Legion Theorycrafting [7.3, All specs]

[GT4]

The only way to get item levels to show up in the XML output of Simulationcraft is to specify a custom item level. I could potentially force item levels on all items, but that actually overrides the bonus_ids for item level distinctions and may cause more problems than it's worth.

Also, keep in mind that all of these items are from dungeons, world bosses, crafted, or raid bosses within Emerald Dream or Nighthold. The TF (Titanforged) versions of these can go up to 940 ilvl (similar to how we can get Titanforges to 755 or so in HFC right now). So, just looking for a breakoff of 895 doesn't mean that it would actually be available within Emerald Dream, for instance.

Correct me if I'm wrong with any of these but this is what I believe to be the case as of now:
For the first raid tier, maximum item level any item can be bumped to is 895 [source].
The maximum item level in the database is currently different depending on the item in question (900 to 955 depending on the item, e.g. 955, 940, 930, 900, etc.).

Now if you wanted to, for example, look at which would be the best trinket in the first raid tier (so 895 max), it'd be really hard to determine that with the current list format because it has lots of trinkets at 900+. Arguably even more importantly, different trinkets are included with different maximum ilevels (even though they'd have the same maximum ilevel ingame) making it hard to just look at each trinket's top occurrance and assume that all trinkets scale down roughly linearly.

While showing item level would obviously still show you the trinkets not available in the first raid tier, a simple CTRL+F search for 895 (or your desired item level) could let you easily compare all trinkets at that ilevel and manually filter out the ones in the second raid tier (if so desired).

Of course there might be other solutions to this issue as well but I figured adding the item level might be the easiest since it's certainly used within Simulationcraft and is available in the XML of the wowhead links you've added.

Edit:
In case anybody else finds it useful, here are the lists showing item levels as well:
BM
MM
SV

Item levels were extracted from the respective wowhead XML pages using a simple python script. If you see any errors, feel free to point them out.

[Effinhunter]

That's the kind of forensic tool I was saying I just haven't had time to develop. I haven't looked into wowhead XML. You mind sharing the script?

The items can all be titanforged. That's what the 900+ are showing.

[GT4]

That's the kind of forensic tool I was saying I just haven't had time to develop. I haven't looked into wowhead XML. You mind sharing the script?

Of course not, I'll send you a PM.

The items can all be titanforged. That's what the 900+ are showing.

Going by the Blizzard post I linked, 895 should be the hard cap for the first raid tier though. "Titanforged" is merely a label now.

[Effinhunter]

I should be writing a paper that's due Thursday, but I'm doing artifact sims and guide images instead. I had promised to do these guide images for the artifact, and I just haven't had time to get back to it. I'm going in alphabetical order (BM->SV), so first on the docket is BM.

BM Simcraft of ilvl 840 / 870 artifact while going after DPS points of interest

Simcraft settings: 180s +20% dev, 20k iterations, Simcraft Source

Resulting BM Artifact Guide with DPS indicated per DPS point of interest


MM is coming up next.

Edit: P.S. First post updated with new bullets under Artifact, including the guide image.

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The MM results for 840/870 ilvl have a choice at Trait 9 between WG and DA. Initially WG jumps ahead but DA gains more strength with Marked for Death (right before Bullseye) and stays ahead by 200-300 dps basically until the dps talents are filled at 31. Here are the sims for this ilvl. I upped the iterations to 50k, but they were basically the same as 20k.


Simcraft settings: 180s +20% dev, 20k iterations, Simcraft Source

So, I'll work the guide around taking the DA path, simply because it is better in later stages.

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Resulting MM Artifact Guide with DPS indicated per DPS point of interest



SV Artifact 840/870 ilvl

Simcraft settings: 180s +20% dev, 20k iterations, Simcraft Source

SV Artifact Guide

[Deleted]

Nice bit of information on the artefacts there. Similar to the path I took on beta, although that's more of a dumb luck coincidence combined with my reading of the tooltips for MM. Useful knowledge to have for the early doors of Legion anyhow.

[Keltas]

So they doubled masteries effect for SV hunters, that's kinda nice.

Still probably a dogshit stat, but better than nothing!


