Mr Robot Optimizer

[Furiyers 10]

AMR keeps telling me to re-gem my 560 ret paladin to strength -_-

 

I prefer to use the "reforge only" option so I can optimally get as close to hit/expertise caps as possible (and/or haste thresholds on my warlock). I should probably just use the Reforge Lite add-on or something similar but I like being able to "lock" certain pieces because about half my prot off-spec gear is also my ret gear.

[Errinkel 9]

I much prefer Reforgelite. AMR is fine (for now) for my fury warrior that I don't really have a good handle on how to play well and don't know what gems to use (though I am learning), but for my warlock I choose my own gems - mastery and int/mastery and hit/mastery - and then use reforgelite with custom settings. Reforgelite does exactly what I want and does it without me pushing a lot of buttons and doesn't annoy me with its interface. Easy peasy.

[Rakupenda 15]

My comment about reforges wasnt directed at you, although I understand how it would make your method easier. I fundamentally disagree that this is easier than my way, though. If I'm following you, I have to go out, learn my hit caps, my haste caps, THEN do the math to figure out how to reach EXACTLY those numbers. M way, I put a program on my computer, tell it to run 2500 iterations, change some fight options, tell it to stat weight through an easy guide posted on their website, then wait 5 mins. Come back, plug numbers into AMR, and all the capping, and math is done for me. All the stuff I'm suggesting people do is stuff they teach you in about a page and a half tutorial, which takes less time, IMO, than learning all the number intricacies.

So you still need to know all the capping by your own admission...

 

"Number intricacies"?

 

5100 hit cap - current hit rating = how much hit you need to get

9778 haste breakpoint - current rating = how much haste you need to get

Blizzard does the 40% calculation for reforging as you put it in the vendor's box...

 

That's some tough math...may even have to use a pocket calculator to crunch that

 

Sorry for the smugness, but this is basic stuff...like knowing Backdraft reduces cast time of Incinerate per charge or Chaos Bolt with three charges.

[Ilion 8]

Trusting simcraft in this tier is a bad idea.

[Astynax 24]

So you still need to know all the capping by your own admission...

 

"Number intricacies"?

 

5100 hit cap - current hit rating = how much hit you need to get

9778 haste breakpoint - current rating = how much haste you need to get

Blizzard does the 40% calculation for reforging as you put it in the vendor's box...

 

That's some tough math...may even have to use a pocket calculator to crunch that

 

Sorry for the smugness, but this is basic stuff...like knowing Backdraft reduces cast time of Incinerate per charge or Chaos Bolt with three charges.

 

 

Do need a pocket calculator for it, which is exactly why I'm not a fan. My way is literally impossible to screw up beyond setup. I don't have to worry about needing exactly 1,231 more hit, or 537 more haste. It gets as close as possible with no thought from me. I don't have to trial and error it, or care about it at all. It's done for me. Theoretically, we'd get the same results. Realistically, you're ignoring the interaction between stats that make weights change, meaning I have more hypothetical DPS for far less mental stress. Your way requires SOME knowledge of how to play your class. Mine requires you to follow a guide. That's my argument for simplicity.

 

You actually don't need to know any of the capping. You just have to manually tell AMR which cap to cap your haste at. I guess that was unclear. Maybe you should try my way before you proceed to be a smart ass and criticize it as inferior.

Edited November 7, 2013 by Astynax

[Cinaede 0]

I for the life of me cant figure out how the hell to use the sim craft.. I've read the forums on it.. numbers, graphs & computers arent really my thing, tried to explain what I need comprehended & VERBALLY explained to me to my bf, but I couldnt explain it right to him.. can I link you my mr robot thing or can you just put in cinaede malfurion into your magic thing & help me with my toon as well??? I'm trying really hard to refordge myself but its not working & then when i decided to go back to AMR cause i fail I read this thread... would you mind taking a look?
 

I'll run this through my simcraft later, and efit it then. The way I do sat weights is just simcraft them out, then AMR the edited weights to get my reforge strategy.

