Simulationcraft results for Legion Expansion (7.0)

[Aethys256]

UPDATE 7.2.5

Hello everyone.

Starting from patch 7.2.5, I worked along with Mystler to make a project around Rogue Theorycrafting.

Here is the announce I did on the Ravenholdt Discord server:

Aethys - 06/14/2017
Hello guys, the rogue theorycrafting community is happy to introduce you to our new community hub, the Ravenholdt-TC Organization !
This will let you follow what's going on behind the scenes. You can also contribute via the issues panel to suggest ideas and report bugs.
The two features that will matter the most to you are probably the dashboard and the resources website.
Stay tuned!

Resources Website: https://ravenholdt-tc.github.io/
Dashboard: https://github.com/Ravenholdt-TC/Rogue/projects/1
Issues: https://github.com/Ravenholdt-TC/Rogue/issues
Organization link: https://github.com/Ravenholdt-TC

Special thanks to @Mystler for his contribution.

I discontinued the spreadsheet right before 7.2 because we were working on this project.
Any news things will be located there.




LEGACY

Hello everyone.

For those who don't know me, I'm one of the Simulationcraft Rogue Action Priority List (APL) Maintainer (along with Skasch).

I made a lot of work to know what is optimal or not for Rogues and I would like to share it with you.

I summed up everything on the spreadsheet. You will find there :

Tabs

- Main Results : DPS value for all 3 main profiles from SimC (T19P, T19H, T19M) and their stats weight (be careful on this, read below).
- Legendaries Breakdown : All relevant legendaries for each spec.
- Races Breakdown : All rogue races. (So, you'll be able to see that it doesn't matter much )
- Talents Breakdown : Every talents combination breakdown.

And in the future (probably after Emerald Nightmare), you'll be able to see :
- Stats Research

From my original one, I removed the Artifact Paths work since everything is already know and it takes like 1 day to sim everything (Assassination is really long in fact) with a decent precision. (See the FAQ if you don't know)

Sims Infos

I always use SimC default profiles (T19P, T19H, T19M) that are constantly updated.
Every infos are on the top of the main page, you will find here the fight_duration, the target_error, what does xT stands for, etc...
You can find the html report of every sims by clicking on "Click" in the "Source" column.
I will update it if there is any hotfix of course, you can find the last update date on the main page aswell.

I'm using Simulationcraft, but you should be able to find similar results on AMR's one. I've written the APL in a way that it can easily exported to AMR so the AMR guys are able to update it based on SimC's one. I may port it myself someday, but I have no plan on it yet.

FAQ

What's the best rogue spec for Legion ?
- There is not a "best rogue spec" exactly like there is not a "best champion" in League of Legends. Each spec got its strengths.
Basically from the infos we have as of 28 August 2016 (it may changes if Blizzard hotfix something), Assassination is good early but fall off due to poor scaling while Sub is way behind early but when you'll enter in raid, due to great scaling, it come back to Assassination level and even outperforms it.
It is mostly due to the stats scaling and legendaries.
About Outlaw, that's the rogue swiss knife spec at this moment. That's the most performing spec on simulations but in "real environnement" it will probably performs equally (due to the fact that the rotation is somewhat hard to manage perfectly). But if you plan to only focus on one spec, that may be your best bet.
While in raids Subtlety toolkit is probably the best (burst on demand and good single target dps overall is really what you'll need most of the time in raids), in Mythic+ dungeon you'll probably want to play Outlaw due to its insane AoE along with great Marked for Death usages.

Why the error bars are so high for Outlaw ?
- I'm using Excel Error Bars to represent the range of the min and max possible. But don't think that you'll be often in the lower case or upper case, in fact you should take care of the Median value (which is also called Mean on SimC Report) and if you want more infos, check the DPS Distribution in the Source (the .html report).

Should I put your stats values in Pawn ?
I do not advice doing so, while it gives rough ideas, it might be totally wrong. Your best bet if you want to know if X piece is better than Y piece is to sim it directly on SimC (or AMR) and figure yourself. There are too much parameters to give a "general" answer.
Besides that, in the future I'll probably add some stats plotting & ideal repartition which may be useful to figure what is nice to have.
And finally, I may add some trinkets comparison or relic comparison. I don't like doing so tho since it only gives a small idea (especially since things can be socketed / titanforged) which is most of the time not applicable (because the sample profile gear isn't what you wear). I'll see.