Hotfixes: http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/5...xes-august-16/


Edit: I have no theorycrafting or anything to go on here and it's just some thoughts I had on this but, could stacking mastery +crit/vers potentially be really good for SV now? Our other stats scale badly and haste is pretty terrible, so I could definitely see mastery being worth stacking if that was enough of a buff.

Plus the extra 2 seconds means even at 0% haste you will get 4 stacks no matter what.

[Azortharion]

Haste is "pretty much worthless", yet it's nearly tied for being our best stat before this change?

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@Effin Your Marksmanship artifact is wrong. You go left, up, left, and then you grab Legacy going through the Marked Shot thing rather than the Aspect of the Turtle* thing. This is step 1. Step 2 is towards Bullseye, and so on.

[Akainakali]

Haste is "pretty much worthless", yet it's nearly tied for being our best stat before this change?

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@Effin Your Marksmanship artifact is wrong. You go left, up, left, and then you grab Legacy going through the Marked Shot thing rather than the Disengage thing. This is step 1. Step 2 is towards Bullseye, and so on.

I assume you mean the Aspect of the Turtle, since the Disengage artifact power is in the opposite direction from Legacy.

I guess that it would depend on how fast you can gather Artifact power and get the Artifact Knowledge buffs. Going directly to legacy gets you there before the costs start going through the roof, but the aspect of the turtle ability is fairly useless and the abilities in your path are certainly much better.

Thanks for all your work on this Effinghunter and yours as well Azortharion.

[Keltas]

Haste is "pretty much worthless", yet it's nearly tied for being our best stat before this change?

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@Effin Your Marksmanship artifact is wrong. You go left, up, left, and then you grab Legacy going through the Marked Shot thing rather than the Aspect of the Turtle* thing. This is step 1. Step 2 is towards Bullseye, and so on.

It was not only a thought I simply had in the car on the way to a doctors appointment that I quickly wrote down (while not driving because legally blind) and had little thought attached to it otherwise. The pretty much worthless was basically how all our secondary stats are crap and that's how I jotted it down. Largely poor wording on my part.


After getting home and giving it more thought and messing around with it, I'm thinking maybe a haste/mastery build for SV could be pretty strong, instead of crit/vers. The extra 2 seconds could even buy us a 5th stack guaranteed with enough haste, and possibly with mastery it'd be almost always a 6 stack. 2PC could be enough to push it to 6 every time.

Someone better at theorycrafting would have to be more extensive about it, but I think there is a real possibility there for SV.

[Deleted]

So they doubled masteries effect for SV hunters, that's kinda nice.

Still probably a dogshit stat, but better than nothing!


Hotfixes: http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/5...xes-august-16/


Edit: I have no theorycrafting or anything to go on here and it's just some thoughts I had on this but, could stacking mastery +crit/vers potentially be really good for SV now? Our other stats scale badly and haste is pretty terrible, so I could definitely see mastery being worth stacking if that was enough of a buff.

Plus the extra 2 seconds means even at 0% haste you will get 4 stacks no matter what.

Even with 12s and old mastery i usually did 4 stacks on average. So with 14s + mastery buff i expect to do atleast 5 stacks all the time.

[Effinhunter]

@Effin Your Marksmanship artifact is wrong. You go left, up, left, and then you grab Legacy going through the Marked Shot thing rather than the Aspect of the Turtle* thing. This is step 1. Step 2 is towards Bullseye, and so on.

This was based on pathways that get you the most dps for the artifact power invested while leveling, getting first dungeons, etc. within first 14 traits, and I agree that I should change this. Going DA up through WG to Legacy, as you've noted, would get you all dps traits in 28 investment vs 31. Since WG is so low on single target (essentially only adds 3,800 dps, even after you've added all other artifact traits which might push it upwards), I opted for going after the first golden trait within the first 9 traits (we essentially get 13 through questing, class hall, etc.) which adds a huge dps boost while leveling and doing mythic dungeons. However, this lead completely disappears and is in fact reversed by 16 if we go up through DA and WG, which should definitely be attainable before raids open up. For a raider, who doesn't care about his dps while leveling/doing dungeons with friends and simply wants to optimize for 16+, this makes sense. And since this is a theorycrafting thread targeted at raiders, yeah, I think you're right.

Here's a breakdown with all of these paths simmed. I've highlighted the new path and where it starts to overcome the path that optimizes for more casual players.

