Best Possible Feral DPS in SimulationCraft

Mihir · 11/13/09, 5:39 AM

Inspired by the hunter best DPS thread, Best Possible DPS in Shandaras WotLK Spreadsheet

Since Nightcrowler is still MIA, and FbN therefore isn't likely to be updated to 3.3 anytime soon, SimulationCraft probably has taken over as being the premier feral DPS simulator. The aim of this thread is to find out which combination of gear/talents/rotations etc. yields the highest theoretical DPS in the latest version of SimulationCraft. In order to keep the results comparable it´s required to agree on one set of frame conditions. I will try to set those initially to something I deem realistic for an - reasonably min-maxing - 25 ppl progress raid (which essentially means you get every buff available). I am open for suggestions though.

Relevant Options

Patch	3.3.0
Latency	Low
Iterations	10000
Length (sec)	300
Fight Style	Patchwerk
Smooth RNG	No
Buffs	All checked
Debuffs	All checked

Values to optimize:

Glyphs

Professions

Gear

Talents

Buff consumables

Attack priority list

I will try to keep track of what currently is the best profile for both mangle and non-mangle situations according to the posts in this thread and post the numbers here if I can validate them with my own version of SimulationCraft.

SimulationCraft Version used: 322-5

Best Shred Profile:
RapidShare: 1-CLICK Web hosting - Easy Filehosting

DPS: 13907

Profiler - Wowhead

The actions list:

#!./simc 

druid=T10BiS
level=80
race=tauren
talents=http://www.wowarmory.com/talent-calc.xml?cid=11&tal=0000000000000000000000000000533202132322010053100030313511203503012000000000000000000
glyphs=shred/rip/savage_roar
actions=flask,type=endless_rage
actions+=/food,type=hearty_rhino
actions+=/cat_form
actions+=/auto_attack
actions+=/snapshot_stats
actions+=/maim
actions+=/faerie_fire_feral,debuff_only=1
actions+=/tigers_fury,energy<=30,berserk=0
actions+=/berserk_cat,energy>=80,energy<=90
actions+=/savage_roar,cp>=1,savage_roar<=1
actions+=/savage_roar,if=buff.combo_points.stack>=3&dot.rip.remains-buff.savage_roar.remains>=0&buff.savage_roar.remains<=8
actions+=/savage_roar,if=buff.combo_points.stack>=3&buff.savage_roar.remains-dot.rip.remains<=3&buff.savage_roar.remains<=8
actions+=/shred,extend_rip=1,rip<=4
actions+=/rip,cp>=5,time_to_die>=6
actions+=/ferocious_bite,cp>=5,time_to_die<=6
actions+=/ferocious_bite,cp>=5,rip>=8,savage_roar>=11
actions+=/mangle_cat,mangle<=1
actions+=/rake,time_to_die>=9
actions+=/shred,energy>=80
actions+=/shred,omen_of_clarity=1
actions+=/shred,cp<=4,rip<=3
actions+=/shred,time_to_die<=9
actions+=/shred,berserk=1
actions+=/shred,if=cooldown.tigers_fury.remains<=3
actions+=/shred,cp<=0,savage_roar<=2
head=sanctified_lasherweave_headguard,stats=564armor_196ap_114crit_106arpen_183agi_183sta,gems=relentless_earthsiege_20arpen_8agi,enchant=50ap_20crit
neck=sindragosas_cruel_claw,stats=120ap_60haste_68arpen_102agi_102sta,gems=20hit
shoulders=sanctified_lasherweave_shoulderpads,stats=521armor_165ap_90crit_82arpen_136agi_136sta,gems=20arpen_4agi,enchant=40ap_15crit
chest=sanctified_lasherweave_raiment,stats=694armor_212ap_122crit_106arpen_183agi_183sta,gems=20arpen_20hit_6agi,enchant=10str_10agi_10sta_10int_10spi
waist=astrylians_sutured_cinch,stats=391armor_181ap_90crit_74arpen_120agi_136sta,gems=34arpen_34arpen_34arpen
legs=sanctified_lasherweave_legguards,stats=608armor_212ap_106exp_122arpen_183agi_183sta,gems=20arpen_20hit_6agi,enchant=75ap_22crit
feet=frostbitten_fur_boots,stats=477armor_181ap_90crit_74arpen_120agi_136sta,gems=20hit_20hit,enchant=12crit_12hit
wrists=toskks_maximized_wristguards,stats=304armor_120ap_60crit_68arpen_102agi_102sta,gems=10hit_10exp_4agi,enchant=50ap
hands=aldrianas_gloves_of_secrecy,stats=434armor_165ap_74haste_90arpen_128agi_136sta,gems=20hit_20arpen,enchant=20hit
finger1=frostbrood_sapphire_ring,stats=120ap_60crit_68arpen_102agi_102sta,gems=20arpen,enchant=40ap
finger2=band_of_the_bone_colossus,stats=120ap_62hit_65haste_102agi_102sta,gems=10hit_10exp,enchant=40ap
trinket1=deathbringers_will,stats=167arpen
trinket2=herkuml_war_token,stats=153haste,equip=onattackhit_17ap_20stack_10dur
back=sylvanas_cunning,stats=182armor_114ap_65crit_57arpen_97agi_97sta,gems=20arpen_8ap,enchant=23haste
main_hand=distant_land,stats=244ap_122crit_122haste_159agi_147sta,gems=20arpen_10str_10agi_10sta_10int_10spi_20hit,enchant=berserking,weapon=staff_2.40speed_625min_938max
ranged=idol_of_mutilation
# Gear Summary
# gear_strength=20
# gear_agility=1786
# gear_stamina=1765
# gear_intellect=20
# gear_spirit=20
# gear_attack_power=2453
# gear_expertise_rating=126
# gear_armor_penetration_rating=1344
# gear_hit_rating=254
# gear_crit_rating=882
# gear_haste_rating=497
# gear_armor=4175
# meta_gem=relentless_earthsiege
# tier10_2pc_melee=1
# tier10_4pc_melee=1
# trinket1=deathbringers_will
# main_hand=distant_land,weapon=staff_2.40speed_625min_938max,enchant=berserking

