You can go look at the class mechanics thread discussing it (don't worry, it's a short thread), but the summary is: recount records blocked attacks as "hits" because they are partial hits. It only categorizes whole blocks as "blocks". In all probability, there was never a crit cap change in the first place, but instead, blocks from attacking from the front.
I'm not entirely sure how [Herkuml War Token] is calculated because even on Helter Skelter it is displayed under Constant Buffs instead of Dynamic buffs. Even with a 0.5s swing speed it will take more than 6 seconds to ramp up to 20 stacks. Assuming 100% uptime after the initial ramp up time on a 300s fight, that would still only be 98.3% uptime which is enough below 100% to make [Whispering Fanged Skull] better.
All the sims were done using 10,000 iterations, Simcraft 332.0 and the following profile (with just the trinkets swapped):
I'm not entirely sure how [Whispering Fanged Skull] is calculated because even on Helter Skelter it is displayed under Constant Buffs instead of Dynamic buffs. Even with a 0.5s swing speed it will take more than 6 seconds to ramp up to 20 stacks. Assuming 100% uptime after the initial ramp up time on a 300s fight, that would still only be 98.3% uptime which is enough below 100% to make [Herkuml War Token] better.
With three trinkets of different stats with a damage spread of less than 10 DPS, you can assume they're effectively within the margin of error of the tool. I'd definitely say they're all roughly equal.
With three trinkets of different stats with a damage spread of less than 10 DPS, you can assume they're effectively within the margin of error of the tool. I'd definitely say they're all roughly equal.
You are probably right, but if theoretical dps almost the same, practical influences of the stats do matter:
War Token: More static Haste, more OOC procs, easier CP generation (but limited by RNG), AP buff almost up all time = less RNG = better, imho easier target switch = better, ramp up time = bad if you have "pauses" (e.g. you cannot attack for some time, like trash, or huge gaps between boss phases), very easy to obtain. Good for Swipe.
compared to:
Death's Choice: More Agi SOMETIMES => easier CP generation SOMETIMES, you have to go PdOk to get it, and its only 10% drop chance, e.g. hard to obtain. Good for Swipe.
Skull: Crit => easier CP generation, easy to obtain (ICC 10 Deathwhisper HM), bad for Swipe.
You are probably right, but if theoretical dps almost the same, practical influences of the stats do matter:
War Token: More static Haste, more OOC procs, easier CP generation (but limited by RNG), AP buff almost up all time = less RNG = better, imho easier target switch = better, ramp up time = bad if you have "pauses" (e.g. you cannot attack for some time, like trash, or huge gaps between boss phases), very easy to obtain. Good for Swipe.
compared to:
Death's Choice: More Agi SOMETIMES => easier CP generation SOMETIMES, you have to go PdOk to get it, and its only 10% drop chance, e.g. hard to obtain. Good for Swipe.
Skull: Crit => easier CP generation, easy to obtain (ICC 10 Deathwhisper HM), bad for Swipe.
Did I miss something?
The CP generation should fully be accounted for in the simulator already in the sense that when it's useful to the modeled player, the modeled player takes advantage of it. Also, it's hard to make a case that less individual RNG is better unless you have a specific task you need to carry out that requires a minimum of DPS-- when you have 16 DPSers, the RNG all averages out, for the most part, so occasionally ranking higher on DPS meters might be more rewarding.
How is crit/AP bad for swipe? If any of the trinkets is bad for swipe (without running a sim) it's HWT, because the haste isn't as good as you think it is. You also can't concentrate attacks while a proc is up.
The CP generation should fully be accounted for in the simulator already in the sense that when it's useful to the modeled player, the modeled player takes advantage of it. Also, it's hard to make a case that less individual RNG is better unless you have a specific task you need to carry out that requires a minimum of DPS-- when you have 16 DPSers, the RNG all averages out, for the most part, so occasionally ranking higher on DPS meters might be more rewarding.
How is crit/AP bad for swipe? If any of the trinkets is bad for swipe (without running a sim) it's HWT, because the haste isn't as good as you think it is. You also can't concentrate attacks while a proc is up.
The simulator only simulates single target or a very specific setup (multi target of simulationcraft).
Less RNG is always better if the DPS is about the same. It "guarantees" something. If your dps is about the same if you chose crit OR hit, hit is also better (but its lower most times), imho.
Crit/AP are not bad, but Skull is an AP proc. Question is, is static AP (Death'S Choice) or static CRIT better (Skull) is better for Swipe? Token is FAR better because the AP part is up all the time (after ramp up) and the haste part gives nice OOC procs which you require to Swipe a lot, imho.
