Ask questions to one of the guys working on Shadowcraft.

[nextormento]

Shadowcraft is the tool used by EJ to compute rogue damage output as well as a handfull of usefull stuff to gear up and play a rogue character in wow. It started out in the rogue forum in EJ and evolved rapidly through google groups and github. It currently features two open source main branches, the UI and the backend, both still in development. Our goal is to build an easy to use yet highly precise tool to help the comunity at decision making regarding both gear and playstyle.

I've been involved in the development of the backend branch since it's very beginning and would like to answer any question ranging from it's current state and features to how (and why) things are modeled. I've written and commited code to about every module in there save for the one over which Aldriana keeps a very tight control (and even so, we all reviewed and modified it, just not in large scale). If you have questions about the UI branch I may have some, but I'm not that familiar with its coding.

Personally I'm not very used to the flow of mmo-champion's forums but I'll try to catch up if needed. I may also be updating the OP in case I see it fits. See that I won't be answering questions about gear itself but only about the tool. Also keep in mind that I'll be pourin in the answers as fast as my free time lets me.

[RoflzNsyrup]

How about starting with a guide to getting Shadowcraft to work. Every time I would go to the UI, I would import my character and only be given a blank gear sheet with no way to input my gear. When I looked at the EJ thread, it appeared that many others were having the same issue.

So my only suggestion so far would be just a step by step guide to getting started with using Shadowcraft.

[nextormento]

As of now, the UI and the backend of the project are not talking to each other. Mainly because the UI is behind in development due to blizzard not providing us with XML or JSON feeds from the armory (suposedly they will do soon TM). Cheald is working on the UI (and hence the current "breakiness" that you are experiencing) parsing html from the armory, but the two branches will not comunicate until we do get proper feeds (and the hosted UI will most likely not work unless Cheald updates it, or someone else hosts a new one).

Getting shadowcraft to compute something:
In the meanwhile, we wrote two front-ends: one of them is purely python and can be downloaded from github and used offline; the other is the one I would recomend as it's easier to use: it's hosted at http://shadowcraft-test.appspot.com/ almost fully functional and updated with gear ranging from ilvl333 up to heroic raid epics.
Its functionality is very similar to that of the old spreadsheets barring the fact that you need to press the "calculate!" button instead of seeing everything update as you input stuff.

Downloading shadowcraft to see how it works:
The source files are hosted at https://github.com/cheald/shadowcraft-ui and https://github.com/Aldriana/ShadowCraft-Engine. The former is the UI which takes gear and spits javascript files to set up the fancy front end that you may have seen before (and maybe use it to to reforge gear previous to cata release). The later is the calculations library written in python that has been used to compute the basic ep weights shown at EJ (as well as some other usefull stuff).

[phus]

possibly a tutorial/walkthru.. video something of that nature would be most excellent =]

[Kaens]

What's the best assassination meta gem for pvp? Also, what other stats should I put into the other sockets or should I just go all agility and no worry about socket bonuses?

[iskall]

When you input full BiS gear the EP values are similar but not the same as the EP values posted by Aldriana a couple of weeks ago. Is that a fault with the current modeling or something on my end?

[nextormento]

possibly a tutorial/walkthru.. video something of that nature would be most excellent =]

We may at some point work on this kind of stuff. When both branches of the project come to a state in which we feel comfortable with how things look a FAQ will be released. We are trying to make the whole thing very understandable and user friendly anyway. The only drawback seems to be the fact that we aren't using an actual spreadsheet so, the calculation backend is a little less easy to acces.

What's the best assassination meta gem for pvp? Also, what other stats should I put into the other sockets or should I just go all agility and no worry about socket bonuses?

Shadowcraft only focuses on PVE. You can download the thing and configure it for a same level target and different amounts of armor (this will be configurable through shadowcraft-UI once we publish it too); but PVP fights are very far from our scope, due to the very nature of PVP: situational awareness, target switching and the like render a precise pvp modeling hard to achieve.

When you input full BiS gear the EP values are similar but not the same as the EP values posted by Aldriana a couple of weeks ago. Is that a fault with the current modeling or something on my end?

Neither =). Or a little bit of everything actually. The current front-end does not support proffesions (you can set the LW enchant and JC gems but that's not too straightforward). Aside from that, the BiS setup Aldriana posted does not include reforging (which he did take into account when computing the EPs). Also, the BiS setup is no more than an excel spreadsheet that Aldriana developed on his own and has not released. Keep in mind some of the gear choices made for that setup include pieces that seemingly don't hold the best stats but do have some bigger rating stats pool to mess around with when reforging.