Best Manglebot Profile: (uncheck the bleed damage debuff and make sure the profile has the mangle talent)
RapidShare: 1-CLICK Web hosting - Easy Filehosting

DPS: 10148.7

Profiler - Wowhead

The actions list:

actions=flask,type=endless_rage
actions+=/food,type=hearty_rhino
actions+=/cat_form
actions+=/auto_attack
actions+=/snapshot_stats
actions+=/maim
actions+=/faerie_fire_feral,debuff_only=1
actions+=/tigers_fury,energy<=40,berserk=0
actions+=/berserk_cat,energy>=70,energy<=90
actions+=/savage_roar,cp>=1,savage_roar<=1
actions+=/savage_roar,cp>=5,savage_roar<=6,rip>=6
actions+=/shred,extend_rip=1,rip<=4
actions+=/rip,cp>=5,time_to_die>=7
actions+=/ferocious_bite,cp>=5,time_to_die<=7
actions+=/ferocious_bite,cp>=5,rip>=10
actions+=/mangle_cat,mangle<=1
actions+=/rake,time_to_die>=9
actions+=/shred,energy>=70
actions+=/shred,omen_of_clarity=1
actions+=/shred,cp<=4,rip<=3
actions+=/shred,time_to_die<=9
actions+=/shred,berserk=1

Method of reporting better profiles:
If you've found a profile that yields more DPS than any of the above you can report it in any of the following ways
a) Give a full description of anything that´s not a fixed value as per this post (glyphs, gear, talents, used buff consumables, action priorities, etc.).
b) Download the profile linked above and explain precisely what you changed
c) Download the profile, make the changes, upload it somewhere and give me the link to it
If the changes ain't submitted in any of those ways or if important parts are omitted I can't and won't include it here.

Allev · 11/13/09, 10:38 AM

Thanks for starting this up.

We'll want to switch to 322-5 whenever it's released, as a bug fix for weapon enchant procs is up right now.

I changed my profile to the latest one I'd posted in the feral action tweaks topic here.

