Confused on gear weights (Simcraft experts please help :))

[Booniehat]

Hey guys,

Can Someone tell me how Simcraft determines stat weights? Does it
A. Take your gear, regardless of reforges/enchants/gems, and tells your stat weights?
B. Takes your reforge/enchants/gems into account and generates the stat weights.

Reason is that I usually use Ask Mr Robot to generate "fake" gear sets, and export them into simcraft. I am not sure if its the right thing to do. I do this because I don't want to do stupid things like put in a intellect gem, find out haste is > intellect, then have to replace it again and again ad nauseum.

The problem I'm facing now is that when I first simmed my toon with Mr Robot's "optimizations", it gave my stat weights as Mastery>Crit~=Haste.

I decided to take those weights, put them into Ask Mr Robot, and re-optimize my toon again. I re-simcrafted myself.

This time, the stat weights were Mastery=~Haste=~Crit. I think I've done something wrong :X Please help this sorry simcraft noob~!

Toon: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...kodomeo/simple
-Again, the weapon is ungemmed cos I wanted to determine stat weights first. Waiting on jade spirit from guildie.

[Deleted]

You should be fully gemmed, reforged and enchanted before simming yourself to see statweights. Statweights as an elemental shaman will always be close to eachother though and having some sort of balance is usually recommended. Depends alot on what talents you are using too.

Remember that statweights are just snapshots of your current stats, if you would have mastery>haste and then gem and reforge everything to mastery the statweights may very likely change, that's where simulationcraft plots come in, if you really want to maximize you should learn how to use them, it's not that hard but takes quite awhile to simulate.

[Synithin]

B. Takes your reforge/enchants/gems into account and generates the stat weights.

Is the correct answer.

Also don't fear afraid to gem Intellect. Int usually is around 2-4 times better than Mast, Haste, Crit for Elemental Shamans. Personally i don't think i have ever seen a sim where Haste or mastery was above int in the stat weights. Most of the time it is better to just ignore the gem bonus and go purely for Int.

Other then that your stats look fine, i would however consider reforging out of some hit since you have almost 16% at the moment.

[Booniehat]

You should be fully gemmed, reforged and enchanted before simming yourself to see statweights. Statweights as an elemental shaman will always be close to eachother though and having some sort of balance is usually recommended. Depends alot on what talents you are using too.

Remember that statweights are just snapshots of your current stats, if you would have mastery>haste and then gem and reforge everything to mastery the statweights may very likely change, that's where simulationcraft plots come in, if you really want to maximize you should learn how to use them, it's not that hard but takes quite awhile to simulate.

1. Hi, yes I am not technically gemmed in game, but I used mr robot to create fake profiles that are full 'gemmed, chanted and reforged.'.
2. Your second paragraph is exactly the problem. I reforge to one, then sim myself and get another set of weights. I understand now i need reforge plots to get this, but when I checked the reforge plots options for crit, haste and mastery it gave me this image:

I have NO idea what to read from this

---------- Post added 2013-04-04 at 03:27 PM ----------

B. Takes your reforge/enchants/gems into account and generates the stat weights.

Is the correct answer.

Also don't fear afraid to gem Intellect. Int usually is around 2-4 times better than Mast, Haste, Crit for Elemental Shamans. Personally i don't think i have ever seen a sim where Haste or mastery was above int in the stat weights. Most of the time it is better to just ignore the gem bonus and go purely for Int.

Other then that your stats look fine, i would however consider reforging out of some hit since you have almost 16% at the moment.

Thanks! As I said, my armory gear's not exactly the one I sim. Instead I upload my char into Ask Mr Robot to generate a fully gem/chant/reforge set of gear which I put into the simcraft profile.

What I am wondering is how I can ever conclusively figure out how to reforge my stuff. e.g. I put in a 80 Int 160 Haste Gem. Then it says Mastery > Crit > Haste. So I have to replace it with a 80 Int 160 Mastery gem. And so on. :\. I don't really see any clear guides on reforge plots on the simcraft page. Wondering if anyone can explain it simply!

