Apex Simming better than Call of the Wild

[Slicer299]

Now, before someone goes and just links to Azortharion's guide with no critical thinking of their own, I've already read his guide extensively. While he's a good source of information, he's not the only source of information, hence why I'm posting here looking for additional input. Even his own guide is conflicting, because the legendary ranking in the guide does not match his own spreadsheet. The guide has the Apex ring ranked very low, behind even the healing mask, yet the spreadsheet has it higher on the list. Both also rank the legs very highly, yet my own sims always have me losing almost 100k DPS when simming with the legs.

Anyways, onto my specific issue, I do not have the belt, and even then he has the wrists+CoF ranked higher than the belt now, but I just don't see that. But I do have every legendary except that belt, the healing mask and the neck. With that in mind I also have an 895 CoF that I pair with an 895 Bloodthirsty. Up until today, Shoulders+Wrists always simmed highest out of any combination of my gear, but today I got a good, not perfect, but good pair of wrists out of my weekly chest.

Resimming everything, and I always use the latest version of SimC from the nightly builds, Shoulders+Apex Ring is now 5k DPS ahead of Shoulders+Wrists. I already had 910 wrists before today, the ones I got today just had slightly better stat optimization on them. But not significant enough, I would think, to pull ahead of using the legendary wrists.

So my TL/DR would be, is anyone else have the legendary wrists, but not the belt, not using the wrists? Is there a scenario where stat optimization pulls ahead of stacking the CD combo on Aspect of the Wild?

[Deleted]

5k is ridiculously small an upgrade. Less than 1%? With wrists you also have utility that comes from the CD reduction of Turtle and Cheetah. Apex, for a raid, does not bring much other than an extra gap closer if specced Tenacity. It's great for open world content like Broken Shore and the rares we need to whittle down in Tenacity spec.

Consider also the burst of having AotW ready every pack, or every two packs, in higher M+. Not just Thunderslash but the spamming of Multi-shot without focus concerns.

[Slicer299]

5k is ridiculously small an upgrade. Less than 1%? With wrists you also have utility that comes from the CD reduction of Turtle and Cheetah. Apex, for a raid, does not bring much other than an extra gap closer if specced Tenacity. It's great for open world content like Broken Shore and the rares we need to whittle down in Tenacity spec.

Consider also the burst of having AotW ready every pack, or every two packs, in higher M+. Not just Thunderslash but the spamming of Multi-shot without focus concerns.

It's more about the insanely low value guides like Azortharion's are giving Apex that's throwing things off. Yes 5k is nothing, there is margin of error to take into consideration too. I can rerun the same sims and that difference will change, up or down, between the two. The biggest gap I saw Apex pull ahead was over 8k, the lowest was less than 4k. But he has it at the very bottom of his second tier of legendaries. He ranks the damn legs at the top of the second tier, yet my sims come in a full 80k less when using the legs. Whatever he's doing to weight/rank these legendaries doesn't add up. I'm sure he'll take that as some personal insult, it's not, but unless he can explain it, people are going to question it. Especially since, as I pointed out in my original post, his ranking in the guide doesn't even match the spreadsheet.

To me it would seem that Apex needs to be up there, neck and neck with the belt and the wrist+cof combo. I actually got the belt about an hour after I made this thread. Going and running all 3 sims again as I type this, Shoulder+Belt = 961K, Shoulder+Apex = 960K, Shoulder+Wrist/CoF = 954K. So Apex again consistently out simming the wrist/CoF combo, but within 1k of the belt. That's actually the first time Apex has cracked 960k, earlier Apex was siming about 958 and the wrist/CoF were simming about 953-954 on average.

On that note, ran them a second time as I was typing, and exactly that happened, Apex dropped to 958 and wrist/CoF dropped to 953. Just like it was earlier tonight. As for the other benefits of the combo, like shorter CD on Cheatah and Turtle, has zero impact on 90% of fights. Except for Guldan, no fight lasts long enough to be able to use either one a second time, even with the reduced CD, unless I'm popping them on pull. As for M+, that's a whole other can of worms that I'm not getting into here. There are far too many variables in Mythic+ to base gear choice on DPS potential from sims. I talking strictly about raiding.

There could be an explanation for all of this, the people running SimC are weighting things incorrectly, which is spitting out incorrect results. Advanced theorycrafters typical use all sorts of custom settings and priority lists that the average player doesn't when running their own sims. Why they don't share those things with the rest of us I'll never understand. So it's entirely possible SimC is giving me bad information because it's programming is flawed.