When should I reroll "Roll the Bones" ?
- The current rules on the APL is to do it if you have less than 2 buffs. The only exception is if you have the Legendary Boots (Thraxi's Tricksy Treads) where you'll reroll RtB if you have less than 2 buffs except if the only buff you got is "True Bearing".
UPDATE 09/17 :

New Fishing Rule :

You should cast again Roll the Bones if you have 1 or less Buffs and this buff isn't Shark Infested Waters while your CDs (AR/CotD) are ongoing and this buff isn't True Bearing.

So, if you have 2 or more buffs, keep it.
If you have only 1 buff, check :
- If it's Shark Infested Waters or True Bearing, if it's True Bearing, keep it
- If it's Shark Infested Waters and you have either Adrenaline Rush either Curse of the Dreadblades up, keep it, else reroll.

Also, if you're in a stage not very demanding in terms of dps output, you should be aware that fishing for either 3+ either 2+ with at least TB or SIW being one of the two is something good. The ramp up time is longer but the burst is higher (and overall, it's better if you're not against rerolling some times).

"Your results are BS, I was on Beta and Assassination was king."
- Well, since you got Beta access you might know why it's called Beta. Yes Assassination was strong and was still strong even during the latest raid tests. But since then (ie: Legion Prepatch), they nerfed Assassination and buffed a lot Outlaw. That's why Outlaw now appears as "a king". If you were on #Ravenholdt some weeks/months ago before the end of the Beta, you would have seen that Assassination was also "the king" spec on the spreadsheet. But things change, and you have to adapt.

"Will I see the same results in my raid if we have 3 rogues and each of them got a different spec ?"
- Likely no, for multiple reasons.
First, your 3 rogues might not have the "same skill", ie performs at the same level. While simulations do always "the right thing" based on the APL.
Second, it really depends of the environnement. Each spec got its strengths, so if your boss do have a lot of adds that spawn in waves, Outlaw will probably shines. But if the fight is like a council with 3 sustained targets, then it'll probably be Assassination.
Third, all 3 rogues will have different gear (and probably different Artifact Ranks and different Legendaries), so it's not directly comparable.
Fourth, one attempt is heavily subject of the RNG impact, so its' irrelevant to say that X is better than Y if your sample is very low.
Fifth, the length of the fight does matter, like if your boss die right after a Rupture Exsanguinated, Assassination will had benefit from a good burst before the boss die while others may have theirs 10s later.
Sixth, the strat used may have an impact aswell.
TL;DR : There are a lot of parameters to take in account, you cannot apply those results everywhere. There are true in a given context. Outside of it, it might be heavily wrong.

What will you play in Legion during leveling and after ?
- I'll play Outlaw for Leveling and mainly Outlaw after. I do the leveling as Outlaw because I'm in a 5man Party, but if I was solo I would have done it as Subtlety.
Why mainly Outlaw ? Because it's a strong spec overall and probably the best one for Mythic+. I'll level both Outlaw Artifact and Subtlety Artifact, because I think that Subtlety fits more what I want to do in raid but I'll not play it until I have enough gear.
I do think that they might slightly buff again Assassination and probably Subtlety aswell, even if that's (or not) the case, I'll probably stick to this. Except if Outlaw is heavily nerfed.

Why Insignia of Ravenholdt seems so strong ?
- It might be related to what we call crit "double dip". We don't know yet if it's an intended behavior or not. Check this for more infos :
http://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/t...ge=14#post-269

Feel free to leave your comments or ask something here. I may adds more things to the FAQ.

And finally, here is the spreadsheet link :
https://1drv.ms/x/s!Aqwv0VckwWnidXxBKV_biTNzfRY

I put it at the end on purpose, so at least I can hope you have read what is above.

[Kuroii]

awesome stuff ! been keeping with your sims for a good amount of time ! good post

[elfporn]

Good stuff man, thanks for all the work you've put into this!