 

 

You've really caught my interest here, I allways thought that Mr Robots optimisations looked ok, and I'm surprised to find out there not. So i'd really like to know how I should be working them out.

 

Here's my current setup:

 

 

My Mr.Robot Profile

 

 

Many thanks!

[Astynax 24]

I for the life of me cant figure out how the hell to use the sim craft.. I've read the forums on it.. numbers, graphs & computers arent really my thing, tried to explain what I need comprehended & VERBALLY explained to me to my bf, but I couldnt explain it right to him.. can I link you my mr robot thing or can you just put in cinaede malfurion into your magic thing & help me with my toon as well??? I'm trying really hard to refordge myself but its not working & then when i decided to go back to AMR cause i fail I read this thread... would you mind taking a look?

 

 

 

https://code.google.com/p/simulationcraft/wiki/StartersGuide

 

This is their guide on running simcraft. It's pretty comprehensive in terms of setup, and will do most of what you need it to. I'll try to plug in you character tonight, after flexes.

[Zanzal 6]

I'm surprised Zag or Locky hasn't chimed in with a, "Don't trust SimCraft" post yet.
Personally, I've always been skeptical of AMR but the Enable-Reforge Only button is quite wonderful because AMR likes to tell you to gem expertise which is so minimal as an increase, it hardly matters. And I mostly use it out of curiosity. Same with SimCraft as well. I calculate my stat weights. Even though SimC is showing some really weird scales at the moment.
Common sense, if shit looks weird, question it.

[Kazistrasz 216]

The fact that this thread has become this long amazes me.

 

Not sure how many times we're going to have to say it before people start listening to us, but here let me say it again anyway:

 

If your DPS is subpar, you are the problem not your stats.

 

I'm my own problem. I screwed up horrible on IJ last night and totally shot my opener by mishitting Flames of Xoroth when I started pushing buttons, meaning there goes a 2-million-damage Chaos Bolt I could have had. I hurt myself on Thok last night by hitting SB:SS too soon when I was one proc short, only to have that proc literally one second after. My stats aren't going to fix any of that. The problem is me. Zagam's problem? Himself. Researching his logs the other day to confirm the CB/GoSac clipping issue, we found that he had places he'd consumed Backdraft with CB instead of Incin. Locky's problem? Himself (though he might tell you lack of drops, but that's outside of this discussion).

 

"Well, my stats are as much of my DPS as I can fix quickly."

 

This is only true IF you're playing at a level where you will notice the difference in changing your stats around. If we're having to have this conversation, the odds are pretty good that you're not playing at that level. I'm not even playing at that level (clearly not saying I'm a model of greatness, but I'm certainly not bad).

 

As for Ask Mr. Robot and SimCraft, we do everything we can to disillusion people, but again no one listens. If you're at the point of trying to use SimCraft to tell you how to gem your gear, then you're not at a point that you actually should be using SimCraft as it can't give you any information you'll care about.

 

Ask Mr. Robot is much the same. If you're having to use it to tell you what you're supposed to be doing, you're not at a point it can help you. Ask Mr. Robot only works when YOU are telling IT what to do, not the other way around. 

 

How do you get to a point that SimCraft and Ask Mr. Robot are useful for you? Read around here. Learn what we have to tell you. Research the way your class and your stats work. Don't use things if you don't know how they work. 

[Astynax 24]

The fact that this thread has become this long amazes me.

 

Not sure how many times we're going to have to say it before people start listening to us, but here let me say it again anyway:

 

If your DPS is subpar, you are the problem not your stats.

 

"Well, my stats are as much of my DPS as I can fix quickly."

 

This is only true IF you're playing at a level where you will notice the difference in changing your stats around. If we're having to have this conversation, the odds are pretty good that you're not playing at that level. I'm not even playing at that level (clearly not saying I'm a model of greatness, but I'm certainly not bad).