And on that note, I just ran another series of sims. Making my own adjustment to take into account the fact that so many of these fights are closer to 3 minutes than 5 minutes. Setting it to 200 second fight length, with a 10% variation, instead of 300 second with a 20% variation. The difference between Apex and Wrist/CoF remained the same, about 5k. Due to the the fact that the fight length is so short, the wrists only result in 1 additional cast of AotW per fight. Apex on the other hand doesn't care how short the fight length is for it's full potential to be utilized.

[Deleted]

When I used AMR I consistently had it trying to put the legs in the BiS gear permutations. It's only once I got Apex that it swapped over the legs.

I've swapped to Raidbots and tried manual gear permutations (not as good due to the limit in gear) and Prydaz, of all things, either ends doing as much as Apex or CoF + Wrists or is just slightly behind on the range of 2k. I know it's bloated with stats, but it's a defensive legendary.

I cannot add much more to the conversation since I am not a pro sim or theorycrafter, but it's my opinion that the wrists are more useful than Apex especially when, as you point out, the damage is about equal, leaving utility as the balance tilter. Apex does little for us in a raid (extra tenacity charge, first few seconds of a fight doing more damage with the gear removing trick) where wrists give more Thunderslash (only one million, million and a half per use though it multiplies with more mobs present), more focus to spam (allowing for WotC if using Dire Stable), and more uses for Cheetah/Turtle, which as you pointed out may not end up being really of use, but hey, it's there.

It is why I intend to use the belt once it drops (it is my last unobtained legendary) since it serves for AoE and for ST.

While I can't add much more to the conversation I will certainly keep an eye on the thread to see if interesting points are raised in it.

[Puri]

It's more about the insanely low value guides like Azortharion's are giving Apex that's throwing things off. Yes 5k is nothing, there is margin of error to take into consideration too. I can rerun the same sims and that difference will change, up or down, between the two. The biggest gap I saw Apex pull ahead was over 8k, the lowest was less than 4k. But he has it at the very bottom of his second tier of legendaries. He ranks the damn legs at the top of the second tier, yet my sims come in a full 80k less when using the legs. Whatever he's doing to weight/rank these legendaries doesn't add up. I'm sure he'll take that as some personal insult, it's not, but unless he can explain it, people are going to question it. Especially since, as I pointed out in my original post, his ranking in the guide doesn't even match the spreadsheet.

I am actually exactly in the same spot as you, and I actually would want to get rid of the pants, but from all to me available legendaries (including wrists, boots and ring) the pants sim best (although I could replace them with socketed 905 mastery/haste).
So it might simply be a scaling issue, apex pretty much gives a flat 5% damage increase on the pet (aside from cheesing ferocity) while the benefit of the other legendaries might not scale as linear.

[Ztranger]

Sims will never be a perfect match with the game, both when it comes to accurately modelling fight mechanics and bugs, e.g. earlier in the expansion there was a bug in game with arans that made it trigger a lot more ingame than what the spell data / sims would suggest, which made the trinket sim ranking for arans alot lower than the in game log ranking of the same trinket.

If you only care about dps rankings then I suggest using https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...fo=Legendaries (pick the boss you are interested in). Sims don't account for fight mechanics.

[Stupud]

Sims will never be a perfect match with the game, both when it comes to accurately modelling fight mechanics and bugs, e.g. earlier in the expansion there was a bug in game with arans that made it trigger a lot more ingame than what the spell data / sims would suggest, which made the trinket sim ranking for arans alot lower than the in game log ranking of the same trinket.

If you only care about dps rankings then I suggest using https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...fo=Legendaries (pick the boss you are interested in). Sims don't account for fight mechanics.

This^^

Also, are you sure you're simming the same way that Azor did?
Also, are you sure you're "simming correctly" for the fight you are tyring to model, or are you just doing 10,000 iterations, 1 boss, patchwerk?
Also, are you using a similar gearset to the one that the guides used? Different stat values influence leggo's differently.

I change out to wrists/CoT (from belt) depending on fights because my guild has some "odd" strategies that require more bursty moments.

[MisterBigglez]

Everyone will sim differently. The list on icy veins says best for both m+ and raiding, while the spreadsheet is purely dps gain for a specific character set up for those sims.

