Outlaw - Why does AMR always suggest Mastery?

[Swol]

Hey all, Swol from AMR here. I have been getting a lot of questions about mastery for outlaw rogues for pretty much all of legion. We have always ranked it as a very good stat, but people are very hesitant to believe it!

Here is an explanation of why we recommend a lot of mastery by default:

TLDR version first.
If you have no legendaries or set bonuses, Mastery is the best stat.
If you have Greenskin's, Mastery is the worst stat, Crit is the best stat.
If you have Mantle, Crit is the worst stat, Haste/Mastery are about equal.
If you have Mantle and Greenskin, Crit is the worst stat, Vers is the best stat. Haste/Mastery are about equal.
If you have 2pc and/or 4pc bonus, Mastery's value goes down a bit.

There is no one set of stat priorities that will always work! You have to take into account special items.

The first thing I did was a complete overhaul of the outlaw rotation on AMR. My original one was pretty good, but, it was missing a few refinements. I looked at the SimC APL for outlaw rogues as well. I incorporated some of the refinements found there, and removed the logic that was not actually increasing DPS. The resulting rotation is easier to read and does a good job at not wasting resources. Here it is:
http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/theory...w&version=live

Now I have a rotation that chooses the same actions in AMR and SimC, and which also gets optimal DPS by following the general rotation logic that top rogues are using. So, this is not an AMR vs SimC discussion... both simulators are in agreement on these results. If you simulate the same gear in both simulators, you will see the same actions chosen.**

I did a series of simulation batches. I used approximately 885 item level with no special trinkets that could influence results. I kept the secondary stat budget fixed and sampled 100 different combinations of stats randomly, allowing any given stat to be as low as 2000 or as high as 14000. Of course, very high versatility sets are hard to get unless you PvP, but they are included for theoretical purposes. I used the highest damage talents for each setup. In general, that means Ghostly Strike, unless you have Greenskin's, then use Quick Draw.

No set, no legendaries:
http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/simula...de99d332dbef85

No set, no legendaries with Quick Draw - just to show that the talent itself doesn't influence stats:
http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/simula...090167797ad6ac

Greenskin's only:
http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/simula...c1cdcfbebae3d5

With Greenskin's, Between the Eyes becomes a decent contributor to DPS. This means less attacks that proc mastery and also a spell that scales very well with crit. As a result, we see that putting as much of our stat budget into crit as possible becomes optimal.

Mantle only:
http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/simula...8c597cf2243f5d

Here we see the obvious result of having 100% crit for some portion of the fight: You want to avoid stacking crit rating on your gear.

Greenskin's + Mantle:
http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/simula...69a04786f43b77

When we combine the crit-loving Greenskin's with the crit-hating Mantle, we see the predictable result: get Vers. Mastery seems to be the next best stat, with Haste not too far behind.

2pc only:
http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/simula...7e77ad485c0bdb

4pc only:
http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/simula...f8a157a6ac90cb

The set bonuses both reduce the optimal amount of Mastery you'd want on your gear. This makes sense because you have less need for the energy from Combat Potency.

4pc + Greenskin's:
http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/simula...5f425664c1613c

As expected, avoid Mastery like the plague, stack Crit.

4pc + Greenskin's + Mantle:
http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/simula...762eeaf23ba5c3

At this point, the stats you get just don't matter much! For those who really love to min-max, get as much vers as possible.


The simulation results speak for themselves - and the fact that both AMR and SimC agree on these results should give people some confidence in them. My assertion that Mastery is the best stat for Outlaw rogues has always been qualified by: If you don't have specific legendaries or set bonuses. I did not include an exhaustive examination of how relics might also affect this - I'll leave that for another day!


**AMR and SimC are two different models of the game. AMR was written to incorporate some more human-limited reaction time and decision logic. As a result, you will always get slightly more DPS in SimC, since it squeezes out a couple more actions over the course of a simulation. Conversely, AMR will usually match what you see in logs more closely (although comparing combat rogue sims to logs is almost pointless because of RtB). This does not affect results in any significant way, from my testing, for outlaw rogues. If you perform all of the tests linked in this thread in SimC, you will get the same results. I have spot-checked the results and SimC does, indeed, agree that the high mastery sets of gear simulate higher for the no-set, no-legendary setup.