I think you're overvaluing the Token. Both versions of the simulation pretty much assumed 100% uptime. In order to even get 99% uptime you'd need something on the order of an 11 minute fight to counter the initial ramp up time not even considering if the buff ever falls off (.5s swing, 1s specials, 20/3s ramp time). Even assuming 99% uptime, which is better than ideal, results in a loss on the order of 20dps, much larger than the calculated difference between the trinkets.
The simulator only simulates single target or a very specific setup (multi target of simulationcraft).
Less RNG is always better if the DPS is about the same. It "guarantees" something. If your dps is about the same if you chose crit OR hit, hit is also better (but its lower most times), imho.
Crit/AP are not bad, but Skull is an AP proc. Question is, is static AP (Death'S Choice) or static CRIT better (Skull) is better for Swipe? Token is FAR better because the AP part is up all the time (after ramp up) and the haste part gives nice OOC procs which you require to Swipe a lot, imho.
First, you can set up a ton of different multi-target simulations if you'd like. You have a lot of flexibility if you know how to edit the text files.
Less RNG is actually only better half of the time. The other half it's worse. Less RNG guarantees a lower maximum at the same time it guarantees a higher minimum. The more RNG-dependent elements you have at the same time, the less it matters. If you have a 25-man raid attacking a single target, RNG will have approximately no effect on raid DPS-- everyone's RNG will "average out" very quickly. This is like rolling 1 die at a time and finding the average. If you roll once, you could get 1 or 6 as much as you'd get a 3 or 4. If you roll 25 times, your average will almost certainly be between 3 and 4 (despite the RNG factor being identical in each roll).
So that's the "RNG averages out faster than you think" part of my discussion. Let's think about it in the context of the carnival game where you swing the hammer and if you hit it hard enough, it rings the bell at the top. Say you got 80% towards the bell, plus or minus a variable due to RNG. If your variable is 20%, you sometimes win the prize. If your variable is 10%, you never ring the bell. Similarly, higher RNG can cause success in a raid when your under the minimum threshold for success, but RNG can sometimes push you over. On the other hand if you swing 110% and your RNG variable is 20%, then sometimes RNG can hold you back. But the majority of fights we see are tuned where player DPS potential is 150% or 200% of what's necessary. The 10% variation wouldn't matter unless you have execution failures, which are as likely to bring you down to 80% as they are to bring you to 120% and suffer from RNG.
You can look back at Vashj-style fights which makes an individual success or failure matter and requires a high minimum DPS, but those fights don't actually exist in WotLK. XT-002 normal mode put some AOE stress on some individual casters, but that was an execution check. I'm trying to think up another minimum-threshold fight, but I can't think of one.
In other words, how often have you looked at DPS to find the cause of a wipe and been able to legitimately say that "DPS RNG was unlucky", instead of "DPS execution failed"? The fights don't require minimum DPS, so at the end of the day it doesn't matter.
Finally, I'd get into how proc mechanics are more often beneficial than build-up procs, but I won't bother. While you're increasing OoC procs, keep in mind that the lion's share of DPS you gain from Haste is white damage. And your white damage is likely to be much lower because all the typical debuffs are less likely to be on your target. I won't argue whether you can count on debuffs being up, other than question an inconsistent philosophy here where you support the RNG of OoC as opposed to more reliable things like crit or an AP/crit proc.
This thread still seemed somewhat active, and being a new Feral Druid I found the information in it quite useful and wanted to work on building an Ovale (and then Faceroller) script to help me learn the rotations.
I see the discussion has moved a little off from the "Best Feral DPS in SimulationCraft" but here's what I came up with anyway.
I got SimCraft up and running and ran the OP's "Best Shred Profile" and made some extremely minor changes (and combined some lines into one).
My settings in SimCraft are:
Patch: 3.3.3
Latency: Low
Iterations: 10000
Length: 300
Fight Style: Patchwerk
Smooth RNG: No
Buffs: All checked
Debuffs: All checked
I ran several others in this thread (including my own druid) and would consistently get higher DPS with this action list. I merged the shred lines, raised the SR remains time, raised tigers fury to 40.. and probably a couple other small things. It's not a huge difference in DPS, only 43.. but it was still an increase and so it served as a building platform for my scripts.
I also see the OP instructions aren't updated to the latest patch in SimCraft either so this helps show that the rotation is still solid in the latest updates.
I'm certainly not an expert like others here.. this was just what I got with playing with SimCraft for a few days.
Does anyone know how to force the simulator to use mangle as "anytime" ability? I can't get it to use mangle any shorter than the debuff's duration. Yes, I know it's probably not comparable to shred, but I'm just curious for curiosity's sake. The amount of time bosses turn around is getting annoying too.