This action list nets an increase of ~60 DPS:

actions=flask,type=endless_rage
actions+=/food,type=hearty_rhino
actions+=/cat_form
actions+=/auto_attack
actions+=/snapshot_stats
actions+=/maim
actions+=/faerie_fire_feral,debuff_only=1
actions+=/tigers_fury,energy<=40,berserk=0
actions+=/berserk_cat,energy>=70,energy<=90
actions+=/savage_roar,cp>=1,savage_roar<=1
actions+=/savage_roar,cp>=5,savage_roar<=6,rip>=6
actions+=/mangle_cat,mangle<=1
actions+=/shred,extend_rip=1,rip<=4
actions+=/rip,cp>=5,time_to_die>=6
actions+=/ferocious_bite,cp>=5,time_to_die<=6
actions+=/ferocious_bite,cp>=5,rip>=10
actions+=/rake,time_to_die>=9
actions+=/shred,energy>=70
actions+=/shred,omen_of_clarity=1
actions+=/shred,cp<=4,rip<=3
actions+=/shred,time_to_die<=9
actions+=/shred,berserk=1

It's not a direct derivative of yours, although it follows most of the same premises. The big DPS increase, I think, is the berserk changes: berserking based on energy instead of TF (for those times when Berserk comes off cooldown in the middle of TF) adds a little. I don't think the sim has properly implemented NOT using TF during a berserk (I don't think it has an effect, but triggers the cooldown); and I try to shred at greater than 70 energy. The attack priority changes don't matter much, I don't think.

The most evident place I can see these changes are in the time at energy cap. Your profile lands in the 2.5% range, while mine ends up being at 0.8%. 1.7% more energy leads to a nice DPS increase. Collisions between energy pooling and OoC procs simply happen too often to pool so much. Also, it triggers Tiger's Fury more frequently-- you don't trigger it from just a shred when you're pooling to 90. Mine used TF 9 times a fight, yours averaged 8.4.

Thessaly · 11/13/09, 11:15 AM

Is there any way in simcraft to work trinket procs? When the fight is of a fixed length due to enrage timers or typical kill speed, you get a specific number of berserks. I'm wondering how much of an increase lining up berserk and trinket procs is.

ramenchef · 11/13/09, 12:06 PM

Allev, just a few questions about your profile. Why is there a maim at the top? I also see a bit of an issue. With your profile, it is possible, either with many, many lucky OOC procs or a good berserk, to have SR at 10+ seconds and you put up a fresh rip and fully extend it 3 times with shred. With your profile, rip doesn't check against itself, resulting in rip clipping itself in very specific circumstances, unless I'm missing something, which I could very well be.

dedmonwakeen · 11/13/09, 1:09 PM

Originally Posted by Thessaly

Is there any way in simcraft to work trinket procs? When the fight is of a fixed length due to enrage timers or typical kill speed, you get a specific number of berserks. I'm wondering how much of an increase lining up berserk and trinket procs is.

Not at the moment, but I'm in the process of over-hauling our action conditional setup. When I'm done (which should be soon) you will be able to access information about any buff, cooldown, or dot. You will also be able to combine them in arbitrary expressions.

Currently, action lists are a simple PLA: Each shred action line is an "OR" and the conditionals on each line represent an "AND".

When I'm done you will be able to:

....
actions+=/shred,if=(buff.omen_of_clarity|energy>70|(dot.rip.remains<3&cps<5)|buff.berserk)

You will also be able to access talents and glyphs in the conditionals.

Originally Posted by ramenchef

Allev, just a few questions about your profile. Why is there a maim at the top?

maim will only ever be "ready" if the boss is in the middle of casting a spell. We put maim (and other interrupts) at a very high priority so that we can model interrupt responsibility.

Mihir · 11/13/09, 1:21 PM

Originally Posted by ramenchef

Allev, just a few questions about your profile. Why is there a maim at the top? I also see a bit of an issue. With your profile, it is possible, either with many, many lucky OOC procs or a good berserk, to have SR at 10+ seconds and you put up a fresh rip and fully extend it 3 times with shred. With your profile, rip doesn't check against itself, resulting in rip clipping itself in very specific circumstances, unless I'm missing something, which I could very well be.

As far as I know debuffing abilities never clip unless they specifically include themselves in their conditionals. Otherwise you would never get to shred, as rake doesn't check against itself either.