[elfporn]

Its crazy how much of an impact certain items can have on the stat goals.

Thanks for the clarification swol

[Deleted]

Maybe it's a lot to ask, but you can run similar test with slide n dice, probably skipping mantle since you can ony vanish a few time? I am curious how the current tier set bonus could change the value of mastery

[elfporn]

Maybe it's a lot to ask, but you can run similar test with slide n dice, probably skipping mantle since you can ony vanish a few time? I am curious how the current tier set bonus could change the value of mastery

You should be able to run these yourself with your own character.

[nicknite1]

I'm using SnD and only have 2 utility Legs and Mastery is always my best stat up until about 60-65%. Afterward Vers and Crit run about dead even.

[Tier539]

Cause it knows youll get fed up with rtb and go assassination.

[Deleted]

If i simulate my character using AMR wearing greenskins/belt/2set AMR still suggests me to push Mastery and showing it as "best" secondary stat. Simcraft is telling me "Versatility > Crit > Haste > Mastery" , if AMR and SimC are so close to each other why do i get like the exact opposite stat priority on Mastery? Its showing me like "Mastery > Versatility > Crit > Haste". This is a huge difference when AMR tells me Mastery is my best stat and SimC tells me its my worst. I read through your posts, i think you do alot of nice work but i dont know how there can be such a huge difference in both of these simulators regarding Mastery. I guess every1 would like to know.

Besides Simulations, Warcraftlogs is indeed showing Mastery is Outlaw's weakest stat in nearly every scenario besides SnD/Normal Mode raids. Lets talk about great Outlaw players, follow there experience by spying there Gearing Strategy. I dont see any top Outlaw Rogue stacking Mastery, even without bracers they dont.

And i guess this is for a reason, they do not only rely on Simulations they do also test stuff ingame and farm alot of experience with the spec. But thats also why simulations are simulations, the calculated "best" isnt always the best way to go. Especially in a game where encounters/situational gameplay make or break it with such an ease. So the point is, lets say you are absolutely right about Mastery and its often the most valueable stat, players are still experiencing Mastery's downsites and gain overall on most situations a higher DPS by following a "avoid mastery like a plaque" gearing strategy, shoudlnt AMR then giving all players the advice to follow that gearing strategy to improve the players overall performance, instead of maybe misleading them into a stat gearhunt which will most likely make there dps-output suffer?

[Swol]

I would have to see what simulations you are doing. As my post shows - simulations in AMR with greenskin's show mastery as a very weak stat.

The stats for outlaw are close enough in value that a player's skill is going to make a much larger difference than what stats you pick. A lot of good outlaw rogues never believed that mastery was worth getting, so they didn't get it. This creates a bias in the data you see on log parses. If you can't convince the best players to try something... it won't look like it is worth doing. The DPS difference between the best stats and the worst is not very large for outlaw, which has a higher than usual DPS variance already.

We use simulations to find the best stats because it is the only way to figure it out. In-game testing and empirical data is inadequate to do so.

[Deleted]

I have no idea how you deduce gearing strategy from warcraftlogs. You don't choose the stats you get on your piece of gear in the game. If I have a piece 900 that give me crit/versa I will wear it over a piece 890 mastery/versa since stats are quite close.

What people fail to see is that Main gauche is over 33% of your energy regenaration, I know sometime you are energy capped but it's not most of the time.

[Sigfodr]

Single target is all fine and dandy, but what about AoE? There are very few pure ST fights. I don't have any good dps leggos (neck/legs/gloves), but even without the bracers, SimC shows mastery to be my worst cleave stat by a LONG shot.

[Deleted]

Single target is all fine and dandy, but what about AoE? There are very few pure ST fights. I don't have any good dps leggos (neck/legs/gloves), but even without the bracers, SimC shows mastery to be my worst cleave stat by a LONG shot.

Well the thread is about AMR. And a good way to have better AoE dmg is having a better energy regen to compensate blade furry, mastery and hate help for that.

[Deleted]

Hi Swol,

thanks for your thread. I would love to give the mastery thing a try, since I hate being energy starved so much...

