case in point

 

Yes.

[Kazistrasz 216]

Simcraft's biggest failure, bugs aside, is that no matter how great Gahhda designs the profile (which he does a good job of, don't get us wrong we do appreciate his work), it's never going to truly model the human decision making that goes on into optimizing procs and so forth. It's outside of the scope of the program. In days past, SimCraft could model perfect playing. Whatever theoretical max it told you was a goal to set for yourself. Nowadays, it's fairly easy to beat the number it gives you, because we can do decision making that it cannot.

 

Now, onto more important disillusionment: this stat weight business with Ask Mr. Robot.

 

1. If you knew this existed, stop being argumentative....

 

2. But making up the weights DOESN'T yeild the same results. At least not before you can comfortably hit the 30% haste breakpoint, because there are points where mastery is less valuable than the weight you'd arbitrarily give it, and as you approach it, there is actually DPS gain by ditching mastery for haste, and knowing when crit is more/less valuable than haste between breakpoints. The reason that AMR sucks is the same reason your strategy isn't ideal, ironically. AMR is optimized for BIS gear. You're using BiS stat weights, and ignoring when it's worth/not worth grabbing stats that aren't mastery.

 

1. Your response is also being argumentative. Just let it go, since you're both talking about things in a manner that you can't agree on.

 

2. It's not "making up" the weights. I don't "arbitrarily" assign numbers in places. I know how the stats behave together, and I know what I need to set them to in order to make Ask Mr. Robot tell me what I need it to tell me (that is, optimize my hit cap and max out mastery as much as possible). AMR's default stat weights are NOT what you want to use. They're NOT ideal. They're rarely EVER going to be better to use.

 

But you know what? This is the same thing we keep telling you guys: if you put half as much effort into looking at your logs and fixing your playstyle as you do obsessing over your secondary stats, you'd actually be pulling the DPS you come here to ask how to pull. It's as simple as that.

 

Haste breakpoints being more valuable than mastery... this really, REALLY depends on how you're playing. Theoretically it can tell you one thing or another, but the fact is that none of these machines like AMR and SimCraft can actually tell you what's optimal. The actual live environment is going to change things. Generally speaking, we get more out of mastery than we get out of anything else. You need a LOT of mastery to be able to go up another breakpoint. Example: I could do the 9778 breakpoint and have 15.2k mastery. I wouldn't even consider the 13737 breakpoint without at least 18k mastery. Even then, I probably still wouldn't. Of course, this is for affliction. I've had AMR set 13737 as the default when I've loaded myself, and I laughed in its face.

 

You can't trust AMR. Period.

 

Given the time you and I have spent talking in-game and about your log, there's a lot you still have to learn in theory to truly understand the behavior of our stats in relation to one another and why we do what we do. Join us for our warlock mumble. Do research on the ways our mechanics work with each other. Get into some logs and poke around with things. The biggest thing to remember is: until you're playing at a very high level (meaning you're playing your class well, not necessarily far in the game as there are warlocks I've talked to much further than me that have been doing the most ridiculous things), you're not going to have enough consistency to truly look at experimentation you're going to do. Half of theorycrafting, of course, is actually implementing and revising the theories you're coming up with. You have to be a consistent player to do that testing.

 

I'd like to propose a new rule for everyone: no one talks about secondary stats, gemming, and reforging until they're posting logs that Zag can't find significant issues with. Fix your playstyle first, then you can actually worry about this stuff. The 20k of your DPS that your stats make up is only actually 20k if you're consistently playing well. The worse you play, the less your stats are contributing. You are wasting your time chasing part of that 20k when could be chasing the 50-100k you're losing from simply not playing as well as you should be.

[Ilion 8]

The problem about SimCraft is not only how well modeled the profile is, is more about the complexity of most encounters make patchwerk or helter-skelter fights' stat weights almost useless.

