Cannot figure out differential between my dps and sim dps

[chickas 0]

So, apologies if this rambles a bit, but I CANNOT figure out why my DPS Is lagging my sim so much and want to try to fix it. Last I played this game was MoP, and was a top10 US parsing rogue. I remember being able to semi-regularly beat my sim, and I know that the Sin rotation has really not changed all that much in the time since.

 

So basically, raidbots/simcraft sims my DPS at around 10.2k, here: https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/report/hBxjZMQsPqsKuTnoQv6URQ/simc

 

When I go up and beat on a dummy for 5 minutes, though, I can only pull between 8500 and 9500. Now, I can't seem to vanish on the dummy and have it keep my log going, so I know that's accounting for *some* of the loss, but not that much. What I ended up finding out is how significant my DPS breakdown and my buff/debuff uptimes varied. 

 

So basically, a few digressions between the two. Sim DPS expectation here with my DPS in parenthesis:

22% garrote (14%)

15% auto attacks (16%)

13% rupture (14%)

12% deadly poison (15%)

10% envenom (14%)

 

Now, what's really odd to me is the differential in uptime on buffs and debuffs. My first assumption was that I was mistiming garrotes or ruptures or having shit uptime on envenom or something, but found that the sim ran at roughly 94-96% uptime on garrote and rupture, and that envenom had a 58% uptime. Yet, on my damage, I had 100% uptime on garrote and rupture, which then made me think I might be using them too often. But my envenom uptime is also higher than the sim, at 63%. 

 

As far as I can tell, I'm outplaying the sim, yet my damage breakdown doesn't add up, and my DPS is down against it. 

 

Any other thoughts?

 

Edit: I just ran at this again, and things look closer to the sim, and my DPS on that pull was 9800, so 400 off the sim. Not bad, but I changed almost nothing in my playstyle from the 8500 one. That's an awful lot of variance I can't seem to account for. 

Edited September 12, 2018 by chickas

[Carrn 284]

12 hours ago, chickas said:

So, apologies if this rambles a bit, but I CANNOT figure out why my DPS Is lagging my sim so much and want to try to fix it. Last I played this game was MoP, and was a top10 US parsing rogue. I remember being able to semi-regularly beat my sim, and I know that the Sin rotation has really not changed all that much in the time since.

 

So basically, raidbots/simcraft sims my DPS at around 10.2k, here: https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/report/hBxjZMQsPqsKuTnoQv6URQ/simc

 

When I go up and beat on a dummy for 5 minutes, though, I can only pull between 8500 and 9500. Now, I can't seem to vanish on the dummy and have it keep my log going, so I know that's accounting for *some* of the loss, but not that much. What I ended up finding out is how significant my DPS breakdown and my buff/debuff uptimes varied. 

 

So basically, a few digressions between the two. Sim DPS expectation here with my DPS in parenthesis:

22% garrote (14%)

15% auto attacks (16%)

13% rupture (14%)

12% deadly poison (15%)

10% envenom (14%)

 

Now, what's really odd to me is the differential in uptime on buffs and debuffs. My first assumption was that I was mistiming garrotes or ruptures or having shit uptime on envenom or something, but found that the sim ran at roughly 94-96% uptime on garrote and rupture, and that envenom had a 58% uptime. Yet, on my damage, I had 100% uptime on garrote and rupture, which then made me think I might be using them too often. But my envenom uptime is also higher than the sim, at 63%. 

 

As far as I can tell, I'm outplaying the sim, yet my damage breakdown doesn't add up, and my DPS is down against it. 

 

Any other thoughts?

 

Edit: I just ran at this again, and things look closer to the sim, and my DPS on that pull was 9800, so 400 off the sim. Not bad, but I changed almost nothing in my playstyle from the 8500 one. That's an awful lot of variance I can't seem to account for. 

Without a log of what you're doing, there's absolutely no feedback that I can give you about how to improve it or what the differences may be.

A few pointers though:

1. Not Vanishing on a dummy is a significant difference, as you aren't buffing Garrote on any applications after the first. Garrote is your hardest hitting ability, and not buffing it with Subterfuge is noticeable. 80% extra damage on your biggest ability combined with the 30% damage buff from Vendetta is big.
2. You didn't mention Elaborate Planning uptime when comparing your dummy vs the Sim, so I don't know how often you have that flat 10% damage buff

That's about all I've got for you without a log, if you can provide one then I can give some more specific feedback

[chickas 0]

5 hours ago, Carrn said:

Without a log of what you're doing, there's absolutely no feedback that I can give you about how to improve it or what the differences may be.