[Bethan]

to compute statweight, simcraft sim your stuff, then sim it with 1000 extra stat, and look at how much dps you gained, so it takes into account gear, reforge, enchant, but also glyphs, talent and rotation.

Reforge graphs with 3 stats are a pain to read (and you removed the axis on your graph so it's harder to interpret, but basically for a 3 stat reforge graph, the aim is to get the "most red" point, and to get the stat that correspond (so in your case it seem to tell you to reforge out of crit/haste to get more mastery)). They are a LOT easier to read with only 2 stats (usually haste/mastery or haste/crit), as it would show as a "normal function", and all that is left to do is find the maximum of that function, and get the corresponding amount of stats.

[Zoopercat]

I'm from Ask Mr. Robot. You mentioned that you sim with Mr. Robot's optimizations, then get stat weights. You put those stat weights into Mr. Robot and get new optimizations, then sim again, correct? And you see the stat weights continue to change, if I'm understanding your concern.

You are doing it correctly. SimC puts out stat weights for your current setup. But that doesn't mean it's the best stat weights for optimizing - as you can see, stat weights change every time you optimize. We actually wrote a program that interfaces with SimC. We do exactly what you're going over a ton of gear sets. We continue to do this until we get stable stat weights that are good for gemming/enchanting/reforging. Here's more info on how we generate our stat weights.

That being said, it's possible that your class/spec has specific points where values cross over. I'm still trying to track down theorycraft around shamans.

[Booniehat]

I'm from Ask Mr. Robot. You mentioned that you sim with Mr. Robot's optimizations, then get stat weights. You put those stat weights into Mr. Robot and get new optimizations, then sim again, correct? And you see the stat weights continue to change, if I'm understanding your concern.

You are doing it correctly. SimC puts out stat weights for your current setup. But that doesn't mean it's the best stat weights for optimizing - as you can see, stat weights change every time you optimize. We actually wrote a program that interfaces with SimC. We do exactly what you're going over a ton of gear sets. We continue to do this until we get stable stat weights that are good for gemming/enchanting/reforging. Here's more info on how we generate our stat weights.

That being said, it's possible that your class/spec has specific points where values cross over. I'm still trying to track down theorycraft around shamans.

Awesome to get a reply from one of the Robots!

I'm just wondering what I should do for now? Follow SimC (Mastery>Crit>haste, which I find weird for an elemental)? Follow AMR's default PVE weights?

[Deleted]

I found myself in this exact same situation after I was trying to really get to grips with SimC.

I had been using AMR for a long time, using the presets (Haste => Mastery > Crit) as I believed from what I read, that was correct. I felt I was relying on other peoples work and especially wanted to know what my current stat weights were to be completely optimal. So I decided to take charge and SimC myself, this thread is what happened. I would Sim my armory, find a set of weights, put them into AMR, reforge/gem accordingly and then Sim myself again to double check. Except I would get a completely new set of results.

On the first result I got:

int - 3.98
Hhit 3.78 (or something)
Haste 1.86
Mastery 1.90
crit 1.63

Which I thought was pretty solid. Next time round I got

Int - 3.98
Hit - 3.76
Mastery 1.72
Haste 1.93
Crit 1.72

Completely skewed. I'm glad this thread exists and I didn't really take notice of reforge plots. WOuld someone please explain to me in simple terms, what the reforge plots do, how to accurately measure them and how to analyse the results to make sure you take the right course of action. That would be really appreciated.

[Zoopercat]

Hey guys, I want to point you to another thread. The guy who generates our stat weights with SimC explained what is going on in that thread. Here's his quote:

Like Nagassh mentioned, SimC is finding a very localized solution when it analyzes the stat weights. Those numbers it calculates are not meant to be used with a tool like Ask Mr. Robot. AMR is examining stats over a very broad range, and our default weights are tailored for this expectation. We use SimC to help us create the default weights, but we don't use SimC's stat weight analysis - we use it to run simulations and then do our own analysis of the results. That is why you are always seeing better results with our default weights - they were designed for use with a gear optimizer!

