[Mage] Rawr Spec Shootout - Page 2

Pintofbrew · 06/11/08, 10:24 AM

It's extremely hard to make a consistent set of limitations; Having too-short time-frame imballances the encounter in favor of mana-intensive builds, provided they don't need to use mana-generation tools. Then, making the time-frame too long makes the same builds "step-up" whenever they gain another Evo CD.For time/fight conditions I think the default Rawr ones are perfectly fine as an indication

As for buffs, perhaps it's best if you try and make a series of comparisons, like "leagues".

How about one series with every buff expectable in an absolutely optimized raid; an Elemental Shaman and a SP, with a Retadin in the raid, Mal-CoS, CoE, JoW and Misery, every buff including I-Div. Spi (you may or may not include an Innervate too). Then moderate to an intermediate scenario, drop the retadin and the subsequent judgements, drop Div Spi and drop the E-shaman for an R-shaman. With a last "low" scenario, further dropping the shaman entirely, losing one of three blessings (BoK, naturally) and dropping CoE too. That should cover most realistic scenaria.

Kavan · 06/11/08, 10:46 AM

Originally Posted by Ranec

I have recently become rather suspicious of Rawr. Based on the results you found through an exhaustive search of viable specs for mages, I don't know that Rawr is correctly modeling certain aspects of the mage class correctly. I became convinced of this last night, when a tier 4 mage using pure arcane blast was #1 raid dps during trash, beating a tier 6 rogue (normally #1 dps) wielding the Illidan offhand. Granted, the mage had a shaman popping heroism and drums, and a shadow priest restoring mana. However, the rogue also had two shamans popping totems. Based on the above Rawr results, this should not have happened, but it was a legitimate occurrence (no random disconnects, etc). Of course, this was only during trash, arcane blast didn't seem to be as viable during long boss fights due to mana problems.

The above results are for boss fights, so comparing them to trash is really not relevant. And taking into account that the above results use 0 base stats it's really not surprising that it undervalues arcane. It's not a problem with Rawr, it's a user input problem.

Originally Posted by Ranec

Also, I examined the source code to Rawr. Results are built using a rather long list of shot rotations that the author developed, probably borrowing from personal experience as well as the existing knowledge base. However, I was able to identify a few obvious rotations that were not present (or I at least didn't see). Hopefully the author will recognize the advantage of building an algorithm that seeks out the most efficient shot rotations, perhaps using a genetic algorithm. Given the plethora of available talents, it would be difficult to enumerate all possible shot rotations manually, and Rawr isn't there yet.

In summary, take what you get from Rawr with a grain of salt. It is extremely difficult to do what Rawr is trying to do, and it needs some additional work to get there.

There is some truth to this, although you don't seem to see the big picture. The authored cycles are only the building blocks of the optimization scheme. They are used as input to a linear programming representation of the problem. The requirements of Rawr require that evaluating the value of a single gear set is fast, so using genetic algorithms to generate cycles is not really feasible. This would only make sense as an offline process to increase the pool of authored cycles.

There is one very important issue though that makes me think this is not a good idea. For cycles to be used in LP they have to be independent or self-reliant in a sense, this is especially hard to enforce for dynamic cycles. I've done quite a bit of genetic programming and I don't see this as a particularly useful application. I think using theorycrafted cycles is more appropriate. Although if someone comes up with an algorithm that generates cycles it's fairly straightforward to include them in. For that matter if you think you have a cycle that is missing all you have to do is ask for it to be added. Unless it is some very complex dynamic cycle I might code it up myself.

manly · 06/11/08, 11:04 AM

Originally Posted by Ranec

I have recently become rather suspicious of Rawr. Based on the results you found through an exhaustive search of viable specs for mages, I don't know that Rawr is correctly modeling certain aspects of the mage class correctly. I became convinced of this last night, when a tier 4 mage using pure arcane blast was #1 raid dps during trash, beating a tier 6 rogue (normally #1 dps) wielding the Illidan offhand. Granted, the mage had a shaman popping heroism and drums, and a shadow priest restoring mana. However, the rogue also had two shamans popping totems. Based on the above Rawr results, this should not have happened, but it was a legitimate occurrence (no random disconnects, etc). Of course, this was only during trash, arcane blast didn't seem to be as viable during long boss fights due to mana problems.

Common problem. One cannot evaluate and compare 2 parses where player skills are not different. If anything, you can see a huge discrepancy across players on trash, some of it being playstyle-based and/or skills.

MyrddinE · 06/11/08, 6:25 PM

Also note that unlike some people, i'm not looking to find the theoretical maximum DPS possible for a mage. Which gear is the absolute best isn't really a priority for me. Instead, I'm looking to compare one spec to another. So while the buffs are significant in overall DPS, they are less so when comparing spec to spec.

Not to say it's completely insignificant either. But 150ish +spell damage for a fire mage becomes 170ish spell damage... and 20 spell damage extra is not going to make or break the fire spec, nor will it radically throw off comparisons between one spec and another.

At some point you have to have a cutoff between what is reasonable to model and what isn't. I ran the optimizer with all the global buffs, and one party buff (Heroism), as a reasonable approximation of what a 25 man raid will be able to put on a mage. Some mages will get more... crit from a Boomkin, totems, whatever. But few mages can rely on a specific group buff like they can rely on getting, for example, Blessing of Wisdom. Now, perhaps unrealistically, I also gave out Blessing of Kings. In my raids, I rarely had to suffer with fewer than 3 pallies, so Kings is a reasonable expectation for my TC (some other raids may not have that luxury). Kings is notable in that it helps Arcane spec more than any other. Another buff I gave out is Improved Spirit... something that our priests will re-spec to ensure is available to the raid, but perhaps other groups don't always get.

The point is that there are too many variables... to many 'what ifs' when comparing DPS. So I went with what I felt to be the closest approximation of what a typical raider can rely on when running the Optimizer to choose equipment. It's easy to just add a few buffs to a set of gear and see what the new result is... it's SLOW to re-run the optimizer for every single variation on buffs, and I think the accuracy for comparison is fine just using global buffs and Heroism.

If you want to expand upon my work and run results with different buffs, feel free! That's why I zipped up all that and put it out for others to use. I'm not trying to keep this to myself... if you feel a different set of buffs would produce notable differences in which spec comes out on top, then by all means do the work and publish the results!

For now, I'm gonna go back to recompiling the work properly, using a working race.