A few pointers though:

1. Not Vanishing on a dummy is a significant difference, as you aren't buffing Garrote on any applications after the first. Garrote is your hardest hitting ability, and not buffing it with Subterfuge is noticeable. 80% extra damage on your biggest ability combined with the 30% damage buff from Vendetta is big.
2. You didn't mention Elaborate Planning uptime when comparing your dummy vs the Sim, so I don't know how often you have that flat 10% damage buff

That's about all I've got for you without a log, if you can provide one then I can give some more specific feedback

I wasn't able to vanish without having Skada reset, sadly. I DLed the warcraftlogs addon and will get that running and try to post. Elaborate planning was off by the sim by 1% in either direction depending on the run. 

[Carrn 284]

16 hours ago, chickas said:

I wasn't able to vanish without having Skada reset, sadly. I DLed the warcraftlogs addon and will get that running and try to post. Elaborate planning was off by the sim by 1% in either direction depending on the run. 

yeah I know about the Vanish thing, I'm just saying that if you're only using a dummy that not being able to buff Vanish Garrote is a big deal 

[jinsu2301 273]

17 hours ago, chickas said:

I wasn't able to vanish without having Skada reset, sadly. I DLed the warcraftlogs addon and will get that running and try to post. Elaborate planning was off by the sim by 1% in either direction depending on the run. 

you can set skada so it tracks overall dmg instead of current

[chickas 0]

So here's some logs from our raid the other night, and it feels like I should be pushing higher damage than I am, but cannot quite figure out where I'm dropping: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/character/id/35248616

 

Edit: I cannot figure out how to get warcraftlogs to actually parse my logs against a dummy - any advice on how to get that up?

Another quick update: I just beat my dummy on uptime for elaborate planning by 2%, uptime on envenom by 10%, uptime on weapon enchants by 5%, and uptimes on Garrote and Rupture beat the sim by 5%. Should I be strategically letting certain garrote's and rupture's fall? 

 

 

Edited September 14, 2018 by chickas

[AlexJones 0]

When you sim your damage, make sure to check the options of the simming based on your buffs. I was having this same issue yesterday. Took till today to figure out that my damage that it showed was based on every conceivable buff that BfA had to offer. Attacking a dummy, I normally don't have all those buffs active. So I switched all of them off that were not relevant. Before, as assassination, standard 6 minute patchwerk said I should be pulling 13k, and on the dummy, I was pulling 9k. switching off all the buffs that it takes into consideration, its now within 100 of what I actually do after burst and all.

[chickas 0]

On 9/14/2018 at 10:17 AM, AlexJones said:

When you sim your damage, make sure to check the options of the simming based on your buffs. I was having this same issue yesterday. Took till today to figure out that my damage that it showed was based on every conceivable buff that BfA had to offer. Attacking a dummy, I normally don't have all those buffs active. So I switched all of them off that were not relevant. Before, as assassination, standard 6 minute patchwerk said I should be pulling 13k, and on the dummy, I was pulling 9k. switching off all the buffs that it takes into consideration, its now within 100 of what I actually do after burst and all.

I had already done this, still can't figure it out.

[Carrn 284]

On 9/14/2018 at 2:07 PM, chickas said:

So here's some logs from our raid the other night, and it feels like I should be pushing higher damage than I am, but cannot quite figure out where I'm dropping: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/character/id/35248616

 

Edit: I cannot figure out how to get warcraftlogs to actually parse my logs against a dummy - any advice on how to get that up?

Another quick update: I just beat my dummy on uptime for elaborate planning by 2%, uptime on envenom by 10%, uptime on weapon enchants by 5%, and uptimes on Garrote and Rupture beat the sim by 5%. Should I be strategically letting certain garrote's and rupture's fall? 

 

 

I suggest looking at both your opener and your sustained rotation.

For your opener

• You're using Vendetta too early. There's no reason to pop it at the start of a fight when you don't have bleeds on the target cause an extra 20% on 0 damage is still 0. You're missing a large part (4 seconds or so, or 1/5th the time) of buffed damage on the boss without your bleeds ticking. It also completely wastes the Energy gain.
• Your Rupture after Garrote was late. I'm sure this is because the boss was moving and you were out of range, but basically what happens is you nerfed your second Garrote by casting it without Subterfuge - not only did you not gain the bonus CP, but you lost the bonus ticking damage from the Azerite trait

 

For your main rotation

• Use Vanish more. Your Taloc kill was 8 minutes long and you only used Vanish once. As stated in my earlier post, Garrote is a huge part of your damage and you're missing out on free buffed damage but also free combo points.
• Use Vendetta more. Same kill you only pressed Vend 3 times where you could have fit 6.
• Use Vendetta during Bloodlust. If you're only pressing it 3 times in an 8 minute fight, it should at least line up with Lust.
• Use a second potion. Ideally when you have Lust + Vend + Exsang

[chickas 0]

3 hours ago, Carrn said:

I suggest looking at both your opener and your sustained rotation.