In general, the value of stats varies much less than some folks would lead you to believe. You can use the same set of weights for a very large range of stats and get optimal (or very near optimal) theoretical results. We offer multiple stat weight "presets" for some specs where there can be a major shift due to gear or talents, but there really aren't that many. We definitely don't discourage people from making their own weights - but we do caution people about what you found for yourself: you can't use the weights SimC spits out by default with a gear optimizer - they weren't intended for that. Our defaults are there to save people a lot of work that it takes to find the actual weights which would get you the best result in SimC.

[Swol]

The stat weights SimC calculates for you are a very localized solution, and aren't necessarily meant as a general stat priority for your character. They may not yield the most optimal results when used with a gear optimizer that finds the highest score for a set of stat weights. Ask Mr. Robot does a lot of extra work to find stat weights that will work over large ranges of stats to give people near-optimal theoretical DPS.

You can test this out, using the OP's character as an example, I calculated weights using SimC based on his gear as it currently is in the Armory. The results were:
Int: 3.93, SP: 3.18, Hit: 4.12, Crit: 1.42, Haste: 1.44, Mastery: 1.62.

So, one comment right off the bat: saying Hit is worth more than Intellect might be theoretically true... but it is not what you want. No one wants pure hit gems in their gear, because we already know that you can get better DPS by finding hit elsewhere. You also don't want to load up on gear with tons of Hit, since you can easily reach the hit cap without doing so. Your stat weights need to reflect what you actually want to happen on your gear - we make these adjustments in the weights we create. Mr. Robot is usually smart enough to deal with a high hit weight, but it causes your ranked lists of gear to look pretty funky with hit weighted so high.

If you optimize Oikodomeo with the Mr. Robot default weights, I get 110,446 DPS. If I use the weights from SimC, I get 108,810 DPS. The SimC weights favor mastery, but that is just a localized bump in the value, you don't really want to go switching all your stats to mastery. SimC is saying that if you added a small amount of stats to your current gear (like 500 rating), you should add it to mastery. But... you can't just add one stat to your gear - you have to take it out of something else. The reforge plots try to help with this... but I find those plots pretty confusing.

[Caltiom]

You should just read through http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_approximation to get a rough understanding on how you can use Scale Factors which SimC gives you.

The solution is not to forget all about SimC Scale Factors and just trust some third party source, but to use them correctly. That means only applying them in a local area around the current gear setup, re-evaluating the weights of the stats in a iterative process. Of course that requires work, but there are nice tools like Plots and ReforgePlots who can shorten that process that for you.
If you're happy with "near optimal", you can of course just use the Ask Mr.Robot preset numbers.

Ps. We know that this 3 stat reforge chart is crap. All the reforge data is easily available in a .csv file in your SimC folder, from where you can create your own 3d reforge plot.

[Gistwiki]

2. Your second paragraph is exactly the problem. I reforge to one, then sim myself and get another set of weights. I understand now i need reforge plots to get this, but when I checked the reforge plots options for crit, haste and mastery it gave me this image:

I have NO idea what to read from this[COLOR="red"]

Simulationcraft doesn't support 3D modeling yet. It's trying to do that for yours, but it's unable to. You'd have to find the output from it and plug it into excel or something to see what it's actually trying to show you. Pick only 2 stats for reforge plots. Note that if you pick a primary and a secondary stat together it'll compare 2 of the Secondary vs 1 of the Primary to see if gemming for a secondary is a good idea for you.

The reason you're getting strange weights is almost certainly that 522 trinket you have. That one and the one off of Sha of Fear do weird things to your stat weights in simc even though they don't change the results shown in the reforge plots (which supports Haste > Mastery > Crit all the way up till you pick up the legendary meta.) - http://www.totemspot.com/vb/showthread.php?t=6338 - This is a pretty good starter guide for simc to get you started off on it.

@ Zooper - For some reason the optimizer's having my Ele Sham use the Spirit flask by default and I can't for the life of me figure out why it would think flasking for spirit over int is superior to reforging for it. Gistwiki - US - Velen. Weights I've got in at the moment are:

Spirit - 4.48
Int - 4.34
SP - 3.52
Hst - 2.2
Mst - 2.01
Crit - 1.9

Edit: Figured it out. Looks like it prioritizes the spirit flask when spirit has a higher weight than Int. Might want to look into that as that really seems like a loss T_T

[Zoopercat]

Gist, can you give me your character name and realm? It should not be using the spirit flask, so I want to see what's going on.