I have a question to your AMR Tool. Is there any way I could calculate my personal stat weights like SimCraft does?

I would love to get the ratings that AMR uses to calculate my DPS and Item optimization in PAWN.

Any way to do so? Currently I am missing that button on the AMR Site or am I just blind?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Best regards,

Fipyna

[Gorsameth]

Hi Swol,

thanks for your thread. I would love to give the mastery thing a try, since I hate being energy starved so much...

I have a question to your AMR Tool. Is there any way I could calculate my personal stat weights like SimCraft does?

I would love to get the ratings that AMR uses to calculate my DPS and Item optimization in PAWN.

Any way to do so? Currently I am missing that button on the AMR Site or am I just blind?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Best regards,

Fipyna

On the page where you start a simulation change the Sim Type to Gearing strategy to calculate stat weights.

Note that this requires you to also run a separate desktop program so your pc does the calculations, rather then hog the server because of the amount of runs required to calculate accurate weights.

[Deleted]

Thanks! I will give that a try. Btw. anybody already tried to focus on mastery instead of versatility?

[elfporn]

Thanks! I will give that a try. Btw. anybody already tried to focus on mastery instead of versatility?

yes.

As swol indicated stats change to a ridiculous extent depending on your legendaries. I have the 4p only and as indicated, mastery is only good for me up to about 50-55% and then crit/vers are the way to go. (i have 63%)

Swol's results mirror my own for my character.

[Zoopercat]

@Fipyna here's a picture tutorial on how to run custom stat weights on AMR (and a few 'best practices' as well): http://i.imgur.com/r2gpuBW.jpg

[CHONGWHO]

When we follow the guide above to get stat weights. Will it take in to consderation the rotational changes with legendaries (I have Greenskins and Mantle).

[Zoopercat]

@CHONGWHO - it sure does! It looks to see if you have either of those items and adjusts accordingly. The stat weight output will be based on whether you have them or not, so if you don't have one, and then later you do, rerun the stat weights.

[Blayke]

I would have to see what simulations you are doing. As my post shows - simulations in AMR with greenskin's show mastery as a very weak stat.

The stats for outlaw are close enough in value that a player's skill is going to make a much larger difference than what stats you pick. A lot of good outlaw rogues never believed that mastery was worth getting, so they didn't get it. This creates a bias in the data you see on log parses. If you can't convince the best players to try something... it won't look like it is worth doing. The DPS difference between the best stats and the worst is not very large for outlaw, which has a higher than usual DPS variance already.

We use simulations to find the best stats because it is the only way to figure it out. In-game testing and empirical data is inadequate to do so.

So here's an odd thing. I'm primarily a sub rogue with the bracers and ring. Mastery is clearly my best stat. When I read that mastery might also be my best stat for my Outlaw spec, I was like, "oh, that's convenient.".

And yet, when I ran the gear strat sim on my outlaw spec (which took forever, btw) I got the following results:

Agi: 14.22
Crit: 7.84
Vers: 7.66
Mastery: 5.63
Haste: 4.37

I'm guessing this is because I'm already overloaded with Master already, AMR wants me to put more into Crit/Vers, although I'm more than open to input on that one.

It also makes me wonder, given that it seems I'll also be using Outlaw quite a bit in NH, maybe I should stack vers rather than mastery, since vers. has value to both specs. Again, any and all input is welcome.

[elfporn]

So here's an odd thing. I'm primarily a sub rogue with the bracers and ring. Mastery is clearly my best stat. When I read that mastery might also be my best stat for my Outlaw spec, I was like, "oh, that's convenient.".

And yet, when I ran the gear strat sim on my outlaw spec (which took forever, btw) I got the following results:

Agi: 14.22
Crit: 7.84
Vers: 7.66
Mastery: 5.63
Haste: 4.37

I'm guessing this is because I'm already overloaded with Master already, AMR wants me to put more into Crit/Vers, although I'm more than open to input on that one.

It also makes me wonder, given that it seems I'll also be using Outlaw quite a bit in NH, maybe I should stack vers rather than mastery, since vers. has value to both specs. Again, any and all input is welcome.

it's highly dependent on legendaries.

if all you have is the 4p set bonus, then that's a correct set of weights.