Why do people keep recommending Simcraft?

[pyrostorm9001]

Its a combination of sims not counting everything fire can do and arcane being just really bad atm in live.. frost and fire difference is smaller than it says though, just that fire still does better dps by quite a margin, plus its easyer and has more lil tricks to keep dps'ing. Oh and the profile they are using for Simc firemage gear is just wrong so that accounts for 2-3k dps aswell

But why is arcane doing badly? assuming arcane in game is 100% bug free and is being played correctly. How badly has simc modeled arcane to allow it to get that close to fire.
Or is arcane modeled correctly but no one knows how to play it? (i very much doubt that)

[mrgreenthump]

But why is arcane doing badly? assuming arcane in game is 100% bug free and is being played correctly. How badly has simc modeled arcane to allow it to get that close to fire.
Or is arcane modeled correctly but no one knows how to play it? (i very much doubt that)

It just doesnt work with the tier 6 talents, you have horrid rng cause AM procs so rarely.. could go on

[Assumi]

Well considering you're noting this to be your first time using SimC, it's likely you did it very wrong.

It's not something you just import, tick off some buffs and hit sim to get good results. You need to manually edit the conditions page and the sort of "code" it contains with certain variables to get some mechanics properly functioning.

People not understanding how to really set up SimC is the cause of a lot of the reported issues or inaccuracies with the software.

[Urmydinner]

You should be more educated on a topic before you post threads bashing a program that you seem to have very little experience with. People use it because it has a real value. You need to understand what it is giving you and how you can use that data to your advantage.

[Akraen]

Your ice lance is cleaving, that's making it your top damage and making your DPS be a lot higher than a Patchwerk encounter. Also, why are you using Living Bomb as frost? Nether Tempest or Frost Bomb, though NT in nearly all situations.

[zomgDPS]

Simcraft won't give you your DPS as is, it is a tool that measures your gear and calculates its possible dps with a group of conditions

Wrong.

Simcraft does simulations, not computations. That's what RAWR does.

Simcraft does absolutely no calculation. It just simulates a fight, and does it 1000s of times over, averages the results and gives them to you. It does no calculations, computations or anything of the sort.

Even the stat weight 'calculations' it does is through brute force simulation, e.g. to get your item weight for, say, crit, it will run 1000s of simulations with your current crit, then run 1000s more with your current crit + 10, etc etc and compare results.

RAWR on the other hand actually does computation, i.e. it has created a mathematical model for how a spec/class works, then proceeds to calculate your DPS, item weights, stat weights etc from that model.
Both have very different approaches to how they want to theorycraft. Both are good for very different things.


As far as the OP's question goes, everyone keeps recommending Simcraft as the be all end all of everything related to WoW because of 2 simple reasons:

A) The majority of everyone are morons. Straight and simple.

B) There are people in the community (e.g. Lhivera, the mage MVP) who have their own personal agenda of misinformation. Him (and people like him) have spent hours upon hours upon hours on the forums pushing Simcraft in people's faces, even when Simcraft results do not matter. They do this mainly because they are aware of point A), that is, that almost everyone is a moron and doesn't know how Simcraft works.

But basically, if you want to know how you will perform on a specific fight, Simcraft is the wrong tool to use. If you want to know how spec A compares to spec B, simcraft is the wrong tool to use (unless you are a god at programming fight parameters, which no one is, except for me and a few others). If you want to know what effect changing your rotation from ABC to ACB would have, keeping everything else constant, then Simcraft is the right tool to use.

People don't get that. People are morons.

[Akraen]

(unless you are a god at programming fight parameters, which no one is, except for me and a few others).

Such a jejune ego.

I agree with you, though! Every tool and statistic has its purpose and context. People, as it were, love to extend beyond that context and offer results as evidence from an inappropriate angle.

[LocNess]

Wrong.

Simcraft does simulations, not computations. That's what RAWR does.

Simcraft does absolutely no calculation. It just simulates a fight, and does it 1000s of times over, averages the results and gives them to you. It does no calculations, computations or anything of the sort.

Even the stat weight 'calculations' it does is through brute force simulation, e.g. to get your item weight for, say, crit, it will run 1000s of simulations with your current crit, then run 1000s more with your current crit + 10, etc etc and compare results.

RAWR on the other hand actually does computation, i.e. it has created a mathematical model for how a spec/class works, then proceeds to calculate your DPS, item weights, stat weights etc from that model.
Both have very different approaches to how they want to theorycraft. Both are good for very different things.


