shadowcraft vs. simcraft+AMR

[Joey Ray III]

(combat rogue, 553 ilvl - http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte.../kadi/advanced)

been using AMR defaults for some time. dps was good, it made sense (it went for maximum haste) and i love the one-click reforge in their addon.

apparently though AMR default stat weights are a big no-no. so i went to shadowcraft but its optimizations made the dps go down on the graph. i'm like WTF really? do i need custom weights for SC too? on top of that it gives me different gems every time i press optimize (there seem to be 2 presets - agi+haste vs. just agi)

so i figured i'd try using custom weights from simcraft in AMR - it optimized me into mastery! of all fucking things, with pure agi gems. is it possible that with my gear this is the best set up or did i mess something up? i always liked extra attack so that's what i went for for now but i don't wanna gimp myself.

why did shadowcraft show less dps with its own optimization vs. AMR defaults? and why are they all so different?

[Raic]

I've used Shadowcraft for some time now, but I'm not a Shadowcraft expert so this information may not be 100% accurate.

If I recall correctly, your stat weights in Shadowcraft will update based on your current stats. If you have two or more secondary stats that are close to each other in weight, reforging/gemming to one secondary stat can increase the value of the other secondary stat. I remember running into this issue with Assassination back in ToT, reforging/gemming toward Haste would increase the value of Mastery and reforging/gemming toward Mastery would do the opposite.

I can't say for sure what is actually better for optimization, but if you want to use Shadowcraft I would suggest playing around with it until you find the absolute highest DPS you can get. This could involve the use of "auto-reforge" and "optimize gems" several times.

The maximum that I find when I run your character is 258,943.40 DPS, this occurs with agi/haste in red slots, haste in yellow slots, and hit/haste in blue slots with secondary stat reforges favoring crit over mastery (after haste of course). The issues I see in your particular case is that crit/mastery and haste*2/agi are very close in value, which will cause Shadowcraft to bounce back and forth when optimizing.


Hope some of this makes sense (and is fairly accurate).


On an unrelated side note: My biggest beef right now with Shadowcraft is that occasionally when I tell it to optimize gems, it will remove my JC perk gems without replacing them.

[Verain]

Shadowcraft doesn't run through all the possibilities each time. There's a java file running around that can do that, but I dunno how updated it is.

In general, if you see shadowcraft lunging between "do agi" and "do haste" (or the much more common reforge dance of haste and mastery), go to whichever of those two looks higher, then start changing stuff one by one. You may find a soft break point in the sim.

I will also point out that if the delta is small- 3k dps or less- that fight variables will be MUCH more relevant. For instance, if I offer you the chance to trade out 1500 agility for 3000 haste, and this sims to +3k for you, do you take it? That's likely less than 1% of your spreadsheet dps, but your rotation just got harder and your time off target did too, and your killing spree got softer. What will actually benefit you in practice?

[Kelmor]

When I put your char in and auto-reforged all, and optimized gemms (bottom left hand corner) I had a 3k dps increase.
http://shadowcraft.mmo-mumble.com/eu...9fgOv5Nzb5BQ==

[shadowboy]

As Verain said, the deltas are going to be close. I try and balance crit/mastery for my build (I may manually change some reforges that don't involve hit/exp to get the mastery and crit EPs as close to each other as possible), but I switched from a deft/quick/lightning gemming strat to a delicate/deft/glinting gemming strat. While I lost about 3000 haste in the process. My dps is no less viable (the difference is small enough to not really be noticable), but I can use most of my gear for sub. I also cap energy far less often during adrenblades. Cooldown cycling is a little slower though (If I'm unlucky with RvS procs, my second killing spree falls outside of deep insight at my 12.5k haste).

[Artorius]

General answer, regardless of what they tell you, go haste > agi > mastery => crit ( trying to balance crit and mastery is supposed to be an increase, but personaly I just go mastery for the extra main gaunche energy procs...)

As everyone already stated, your values are going up and down because they're close, close enough to make one higher than the other with simple gem changes.

Sc and Simc are different because the first one is a gearing tool and the second a simulator.

[Joey Ray III]

interesting, gotta see how it works in practice. this will take some messing around. thx all.

When I put your char in and auto-reforged all, and optimized gemms (bottom left hand corner) I had a 3k dps increase.
http://shadowcraft.mmo-mumble.com/eu...9fgOv5Nzb5BQ==

ye i've already regemmed/forged since.