[Kazistrasz 216]

Theoretically, Ilion, you could write it to model those types of things. Consider Sha: Once a minute spawn an increasing number of low-HP adds and sometime after spawn one add with slightly more health. It wouldn't be perfect, but it would be a reasonably similar model. You can't reasonably model our decision making powers.

[Ilion 8]

Theoretically, Ilion, you could write it to model those types of things. Consider Sha: Once a minute spawn an increasing number of low-HP adds and sometime after spawn one add with slightly more health. It wouldn't be perfect, but it would be a reasonably similar model. You can't reasonably model our decision making powers.

 

 

Theoretically, you could, there are some really cool models out there, and some can mimic human's decision making really well.

 

So, in theory you could make great models of both players and battle scenarios, but to be honest, I don't think anyone with the skill to do them is willing to.

[Wolland 1]

Thanks Lockybalboa, made me lol :)

 

https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/3714-mr-robot-optimizer/page-3#entry41734

[Kazistrasz 216]

Theoretically, you could, there are some really cool models out there, and some can mimic human's decision making really well.

 

So, in theory you could make great models of both players and battle scenarios, but to be honest, I don't think anyone with the skill to do them is willing to.

 

Really, though, you can't model that level of decision making. Decision making in a game as simple as Tic-Tac-Toe is something anyone can do. given a little knowledge. Modeling the decision making humans do in a snap based on so many variables is really going to be intractable due to the demand needed of a computer and of programmers (plural) to code one person. This is the larger limit of SimCraft. In either case, people need to stop trying to talk about SimCraft this and SimCraft that and start talking about my logs this and my performance that.

[Calol 5]

The worst is when it tells you to replace say two 80int/160 Haste for two 80int/160 Mastery to swap 320 haste for 320 mastery, instead of swapping out a single 320 yellow gem.

 

Best thing about Destro and not giving a shit about any Haste breakpoints, my gems are all */Mastery and there is nothing but reforging to do, no more gem changing.  If i want to swap between deep crit to more Haste focused, its only reforging as my gems are always maxing mastery.

I run about 10k haste atm as destro and only thing I ever do is switch my reforges my mastery gems stay regardless if I'm playing destro or afflic

[skullytor 4]

so i'm gonna go ahead and be "that guy". actually, ill preempt by saying that i loathe AMR, more on principal than actual execution. ran a few sim's on my affliction lock a few weeks back, churned out roughly expected results. the reforge was my own custom blend of reforgelite + known hastebreakpoints + calibration of the breakpoints using simc's reforge measuring. very very fine tuned. i thought i couldnt do much better. sooo i thought it would be funny to see how crappy AMR's "optimized" import would fare against my overtuned custom blend.....unfortunately the AMR build beat mine by 10k dps. yes, simc is not perfect, but damn it they did something right. 

[Zanzal 6]

.

Edited November 19, 2013 by Zanzal

[Boradan 17]

well, it seems that they want to remove DoT snapshotting, so simcraft and AMR will become a lot more accurate in future.

All they need to do is factor in the likelyhood of procs from trinkets etc since it would mean the applied, rolling dots simply get more powerful as you get procs. No need to reapply to snapshot them.

Gonna make affliction BORINGLY easy to play:

Put your Dots up, dont let them fall off, and just use haunt when you get trinket procs.

No more remembering how powerful your dots were when you last cast them. Just keep em rolling.

[Errinkel 9]

Good news: in Warlords of Draenor, no more reforging, so this whole debate will be moot!

[Lockybalboa 618]

Posting from blizzcon! On my phone so idk how it will look. Heroes of dranor is a were first off, but on point; they are going to rework off. Major over all. No reforging won't be that big of a deal since they are doing away with hit/exp.IMO it will make the right trinkets more important though. This new 3rd at at sstuff remains to be seen as good or bad. IMO its good on paler, sounds awesome, and in game will suck.

