Simulationcraft-101

This guide is meant to help players to learn about properly using and understanding Simulationcraft and the webversion on Raidbots.com

How it Works

Raidbots is a website that runs the program Simulationcraft for you. Simulationcraft has a big database of spells, effects, gear, etc and knows how they all interact. Using this it will make a simulation of a character doing it’s rotation and tracks damage, buff uptime and much much more. To make it more accurate, it will do this many many times (called iterations) and give you the average results. The character it will use is whatever you put in, this will usually be your own character with maybe a few changes to see how they compare. The rotation it follows comes from the Action Priority List, or APL. These lists are maintained by theorycrafters from the respective specs. If you want you can also make your own APL or adjust the existing one.

How to Sim Yourself

Get the SimulationCraft add-on, type /simc in game and copy the text, go to Raidbots and click whatever type of sim you want (Top Gear, Gear Compare, Quick Sim), paste the output in the ‘Load from SimC Addon’ box and select items, traits, talents, whatever else you want to compare, then select the settings you want to sim with. If you want to use a custom APL just put that in the ‘Custom APL’ box at the bottom. Now that you know how it works here are some Windwalker specifics when it comes to simming.

TL;DR

To sum up what option from raidbots is best used for any usecase you might have and to find the correct fightstyle quickly we have this small TL;DR. For anything more advanced or more Informations continue to read this page.

Usecases

Identify Upgrades in your Bag or from your Vault – Top Gear Identify possible Upgrades from Dungeons, Raid, PvP or Professions – Droptimizer Evaluate specific items against each other – Gear Compare Get a rough overview about your possible damage – Quick Sim Get deeper into SimC and use more advanced functions – Advanced

Fightstyles

Singletarget – Patchwerk 5 Minutes 1 Target Static Multiple Targets (e.g. any Council like fight) – Patchwerk 5 Minutes pick targets based on situation Mythic+ (low effort) or Raidbosses with an equal fightstyle – Dungeon Slice Mythic+ (high effort, more precise) – Dungeon Route

Fightstyles in Detail

Patchwerk

Patchwerk is mostly used to simulate static fights. Examples would be councillike fights or even pure single target fights that dont include a lot of mechanics or have any add spawns. Due to the very frequent usage of such bosses in raids this is the default chosen by most people to optimize their chars for raid content. This can also be used to simulate shorter combats with a lot of targets. Due to the way our cooldown management is made in the APL this is not a recommended usecase and shouldn’t be used to optimize for dungeon content.

Dungeon Slice

Dungeon Slice and Dungeon Route are two different fight styles even tho both have the same goal. Simulating a full dungeon. Dungeon Slice was made years ago with the goal to generalize whole dungeons into a shorter fight style to make gearing decisions for dungeons easier. If you followed the link and read through the article written by Seriallos you may already have noticed the issue with it. Dungeons nowadays are much different with a lot of bigger pulls that are not properly mirrored by such a fight style. Dungeon Slice can have some issues with a few trinkets that require a higher targetcount but even for those its still “fine”. What you use to simulate dungeons is up to you. Dungeon Slice is also a good tool to make gearing decisions for raid fights that involve add spawns due to the way it values single target and low target cleave.

Dungeon Route

Dungeon Slice and Dungeon Route are two different fight styles even tho both have the same goal. Simulating a full dungeon. If you want a much more detailled sim that represents a dungeon of your choice, with the route of your choice you have to use Dungeon Route. You probably already noticed that this is not a default fight style on raidbots. Thats because of the nature of Dungeon Route itself. The goal here is to make it as flexible as possible. The steps are fairly simple. Get Method Dungeon Tools (MDT) and this Weakaura. In MDT you can build your own routes of the dungeons with the keylevel you decide. The weakaura makes it possible to extract those routes as a fight style for your sim. At the top right corner of your MDT window you will find two things. A setting to decide the % of the health you will deal to the enemies (default is 27%, based on your group you can adjust that) and right next to it you have a button that is called “SimC Export”. When you press this button a pop-up opens with the current route as a bunch of lines that are raid events. Those raid events will be your trash packs and bosses in the sim. Now just copy the content of the popup like you did with your /simc popup. When you now open raidbots and insert your normal /simc export or decide to use the “Load from Armory” option you can scroll down to the end of the page. There you can find a part that is named “Custom APL and SimC Options”. Extend this and enable the expert mode with the checkbox. You will have 4 input boxes now that are named “Header”, “Pre-Actor”, “Post-Actor” and “Footer”. Paste your route into the Footer. This will overwrite all settings about the fighstyle that you have in the Simulation Options above. Dungeon Route requires a lot more effort but will be the most accurate simulation of a dungeon at this point. What you use to simulate dungeons is up to you.