 

As for Ask Mr. Robot and SimCraft, we do everything we can to disillusion people, but again no one listens. If you're at the point of trying to use SimCraft to tell you how to gem your gear, then you're not at a point that you actually should be using SimCraft as it can't give you any information you'll care about.

 

Ask Mr. Robot is much the same. If you're having to use it to tell you what you're supposed to be doing, you're not at a point it can help you. Ask Mr. Robot only works when YOU are telling IT what to do, not the other way around. 

 

How do you get to a point that SimCraft and Ask Mr. Robot are useful for you? Read around here. Learn what we have to tell you. Research the way your class and your stats work. Don't use things if you don't know how they work. 

 

I agree a lot here Kazi. You are mostly the problem in your dps. and simcraft is..... weird sometimes. (E.G. I have to doctor out when my mastery gets a rating of 2.3 when haste pulls 4.8 at a cap....) But I've found that I get better results, personally, when I use some kind of guide rather than just guessing at what kind of haste, mastery, and crit I should be pulling, because I can't compute the weird interactions I see in both the numbers and my DPS. I think that, ironically, the discussion became about the best way to gain marginal DPS for a casual who didn't want to/couldn't do those things. However those are the same people who won't be reading the discussion here. lol. In terms of actual DPS gain, it's hard to tell, but just comparing AMR's default reforges and my edited weights, mine FEEL much more efficient. In actuality, you need to know enough to use any method of reforge, and I've spent a good amount of time [attempting] to do that.

 

 

Also, there's something to be said about the allure of arguing over things that don't matter on a forum. lol

[Errinkel 9]

I AM my own problem. I finally looked at a log this week (had never done so before); CB higher than Incinerate; I was so happy. Immolate up-time at 90.3%? I was a sad gnome and am working on fixing that.

[Wolland 1]

Somebody please show me the path to the "do not include gems in optimization" option, I just can't find it and I hope you don't tell me that I have to "lock" each gem individually by hand...

 

Also, I've found that when enabling the "Get as close to 15% Hit cap you can" option it actually puts me far more further up from 15.00% than when I don't use it... weird.

[Lockybalboa 618]

Somebody please show me the path to the "do not include gems in optimization" option, I just can't find it and I hope you don't tell me that I have to "lock" each gem individually by hand...

 

Also, I've found that when enabling the "Get as close to 15% Hit cap you can" option it actually puts me far more further up from 15.00% than when I don't use it... weird.

 

 

 

[Ilion 8]

I swear there's some sort of conspiration going between AMR and jewelcrafters, Mr. Robot always tell me to buy the most expensive gems :/

[Soulzar 42]

I swear there's some sort of conspiration going between AMR and jewelcrafters, Mr. Robot always tell me to buy the most expensive gems :/

 

The worst is when it tells you to replace say two 80int/160 Haste for two 80int/160 Mastery to swap 320 haste for 320 mastery, instead of swapping out a single 320 yellow gem.

 

Best thing about Destro and not giving a shit about any Haste breakpoints, my gems are all */Mastery and there is nothing but reforging to do, no more gem changing.  If i want to swap between deep crit to more Haste focused, its only reforging as my gems are always maxing mastery.

[Rakupenda 15]

You actually don't need to know any of the capping. You just have to manually tell AMR which cap to cap your haste at. I guess that was unclear. Maybe you should try my way before you proceed to be a smart ass and criticize it as inferior.

How is that not contradictory? You don't need to know the capping but you need to tell AMR which cap you want.

 

I never said it was inferior. Don't put words in my...hands? I said it was more complex. The OP hasn't seriously raided in a while:

I was a semi-hardcore raider a long while ago, but I really haven't had the time to do it since.  I am now a very casual player, I get on when I can.

so making them run Nth iterations of Simcraft to get their own customized results is like giving a Chef a katana and telling him to go fight in a war. "Hey, you're good with blades, right? Take this sword, it's a much more effective weapon than your kitchen knives. It's got moar reach!" 

 

They should be studying the decision making process and rotations during a fight rather than worrying about how to fully optimize their gear. If you're perfect in your rotation and decision making process, then sure, it's time to maximize your gear for that extra 60 points of mastery.

