Originally Posted by Enthorn

As Astrylian said, I'm really not sure how you think I arrived at the 'optimal' sets that I listed. I assure you, I've used the optimizer in every build of Rawr. It's an incredibly useful and powerful tool. I mean, if you want to hand sort through all the items and gems to arrive at the same numbers that it is getting, then I guess that's your choice, but if your argument is that the optimizer isn't properly showing you upgrades, then you'd be quite mistaken.

From what I've gathered, when you switch out an item, or enable a buff, or change anything, Rawr is computing your DPS based on your settings (and whether you have things like Sequence Reconstruction turned on to show you how it's getting those numbers). Optimizer is undoubtedly doing the same thing, but it's looking at unfathomably more combinations due to the number of variables possible, number of sockets, number of items selected per slot, and so forth.

While you can say, "This item has a lot of hit on it, and I don't need 40 hit, I only need 30 hit, so I'll switch out this item and switch in this other item," it's a limited perspective. You could look at Dying Curse and say it's great because hit rating is valued high, it has a ton of hit on it, so you say to yourself, if I can get a lot of hit from one item, I can free up two other slots, and yes, making that switch yourself could show you a higher DPS, but what the Optimizer is doing is saying, "One of those items you'll keep, the other you won't, then you use this gem, and replace Dying Curse with this other trinket, and it's an even better combination."

The only thing I can really think of concerning the optimizer tool is that in older builds (pre-2.1.6) it wasn't always working the greatest with gemmings, but the new gemming template is amazing and it works quite well now. I'm very impressed with how far Rawr has come, and of course, very appreciative (and vocal about it).