Huge simcraft changes for no reason?

[Kildragon]

So I know that simcraft obviously doesn't reflect actual raid performance and that it's not perfect. I do however get baffled when there are sweeping changes in the way classes are simming without ANY hotfix or patch changes that have an effect on DPS performance.

5.1 Sims
http://www.simulationcraft.org/510/Raid_T14H.html

5.0.5 Sims
http://www.simulationcraft.org/505/Raid_T14H.html

The only classes that got changes that actually have an impact on their DPS are Destro Locks, Demo Locks, Fire Mages, Arcane Mages, Hunters and Rets.

-Destro UP from 111k to 118k 7k increase. Expected with the buff to Conflag
-Demo DOWN from 121k to 118k 3k decrease. Expected with the removal of Meta auto attack and Doom
-Fire DOWN from 127k to 116k 11k decrease. Expected with the nerf to Combustion and Critical Mass
-Arcane UP from 125k to 135k 10 increase. Expected with the buff to Arcane Charges and the lowering of the mana cost increase
-Marksman UP from 107k to 114k 7k increase. Should be higher with buffs to Serpent Sting, Aspect of the Hawk, Steady Focus and Careful Aim
-Survival UP from 107k to 116k 9k Increase. Should also be higher
-Beast Mastery UP from 112k to 118k 6k increase
-Retribution UP from 114k to 117k 3k increase. Doesn't make ANY sense as their DPS should have gone down with the 4pc nerf

So, Fire Mages received probably the biggest nerf resulting in a rather huge nerf of 11k as expected. The problem though, is that such a huge nerf to Fire Mages resulting in an 11k DPS drop should mean that you'd have to see other huge changes to the remainder of the classes to see changes anywhere near as big. Minor fixes in Simulationcraft builds should only result in 1-2k DPS differences at the most, especially after MoP has been out for so long.

Let's look at the rest of the classes, where almost every spec went up, except for Frost Mages, 2H Fury, and Arms which stayed the same, and Ferals which somehow dropped. After looking through them, you'll see that Enhancement, Elemental, Unholy, Combat, Assassination, Windwalkers and Shadows all went up by huge amounts. In fact, these classes went up by as much or more than all Hunters which received significant buffs in 5.1.


-Affliction UP from 129k to 132k 3k increase

-1H Fury UP from 124k to 127k 3k increase

-Enhancement UP from 121k to 131k 10k increase
-Elemental UP from 111k to 117k 6k increase

-Feral DOWN from 119k to 117k 2k decrease
-Balance UP from 107k to 112k 5k increase

-1H Frost UP from 118k to 120k 2k increase
-2H Frost UP from 117k to 120k 3k increase
-Unholy UP from 112k to 119k 7k increase

-Assassination UP from 118k to 127k 9k increase
-Combat UP from 114k to 122k 8k increase
-Subtlety UP from 117k to 121k 4k increase

-1H Windwalker UP from 114k to 126k 12k increase
-2H Windwalker UP from 109k to 120k 11k increase

-Shadow UP from 111k to 119k 8k increase

Why am I making such a big deal out of this? Because a lot of people use sims to determine which specs to play in raids. Actual raid logs are often skewed because the top players play whatever spec sims the highest. So, does this drastic change mean that most of these sims were just plain wrong pre 5.1? Are they wrong now and someone just fucked up big time in the coding of simcraft?

[Nitwit]

Use effect trinkets/buffs don't have a cooldown in that version of SimC, so everyone who has engineering as a profession is getting hugely inflated uptime on synapse springs. It's fixed in SVN, but the profiles on that page haven't regenerated yet.

That said, pretty much every spec should still see a ~1-2k+ dps gain from the patch, because the primary stat weapon enchants moved to the real ppm mechanic, which increased their buff uptimes.

[Kildragon]

Ah ok, thanks. So we should be seeing a return to the normal number soon.

---------- Post added 2012-12-04 at 05:07 PM ----------

Still doesn't explain the DPS increase for Rets after their 4pc got nerfed and the drop for Ferals even though they received no changes. It also doesn't explain why Demo still dropped by 3k in the sim, even though Jade Spirit Uptime is nearly doubled and Synapse Springs are also used by that profile.

[Enosh]

can't it simply be a "we made an oopsie in some numbers fixed now"?
if they can get the whole synapse thing wrong there can be more stuff wrong, or was wrong and is now "fixed"

[Kinjin]

Is the Demonology nerf (The damage and Demonic Fury cost of Chaos Wave have been reduced by 33%) in the newest version or does it still need to be updated to reflect it?

[Caltiom]

Beside the mentioned bug, there can be other reasons for dps differences:

- Class changes which have only been hotfixed in 5.0.5 ( without a tooltip change ), needed to be added manually to SimulationCraft ( not simcraft, btw ). Not all classes have active developers, or developers at all. So if a change wasn't hotfixed in the 505 SimC, and now got automatically imported with the 510 tooltips, you'll have a difference, where Ingame the actual numbers did not change ( but tooltips did ).
If Blizzard would add all their changes directly to tooltip, it would make life much easier, and reduce such inaccuracys.

- The sample profiles which are used on simulationcraft.org are always changing, every time someone finds a improvement and upgrades them. Same for the action priority lists. So you need to look at changelog for the profiles, and calculate the effects of such profile improvements out of your comparison.