For your opener

• You're using Vendetta too early. There's no reason to pop it at the start of a fight when you don't have bleeds on the target cause an extra 20% on 0 damage is still 0. You're missing a large part (4 seconds or so, or 1/5th the time) of buffed damage on the boss without your bleeds ticking. It also completely wastes the Energy gain.
• Your Rupture after Garrote was late. I'm sure this is because the boss was moving and you were out of range, but basically what happens is you nerfed your second Garrote by casting it without Subterfuge - not only did you not gain the bonus CP, but you lost the bonus ticking damage from the Azerite trait

 

For your main rotation

• Use Vanish more. Your Taloc kill was 8 minutes long and you only used Vanish once. As stated in my earlier post, Garrote is a huge part of your damage and you're missing out on free buffed damage but also free combo points.
• Use Vendetta more. Same kill you only pressed Vend 3 times where you could have fit 6.
• Use Vendetta during Bloodlust. If you're only pressing it 3 times in an 8 minute fight, it should at least line up with Lust.
• Use a second potion. Ideally when you have Lust + Vend + Exsan

 

This is all super helpful, ty. Was wondering if you had any thoughts on how I could better get logs running against a dummy though, so I could try to figure out what's going wrong there.

 

Also - what is the opener you recommend? I've read in some places that it should go prepot>garrote>rupture>garrote>exsan>vendetta+berserking>normal rotation, while always pandemiccing the bleeds.

[Carrn 284]

33 minutes ago, chickas said:

Also - what is the opener you recommend? I've read in some places that it should go prepot>garrote>rupture>garrote>exsan>vendetta+berserking>normal rotation, while always pandemiccing the bleeds.

• Prepot
• Garrote
• Rupture
• Garrote
• Vend
• Mut
• Rupture
• Exsang

You want to make sure you always get 2 Garrotes from Stealth/Subterfuge, and you want to always have that full duration Rupture running when you use Exsang

The main reason I commented about your opener is because you missed a gcd - your Rupture was a full gcd late, meaning your 2nd Garrote didn't benefit from the Azerite trait (free damage and CP) and in fact it removed the bonus damage you would have been doing from the initial Garrote.

If the boss is moving when you open, you can do a few things:

1. Wait to open
2. Play as normal but pop Sprint to keep up
3. Open from the side of the boss where the tank is pulling to, so the boss runs through you while you do your opener and is always in range

[Carrn 284]

37 minutes ago, chickas said:

This is all super helpful, ty. Was wondering if you had any thoughts on how I could better get logs running against a dummy though, so I could try to figure out what's going wrong there.

Honestly dummy damage doesn't matter. Neither does Sim damage, for that matter, since an actual performance environment will never be Sim conditions.

Focus on making sure you're doing the right thing when you're on the dummy, it's really only for working on muscle memory and basic rotation practice imo

[Kruzifier 0]

I'd advise checking the Action Priority List of the sim, tells you exactly what spell and when the simulation uses it.

Scroll down to about mid page where it says "Action Priority List", open that.
Once that opens, scroll down to the bottom of it where it says "Sample Sequence Table"
That's the exact spells and rotation it uses.

Like variable E : "Extra Subterfuge Vanish condition: Use when Garrote dropped on Single Target"

It's a little bit more advanced than what most people are used to when it comes to simulations, but it always helps me see if I'm doing something wrong rotation wise to achieve the same dps as the simulation.

[chickas 0]

46 minutes ago, Kruzifier said:

I'd advise checking the Action Priority List of the sim, tells you exactly what spell and when the simulation uses it.

Scroll down to about mid page where it says "Action Priority List", open that.
Once that opens, scroll down to the bottom of it where it says "Sample Sequence Table"
That's the exact spells and rotation it uses.

Like variable E : "Extra Subterfuge Vanish condition: Use when Garrote dropped on Single Target"

It's a little bit more advanced than what most people are used to when it comes to simulations, but it always helps me see if I'm doing something wrong rotation wise to achieve the same dps as the simulation.

I think I've generally done this, and my actions hit and my buff and debuff uptimes would support that I'm in a similar place. I also generally think that my parses aren't that bad considering how my guild does fights vs others, I'd just obviously want those purple parses to get back up to the orange range I used to have them in. Might be a gear min/maxing thing more than a rotation thing, though.