[Astynax 24]

How is that not contradictory? You don't need to know the capping but you need to tell AMR which cap you want.

 

I never said it was inferior. Don't put words in my...hands? I said it was more complex. The OP hasn't seriously raided in a while:

so making them run Nth iterations of Simcraft to get their own customized results is like giving a Chef a katana and telling him to go fight in a war. "Hey, you're good with blades, right? Take this sword, it's a much more effective weapon than your kitchen knives. It's got moar reach!" 

 

1. Becuase AMR gives you a comprehensive list of them under the "edit stat eight button"

 

 

 

 

2. Nth iteration really doesn't result in a significant change. Talking about like 6k, unless something is massively off, which is generally obvious to anybody with any clue. You run one, and 95% of the time, it's within 5k of your max DPS. Two will net a 98% accuracy. It's not an overload at all. It's a simple tool that does all the work for you. You just have to look at it, plug it in, and once in a while use enough common sense to say "I know I don't need to drop to 40% mastery here...."  You're constantly calling out points of contension that don't REALLY exist. Go try my way. See how I do it. THEN come tell me how convoluted and complex and mentally strenuous it is. I've tried it your way, and it sucks, because I know I don't have to do the math, plus it has me ignoring my crit rating too much.

[Rakupenda 15]

I just realized what the AMR acronym stands for...How sad is that? Been using it for a while now (until I made my own spreadsheet).

 

1. Becuase AMR gives you a comprehensive list of them under the "edit stat eight button"

 

2. Nth iteration really doesn't result in a significant change. Talking about like 6k, unless something is massively off, which is generally obvious to anybody with any clue. You run one, and 95% of the time, it's within 5k of your max DPS. Two will net a 98% accuracy. It's not an overload at all. It's a simple tool that does all the work for you. You just have to look at it, plug it in, and once in a while use enough common sense to say "I know I don't need to drop to 40% mastery here...."  You're constantly calling out points of contension that don't REALLY exist. Go try my way. See how I do it. THEN come tell me how convoluted and complex and mentally strenuous it is. I've tried it your way, and it sucks, because I know I don't have to do the math, plus it has me ignoring my crit rating too much.

1.) Where do you think I look up the haste break points? Think I have them memorized or something?

 

2.) What are my points of contention with Simcraft, exactly?

 

Simcraft in a nutshell: Input, run simulations, spits out stat weights.
Then you plug those stat weights into AMR and then it optimizes your gear based on those weights, right?

If you know your stat priorities (since people have done Simcraft countless times and concluded mastery is king, then haste/crit depending on spec) you could just make up numbers (3 for mastery, 2 for haste, 1 for crit to prioritize Mastery>haste>crit) and it would reforge the same as the 2.7, 2.3,2.1 or whatever the "optimal" weights are.

The only reason to have specific stat weights is for finding BIS, not for reforging.

[Astynax 24]

I just realized what the AMR acronym stands for...How sad is that? Been using it for a while now (until I made my own spreadsheet).

 

1.) Where do you think I look up the haste break points? Think I have them memorized or something?

 

2.) What are my points of contention with Simcraft, exactly?

 

Simcraft in a nutshell: Input, run simulations, spits out stat weights.

Then you plug those stat weights into AMR and then it optimizes your gear based on those weights, right?

If you know your stat priorities (since people have done Simcraft countless times and concluded mastery is king, then haste/crit depending on spec) you could just make up numbers (3 for mastery, 2 for haste, 1 for crit to prioritize Mastery>haste>crit) and it would reforge the same as the 2.7, 2.3,2.1 or whatever the "optimal" weights are.

The only reason to have specific stat weights is for finding BIS, not for reforging.