[Boradan 17]

Posting from blizzcon! On my phone so idk how it will look. Heroes of dranor is a were first off, but on point; they are going to rework off. Major over all. No reforging won't be that big of a deal since they are doing away with hit/exp.IMO it will make the right trinkets more important though. This new 3rd at at sstuff remains to be seen as good or bad. IMO its good on paler, sounds awesome, and in game will suck.

 

Dont forget to turn on your spell check :P

[Zagam 1,982]

Good news: in Warlords of Draenor, no more reforging, so this whole debate will be moot!

Not quite.  You'll still seek out properly itemized pieces....you just won't be able to half-way customize bad gear into good gear.

 

The lack of Hit/Expertise is better for this because now they just have to put each type of stat on gear.  For example, 3 sets of bracers:

 

Haste/Crit

Haste/Mastery

Crit/Mastery

 

There won't be the need for gear with hit, so the loot tables should provide a very easy list of BiS gear.  There should be 3 of every type of gear to truly provide itemization options.  The only place this won't be possible is with tier pieces.  Still a better love story than Twilight.

[Kazistrasz 216]

There's also the possibility of them doing gear the way they used to before reforging and mastery: different amounts of the different stats. Not just those 3, but they could also do something with 50 haste/100 mastery vs. 100 haste/50 mastery.

[Failhard 2]

So I know this is the warlock forum and all, but the debate about SimC and AMR is always full of strong opinions. Most of which are held by people who don't understand how to use the tools.

 

I HATE AMR vs I HATE SIMC

 

SimC and AMR both perform the same function, they mathmetically calculate what you can do to your gear to get the largest amount of dps*

 

*dps= AMR does not calculate your dps, SimC calculates a dps that is theoratically perfect and therefore rarely ever seen in game.

 

SimC plays godmode (when simmed for patchwerk) with no screwed up rotations, no misclicks and perfect timing and aligning for procs and returns (when enabled) the value of each stat per dps.  That "weight" is actually how much dps you can with 1 of it.  In 7 years of using it I've never seen the weights returned wrong. SimC profiles are written off of EJ mostly because those smart folks take the time to calculate which spells will do the most damage and how to "game dps" buff yourself and line up procs and use the dmg debuff on the boss and cooldowns and all kinds of complicated calculations that the laymen doesn't have time or patience for.  Thats why they are heroic clearing content, they are playing on a level far beyond the average player. In understanding of fight/class mechanics (including but not limited to: gearing, reforging, gemming, and making you look comparatively like crap), raid composition and elitism.

 

AMR is extremely good at broad stroking the stat priorities for current content and can help the person who forgets which spells do what and that the skull target is the kill target.  It also is extremely good at calculating the way to maximize your best stats, for the lazy optimizer who made a few math mistakes when they tried to do it on their own.  If you don't edit the stat weights in AMR it will tell you the wrong stuff.  If you do edit the stat weights in AMR it will still tell you the wrong stuff.  Does this mean its shit and shouldnt be used?  NO! I have no idea what the reforge/gem formula AMR has but it does magical calculations and does it faster and better than you can humanly possibly do.  It just tends to overshoot the thresholds by a little bit.  And every time I do what it says on the shopping list it changes its mind. (currently telling me to lose 3% mastery and gain 2% exp and crit...I'm already exp capped) so AMR has never FULLY optomized my gear, but its gotten so damn close its not funny.

 

One more thing I'll hit on in my 2nd wall of text I've posted on this site about AMR vs SimC: stat values change relative to each other.  So even though hate or crit or whatever is valued the lowest, if you try to get rid of it from your gear it will end up hurting you more than likely.  This is a credit to the devs at Blizz, they might really hate hunters and keep trying really hard to make frost mages good in pve, but they do a freaking amazing job at keeping all things relatively equal.  OH ONE MORE THING: calculating for tanking and healing is way more difficult but AMR does a pretty good job at that too.

 

tl;dr

The tool is only as good as the person using it...but everything changed when the warlords of Draenor attacked.