Allev: Interestingly enough, while your actionsequence is a dps increase with only shredding, when you include mangle my actionlist ends up higher. I narrowed it down to the priority of mangle; moving mangle below ferocious bite is a 34 dps increase. Also increasing the time-to-die switch from rip to FB to 7 seconds is a 4 dps increase.
So that would be

actions=flask,type=endless_rage
actions+=/food,type=hearty_rhino
actions+=/cat_form
actions+=/auto_attack
actions+=/snapshot_stats
actions+=/maim
actions+=/faerie_fire_feral,debuff_only=1
actions+=/tigers_fury,energy<=40,berserk=0
actions+=/berserk_cat,energy>=70,energy<=90
actions+=/savage_roar,cp>=1,savage_roar<=1
actions+=/savage_roar,cp>=5,savage_roar<=6,rip>=6
actions+=/shred,extend_rip=1,rip<=4
actions+=/rip,cp>=5,time_to_die>=7
actions+=/ferocious_bite,cp>=5,time_to_die<=7
actions+=/ferocious_bite,cp>=5,rip>=10
actions+=/mangle_cat,mangle<=1
actions+=/rake,time_to_die>=9
actions+=/shred,energy>=70
actions+=/shred,omen_of_clarity=1
actions+=/shred,cp<=4,rip<=3
actions+=/shred,time_to_die<=9
actions+=/shred,berserk=1

ramenchef · 11/13/09, 1:29 PM

Ahh ok, I forgot about that feature.

Allev · 11/13/09, 2:35 PM

Originally Posted by Mihir

As far as I know debuffing abilities never clip unless they specifically include themselves in their conditionals. Otherwise you would never get to shred, as rake doesn't check against itself either.

Allev: Interestingly enough, while your actionsequence is a dps increase with only shredding, when you include mangle my actionlist ends up higher. I narrowed it down to the priority of mangle; moving mangle below ferocious bite is a 34 dps increase. Also increasing the time-to-die switch from rip to FB to 7 seconds is a 4 dps increase.

That makes sense, as the energy-cap issue will be less of an issue when you need to maintain mangle debuffs-- you'll get "under" the TF threshold more easily. As the FB doesn't take advantage of the mangle, I can see it being a personal DPS gain (although I'd be interested in seeing if it was a raid DPS gain).

I didn't test the mangling because I'm encountering a bug I'm trying to understand how to replicate before I post about it-- essentially, I can't get a mangle profile to mangle, even with a manual override. I might just need to restart Simqt though.

Mihir · 11/13/09, 3:04 PM

make sure the profile you selected has the mangle talent, i had that as well earlier

(the non-mangle profile doesnt have the talent)

Allev · 11/13/09, 3:44 PM

That would definitely do it... I would never build a spec without Mangle unless I had two cat specs (and even then probably not in case the mangle-bot died), but it's good to know it's a user-end issue instead of an SC issue. Could you put a link to the mangle profile in the first post as well (or a zip with both) since one isn't a direct copy from the other?

We might even find distinctly different strategies-- for instance, pooling energy differently.

Mihir · 11/13/09, 4:46 PM

Added and updated.

Ironhyde · 11/13/09, 4:49 PM

Will this be just something to determine best gear, gem, and rotation? or will there be a mod as well, like fbn, to help with rotation in-game?

Allev · 11/13/09, 6:12 PM

No mod, unless it's on the long-term SC development plan. And that would require a massive rewrite in LUA, so I"m not sure anyone is looking at implementing it.

Although, it would be a nice way of verifying the attack sequences a little bit.

Mihir · 11/13/09, 7:30 PM

I haven't looked at it in detail, but it might be possible to convert the action lists from simcraft to ovale scripts. See Ovale - Documentation - WoW AddOns - CurseForge.com

coldbear · 11/13/09, 8:51 PM

Originally Posted by Mihir

I haven't looked at it in detail, but it might be possible to convert the action lists from simcraft to ovale scripts. See Ovale - Documentation - WoW AddOns - CurseForge.com

Ovale already has a feral script, but I'd love to see the differences between it and your proposed SimCraft action lists.

Mielikinna · 11/13/09, 10:13 PM

I find it interesting that the profile has 2 expertise gems, I assume that was chosen by the simulator?

Mihir · 11/14/09, 8:23 AM

Originally Posted by Mielikinna

I find it interesting that the profile has 2 expertise gems, I assume that was chosen by the simulator?

Replacing them with agi or arpen is a dps loss, so after reaching the arpen soft cap, it's worth it to get close to the expertise cap before starting to gem agi.

