Looking for Sim

[Niklicious 0]

After being out of the game for ~5 years, a lot has changed.  I'd appreciate some recommendations for a good sim program. I used to have this great one years ago, but... I have no idea what it was anymore.

TIA

 

Edit: I heal a lot, so that's pretty important. I see "SimulationCraft" no longer supports healing. :(

Edited February 28, 2018 by Niklicious

[Allseye 96]

Hi Niklicious

Mh, what exactly you want to simulate as healer? There is raidbots which uses SimCraft as Inputstring, but i think there is no healing-simulation. But in my opinion...simulate healing doesn't make any sense. I switch my gear as healer based on fight...and i only know it due to experience. I think there is not such a big room for improvements as you have as DD. Or i have to say: there is not such a big improvement ANYMORE. Healing is much easier then it was 5 years ago. In my experience, people die due to her own fault...mostly beeing one-/two-shot.

[Niklicious 0]

It is the exact same reasons.

1) To simulate the changes in output/performance based on changes to the character (gear, gems, enchants, talents etc.).

2) To provide a target/goal to aim for, and details on how it was obtained to compare real performance to.

 

Quote

...and i only know it due to experience.

I don't mean to be rude, but this doesn't help any one but you. Sim helps me get the information more efficiently. It's great you're at a point you don't need sim, but not all of us are.

[Orthios 271]

5 minutes ago, Niklicious said:

It is the exact same reasons.

1) To simulate the changes in output/performance based on changes to the character (gear, gems, enchants, talents etc.).

2) To provide a target/goal to aim for, and details on how it was obtained to compare real performance to.

 

I don't mean to be rude, but this doesn't help any one but you. Sim helps me get the information more efficiently. It's great you're at a point you don't need sim, but not all of us are.

The thing is, it's impossible to be accurate with a healing simulation in the same way a dps simulation can be.  Healing output varies widely based on:

• Damage patterns
• Other Healers
• When are healing CD's used
• Raid strategy/mechanics
• Downtime
• etc.

The damage patterns point is probably the one that makes this the most difficult, there's simply too many different patterns.  Damage could be big spikes of raid-wide damage with little damage in between, heavy tank damage and light to moderate raid damage, steady moderate-high raid wide damage, just to name a few types.  Add in the fact that in raids, you're never the sole healer (unless you're doing some odd niche 1-healer strategy to push for speed kills) and there's 6 healing classes/specs filling anywhere from 2 to 5 healing spots (typically), and it simply becomes unfeasible to try and simulate healing output.  There's over 9000 possible combinations of healers in groups with 2-5 healers, and if you include the possibility of having a 6th healer, the number goes to almost 56000.  Then, you have to factor in that not every group does things the same way, some groups will try to minimize damage from certain sources, or will handle different mechanics differently.  Or, what if someone mucks up and takes unexpected damage?  That can't be accounted for easily in a simulation. 

[Niklicious 0]

Yeah, so let's keep having this age old argument instead of actually providing some recommendations.

/golfclap

[Allseye 96]

8 hours ago, Niklicious said:

It is the exact same reasons.

1) To simulate the changes in output/performance based on changes to the character (gear, gems, enchants, talents etc.).

2) To provide a target/goal to aim for, and details on how it was obtained to compare real performance to.

 

I don't mean to be rude, but this doesn't help any one but you. Sim helps me get the information more efficiently. It's great you're at a point you don't need sim, but not all of us are.

Oh its absolutely ok, you aren't rude by just saying what you think :-). Orthios mentioned some good point, why healing-simulations is basically pointless...same as tanking-simulation is.

About 1): There is gear where you do a better performance in AE-healing and some for single-target. I can just give you 1 example: For holy priests mastery is increasing the hot-effect which is based on direct-healing amount. So if you wear more mastery, the hot-effect is stronger while the direct-heal-amount is lower (instead you could use versatility or crit). So how you want compare a piec of gear, what is better in healoutput? If the hot-effect is usless due to dmg spikes, then mastery is not that worth. Otherwise while there is ticking raidwide dmg, hot-effect is pretty strong. And even if you would simulate such differences, there is to much variety (what Orthios mentioned)

About 2): In my opinion this is a wrong approach...in term of healing. There is no real target/goal as healer as long as anyone stays alive (while one/two-shoots is basically not a healer fault) and your manabar is not empty. As i said, healing is not that challenging than it was (my point of view) :-).