Edited November 11, 2013 by Failhard

[Twinkielock 15]

Good news: in Warlords of Draenor, no more reforging, so this whole debate will be moot!

That is horrible news.

[Rakupenda 15]

That is horrible news.

Better news: no more hit capping. Yay...

[Soulzar 42]

Better news: no more hit capping. Yay...

 

It really was a pointless stat.  I will be glad to see it go.

[Omaric 246]

Pfft, hitting 15.00% exactly was like, soooooo awesome breh!

 

Honestly though, it was pretty awesome.  :P

[Rakupenda 15]

Blizzard's theme of customizability and personal preference in the last couple years doesn't fit with the "Gotta have 15% hit" meme. Neither did go-to gems in sockets and enchants, or reforging. Think "required" glyphs (remember Affi/Destros extra Shard/Ember glyph?) That type of thing is what made them change from the previous talent trees to the different tiers they are now. And really, 90% of what you gear decisions are now is an identical situation. These changes are not dumbing down the choices; because think about it: do you really debate which enchant goes on your weapon? what gem goes in a yellow socket? No. Why? Because you either know what to do by now (Jade Spirit and a 320 Mastery Gem always) or you Google what you should do if you don't know (www.icy-veins.com). There is no decision making with optimizing your loot drops (aside from which underlying pieces to go for), it's almost all "required". Reforge to hit cap, reforge your secondary stats that aren't mastery into haste to a desired cap, the rest into mastery, and then reforge the least-favorite secondary stat into the second-least-favorite secondary stat. Rigid. Consistent.

 

I hope to see more of it. For me, these types of changes mean more focus on the SKILL of a player rather than the gear. I'll be glad the day when "What stat should I be going for: haste, crit or mastery?" and the answer is simply "Yes, more of it."

 

Kinda like the new arenas being completely skill based as they will give you the same gear as everyone to use for competition.

[Kazistrasz 216]

So I know this is the warlock forum and all, but the debate about SimC and AMR is always full of strong opinions. Most of which are held by people who don't understand how to use the tools.

 

I HATE AMR vs I HATE SIMC

 

SimC and AMR both perform the same function, they mathmetically calculate what you can do to your gear to get the largest amount of dps*

 

*dps= AMR does not calculate your dps, SimC calculates a dps that is theoratically perfect and therefore rarely ever seen in game.

 

SimC plays godmode (when simmed for patchwerk) with no screwed up rotations, no misclicks and perfect timing and aligning for procs and returns (when enabled) the value of each stat per dps.  That "weight" is actually how much dps you can with 1 of it.  In 7 years of using it I've never seen the weights returned wrong. SimC profiles are written off of EJ mostly because those smart folks take the time to calculate which spells will do the most damage and how to "game dps" buff yourself and line up procs and use the dmg debuff on the boss and cooldowns and all kinds of complicated calculations that the laymen doesn't have time or patience for.  Thats why they are heroic clearing content, they are playing on a level far beyond the average player. In understanding of fight/class mechanics (including but not limited to: gearing, reforging, gemming, and making you look comparatively like crap), raid composition and elitism.

 

AMR is extremely good at broad stroking the stat priorities for current content and can help the person who forgets which spells do what and that the skull target is the kill target.  It also is extremely good at calculating the way to maximize your best stats, for the lazy optimizer who made a few math mistakes when they tried to do it on their own.  If you don't edit the stat weights in AMR it will tell you the wrong stuff.  If you do edit the stat weights in AMR it will still tell you the wrong stuff.  Does this mean its shit and shouldnt be used?  NO! I have no idea what the reforge/gem formula AMR has but it does magical calculations and does it faster and better than you can humanly possibly do.  It just tends to overshoot the thresholds by a little bit.  And every time I do what it says on the shopping list it changes its mind. (currently telling me to lose 3% mastery and gain 2% exp and crit...I'm already exp capped) so AMR has never FULLY optomized my gear, but its gotten so damn close its not funny.

