I've been working with the C++ simulator a lot in the last two days (and ported it to Java, for my own sake) and I'm really confused as to what the purpose of this is:

If you look at all the sims people have been running for the last few pages, the lowest DPS sample from all 100,000 simulations is always 6600. Why are we hard-coding the minimum simulation to be 6600?

Ok, just to confirm what has been said above on Deft Ametrines vs Deadly Ametrines, I've rerun the "4xT9 + ilvl258 Offset Gear+Mjolnir & softcap" case with Deft Ametrines in all 5 Yellow sockets and the 4 Blue sockets populated with 1 Nightmare Tear and 3 Delicate Scarlet Rubies. The rest (10 red sockets + 3 Prismatic) with JC ArP and epic ArP gems to reach the 740 ArP rating mark. Here's the result:

Aggressive Stats after all the buffs (full stacked raid + Bloodlust used 1 time
in a 5 min fight)
_______________________

Cat (crit% vs. a boss (-4.8% added)): 66.0587%
Bear (crit% vs. a boss (-4.8% added)): 62.0587%
Cat (AP): 12708
Bear (AP): 9028
Agility: 2395
Strengh: 417
Intellect: 377
Spirit: 354
Mana: 7200
Average MP5 In combat: 181, Average MP5 out of combat: 372
Expertise: 20
Hit: 8.50869%
Armor Penetration: 52.8733%
Haste (from equipment): 21.6469%
+weapon damage: 0
Shield value = 2257


Boss base Armor (before penetration and debuff): 10643
Boss modified Armor (after penetration and debuff): 3978.46
Boss Damage Reduction (after debuff and penetration): 20.7093%
Weapon Speed Reduction % (Total without Bloodlust): 33%
Missed % (Total): 0%
Dodged %: 1.37725%
Not normalized attacks parried by the boss: 0%
_____________________________________

DPS: 9950.48 +/- 1.21541, (Min-Max variance: 47.2758%, Lower dps sample: 6600, Upper dps sample: 11304.2) , Cat: 100%, Bear: 0%, TPS: 7064.84

**************************************
CAT

White cat: 3615.52, Yellow cat: 6334.96
White: 36.3351% (SR: 0%)
Mangle: 0%, Avg dmg: -1.#IND, #/cycle: 0), Shred: 31.9873%, Avg dmg: 11440.6, #/cycle: 7.60308), RIP: 17.2323%, Avg dmg: 49432.1, #/cycle: 0.947965)
Rake: 8.49914%, Avg dmg: 12414.1, #/cycle: 1.86173), Ferocious Bite: 5.94616%, Avg dmg: 21559.7, #/cycle: 0.749986, Average Energy Usage: 43)
Savage Roar uptime: 99.166%

**************************************


For the record, the proper DPS value for Deadly Ametrines instead of Deft Ametrines and the rest as described above is 9941.77 DPS points. The "9919.15" value in my previous post is slightly off due to non-optimal use of the gem sockets (i.e. Nightmare in a Yellow socket and use of Purple gems).

I haven't changed any settings for FBN other than hiding panes I wasn't using. It used to work for me, but has been acting up since it was updated for patch 3.2

Disable lag correction, then. You'll need to do this every time you login or reset your UI, as it's not permanent (unless you edit the LUA itself).

I sure hope FBN doesn't get converted to timer bars - I hate them. Icons FTW!

Aye, if you want some timer bars, get classtimer, you can add as many as you like if they aren't already there.

I definitely prefer the icons with the clear numbers over bars--however, I find that I'm missing the little "clock hand" indicating the duration that I had using Debuff Filter. I prefer to have both a visual indicator and a number. I actually caught myself squinting at the little icons on my target frame trying to see the "clock hand." (Debuff filter is otherwise inferior because it doesn't count shreds and doesn't understand that Mangle/Trauma are the same debuff, for example.)

Also, for me, the FbN preference panes don't scroll. All the checkboxes just continue down past the bottom of the preferences window and even down off the screen on tabs that have enough of them.

Edit: coldbear, for tracking other non-feral buffs and debuffs, I have found Debuff Filter extremely useful. It has icons, though, not bars. I still use it to track Faerie Fire (which actually would be a good addition to FbN's icons, as might Infected Wounds).

FBN tracks Hysteria btw. I´m always slapping my DK if Hysteria is missed :p

Sadly, since Tun got banned, he could no longer argue his point about validity of the final DPS numbers and the merits of FB versus not. As far as merits of FB go (which he didn't dispute necessarily), I think at his gear level, he may have been right, to a degree.

After defending the great majority of TC models, it may not be worth it to FB. FbN is a little bit of a rut right now in terms of modifications of cycle and fact-checking: Nightcrowler has been out of the picture for a few months, and he hastily included T9 stats/gear (see the various modifications since). There hasn't been much testing done with cycle modifications since 3.2 came out.

Knowing that SC and FbN have been close in the past (and not at all wanting to sort through FbN code), I've been playing with SC a lot. It's a lot easier to modify than FbN, the math is approximately right (despite a few recent fixes), and the cycle is user-editable. So, I went about editing-- with the default gear set.

After adjusting it to properly energy pool instead of shredding non-stop, every attack cycle I could model, from bites every time SR/Rip were up and I had 5 CP, to no bites at all, landed in a range of about 100 DPS. The maximum DPS I could muster only had a bite 3 times in a 5-minute fight, with fully talented FA; one of those bites happens in the last 10 seconds of the fight. Without FA, any FBs were typically worse than the Rip cycle.

I'm not saying I did a perfect job in modeling the attack cycle (I'm still not 100% convinced in what I've done), and I encourage others to duplicate that work (it's only a text file, to edit, after all.) But it's questions like this that we can't really answer in FbN right now-- I haven't seen anyone but Nightcrowler modify cycles in his code, and he's not around right now. Is it worth trying to execute a perfect FB-based cycle and losing 100 DPS? Is the utility of doing that not worth 50 DPS?

The recent discussion here has also all taken place under the assumption that the cycle variable has been constant. Without FBs, can you achieve the same results simply by focusing on Agility instead? (SC seems to still like the soft-cap, but I haven't messed with the gear there.)

I would suspect that many would go for a Rip only cycle at the cost of a few hundred dps simply because it offers greater stability in the rotation and it cancels out the gamble nature of FB.

This is especially true since going for the hardcap in sims has produced similar results to that of the soft cap + Gemming agility.

However I would question whether it is worth completely ignoring FB as a finisher, I'm sure we have all been in those situations where you get a Clearcast streak and too many combos and too much energy to wait to apply Rip. I wouldn't say ignoring FB is the way to go but if it were to result in a more stable rotation it could be a very viable option.

Is it possible you could post two sims Allev, one of a pure Rip rotation and one with bite factored in?

That's kind of silly. Nothing about our rotation should be static except the first few opening abilities. Throwing FB's as a static addition into our "rotation" is wrong, quite simply because that's an error in play style, not a matter of numbers.