Replacing the expertise gems with agi gems results in a 9 dps loss, replacing them with arpen is a 12 dps loss.

ramenchef · 11/14/09, 3:39 PM

Does anyone know if SimCraft takes into account the 4.8% white crit to hit suppression? Basically, 4.8% of white hits are guaranteed to hit and not crit no matter what your crit rate is.

Allev · 11/14/09, 5:27 PM

I've opened an issue on the site exploring this... The crit cap is currently expressing itself as 76% and not 71.2%.

It hasn't exactly been narrowed to 4.8% (as opposed to 5%), so we don't really know if Blizzard hard-coded a 5% hit chance always, or whether it's a result of the crit suppression.

I'm going to go auto-attack a dummy for awhile and figure this out, but it's something that needs to be added.

Even without that though, you still start reaching into white-crit-cap territory during a Death's Verdict proc, nullifying the value of additional crit for 30+% of your damage (and you get all that value back by gemming expertise).

ramenchef · 11/14/09, 5:42 PM

I already did some testing, and I'm almost positive it's 4.8%. I went in with 0 hit/expertise/56% crit and did 5k white swings and ended up with everything within 0.2% of their expected values including 4.9% white hits.

• Melthu · 11/14/09, 7:26 PM

Originally Posted by ramenchef

I also did some testing with the yellow specials crit depression. I went in with 51.2% crit, 0 hit, expertise, and built CPs with rake and did FBs. I managed to get a noncrit pretty early on. I'll go and test with over 51.3% crit later on.

Rend and Tear was nerfed to 25% a while ago, you'll need way more crit if you want to (theoretically) remove hits from FB's hit table.

ramenchef · 11/14/09, 8:49 PM

You know what? I completely forgot yellows are on a 2 roll table, I was doing tests on white hits all day long and completely forgot about the 2 roll table when I thought it would be a good idea to test the yellow attack crit depression as well.

chetal · 11/15/09, 3:38 PM

Originally Posted by coldbear

Ovale already has a feral script, but I'd love to see the differences between it and your proposed SimCraft action lists.

I decided to check out Ovale to see its suggestions and it is very flawed at the moment.

For example it does not have ferocious bite implemented at all. It also neglects to keep mangle up at times when it has 5 CP and it is waiting for a rip to finish. Even if the rip will not be finished within 12 seconds and your energy bar is full (where even shredding to keep from wasting energy would be a better use of energy).

With this said I think it would be great if we could implement a SimCraft list into Ovale with the seeming loss of FBN.
Editing of FBN would probably be the better route however since the addon has already had so much work put into it.

Elentor · 11/15/09, 3:50 PM

Originally Posted by chetal

I decided to check out Ovale to see its suggestions and it is very flawed at the moment.

For example it does not have ferocious bite implemented at all. It also neglects to keep mangle up at times when it has 5 CP and it is waiting for a rip to finish. Even if the rip will not be finished within 12 seconds and your energy bar is full (where even shredding to keep from wasting energy would be a better use of energy).

With this said I think it would be great if we could implement a SimCraft list into Ovale with the seeming loss of FBN.

Ovale has FBN in its code:

if ComboPoints(more 4) and BuffPresent(SAVAGEROAR 8) and TargetDebuffPresent(RIP 8 mine=1)
Spell(FEROCIOUSBITE)

Might not be working at all though, I'll have to take a look in-game. But yeah, implementing the SimCraft list in Ovale would be sweet.

dedmonwakeen · 11/15/09, 10:22 PM

Originally Posted by Allev

I've opened an issue on the site exploring this... The crit cap is currently expressing itself as 76% and not 71.2%.

It hasn't exactly been narrowed to 4.8% (as opposed to 5%), so we don't really know if Blizzard hard-coded a 5% hit chance always, or whether it's a result of the crit suppression.

I'm going to go auto-attack a dummy for awhile and figure this out, but it's something that needs to be added.

Even without that though, you still start reaching into white-crit-cap territory during a Death's Verdict proc, nullifying the value of additional crit for 30+% of your damage (and you get all that value back by gemming expertise).

As more details come to light we'll update the code ASAP. For now, I've changed the attack-table for white attacks such that the last 5% is ALWAYS a hit.