 

One more thing I'll hit on in my 2nd wall of text I've posted on this site about AMR vs SimC: stat values change relative to each other.  So even though hate or crit or whatever is valued the lowest, if you try to get rid of it from your gear it will end up hurting you more than likely.  This is a credit to the devs at Blizz, they might really hate hunters and keep trying really hard to make frost mages good in pve, but they do a freaking amazing job at keeping all things relatively equal.  OH ONE MORE THING: calculating for tanking and healing is way more difficult but AMR does a pretty good job at that too.

 

tl;dr

The tool is only as good as the person using it...but everything changed when the warlords of Draenor attacked.

 

If you're insinuating I don't know what I'm talking about, that's one thing and I'll let it slide. If you're insinuating that Locky doesn't know what he's talking about, then basically everyone here is clueless. You should rethink whose knowledge you're challenging.

 

SimC doesn't play perfectly for warlocks. It is not godmode for us. EJ isn't the great theorycrafting resource they once were. So many of those people no longer contribute there or simply have stopped playing the game. The person who writes the SimC profiles for locks is Gahhda. He writes the profiles as well as they can be written, but the program still has limitations. You say they're written by great heroic players, but do you know who the people are that are posting here? Gahhda and Locky are just as far as they are. Zagam is one boss behind. We have some of the best warlocks you're ever going to meet here telling you these programs are limited.

 

Also, SimC has always been notoriously inaccurate in the past for some classes (melee especially).

 

If you can't listen to the locks we have here, there's nothing anyone can say you'll listen to.

[Lockybalboa 618]

So I know this is the warlock forum and all, but the debate about SimC and AMR is always full of strong opinions. Most of which are held by people who don't understand how to use the tools.

 

Eh, most of the people in this discussion know both the tools very well, most of us aren't programmers but we do have a grasp of the idea behind the code and the limitations of the code. Some of us have also spent a lot of time talking with programmers of SimC to gain a better understanding of the situation. 

 

 

SimC plays godmode (when simmed for patchwerk) with no screwed up rotations, no misclicks and perfect timing and aligning for procs and returns (when enabled) the value of each stat per dps.  

 

Thing is, this SOUNDS like a good thing, but it isn't. One of the major gaps between SimC and IRL is the fact that humans just can't play at this level, no matter how skilled the player is. Depending on the class and spec this is a varying degree of issue, something like ele shaman it isn't that big and SimC works very well for them. The rotation is very simple and there aren't an overload of class mechanics that you need to deal with to do max dps. On the other hand a spec like demo lock SimC isn't that amazing for from this respect because demo is a far more complex flow of damage, more complexity the more reactions that are needed, the further behind a human will far from a computer.

 

One stat this is seen with a lot that computers will ALWAYS do far better then humans is hit rating. I haven't played a shadow priest in some time but the last time I was playing it as a main there was a large debate about going for hit cap or not, SimC showed hit cap wasn't needed but just about every good Spriest in the world strongly disagreed with that. SimC was able to react to it perfectly thus losing almost no DPS, where as humans cannot and so would lose a fair bit of DPS.

 

Issues like this lend strength to the perspective that no matter how good the SimC profiles get, you still can't trust it.

 

 

SimC profiles are written off of EJ mostly because those smart folks take the time to calculate which spells will do the most damage and how to "game dps" buff yourself and line up procs and use the dmg debuff on the boss and cooldowns and all kinds of complicated calculations that the laymen doesn't have time or patience for.  Thats why they are heroic clearing content, they are playing on a level far beyond the average player. In understanding of fight/class mechanics (including but not limited to: gearing, reforging, gemming, and making you look comparatively like crap), raid composition and elitism.

 

First off EJ has been fairly crappy for...years now depending on the class. Most of the amazing theorycrafters either stopped playing, stopped posting, or got sick of the crappy EJ forums and people and made there own sites thus mostly or fully abandoning EJ - Blinkastean and Thek are just two examples.