 

1. If you knew this existed, stop being argumentative....

 

2. But making up the weights DOESN'T yeild the same results. At least not before you can comfortably hit the 30% haste breakpoint, because there are points where mastery is less valuable than the weight you'd arbitrarily give it, and as you approach it, there is actually DPS gain by ditching mastery for haste, and knowing when crit is more/less valuable than haste between breakpoints. The reason that AMR sucks is the same reason your strategy isn't ideal, ironically. AMR is optimized for BIS gear. You're using BiS stat weights, and ignoring when it's worth/not worth grabbing stats that aren't mastery.

[Lockybalboa 618]

So I was largely not reading... till now.

 

1) Fuck AMR.

 

2) Fuck SimC

 

3) Tbh, neither of these will get you to your "max dps" because secondary stats mean....very, very little. 90% of your DPS will be from how you are playing, stats will be ~5% RNG will be 5-10% (yes, I know this doesn't add up. Sometimes RNG will totally bone you or totally love you and you could be a chimp with downs and do top 10 rank, in that case it would have been 20% RNG, 75% play, 5% stat). Granted, if we're talking about 380k fights then 5%  can be *fairly* important, but even still it's only ~16k DPS.  

 

Consider this, if in perfect secondary stats you are gaining 20k, then what would you be gaining in perfectly WRONG stats? Even with totally wrong stats, you're still going to gain a good bit of DPS. You drop your haste BPs as aff and you go full crit, you'll still gain 10-15k from all that crit. When you look at it this way, you're really only talking about a 5k DPS gain (keep in mind these are ballpark numbers and not to be quoted as gospel). 5k out of 380k is now only a ~1.3% +/-.

 

That...simply is not worth my time. Unless I'm working a boss that we're wiping on over and over again and we're wiping at ~10-15%, then I just don't care about 5k DPS. And even in that case I'll go through a long list of things that I'd change first before I regemed, like strat, glyphs, talents, upgrading items, changing specs, etc. I had to do this on Heroic Nour before he was hotfixed, I picked up the 3% DPS I needed by changing my kill order and double upgrading two mediocre items that gained me a free 200int. 2.8% of that DPS gain was changing the kill order.

 

4) Prove to me that SimC is correct. How do I know that what it tells me my "max DPS" is true? How do I know that it isn't bugged again? How do I know that it is taking in to account human error to the correct level? How do I know that it is giving a good representation of the fights?

 

In order to answer those questions I would need Bill Gates himself to give it his personal seal of approval after he checked every line of code or I would have to learn how to code and check every line of code myself. Since I don't see either of those things happening, I don't really feel like I can trust a program that has been historically  so wrong so many times. I don't blame the people that work on SimC for this issue, I don't blame anyone for it. Imo warlock is simply to complex of a class to model well, throw in the fact that this game is so buggy on its own, blizz doesn't tell us everything, and there is so much RNG at play on so many levels, that you just can't program enough to get around these issues.

 

Give me logs, give me one or two people that are smart and can play at my callabar of play, give me three hours to look at the logs and an hour in mumble to talk to the people and I'll find all the answers I need and I'll find all the quirky answers to the fights that will make or break my ability to pull mad DPS.

 

So like I said, fuck SimC and AMR. Follow simple priorities when gemming, use Reforge Lite to do the dirty work in your reforging, raid harder.

[Rakupenda 15]

2. But making up the weights DOESN'T yeild the same results. At least not before you can comfortably hit the 30% haste breakpoint, because there are points where mastery is less valuable than the weight you'd arbitrarily give it, and as you approach it, there is actually DPS gain by ditching mastery for haste, and knowing when crit is more/less valuable than haste between breakpoints. The reason that AMR sucks is the same reason your strategy isn't ideal, ironically. AMR is optimized for BIS gear. You're using BiS stat weights, and ignoring when it's worth/not worth grabbing stats that aren't mastery.

[Soulzar 42]

 

4) Prove to me that SimC is correct. How do I know that what it tells me my "max DPS" is true? How do I know that it isn't bugged again? How do I know that it is taking in to account human error to the correct level? How do I know that it is giving a good representation of the fights?