This thread still seemed somewhat active, and being a new Feral Druid I found the information in it quite useful and wanted to work on building an Ovale (and then Faceroller) script to help me learn the rotations.
In the "Visualising the optimal cat rotation ingame" thread there has been some extensive work on writing an Ovale script for feral dps. You can check that thread and see if you find what you are looking for there.
Unfortunately I deleted all my simcraft files but I remember having a line that used potion of speed during bloodlust. I think this should be included as it is a significant dps increase and will be used in most relevant scenarios.
And use TF when you pop this potion and have Heroism. This is best time to use for full it potential (more white hits with +dmg and more OoC proc for yellow with +dmg)
Maybe I'm alone in this, but I get the following with 333
Look here for error messages and simple text-only reporting.
Player Torzak has no weapon equipped at the Main-Hand slot.
No active players in sim!
Player Torzak has no weapon equipped at the Main-Hand slot.
No active players in sim!
Simulation failed!
Edit: To clarify, I do have a Main-Hand weapon equipped when attempting to run 333.
Edit#2: I'm not sure how the simulation program imports exactly your gear and/or stats, but I found something strange:
Equipping and Unequipping [Frostbrood Sapphire Ring] and running 332-4 is only 57 DPS difference between having the ring on and not having any ring on in one slot. 100 agility at a very conservative 1.5DPS per point alone would be worth 150 DPS, nevermind the other stats on the ring. I stumbled upon this in 332-4 which even if bugged by a 'SR costs no energy bug', should still net more than a 57 DPS difference for this ring as it certainly does so for the i251 saurfang's cold-forged band. I stood in awe when my dps dropped by 400 simply by replacing an i251 ring with an i276 one which brought on the 'no ring in one slot' test since it seemed to line up almost perfectly for the total DPS value of the ring that I was expecting.
Edit#3: This will probably help. This is how it shows when I import from the armory:
The main difference is that I moved up the OOC-shred in the priority list(sorry Helistar, that's a 350 dps gain just by itself), and I lowered the remaining rip timers on FB, SR clipping, and the second mangle action towards the end. The rip remaining timer on SR clipping could have been set anywhere between 2 and 4 seconds, it was almost meaningless difference within that range.
These simulations are with no arms warrior or other feral, so the shred profile had to use mangle. I also used 10k iterations to tighten up the averaging. I got 13460 dps with the mangle profile and 13719 with the shred profile. I think I'm going to give it a try once I can get the time to rewrite Furion's move predictor script in Ovale to suit a mangle profile.
I would like to find a way force the simulator to use SR at a certain CP after desyncing it with rip. The models(toskk's and rawr) say using 5 cp SR is better dps than whatever you got at the time.
Just an update on this, I wrote a custom Ovale script to use my mangle simulator profile above. I don't have emperical evidence to compare cleanly to a shred build, but I got 11458 dps(recount) on LK 25. That should at least show it's viable. That was with being val'kyr'd twice. I should have a WoL report up tomorrow if one of my guildmates uploads as usual.
The playstyle was a lot smoother and only rarely did I get problems on shredding during OoC. If anything, I was too fast and pressing mangle during my clearcast procs, so it can use some work. If anyone is interested, I can post my Ovale script in this thread of the other one. It's actually quite simple to translate simcraft code to ovale script once you see it.
I've updated my simcraft profile, got a couple hundred more dps out of it as well. This time I took Furion's profile from the previous page and modified that. The same tuning I used on the mangle profile did NOT provide any benefits for the shred profile, which I thought was a bit weird. Moving OOC shred up to right below the roar/rip desyncing and moving rip below where ooc shred would go was the only improvements I could make to Furion's profile, and that was 20 dps, if that.
I used the same gear and I managed 13685 with the mangle profile and 14043 with the shred(14090 with manglebot). This is tauren too, so no heroic aura. I'm hoping the stark difference between the dps results posted on that same page and mine is the savage roar costing no energy bug in simulation craft. A good sign is that the first shred profile and this shred profile, the difference in dps between both mangle profiles built out of both is a bit below 3%. So it's either right, or I'm doing something fundamentally wrong.
Anyway, some peculiarities I wanted to point out. The logic for the roar/rip desyncing is different for the mangle build than it is for shred, would this be from no shred glyph? Raising the rip min time benefited the mangled build but not shred. Shred glyph again?
One other thing I wanted to mention is that I was able to improve Furion's profile just a bit by changing the rip remains comparators to 1(on both) for the shred filler statement. Moving OOC shred up the priority list to below the roar desync show a bit of dps improvement as well.