Movement Sims

There are 3 different fighstyles that are selectable on raidbots right now that include movement. Hectic Add Cleave, Light Movement and Heavy Movement. While the idea to simulate fights with a lot of movement sounds great we still have a lot of issues with those sims. The APL has to support those. For now thats not the case (at least for Monks) which is why we recommend to never use any of those. If you still use those the results you get can be very different since movement in combats is always a thing a player can plan for while the APL does not do that right now. It’s the same issue you would have when you would stop to play proactively and start to play reactively. A good example is the usage of cooldowns. The APL has no conditions for incoming movement so it can happen that it uses all your damage cooldowns just to run around like a chicken for the next ten seconds.

Target Dummy

Target Dummy is a fightstyle that automatically disables all raidbuffs, consumables and the usage of Touch of Karma and Touch of Death. This fightstyle can be used to get a rough idea about the dps your character is capable of on a targetdummy. Due to the difference between human and APL and the difference in iterations you might not match your simulated dps but you may come close to it.

Known Issues

Cooldown timing The APL won’t always line cooldowns up as perfectly as you can if you know how long your fight will be. This can especially be true for things like uncommon trinkets that were not added in the APL and are just being used off cooldown. This rarely results in burst cooldowns being undervalued. You should take a look at the sample sequences that will be available from a Quick Sim if you are curious how the cooldown is being used. Catered towards a general set-up APLs are made in mind with what is currently the general set-up at high-ish levels of gear. For example, Whirling Dragon Punch right now isn’t used in high-end pve because other tier 3 talents are just better, because of this it won’t have the same time put into the APL to optimize it. If you are running an off-meta set-up it could be undervalued in the sims if it would require complicated APL logic. Stat Weights They change too often and breakpoints can be scary. Please just use Top Gear, Gear Compare, and Droptimizer to look for upgrades or compare items you already got. More info on the problems with stat weights here and here. Bugs Bugs aren’t always implemented into sims. This counts for benificial bugs as well.

Useful Siminputs

Expansion options In every expansion there are several minor and major options that can be used to change the behaviour of items or the whole character in the sim. Those are known as Expansionoptions and can be put into the Custom APL section below the Simulation Options. A list of available options can be found when clicking on the link above. Compare Consumables/Racials To use this just open any Quicksim, post your /simc export or use the “Load from Armory” option. Enable the expert mode in the “Custom APL and SimC Options” section and paste what you want to use into the “Footer”. This will create other profiles in the quicksim with the things you want to compare. If you want to compare any consumables its recommended to change the consumable for the default profile to “None”. This can be found in the simulation options. Combination sims (like comparing different Potions and Phial options at the same time) are not possible with that since you would need to create those combinations. Small note for the racial sims. While you can still do such sims and decide based on the very very very marginal differences we don’t recommend on doing so. Utility and even looks are reasons to pick races, not the very marginal dps differences.

Potions

#Ultimate power copy=”Potion: Ultimate Power rank 3″ potion=elemental_potion_of_ultimate_power_3 #Elemental Power copy=”Potion: Power rank 3″ potion=elemental_potion_of_power_3 #Bottled putrescence copy=”Potion: Bottled Putrescence rank 3″ potion=bottled_putrescence_3 #Chilled Clarity copy=”Potion: Chilled Clarity rank 3″ potion=potion_of_chilled_clarity_3 #Shocking Disclosure copy=”Potion: Shocking Disclosure rank 3″ potion=potion_of_shocking_disclosure_3

Food

copy=”Food: (70 of lowest secondary) Yusas Hearty Stew” food=yusas_hearty_stew copy=”Food: (76 mainstat) Fated Fortune Cookie / Feast” food=fated_fortune_cookie copy=”Food: (45 Haste and vers) Aromatic Seafood Platter” food=aromatic_seafood_platter copy=”Food: (45 haste and crit) Feisty Fish Sticks” food=feisty_fish_sticks copy=”Food: (45 vers and mastery) Great Cerulean Sea” food=great_cerulean_sea copy=”Food: (45 crit and vers) Revenge Served Cold” food=revenge_served_cold copy=”Food: (45 haste and mastery) Sizzling Seafood Medley” food=sizzling_seafood_medley copy=”Food: (45 crit and mastery) Thousandbone Tongueslicer” food=thousandbone_tongueslicer copy=”Food: (70 crit) – Filet of Fangs” food=filet_of_fangs copy=”Food: (70 haste) – Timely Demise” food=timely_demise copy=”Food: (70 mastery) – Salt-Baked Fishcake” food=saltbaked_fishcake copy=”Food: (70 vers) – Seamoth Surprise” food=seamoth_surprise

Phials

copy=”Phial: Corrupting Rage rank 3″ flask=iced_phial_of_corrupting_rage_3 copy=”Phial: Charged Isolation rank 3″ flask=phial_of_charged_isolation_3 copy=”Phial: Glacial Fury rank 3″ flask=phial_of_glacial_fury_3 copy=”Phial: Static Empowerment rank 3″ flask=phial_of_static_empowerment_3 copy=”Phial: Elemental Chaos rank 3″ flask=phial_of_elemental_chaos_3 copy=”Phial: Tepid Versatility” flask=phial_of_tepid_versatility_3