[Orthios 271]

9 hours ago, Niklicious said:

Yeah, so let's keep having this age old argument instead of actually providing some recommendations.

/golfclap

If you really want to look for this kind of info, then look at logs.  Those show you how others of your class/spec are doing on specific fights, and I think you can search for comparisons at similar gear levels, or at the very least, filter logs by gear levels.  

[Niklicious 0]

21 hours ago, Allseye said:

About 2): In my opinion this is a wrong approach...in term of healing. There is no real target/goal as healer as long as anyone stays alive (while one/two-shoots is basically not a healer fault) and your manabar is not empty. As i said, healing is not that challenging than it was (my point of view) :-).

I think this is our big disagreement. My reasons are because:

If the tank doesn't use any damage mitigation cooldowns, it is not the healers fault that everyone dies.

If another player of the same class/spec/gear etc. is doing double your output, than the healer doing half really should improve.

As for mana, I know that management is important, and wasted (overhealing) mana is bad. A lot of times though, especially at the beginning of the expansion, I run out of mana a lot. I much rather say "I did my best and healed until I was out of mana, others need to improve." instead of having people die when I still have mana left.

 

12 hours ago, Orthios said:

If you really want to look for this kind of info, then look at logs.  Those show you how others of your class/spec are doing on specific fights, and I think you can search for comparisons at similar gear levels, or at the very least, filter logs by gear levels.  

Yes, I am doing this. While it is not technically part of a sim, it is a good thing to have included.

The part I am most looking for is how will my performance change if I change X about my character. In a perfect world, this would be done based on logs of my previous run too, but I haven't seen a sim application that advanced yet.

As for your other points, we could argue that forever, it's been going on for years. But basically, sure, a healing sim won't be as accurate as a dps sim, but I just want a rough ballpark of what is a realistic goal (remember I haven't raided in 5 years). I don't think that's such an absurd request, and I see websites that at least try. Maybe it's just me being neurotic, but I'd rather use a standalone application than a website for this sort of thing.

[Allseye 96]

10 hours ago, Niklicious said:

If another player of the same class/spec/gear etc. is doing double your output, than the healer doing half really should improve. 

This! In that way you can get information how you can improve. Its not about any (unrealistical) sims. Its about experience and compare what others do. Comparing of logs is what you should aiming for. 

If you want a realistic goal, look at best logs in your itemlvl. This is the best thing you can do. We just want to tell you: dont bothet yourself with any sims, use comparing instead. If you know how sims work, you will agree it doesnt make any sense for healing. There is no accurance at all. 

At my point of view there is no possibility to sim heal. 

[Ninhursag 0]

Just a comment regarding raidbots, it's absolutely reliable and safe, many people use it and there's no problem. All it does is use what you give it ( either armory or /simc  addon info which only contains your gear, talent and crucible ) and run in into simc on its own server. Also there's wowanalyzer ( need logs for that ), it tells you how much you used your cds, how you used your mana etc, it may not be the most reliable but it's still some info that you can use.

Not much idea about healing sims but healing itself really changed a lot. I used to heal in tbc and wotlk and i don't remember having downtime ( resto druid for tbc, holy pala for wotlk ). Came back in legion and I see healers having 50% or more of their time spent dpsing or just plainly waiting instead, while still outputting more than necessary healing. Could be a matter of overgearing the content, but those people I'm mentioning are either casuals or people playing many alts at the same time and barely come for more than raiding, so their gear isn't fantastic for the content.

Edited March 5, 2018 by Ninhursag

[Valks 2,373]

On 3/2/2018 at 11:16 AM, Niklicious said:

Yes, I am doing this. While it is not technically part of a sim, it is a good thing to have included.

The part I am most looking for is how will my performance change if I change X about my character. In a perfect world, this would be done based on logs of my previous run too, but I haven't seen a sim application that advanced yet.

It doesn't exist because nobody cares enough to create a simulator that is flawed the instant it begins to run. Any work put into it is undermined immediately by the fact that healing simulation doesn't make sense, hence why all healing modules on SimC are incredibly under-developed.

What class do you play? There are spreadsheets created that can work out if things are better based on healing stat weights, but, again, it's all flawed in that it either portrays a vacuum image that impacts healing far more than DPS, or it is trying to factor in very particular scenarios.

I'll link whatever sheet applies to your class if there is one. For healing simulation, it doesn't exist in any form that could be helpful.