[Kael]

Raic/Verain/shadowboy have touched on the major points, the only thing missing is to consider your offspec, assuming you use one often. If you use that assassination spec, you can check to see how a reforge/gemming would affect both specs, rather than just one, and pick a path with the least loss between the two.

Edit: actually Shadowboy commented on this. I'm not awake yet.

Hope this thread helps, and good luck.

(to note, AMR is not horrible, it just doesn't have the tools shadowcraft does for generating stat weights, so you're relying entirely on default weights taken from a specific gear set rather than stats tailored to your character - which, for rogues, generally makes SC far, far more useful, but doesn't demean AMR for anyone else)

[Joey Ray III]

(to note, AMR is not horrible, it just doesn't have the tools shadowcraft does for generating stat weights, so you're relying entirely on default weights taken from a specific gear set rather than stats tailored to your character - which, for rogues, generally makes SC far, far more useful, but doesn't demean AMR for anyone else)

my impression was there's something very wrong with AMR presets. but neither shadowcraft nor simcrafts custom weights gave me any substantial boost. at least for my character the default AMR was perfectly fine tbh (actually default AMR was higher dps then SC the first time i tried it but maybe i messed something up there).

offspec is not an issue btw, only use it for timeless isle ;p

anyway, like this mastery focused build simcraft+AMR produced much better then shadowcrafts so i'll go with it for now. if it turns out ok, i'll keep it.

cheers

[Sesshou]

trying to balance crit and mastery is supposed to be an increase

ST maybe, but they're super close and mastery increases massively in value relative to crit if you are blade flurrying even 1 additional target (according to shadowcraft anyway) so I force my reforge into haste>mastery>crit.

[Artorius]

ST maybe, but they're super close and mastery increases massively in value relative to crit if you are blade flurrying even 1 additional target (according to shadowcraft anyway) so I force my reforge into haste>mastery>crit.

Yep, I also do it

[shadowboy]

ST maybe, but they're super close and mastery increases massively in value relative to crit if you are blade flurrying even 1 additional target (according to shadowcraft anyway) so I force my reforge into haste>mastery>crit.

Cleaving isn't all THAT common, and usually when you do cleave, you want to focus on a higher priority target while cleaving off to secondary targets. I'd rather utilize the crit and put more dps into that primary target than worry about how many MG procs are flurrying to the lower priority ones. Nevermind that Flurry of Xuen is a fairly significant source of cleave damage and it does not benefit from mastery at all. It can, however, crit.

[Sesshou]

Cleaving isn't all THAT common, and usually when you do cleave, you want to focus on a higher priority target while cleaving off to secondary targets. I'd rather utilize the crit and put more dps into that primary target than worry about how many MG procs are flurrying to the lower priority ones. Nevermind that Flurry of Xuen is a fairly significant source of cleave damage and it does not benefit from mastery at all. It can, however, crit.

Not sure how that last part is relevant at all unless you are implying SC doesn't model the proc or there is a problem with SC's modeling. According to SC, mastery is better for bf'ing than crit even when wearing the cloak.

Also, is it the MG damage itself that makes the difference? MG cleaves yeah, but crit is also increasing your cleaves and as you said effects your cloak proc where mastery does not. MG is giving you more CP procs and when BF is on, CP procs are a larger percentage of your incoming energy. I was guessing that had a lot to do with the increased value of mastery relative to crit. There any math on this?

And I disagree about your lower priority argument, but this is just personal opinion. However, imo, if you're cleaving something, you want it to die. Generally stuff being dead faster is better for your raid. Now sure, maybe if you were arguing to leave BF off, but if you are turning BF on at all, it seems to me that you have already decided losing dps on the primary target is worth those additional targets dying faster.

[shadowboy]

My main point was that I prefer to use single target stat priority even when cleaving by virtue of the advantage it provides to the focused target. The cloak thing was a side point. The cloak (and meta) are a big part of why mastery is similar to crit and significantly less in value than haste. Take away the meta and cloak and mastery is almost as good as haste for combat. If you go into ShC and replace the capacitive with agile and the legendary cloak with the epic one, the value of mastery goes up (haste and crit don't change much). The cloak is largely irrelevent if you're cleaving or not. But the meta isn't. The meta drives more dps into your focus target. The meta is the reason why mastery is better when cleaving. While the cloak doesn't benefit from mastery it is itself a cleave. The meta is a significant chunk of your single target dps that does not cleave and does not benefit from mastery.

So I suppose that while the cloak is not relevent, the meta is probably the crux of the issue--but for the exact reason I mentioned. Either way, gearing more mastery is shifting damage away from your focus target and into your secondary targets.