Remember that if you just sim your character, it will consider it as a patchwerk fight, so pure single target, no movement.

[aikanaro]

Like someone stated, stat values change everything. However I personally wouldn't give up the low CD on aspect of the wild because with the upcoming BW CD changes we will already be forced into another higher wait time play style.. cuz waiting is fun.. yay!

[Zoopercat]

I'm not a hunter expert (I'll leave that to the people here), but I am a sim expert and thought I might be able to shed light on a few things.

1. You probably already figured this out, but just in case. CoF will noticeably change in value depending on the fight length. So if you haven't yet, set the sims up to around your average fight length.

2. You might be interested in a 'batch' simulation - you can sim several combos of talents, legendaries, any number of things, and see how they stack up. You can even change stats up an down to see how those affect it. Here's a guide for that.

3. You can sim real boss fights - I have 3 main scripts you can choose out of the box: Krosus, Spellblade, and Mythic +. If you are interested in simming krosus, check out this guide - and be sure to scroll to the bottom of step 3 for script variations, including how much you move for Fel Beams, if you want to always, never, or sometimes get targeted by the Orb of Destruction, etc.

Hit me up if you want some help or tips on running different tests. I do these kinds of things all day, ha.

[Slicer299]

Also, are you sure you're simming the same way that Azor did?

He doesn't tell anyone how he sims and one of things I'm doing is questioning his sims. Because his legendary rankings make zero sense in some cases.

Also, are you sure you're "simming correctly" for the fight you are tyring to model, or are you just doing 10,000 iterations, 1 boss, patchwerk?

I'm trying to sim correctly for overall best choice. Very few fights, like Skypiron, are different enough that other gear choices pull ahead.

Also, are you using a similar gearset to the one that the guides used? Different stat values influence leggo's differently.

The guide should be using a best case scenario optimized gear set, the legendary legs should be even less useful for someone with well optimized gear, yet the guide still ranks them very highly. Which is one of the reasons for my post, and I've said it multiple times now, the guide makes no sense and I want to see what other people are using for their top choice.

Warcraft Logs is not the best choice for simply looking at popular gear choices on boss fights, because you can have the bottom 60% all wearing the same gear, but losing to the top 40% of players, but it's those bottom 60% of players who gear choices will show up as the "popular" choice. I do look at the top parses on Warcraft Logs, but even then there can be a lot of variation in the gear due to RNG. RNG of drops and RNG of titanforging. Normally I shouldn't be wearing a tier chest for my class, but when I get one that titanforges 925 with a socket, it's going to beat out my 895 "BiS" chest piece.

I change out to wrists/CoT (from belt) depending on fights because my guild has some "odd" strategies that require more bursty moments.

Even when I'm not using the wrists I'm still using CoF, as it's still my second best trinket. So even when using Apex, or now the belt, I'm not losing all of that CD reduction on Aotw.

[aomtte]

I have the all leg except the neck and the ring.

Even if most people recommand shoulders + belt, I would recommend shoulders + wrists (if CoF).

I don't have much energy problems, unless I take the lvl30 +20% proc on DF, so the belt isn't that efficient, until I will need to AoE a lot, which don't happend so often in raid. And even for most AoE fight, I'll keep the bracers + CoF due to the new artifacts traits.

[Turtel]

The Icy Veins guide states that the order of the legendaries listed is not from best to worst. He splits the legendaries into three tiers, and any legendary within each tier could be the best, depending on your situation. I think this is probably the best way to do it since the order from best to worst will pretty much be different for everyone depending on their gear/talents/traits/legendaries/etc.

Also I think you might be doing something wrong when you get a 100K DPS loss from using the legs. It doesn't make any sense. Consider that the legendary ring probably increases your DPS by about 6%, which you get 960k DPS with, so without the ring you'd get about 905k DPS: with just one legendary, you get 905k DPS. Now you add the legendary legs to get back up to 2 legendaries and your DPS drops by another 40k? Something definitely seems wrong. My suspicion is that you're replacing tier legs to use the legendary legs and end up with only 3 tier pieces in your sims.

Warcraft Logs is not the best choice for simply looking at popular gear choices on boss fights, because you can have the bottom 60% all wearing the same gear, but losing to the top 40% of players, but it's those bottom 60% of players who gear choices will show up as the "popular" choice. I do look at the top parses on Warcraft Logs, but even then there can be a lot of variation in the gear due to RNG. RNG of drops and RNG of titanforging. Normally I shouldn't be wearing a tier chest for my class, but when I get one that titanforges 925 with a socket, it's going to beat out my 895 "BiS" chest piece..