Runes

#draconic_augment_rune copy=”Draconic Rune” augmentation=draconic

Weapon Enhancements

copy=”Weapon: DW (crit) Buzzing rank 3″ temporary_enchant=main_hand:buzzing_rune_3/off_hand:buzzing_rune_3 copy=”Weapons: DW (haste) Howling rank 3″ temporary_enchant=main_hand:howling_rune_3/off_hand:howling_rune_3 copy=”Weapons: DW (mastery) Hissing rank 3″ temporary_enchant=main_hand:hissing_rune_3/off_hand:hissing_rune_3 copy=”Weapons: DW (AP) Whetstone rank 3″ temporary_enchant=main_hand:primal_whetstone_3/off_hand:primal_whetstone_3 copy=”Weapon: (crit) Buzzing rank 3 + (haste) Howling rank 3″ temporary_enchant=main_hand:buzzing_rune_3/off_hand:howling_rune_3 copy=”Weapon: (crit) Buzzing rank 3 + (mastery) Hissing rank 3″ temporary_enchant=main_hand:buzzing_rune_3/off_hand:hissing_rune_3 copy=”Weapon: (crit) Buzzing rank 3 + (AP) Whetstone rank 3″ temporary_enchant=main_hand:buzzing_rune_3/off_hand:primal_whetstone_3 copy=”Weapon: (AP) Whetstone rank 3 + (haste) Howling rank 3″ temporary_enchant=main_hand:primal_whetstone_3/off_hand:howling_rune_3 copy=”Weapon: (AP) Whetstone rank 3 + (mastery) Hissing rank 3″ temporary_enchant=main_hand:primal_whetstone_3/off_hand:hissing_rune_3 copy=”Weapon: (haste) Howling rank 3 + (mastery) Hissing rank 3″ temporary_enchant=main_hand:howling_rune_3/off_hand:hissing_rune_3

Races

# Races for Both Factions profileset.”Pandaren”+=”race=pandaren” # Horde Races profileset.”Blood Elf”+=”race=blood_elf” profileset.”Orc”+=”race=orc” profileset.”Tauren”+=”race=tauren” profileset.”Troll”+=”race=troll” profileset.”Undead”+=”race=undead” profileset.”Goblin”+=”race=goblin” profileset.”Highmountain Tauren”+=”race=highmountain_tauren” profileset.”Nightborne”+=”race=nightborne” profileset.”Mag’har Orc”+=”race=maghar_orc” profileset.”Zandalari Troll (Akunda)”+=”race=zandalari_troll” profileset.”Zandalari Troll (Akunda)”+=”zandalari_loa=akunda” profileset.”Zandalari Troll (Bwonsamdi)”+=”race=zandalari_troll” profileset.”Zandalari Troll (Bwonsamdi)”+=”zandalari_loa=bwonsamdi” profileset.”Zandalari Troll (Gonk)”+=”race=zandalari_troll” profileset.”Zandalari Troll (Gonk)”+=”zandalari_loa=gonk” profileset.”Zandalari Troll (Kimbul)”+=”race=zandalari_troll” profileset.”Zandalari Troll (Kimbul)”+=”zandalari_loa=kimbul” profileset.”Zandalari Troll (Kragwa)”+=”race=zandalari_troll” profileset.”Zandalari Troll (Kragwa)”+=”zandalari_loa=kragwa” profileset.”Zandalari Troll (Pa’ku)”+=”race=zandalari_troll” profileset.”Zandalari Troll (Pa’ku)”+=”zandalari_loa=paku” profileset.”Vulpera”+=”race=vulpera” # Alliance Races profileset.”Draenei”+=”race=draenei” profileset.”Dwarf”+=”race=dwarf” profileset.”Gnome”+=”race=gnome” profileset.”Human”+=”race=human” profileset.”Night Elf (Night)”+=”race=night_elf” profileset.”Night Elf (Night)”+=”timeofday=night” profileset.”Night Elf (Day)”+=”race=night_elf” profileset.”Night Elf (Day)”+=”timeofday=day” profileset.”Worgen”+=”race=worgen” profileset.”Void Elf”+=”race=void_elf” profileset.”Lightforged Draenei”+=”race=lightforged_draenei” profileset.”Dark Iron Dwarf”+=”race=dark_iron_dwarf” profileset.”Kul Tiran”+=”race=kul_tiran” profileset.”Mechagnome”+=”race=mechagnome”

Useful links

Simc github Here you can find the coding behind simc and the wiki to help you make advanced adjustments yourself such as a editing the APL. Simc discord If you have any questions for the programmers behind simulationcraft themselves. Raidbots discord If you have any questions or problems with Raidbots.