Sim and pack alpha

[Jatuu 1]

I understand that according to the discord, pack alpha is only good if you have 3 stacks and that animal companion is a dps loss compared to no talent at all. That is what I am told.   However, I got a shoulder piece with pack alpha.  I only have 1 stack of it. But when I sim it, it is a clear dps increase over using my old shoulders, most likely due to ilevel.  But in the discord, I am told to not use animal companion in raid regardless. Why is this, even if it sims higher than my old gear set? 

I do lose an execute, but it seems to sim overall higher dps. 

 

 

[Sisco 23]

1 hour ago, Jatuu said:

I understand that according to the discord, pack alpha is only good if you have 3 stacks and that animal companion is a dps loss compared to no talent at all. That is what I am told.   However, I got a shoulder piece with pack alpha.  I only have 1 stack of it. But when I sim it, it is a clear dps increase over using my old shoulders, most likely due to ilevel.  But in the discord, I am told to not use animal companion in raid regardless. Why is this, even if it sims higher than my old gear set? 

I do lose an execute, but it seems to sim overall higher dps. 

 

 

Do a sim with your new shoulders with Pack Alpha and Animal Companion, then run it again with Killer Instinct and whichever Azerite Trait shows highest for you. See what has the better numbers.

Just because PA + AC with your new shoulders is better than your old shoulders does not mean it will also beat Archive of the Titans + KI. (Assuming the new shoulders are Flame-Sterilized Spaulders)

[Khallid 110]

9 hours ago, Jatuu said:

I understand that according to the discord, pack alpha is only good if you have 3 stacks and that animal companion is a dps loss compared to no talent at all. That is what I am told.   However, I got a shoulder piece with pack alpha.  I only have 1 stack of it. But when I sim it, it is a clear dps increase over using my old shoulders, most likely due to ilevel.  But in the discord, I am told to not use animal companion in raid regardless. Why is this, even if it sims higher than my old gear set? 

I do lose an execute, but it seems to sim overall higher dps. 

 

 

Of course ilvl wins, you're simming the wrong thing.

You're not supposed to sim it against your old shoulders. You're supposed to sim it against the other traits in that azerite piece (each sim done with the repsective talents of course). All azerite pieces come with a non-spec specific trait which you can take instead of Pack Alpha.

[Jatuu 1]

13 hours ago, Sisco said:

Do a sim with your new shoulders with Pack Alpha and Animal Companion, then run it again with Killer Instinct and whichever Azerite Trait shows highest for you. See what has the better numbers.

Just because PA + AC with your new shoulders is better than your old shoulders does not mean it will also beat Archive of the Titans + KI. (Assuming the new shoulders are Flame-Sterilized Spaulders)

 Ya, I am not comparing it to KI and Archive. i don't have any archive of the titans anyway. No actual raid-quality azerite has dropped yet. I was just  comparing it to my old shoulders and animal companion with PA beat it. There was an alternative trait on my new shoulders where KI was still better, but it was a marginal difference. It was the azerite puddle trait where you gotta stand in it. I didn't want to use that for unrelated reasons.  It was something like a 100 dps difference compared to AC and Pack alpha anyway. 

[Jatuu 1]

6 hours ago, Khallid said:

Of course ilvl wins, you're simming the wrong thing.

You're not supposed to sim it against your old shoulders. You're supposed to sim it against the other traits in that azerite piece (each sim done with the repsective talents of course). All azerite pieces come with a non-spec specific trait which you can take instead of Pack Alpha.

I know that that I am supposed to sim the traits on the new shoulders. I did. I know that the alternative generic trait is slightly higher dps using KI than using animal companion and the 1 pack alpha. The problem is that the generic trait is terrible to use and only marginally higher dps than using pack alpha with animal companion.  It is about 100 dps difference. 

The alternative is some trait that occasionally spawns azerite puddles on the ground that you need to stand in to get a short buff. I don't use it because I get very low uptime on, since it always spawns an azerite puddle when I either need to move due to kiting/group moving or bad spawning on the puddle.  My  logic was that If the ideal trait combo is only 100 dps increase, and if the sim is assuming reasonably high uptime,  if I don't get high uptime, I am losing even less than 100 dps by picking PA/AC. 

I was just confused because someone said never to use pack alpha in raid--only in dungeons. I did not understand why, since I still simmed better than before while using it. I thought there was some hidden bug or flaw in animal companion that was not reflected in the sim. 

I am sorry I bungled my question.  ?

Edited October 4, 2018 by Jatuu

[Khallid 110]

Yeah that trait also sucks. You're just unlucky then.

Generally speaking, most of us will say to never use Pack Alpha because it forces you to pick the talent Animal Companion, which brings some issues we just want to avoid. Simply put: the second pet is buggy. Indeed the sim does not reflect this.

I haven't really used it myself, I just did a few tests and agreed that it sucked. I've read a lot of people saying that the second pet doesn't have any Avoidance and it dies to unavoidable damage sometimes, which would porbably happen a lot in some raid bosses. Respawning it requires you to dismiss your pet and call it back again, and then it still doesn't respawn immediately. Its AI is also subpar, and I don't think that petattack macros apply to the second pet. The second pet also can't feign death (or play dead) although that's not very relevant in raids.

So bringing a buggy second pet is a giant drawback. The dps gain would need to be really big to overcome those problems.