As far as the OP's question goes, everyone keeps recommending Simcraft as the be all end all of everything related to WoW because of 2 simple reasons:

A) The majority of everyone are morons. Straight and simple.

B) There are people in the community (e.g. Lhivera, the mage MVP) who have their own personal agenda of misinformation. Him (and people like him) have spent hours upon hours upon hours on the forums pushing Simcraft in people's faces, even when Simcraft results do not matter. They do this mainly because they are aware of point A), that is, that almost everyone is a moron and doesn't know how Simcraft works.

But basically, if you want to know how you will perform on a specific fight, Simcraft is the wrong tool to use. If you want to know how spec A compares to spec B, simcraft is the wrong tool to use (unless you are a god at programming fight parameters, which no one is, except for me and a few others). If you want to know what effect changing your rotation from ABC to ACB would have, keeping everything else constant, then Simcraft is the right tool to use.

People don't get that. People are morons.

This for the most part. They are tools, and a hammer in the hands of an idiot is useless, while the hammer in the hands of an engineer is a very helpful tool. You just need to know how to utilize it.

And also on Lhivera, she/he is on my server and all, so I feel like I should support them, but so many things they do makes me hesitate on that -.-

[Assumi]

(unless you are a god at programming fight parameters, which no one is, except for me and a few others)

LOL. Do you sim against a boss or your ego?

[Deleted]

I agree with Zomg (it's rare to note).
If SimC is easy to use, it need some work to make it show good result. Action list command, boss simulation and others teak to profile aren't that easy.
Even if don't use SimC actually (I'm back to old theorycraft method), I had my share of it.

I invites a lot of mage to check it, play with it and discuss it. With this, mage profile will be better, SimC will have less bug, etc.
Before MoP, this activity was on Elitist Jerks, animated by Lhivera. But now, mage's forum on EJ is near dead and there's no more theorycraft discussion (Rawr, SimC, ...).

[zomgDPS]

Before MoP, this activity was on Elitist Jerks... But now, mage's forum on EJ is near dead and there's no more theorycraft discussion (Rawr, SimC, ...).

Many real theorycrafters left WoW with MoP. Kavan, Logix, Zaldinar, Muph and many many others. All we are left with now is Lhivera and his silliness.

I think their departure is also partially why Lhiv's statements nowadays are so totally out of whack. At least before, those guys used to be around to keep him in check. When he would say something outrageous or 'show his math' they would be around to correct/educate him.

Now that they are all gone, there is no one around to balance out his craziness.

Though unlike Lhiv, those guys never trolled the official forums saying how awesome they are (even though it was them who actually did the 'figuring out'. Lhiv would just go to the official forums, repeat what they would say on EJ, and take credit for it), so no one apart from the EJ community even knows about them. Though I suspect you do Nathyiel. You are an EJ old timer.

Heck, even the guys over at the Subcreation forums seem to have shut down (the Intelligent Mage Forums for those who remember).

Though all of this is to be expected. WoW is old and many people have moved on. The plebs who are left don't even bother to check what they are being told. All they see is "ZOMG GREEN TEXT HE MUST BE GEWD" and they just take what he says outright.

Its just so pointlessly tragic.

[Deleted]

I put my current Frost mage through Simcraft and on a Patchwerk fight it is saying my average dps is around 64k. That is RIDICULOUS! I am consistently doing over 80k dps on real fights in MSV normal.

There are no patchwerk fights in MSV. Even Gara'jal has a damage buff which patchwerk does not.

What I found really odd is that it shows my top damage spell to be Frostbolt. I checked the logs for our last boss kill and Ice Lance was #1 followed by Living Bomb. After this I really lost any trust in this Simcraft tool.

Simcraft is no genie which reads your mind and playstyle. It has it's own default rotation set up, which you need to change in order to represent your doing if you do it different. Also, patchwerk has zero, and I repeat, ZERO movement which no MSV boss is. So it's obviously different.

Is there anything out there that can give more realistic simulations?

Simcraft is the most accurate out there for what it does. What it does not is show real world situations, which no simulator can. Not even the triple A video game studios can dish out AI that does copy human behavior even OK.

Simcraft isn't meant to tell you how much dps you do. It's meant to calculate things like stat weights and rotation changes under very specific circumstances, so you can transfer the gained specific information into common sense real world.