You can filter each boss by BM legendaries, and it will give you the average DPS dealt against that boss by players using each legendary (here's the page for Trilliax). I'd say it does give a pretty good picture of what legendary will give the highest DPS for which fight, but it's definitely not perfect. As is established throughout this thread, how good a particular legendary is will vary depending on the player, whereas this page just averages them out across all players.

There are some skewing effects though, which would tend to increase the average DPS of the better legendaries, and lower the average DPS of the worse legendaries. Lower geared players (who deal worse DPS) will tend not to play the game as actively as the better geared players, and therefore won't have as many legendaries. Players will just use whichever legendaries are their best, and if they have less legendaries, they're more likely to have 'bad' legendaries as their best legendaries. Therefore I suspect that the parses using the 'bad' legendaries will have disproportionately more lower geared players than the parses using 'good' legendaries, which skews the average DPS in favour of the 'good' legendaries. The difference between all the legendaries is likely a lot smaller than that shown in the logs.

[keygy]

I have the all leg except the neck and the ring.

Even if most people recommand shoulders + belt, I would recommend shoulders + wrists (if CoF).

I don't have much energy problems, unless I take the lvl30 +20% proc on DF, so the belt isn't that efficient, until I will need to AoE a lot, which don't happend so often in raid. And even for most AoE fight, I'll keep the bracers + CoF due to the new artifacts traits.

wat lol no, Shoulders+belt its waaay better than shoulders wrist.

belt its fuking insane with killer cobra.

[Deleted]

wat lol no, Shoulders+belt its waaay better than shoulders wrist.

belt its fuking insane with killer cobra.

It's nor particularly fucking insane. It's literally one KC more out of a BW, assuming we didn't use a GCD (or three) using extra charges of DB. Its real value comes out of switching from Dire Stable to Way of the Cobra.


Related to the OP, this is what I get out of switching Prydaz to Apex. A literal 1k of DPS extra, and losing that huge ass Prydaz shield out of the deal.




But that said I don't know how these things work out, because changing Prydaz to CoF + wrists gives me LESS 1k!



I know Prydaz is bloated with stats, but still.


Now replacing Prydaz for the belt, our currently second best, gives a 10k increase working out to be an 1.2% increase.




But as I mentioned the real power of the belt is WotC where the increase now goes to 3.1%. Still nothing that will make or break a player.

[Tycondriel]

Love seeing the experts doing the math behind this. Nothing wrong with questioning the widely accepted theories, that is how progress is made! Great thread, I wish we had more of these!

[Veshx]

Also something of note: You can cheese your pets health to gain the cunning passive "When your pet is below 35% health your pet does 20% more damage".

Make a gearset with you only wearing trinkets+apex ring. Switch to that to make your HP go down, which in turn makes your pets HP go down. Wait like 5 seconds, and switch back to your normal gear. Whenever I did this my pet was around 30% once I switched back into my main gear, you can keep doing this to make your pets HP go lower and lower because of the out of combat HP regen that the pet has.

I tested it a couple of times on the target dummy at the class hall.

With the belt as my other legendary, BTI/Foci as my trinkets and 4pc I could regularly burst to 3M dps on pull (flasked, pre pot, food, racial, lust pet, cds popped, could have been a concordance proc in there idk) Which was very exciting for someone who just recently switched from playing MM/
I'm not saying that this is an optimal way to play, because doing the pet cheese would get very tedious for every pull.

It's also been asked multiple times in the hunter discord: When you sim with apex ring, it does NOT take into account if you have cheesed your pets HP or not. So it does not take into account the extra 20% dmg done by your pet.

[Deleted]

In an actual raid, which is what really matters in these things, the pet's HP is near instantly filled to full within the first seconds. I don't think it even lasted for half the duration of the initial BW.

For M+ without three healers tossing mass AoE that low HP effect lasts longer.

[nToxik]

Weird, when I remove my gear and put it back on, my pet's hp does not change. Did Blizz change something? It worked a few weeks ago.

[Deleted]

I went through that. You can't have Apex equipped when you're doing the gear swap. Make one outfit in the gear manager to get naked. Make another with your full gear but -without- Apex equipped. Go naked, go dressed. Wait 2-3 seconds. Equip Apex. Voila.