Edited October 4, 2018 by Khallid

[Jatuu 1]

12 hours ago, Khallid said:

Yeah that trait also sucks. You're just unlucky then.

Generally speaking, most of us will say to never use Pack Alpha because it forces you to pick the talent Animal Companion, which brings some issues we just want to avoid. Simply put: the second pet is buggy. Indeed the sim does not reflect this.

I haven't really used it myself, I just did a few tests and agreed that it sucked. I've read a lot of people saying that the second pet doesn't have any Avoidance and it dies to unavoidable damage sometimes, which would porbably happen a lot in some raid bosses. Respawning it requires you to dismiss your pet and call it back again, and then it still doesn't respawn immediately. Its AI is also subpar, and I don't think that petattack macros apply to the second pet. The second pet also can't feign death (or play dead) although that's not very relevant in raids.

So bringing a buggy second pet is a giant drawback. The dps gain would need to be really big to overcome those problems.

The pet dying was my thought, too. I guess I don't really have any good options here, as the other trait might as well not exist as I can only rarely sit in the puddle. Gonna have to try it next raid and see how much the pet dies. 

[Shimino 0]

Hello there

I have a question regarding Pack Alpha and Sims so I thought it would be better to ask it here. I have 3 Pack Alpha Trait but when I sim it, it shows a huge DPS loss both on single and AoE.

 

[Khallid 110]

On 12/5/2018 at 3:54 AM, Shimino said:

Hello there

I have a question regarding Pack Alpha and Sims so I thought it would be better to ask it here. I have 3 Pack Alpha Trait but when I sim it, it shows a huge DPS loss both on single and AoE.

 

You need to be way more specific.

It's a DPS loss compared to what? You can't win or lose dps without doing a comparison.

And what is the question you want answered? You didn't actually ask anything. You seem to already know that it's a dps loss and you shouldn't pick that trait.

 

Additionally, taking 3 Pack Alpha means you're not taking Laser Matrix or Archive of the Titans, so Reorigination Array won't activate, which is an enormous dps loss in Uldir, and sims take it into account by default.

Edited December 7, 2018 by Khallid

[Shimino 0]

Hello there

Thanks for answer and sorry that my post was not specific. Here is the Problem!

I have searched most sites that show Azerite Armor Simulation and I saw in all of them that 3 Pack Alpha is beast with AC. So I changed to 3 Pack Alphas with 375ilvl gear (same as my Killer Instinct) and Simulated my char in all fight styles with different fight times. In all of the Simulation types the Killer Instinct came on top. I even Tested it live in some Dungeons. My DPS on Packs of adds has improved but my DPS on bosses in a dungeon has decreased. My question is why is there this much difference between simulations you see in the sites and forums, and what you see when you seem your character yourself.?

Should I go for Pack Alpha or stick to the Old Ways?

My Trinkets that I Simed my char with are ( Boon, Azzaek, Lustrus ) all of them 370ilvl.

Thanks

[Khallid 110]

Killer Instincts is overall a better talent than Animal Companion, but realistically it's not very good for dungeons.

Killer Instincts is an Execute talent. In order to use it correctly you need to line up your cooldowns for the execute phase, which is basically Aspect of the Wild since Bestial Wrath has a short cooldown and tends to be less of an issue. However, most dungeon bosses will die in less than 2 minutes, so if you use Aspect of the WIld on your opener you won't be able to use it again during the Execute phase.

Killer Instincts also doesn't play a significant role while cleaving, which is most of the dungeon time. You shouldn't see any difference there, although I'm not 100% sure if Animal Companion affects your Beast Cleave dps. It "shouldn't", but I have my doubts.

 

Next, your vague description makes me wonder whether your tests are reliable at all. Random dungeons with random groups would be the worst possible way to do it. You might do more dps because there's a warrior in your group and he's buffing you, or a Monk that is debuffing the enemies. You're probably comparing different pulls with different enemies, and dps of the rest of your group also influences how fast things die. All of that is completely unreliable data. Literally useless.

 

AC should synergize with Pack Alpha, which is why they go together, but AC+Pack Alpha is not the optimal setup. I do not recommend to use Pack Alpha, but in order to replace Pack Alpha you probably need to get better Azerite pieces. Unless you have something better, there's no point in fretting about it. 

 

9 hours ago, Shimino said:

My question is why is there this much difference between simulations you see in the sites and forums, and what you see when you seem your character yourself.?

There are a lot of reasons, but the big ones are secondary stats, azerite traits and talents.

Talents are basically set in stone for BM Hunters. If you look at any logs you will notice that there is very little talent variation. The standard talent setup is Killer Instincts, Chimaera Shot, Murder of Crows, Stomp and Aspect of the Beast. All sims you see on forums use those talents, so using anything different will show discrepancies.

Azerite traits are very variable and difficult to predict. Guides would probably use an optimized setup, which is probably Primal Instincts and 2x Archive of the titans. Primal Instincts in particular should show some big differences since it actually affects your rotation. The fact that you're using 3x Pack Alpha places your Azerite traits as unusual so the base sims will differ a lot from your personal sims.

Secondary stats are the usual from always. The current standard is to have Haste as your highest stat.

Edited December 10, 2018 by Khallid

[Shimino 0]

Thanks for the info bro.

Praise the Titans, Pack Alpha is out now. What do you think of the new Trait (Animal Con.). What is your opinion  about it. Is it better to switch to Animal Con. on M+ or still go with Archive of the Titans?

Best regards