locks and sims

[amherian]

I am just coming back to the game from a long break since MoP. I noticed on simcraft that affliction is simming at the bottom of dps meters yet when i check logs it seems to be good. What am i missing?

Also is race a big boost to dps in legion? i see all the top players going for troll, personally i used to like undead but i dont like their new animation so i would go with blood elf. Would it be a big loss in dps for me?

[Biomega]

What am i missing?

Knowing what Simcraft is useful for and what it isn't :P

Simcraft's main use is comparative within a single setup. That means rather than comparing Affliction locks with Boomkins, Simcraft is more useful when comparing different setups of Affliction warlock with each other - using various talent choices, gear pieces, and so on.

The reason Simcraft isn't so good cross-class is real fight mechanics and requirements skew things so much the relative Simcraft ranking from an idealized, streamlined scenario accumulate way too many errors to be all that useful.

Warcraftlogs statistics are a better metric for that, assuming you're looking at fights with enough data uploaded - be careful about small sample sizes at the beginning of a tier (though we're mostly past that at this point), and also about padding at the end of a tier (where people do all sorts of weird shit just for rankings).

Since Warcraftlogs is about actual fights, it reflects much better the various strengths and weaknesses of certain classes and specs. Affliction is ranked very highly mostly because a lot of the mechanics in Antorus are conducive to Affliction locks - various chances to multi-DoT, for example, or to leech soul shards, and so on.

So, even though Affliction is ranked low on the idealized Simcraft rankings, that doesn't mean much because no fight actually works that way - and Affliction is actually one of the top-performing specs on many fights, and the top spec on a number of them. While the other two Warlock specs are understandably miffed there's little reason to ever go Demo or Destro this tier, Warlocks are doing very well as a class and people are more than happy to have them in the raid for almost every fight.

[amherian]

Thank you, Biomega.

What about races, does it matter?

[Biomega]

What about races, does it matter?

Technically there are DPS differences, but in practice they are SO close that it's almost immaterial.

I'd suggest choosing either by personal preference, or by utility. Something like Goblin for the rocket jump can be useful in PvE raiding (though perhaps less so in the case of Warlock who have Circle/Gateway already) and Blood Elf is certainly extremely useful if you are doing high M+ keys (due to the AoE silence). But these demands can be very specific and don't just universally apply to everyone. Also if you're not playing the game at the highest levels it probably doesn't matter a whole lot - and probably less than being able to stare at that sexy elf butt or whatever is your particular fancy.

[Deleted]

I am just coming back to the game from a long break since MoP. I noticed on simcraft that affliction is simming at the bottom of dps meters yet when i check logs it seems to be good. What am i missing?

Also is race a big boost to dps in legion? i see all the top players going for troll, personally i used to like undead but i dont like their new animation so i would go with blood elf. Would it be a big loss in dps for me?

Basically cos sims are rubbish at showing how a class performs in a real raid environment. Although they try to sim non-Patchwerk fights, it's really hard to do.

Many fights in Antorus play to affliction's strengths, which is why it does far better than the sims suggest.

Aff wouldn;t do well at all in a pure single target fight where you just stand and do your rotation.

Since they baked aff's damage back into the dots ad nerfed malefic grasp, it would be very very hard to make aff 'average' on any fight where you can multidot without makign it absolute garbage in fights where you can't.

Same problem with shadow priests who are also doing very well in Antorus.

Also, aff does and alway shas scaled extremely well. Generally speaking, we tend to start up low on the totem pole at the start of an expansion (and sometimes a new raid) and due to scaling catch up later on.

Destro could do with some love, and whilst demo's single target damage can be very high, it's just plain bad for antorus. It needs a total rework, which will have to wait for BfA

[Deleted]

I personally think they won't do anymore balancing because legion is over and they are working on bfa


Think they made this tier a little too easy and now the world 1st race is over I don't think they will bother with anymore passes

Maybe they will surprise me though ������

[impending doom]

Patchwerk sims are actually quite accurate, just look at Varimathas logs where affliction is below average (https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...ty=4&boss=2069). The problem is that people confuse single target dps vs overall performance, and affliction becomes much stronger when there are more than 1 target. Those other type of bosses could be simulated too but it's much more challenging.

Another thing I've been wondering though, is that many people probably decide their gear and stat weights based on sims, but I'd think for that it would be better to use some other form of sim than single target patchwerk?

[Biomega]

Another thing I've been wondering though, is that many people probably decide their gear and stat weights based on sims, but I'd think for that it would be better to use some other form of sim than single target patchwerk?

Correct, and for that reason there are various other presets available in Simcraft, such as 2-target, hectic cleave, and so on. Raidbots has it, too.

The effective error when it comes to stat weights is also probably less than it is for a class ranking. While the actual values for scale factors may be off, their relative ratios are probably somewhat accurate. And at the end of the day, it's the best we've got