[Deleted]

Thanks a lot. This is very helpful!

[Deleted]

Thanks for the hard work Aethys. I mean it, Skasch and you did an amazing work this last mounth, it was a real pleasure to follow those sims through all the hot fixe made by blizzard.

[FenrizZJ]

logged in just to say thanks for this Aethys! your work is appreciated!

[Sae]

Great work, lots of useful information here.

[Snorlaxi]

Nice, thanks a lot.

Seems like going for sub would be an investment, you'd be putting points now to get some nice return later down the line. The only problem, as I see it, with doing an investment like this is that we don't know till then who is getting buffed or nerfed and how. Lots of things could happen before we get to be fully mythic geared and get our sub investment back.

[Zetsumai258i]

Outlaw is definitely the #1 spec from all classes at the moment. Hopefully they don't nerf it in the 3 weeks before raids open.

[Deleted]

Outlaw is definitely the #1 spec from all classes at the moment. Hopefully they don't nerf it in the 3 weeks before raids open.

Blizzard has already said. that if one spec is the strongest.
They will keep that one as the strongest. in order to not screw over the players that spent all the artifact knowledge in said spec.
So we have nothing to worry about.

They will most likely buff the other specs. so that they get on an even playing field.

[Zetsumai258i]

Blizzard has already said. that if one spec is the strongest.
They will keep that one as the strongest. in order to not screw over the players that spent all the artifact knowledge in said spec.
So we have nothing to worry about.

They will most likely buff the other specs. so that they get on an even playing field.

It's more likely that they nerf Outlaw so that it is still the strongest Rogue spec but brings it in line with Subtlety and Assassination and the rest of the DPS specs.

[XZlayeD]

I'm still quite surprised how badly the legendary outlaw bracers fare (greenskins w. w.). do they sim that badly even with quickdraw talented? I get 1.3m+ crits reliably every 20 seconds because of the split projectiles of blunderbuss, making the shot a lot less prone to getting screwed by a non crit attack.

[Kazzai]

Much appreciated mate. Love your work

[Aethys256]

I'm still quite surprised how badly the legendary outlaw bracers fare (greenskins w. w.). do they sim that badly even with quickdraw talented? I get 1.3m+ crits reliably every 20 seconds because of the split projectiles of blunderbuss, making the shot a lot less prone to getting screwed by a non crit attack.

Mostly due to Greed.

[Capita1ist]

As everyone else mentioned. Thanks Aethys and Skasch. You guys rock.

[Deleted]

Is there an optimal amount of cp's we should use to reroll rtb if only 1 buff that isnt TB? Or just for applying rtb in general?
It's top in the priority list in the sims, I'm guessing it means to just reroll as soon as we got any cp's?

[XZlayeD]

Mostly due to Greed.

ah, I see, that makes sense! thanks for the response.

I've also noticed that Shivarran Symmetry rates quite low in a target 3 scenario, does the APL pool 6 pts and high energy to get the most out of the 3 second burst phase?

[Aeolla]

Awesome work. You do the maths so we don't have to .

How do you read the talents in these spreadsheets? I'm not sure where to match these ID's up to.

[Capita1ist]

Awesome work. You do the maths so we don't have to .

How do you read the talents in these spreadsheets? I'm not sure where to match these ID's up to.

The first number is for the 1st row of talents, 1,2 and 3 left to right... and so on. 0 means it has no bearing on deeps.

[Deleted]

Why are the sims done using the worst possible trinkets for sub / ass, but ones that are actually decent for outlaw?
Using the vendetta boots is sub-optimal without using vendetta relics obtained from mythic+dungeons, you can get vendetta down to a 40-44 second cooldown, yet you've used rupture relics. With vendetta refilling energy and having a 40-43second which is inline with Kingsbane cooldown practically, making mastery more viable as kingsbane scales from mastery, and then with mastery / vers being the top 2 secondarys with these relics and the vendetta legendary.

These sim's are actually terrible and are making assass / sub look alot worse than they actually are.

And the fact that the majority of people who can't use common sense, and look at items and see they're good / bad without using the internet, will read this and believe it regardless of inaccuracy.