 

Secondly no one from EJ works with the warlock SimC correctly, Gahdda does that work with the help and imput from Zag and others.

 

I hold world first and a US first heroic kills, I've been in the upper levels of raiding for a long time. SimC and "perfect" raid stats don't really have much to do with top level heroic raiding. Secondary stats are very, very fluid at this level of play. The fight by fight change is big enough that you cannot lock yourself into a mindset of "perfect" stats. Further more, secondary only have a small role in over all DPS anyways so it isn't that big of a deal. Game play is far more important. SimC, gems, encahnts, and reforging isn't why they are clearing, skill, player dedication, innovative strats, a deep understanding of game mechanics, and a lot of wipes is why they are clearing.

 

 

AMR is extremely good at broad stroking the stat priorities for current content and can help the person who forgets which spells do what and that the skull target is the kill target.  It also is extremely good at calculating the way to maximize your best stats, for the lazy optimizer who made a few math mistakes when they tried to do it on their own.  If you don't edit the stat weights in AMR it will tell you the wrong stuff.  If you do edit the stat weights in AMR it will still tell you the wrong stuff.  Does this mean its shit and shouldnt be used?  NO! I have no idea what the reforge/gem formula AMR has but it does magical calculations and does it faster and better than you can humanly possibly do.  It just tends to overshoot the thresholds by a little bit.  And every time I do what it says on the shopping list it changes its mind. (currently telling me to lose 3% mastery and gain 2% exp and crit...I'm already exp capped) so AMR has never FULLY optomized my gear, but its gotten so damn close its not funny.

 

 

My issue with AMR has more to do with marketing than accuracy, although the accuracy of AMR is like a blind man with cerebral palsy at a long range marksmanship competition. AMR is build for noobs, bads, people that don't care, or people that care but just don't understand the complexities of the nity grity. All of that is fine, all of them are real people that deserve a bit of a help if they ask for it. But what AMR does isn't what they need. They don't need a huge shopping list, they don't need to be told to go exp/mastery because it's a .0001% DPS gain, they don't need to be told a lot of this crap that AMR trys to tell them. They don't need to worry about stat weights or fine tuning. They just need it to be kept simple.

 

I.E. Destro = Int>mastery>crit>haste. Use 80/120 int/mastery gems, pure mastery, and hit/mastery gems. Match socket bonuses. Use reforgelite to meet hit caps. The end. No math, no issues, no problem, just DPS.

 

Also, the fact that it would tell you to drop 3% mastery for 2% exp and crit is just...wrong. So...ya...

 

 

One more thing I'll hit on in my 2nd wall of text I've posted on this site about AMR vs SimC: stat values change relative to each other.  So even though hate or crit or whatever is valued the lowest, if you try to get rid of it from your gear it will end up hurting you more than likely.  This is a credit to the devs at Blizz, they might really hate hunters and keep trying really hard to make frost mages good in pve, but they do a freaking amazing job at keeping all things relatively equal. 

 

 

This *might* be true for other classes, but it's flat wrong for warlocks. Destro you can drop every bit of haste you have for full mastery/crit and it will kick ass. You can drop all of your crit and do full mastery/haste and it will kick ass. You can balance crit/haste and it will kick ass. The only thing you need is more mastery.

 

Kind of the same thing with aff and demo also. More mastery is the key.

 

TL;DR Fuck AMR. Fuck SimC.

[Zagam 1,982]

The TL;DR of SimC is that it is VERY difficult to properly model the rampant RNG in mechanics today.  RNG is prevalent everywhere and it's impossible to model it on individual parses.  RNG enables me to beat my SimC theoretical maximum which really destroys any argument of SimC being the truly optimal DPS bar.  SimC also focuses DPS simulations on single target fights with slight modifications, but nothing to really build into the fights we see today.  RNG is a fickle bitch.  Embrace her because there is no way you can fight her.