Simcraft settings: 180s +20% dev, 20k iterations, Simcraft Source

For those who aren't aware of the options available for artifact leveling in legion (and a good breakdown of everything you need to know about getting ready for raiding in Legion), see the following spreadsheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...9mOhc/pubhtml#

Essentially, if you are doing the daily heroic (400 ap) and the quests every day and running mythic dungeons, most estimates put you at between 22 and 24 artifact power when Emerald Dream opens. So, I agree with Azortharion that instead of trying to optimize dps around the first 13 traits (which are pretty much given to you without all that much work), we should be optimizing for the first ~24, which shows a ~3k dps increase in favor of skipping Healing Shell.

I'll update the guide image.

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Guide image updated to the following. I also added the trait investment to the inlined image description.

[Azortharion]

Mastery is still a mediocre stat for Survival, and Versatility/Crit are still basically the best stats.

[Keltas]

Even with 12s and old mastery i usually did 4 stacks on average. So with 14s + mastery buff i expect to do atleast 5 stacks all the time.

Yeah you'll always hit 5 stacks as a haste/mastery build now. With the 2pc (double FS chance) I see 6 stacks being the norm. That's a huge dps boost when you consider our 4pc.

[Frost1129]

Are you just manually creating all these artifacts? Or do you have a way to easily generate the different steps along the paths?

Also how are you populating your different gear slot lists for SE? just manually adding every item?

[Effinhunter]

Are you just manually creating all these artifacts? Or do you have a way to easily generate the different steps along the paths?

Also how are you populating your different gear slot lists for SE? just manually adding every item?

You can take a look at the Simcraft source to see how these are created. There should be a link next to each image that I've posted here. Essentially, in Simcraft, you create an artifact in two ways. First, you specify the weapon with the main_hand command (e.g., "main_hand=thasdorah_legacy_of_the_windrunners,id=128826,ilevel=870"). Next, you create the artifact trait specification with the artifact command (e.g., "artifact=55:0:0:0:0:307:1:308:1:309:1:310:1:311:1:312:3:313:3:314:3:315:3:316:3:317:3:318 :3:319:3:320:3:321:1:322:1:1337:1" for everything filled up to trait 34, ready to go into Windflight Arrows).

And yeah, I populate all items by hand into the SE database, unfortunately. I generally just go to wowhead, sort by ilevel on each slot, and try to double and triple check everything as I copy it over into SE.

[3clipse]

Those artifact paths are exquisitely helpful, cheers.

[Effinhunter]

Here is the BM guide image with the trait cost additions


Here is the SV guide image with the trait cost additions


Updating first post.

[Echion]

Thanks for the paths Effin. Doing great work.

Effin has always been our lord and savior. I miss EJ

[Effinhunter]

I miss EJ

Honestly, I don't. I had convinced the mods to leave the Hunter forum at EJ alone. For the last year and a half that EJ existed, people could have trolled there if they wanted to because I was essentially given full moderation privileges in the hunter forum, and I'm way more lenient than the old EJ mods were. However, people were so used to being punished and moderated for posting off topic and making useless posts, that no one ever tried doing it again. Most of the hunter community was scared to post there, it seems. The result was that after I had the theorycrafting done for HFC, there was essentially not much else to post for an entire tier. I would update small things, especially concerning the very minor updates Blizzard did to SV and BM, but MM was constant, and it's what we all pretty much used for almost a year. So, the rotations, the soft caps, the BiS, it all stayed the same throughout HFC up until the Legion prepatch, really.

MMO Champ has a policy and user base that is more accustomed to posting random crap and keeping threads and conversations alive. For better or worse, that keeps us all communicating, even if Blizzard sort of forgets to tweak us in any meaningful way for a year or so.

I stayed at EJ because I'm loyal to a fault. Not because it was better than MMO Champ in any way, shape or form. Just my opinion, of course.

[Krazzorx]

What would you say is the likelihood Marksman's optimal talent setup gets nerfed because it's best single and multi target in addition to that type of multi target being extremely unique?

Eg, I would've expected tuning to be done in such a way that sidewinders+marked shot+patient sniper +barrage (not that barrage synergizes with anything) would be bad, or at least worse, single target than other options.

Since we know in the grand scheme of things a bunch more tuning will be done, like the hotfixes today.