 

Wasn't it as recent as a month or so ago where a bug in SimC was giving false results for Affliction single Target?  Case in point

[Lockybalboa 618]

Wasn't it as recent as a month or so ago where a bug in SimC was giving false results for Affliction single Target?  Case in point

 

Yes.

[Kazistrasz 216]

Simcraft's biggest failure, bugs aside, is that no matter how great Gahhda designs the profile (which he does a good job of, don't get us wrong we do appreciate his work), it's never going to truly model the human decision making that goes on into optimizing procs and so forth. It's outside of the scope of the program. In days past, SimCraft could model perfect playing. Whatever theoretical max it told you was a goal to set for yourself. Nowadays, it's fairly easy to beat the number it gives you, because we can do decision making that it cannot.

 

Now, onto more important disillusionment: this stat weight business with Ask Mr. Robot.

 

1. If you knew this existed, stop being argumentative....

 

2. But making up the weights DOESN'T yeild the same results. At least not before you can comfortably hit the 30% haste breakpoint, because there are points where mastery is less valuable than the weight you'd arbitrarily give it, and as you approach it, there is actually DPS gain by ditching mastery for haste, and knowing when crit is more/less valuable than haste between breakpoints. The reason that AMR sucks is the same reason your strategy isn't ideal, ironically. AMR is optimized for BIS gear. You're using BiS stat weights, and ignoring when it's worth/not worth grabbing stats that aren't mastery.

 

1. Your response is also being argumentative. Just let it go, since you're both talking about things in a manner that you can't agree on.

 

2. It's not "making up" the weights. I don't "arbitrarily" assign numbers in places. I know how the stats behave together, and I know what I need to set them to in order to make Ask Mr. Robot tell me what I need it to tell me (that is, optimize my hit cap and max out mastery as much as possible). AMR's default stat weights are NOT what you want to use. They're NOT ideal. They're rarely EVER going to be better to use.

 

But you know what? This is the same thing we keep telling you guys: if you put half as much effort into looking at your logs and fixing your playstyle as you do obsessing over your secondary stats, you'd actually be pulling the DPS you come here to ask how to pull. It's as simple as that.

 

Haste breakpoints being more valuable than mastery... this really, REALLY depends on how you're playing. Theoretically it can tell you one thing or another, but the fact is that none of these machines like AMR and SimCraft can actually tell you what's optimal. The actual live environment is going to change things. Generally speaking, we get more out of mastery than we get out of anything else. You need a LOT of mastery to be able to go up another breakpoint. Example: I could do the 9778 breakpoint and have 15.2k mastery. I wouldn't even consider the 13737 breakpoint without at least 18k mastery. Even then, I probably still wouldn't. Of course, this is for affliction. I've had AMR set 13737 as the default when I've loaded myself, and I laughed in its face.

 

You can't trust AMR. Period.

 

Given the time you and I have spent talking in-game and about your log, there's a lot you still have to learn in theory to truly understand the behavior of our stats in relation to one another and why we do what we do. Join us for our warlock mumble. Do research on the ways our mechanics work with each other. Get into some logs and poke around with things. The biggest thing to remember is: until you're playing at a very high level (meaning you're playing your class well, not necessarily far in the game as there are warlocks I've talked to much further than me that have been doing the most ridiculous things), you're not going to have enough consistency to truly look at experimentation you're going to do. Half of theorycrafting, of course, is actually implementing and revising the theories you're coming up with. You have to be a consistent player to do that testing.

 

I'd like to propose a new rule for everyone: no one talks about secondary stats, gemming, and reforging until they're posting logs that Zag can't find significant issues with. Fix your playstyle first, then you can actually worry about this stuff. The 20k of your DPS that your stats make up is only actually 20k if you're consistently playing well. The worse you play, the less your stats are contributing. You are wasting your time chasing part of that 20k when could be chasing the 50-100k you're losing from simply not playing as well as you should be.

[Ilion 8]

The problem about SimCraft is not only how well modeled the profile is, is more about the complexity of most encounters make patchwerk or helter-skelter fights' stat weights almost useless.