[Gistwiki]

Gist, can you give me your character name and realm? It should not be using the spirit flask, so I want to see what's going on.

Gistwiki - US - Velen

Pretty sure it's because I had spirit at a higher weight than int, because moving it to a slightly lower weight fixed it. Not a huge deal, but it can be really confusing if you don't get what's happening.

[Zoopercat]

Gist, ah that would do it. Everything Mr. Robot does is based off stat weights so that it can be completely customizable

[Gistwiki]

Gist, ah that would do it. Everything Mr. Robot does is based off stat weights so that it can be completely customizable

I'm just trying to figure out why the optimizer would think that dropping 1000 int in favor of what effectively becomes (with reforging) 1000 haste/mastery is, by the given weights, an upgrade is all. It had that issue with gems last expansion where it'd make you gem for spirit rather than int if you had a higher weight on spirit even though such a gemming scheme was a clear loss of overall damage. That was fixed, but it doesn't look like this was changed at all.

[Booniehat]

The stat weights SimC calculates for you are a very localized solution, and aren't necessarily meant as a general stat priority for your character. They may not yield the most optimal results when used with a gear optimizer that finds the highest score for a set of stat weights. Ask Mr. Robot does a lot of extra work to find stat weights that will work over large ranges of stats to give people near-optimal theoretical DPS.

You can test this out, using the OP's character as an example, I calculated weights using SimC based on his gear as it currently is in the Armory. The results were:
Int: 3.93, SP: 3.18, Hit: 4.12, Crit: 1.42, Haste: 1.44, Mastery: 1.62.

So, one comment right off the bat: saying Hit is worth more than Intellect might be theoretically true... but it is not what you want. No one wants pure hit gems in their gear, because we already know that you can get better DPS by finding hit elsewhere. You also don't want to load up on gear with tons of Hit, since you can easily reach the hit cap without doing so. Your stat weights need to reflect what you actually want to happen on your gear - we make these adjustments in the weights we create. Mr. Robot is usually smart enough to deal with a high hit weight, but it causes your ranked lists of gear to look pretty funky with hit weighted so high.

If you optimize Oikodomeo with the Mr. Robot default weights, I get 110,446 DPS. If I use the weights from SimC, I get 108,810 DPS. The SimC weights favor mastery, but that is just a localized bump in the value, you don't really want to go switching all your stats to mastery. SimC is saying that if you added a small amount of stats to your current gear (like 500 rating), you should add it to mastery. But... you can't just add one stat to your gear - you have to take it out of something else. The reforge plots try to help with this... but I find those plots pretty confusing.

Yes I agree. I may just be a pleb, but I don't know why they'd say "Okay, your new stat weights are now ABC". THen you do that... and get a DPS loss. Using the "standard" elemental weights (Haste > Mast > Crit), I'm getting a solid 110K DPS. With the Simcraft weights (Master > Crit > Haste or something like that), I lose almost 5K DPS. And it is not a sim thing either, I did try shifting it all around, only to see a pretty noticeable drop in DPS. Granted this was on 2 boss kills, so could be RNG. I guess.

I guess it's a little frustrating that ultimately that Simc statweights don't help - in fact they could be hindering by lowering DPS. Would be better to just create fake gear sets with different weights on AskMrRobot, sim, then get the one with highest DPS. Rather than using SimC stat weights.

If I'm wrong about this, please enlighten

[Deleted]

As far as my statweights go since beginning of ToES Ilvl I need to balance out my haste and master...for each % haste I had to increase my master for the same amount.

So I was sitting on avg 19-20% haste till 42-43% mastery. And now with Ilvl510 coming soon I notice crit crawling in there as well. Atm I'm 21-22% haste and 45-46% mastery, but next few gear pieces I'l actually have to reforge in crit for a tiny amount.