Post by Kamesh on Feb 20, 2015 18:54:03 GMT
I know AskMrRobot does a lot of this, but they wanted money, and simcraft/pawn was free, so I went that route. Simcraft has a pretty full explanation of how everything works and what everything does, so I'll try and cover the most important parts so you can get started with it.
Step 1: Download simcraft from here. I literally just unzipped it and ran the SimulationCraft64.exe from the folder and it worked just fine.
Step 2: Import you character. Just click the import tab (second from left at the top) and navigate to your battle.net profile. Make sure you're wearing the gear you want modeled - no bear set while trying to optimize your cat dps!
Step 3: Set up your sim. Click on the "options" tab and you get this:
Things in green you can set once and forget. Iterations is the number of times the sim runs - more runs, better results, longer time to run. World lag is the latency you usually play with - for us on the east coast, 75-100ms is pretty typical. Player skill: elite will do everything perfect every time, keeping track of all your dots and casting in perfect sync with your latency - things that aren't going to change based on planning or gear level, only muscle memory and skill. Good will get it right 90% of the time, which felt more like my skill level. Your mileage may vary, but it does change the results a bit, so be honest with yourself. The think the best use of this setting is for determining "should I use this talent I know I'm terrible at managing, or this slightly worse talent that I'm really good with".
Things in red are the real meat of SimC. In Highmaul, the correct gear choice was "whatever you got from highmaul", but in BRF, there seem to be three+ gear choices for many slots, so you may want slightly different stats (or talents) for different fights. This is how you figure that out.
Now go to the "scaling" sub tab. If you just want a quick check between two sims, turn off scaling. If you want to get your stat weights, turn this on (it'll take several times as long to run), and select all your dps stats.
Do not turn on plots. They're pretty but they take forever to generate and don't really give you useful information.
Hit simulate! It'll run for a bit - green progress bar will go through all your options.
Step 4: Results! First thing, rename the results tab something you can remember so you can compare things.
There's a ton of information here (and this post is getting huge), so I'll just quickly cover the first couple things to look at.
DPS - use this to compare to two Sims or as a quick comparison to your logs performance.
Scale Factors - plug these into an addon like Pawn. This can be tremendously useful if you have different scale factors for different types of fights. For example:
As you can see - my values change a lot based on what type of fight it is. My *WORST* stat on Gruul is my *BEST* stat on Beastlord. Functionally, this means I want to use Tal'rak on Gruul or Oregorger, but Skullscythe on Beastlord or Blast Furnace. Coming from tBC, this is a huge change for me, where you had a best stat and you just stacked the hell out of it and never really swapped gear between fights.
Abilites: This shows what percent of your damage came from what ability in the fight. If you and the simulator are different, this is good jumping off point for determining if you aren't nailing your rotation.
There's a ton more about SimC that could be mentioned here, but the post has gotten huge, so I'm going to cut it here. I'm hoping this was enough to get anyone curious started. A next step for those interested, would be diving into the "simulate" tab. Once you get familiar with the syntax, you can try out new enchants/specs/gear without having to change you bnet profile, which I imagine will be key for figuring out your personal BiS once you have an odd number of tier pieces.
Step 1: Download simcraft from here. I literally just unzipped it and ran the SimulationCraft64.exe from the folder and it worked just fine.
Step 2: Import you character. Just click the import tab (second from left at the top) and navigate to your battle.net profile. Make sure you're wearing the gear you want modeled - no bear set while trying to optimize your cat dps!
Step 3: Set up your sim. Click on the "options" tab and you get this:
Things in green you can set once and forget. Iterations is the number of times the sim runs - more runs, better results, longer time to run. World lag is the latency you usually play with - for us on the east coast, 75-100ms is pretty typical. Player skill: elite will do everything perfect every time, keeping track of all your dots and casting in perfect sync with your latency - things that aren't going to change based on planning or gear level, only muscle memory and skill. Good will get it right 90% of the time, which felt more like my skill level. Your mileage may vary, but it does change the results a bit, so be honest with yourself. The think the best use of this setting is for determining "should I use this talent I know I'm terrible at managing, or this slightly worse talent that I'm really good with".
Things in red are the real meat of SimC. In Highmaul, the correct gear choice was "whatever you got from highmaul", but in BRF, there seem to be three+ gear choices for many slots, so you may want slightly different stats (or talents) for different fights. This is how you figure that out.
- Length: how long the fight lasts - for example, shorter fights mean higher bloodlust uptimes, so certain talents/stats may synergize better with that.
- Fight style: Patchwerk means a tank-'n-spank fight like gruul. Sort of the base setting for sims. HecticCleave is for simulating fights like Beastlord where you have a main target with lots of adds to cleave into. HelterSkelter is for fights involving constantly switching targets.
- Num enemies: How many primary targets you have. So, if I wanted to Sim the Hans and Franz encounter, you'd set this to 2 (length=350, style=patchwerk).
Now go to the "scaling" sub tab. If you just want a quick check between two sims, turn off scaling. If you want to get your stat weights, turn this on (it'll take several times as long to run), and select all your dps stats.
Do not turn on plots. They're pretty but they take forever to generate and don't really give you useful information.
Hit simulate! It'll run for a bit - green progress bar will go through all your options.
Step 4: Results! First thing, rename the results tab something you can remember so you can compare things.
There's a ton of information here (and this post is getting huge), so I'll just quickly cover the first couple things to look at.
DPS - use this to compare to two Sims or as a quick comparison to your logs performance.
Scale Factors - plug these into an addon like Pawn. This can be tremendously useful if you have different scale factors for different types of fights. For example:
As you can see - my values change a lot based on what type of fight it is. My *WORST* stat on Gruul is my *BEST* stat on Beastlord. Functionally, this means I want to use Tal'rak on Gruul or Oregorger, but Skullscythe on Beastlord or Blast Furnace. Coming from tBC, this is a huge change for me, where you had a best stat and you just stacked the hell out of it and never really swapped gear between fights.
Abilites: This shows what percent of your damage came from what ability in the fight. If you and the simulator are different, this is good jumping off point for determining if you aren't nailing your rotation.
There's a ton more about SimC that could be mentioned here, but the post has gotten huge, so I'm going to cut it here. I'm hoping this was enough to get anyone curious started. A next step for those interested, would be diving into the "simulate" tab. Once you get familiar with the syntax, you can try out new enchants/specs/gear without having to change you bnet profile, which I imagine will be key for figuring out your personal BiS once you have an odd number of tier pieces.
