Cataclysm Mage Simulators and Formulators
 

This thread is meant to serve as a spec-agnostic resource for Mage theorycrafting tools. It should be used both for presenting and discussing data generated by these tools that would be of interest regardless of spec, and for discussing potential problems and theorycrafting errors in such tools and providing feedback helpful for improving them.

Bug reports and questions on the usage of these tools should be directed to the websites below.


Simulators and Formulators

Rawr
Method: Formulation
Platforms: Web (requires Silverlight)

SimulationCraft
Method: Simulation
Platforms: Mac, Windows (binary and source distributions), UNIX (source distribution)

Vontre's Magegraf II
Method: Formulation
Platforms: Web

(Please post information on additional Mage-friendly theorycrafting tools if you know of any.)


Results Collections

SimulationCraft output repository


Standardized Gearsets and Profiles

For the sake of testing the tools against each other, it's helpful to run them all with the same stats, specs, etc. We should build a collection of standard sets, probably including BIS blue heroics (for starting T11 content), T11 359 (for starting T11 heroic content), and T11 372 (for starting T12 content).


Standardized Run Options

Should be developed for consistency and comparison.

It looks to me like something is wrong with Critical Mass -- not in SimulationCraft, in the game. I did some testing myself; I stripped down my spec to eliminate any damage-multiplying talents, so the only multipliers that should have been in effect were +25% from the spec bonus and +20% from the mastery bonus.

180 spell power
Living Bomb tick: 604
Pyroblast DOT tick: 319

2838 spell power
Living Bomb tick: 1533
Pyroblast DOT tick: 666

Then I added 3/3 Fire Power, for an extra 3% damage:

180 spell power
Living Bomb tick: 622 (expected: 604 * 1.03 = 622.12)
Pyroblast DOT tick: 329 (expected: 319 * 1.03 = 328.57)

2838 spell power
Living Bomb tick: 1579 (expected: 1533 * 1.03 = 1578.99)
Pyroblast DOT tick: 686 (expected: 666 * 1.03 = 685.98)

Finally, this won't affect Pyro, but I put my last two points into Critical Mass for +10% damage to Living Bomb:

180 spell power
Living Bomb tick: 674 (expected: 622 * 1.1 = 684.2 ?? additive? 604 * 1.13 = 682.52 -- nope)

2838 spell power
Living Bomb tick: 1711 (expected: 1579 * 1.1 = 1736.9)

That's all I had time for, so I didn't get the chance to explore other possible causes.

It looks like the critical mass bonus is additive with mastery.

622 / 1.2 * 1.3 = 673.8
1579 / 1.2 * 1.3 = 1710.6

2 other things

- Is ignite fixed on beta or are folks operating under the assumption that it will be fixed (so as not to have the refresh lockout period) in the first tier of raiding? Both models have considerably higher damage ratios from ignite than what you'd observe on live with similar ratings.

- Both models appear to have significantly higher hotstreak proc rates (almost double) than what you'd observe in game with similar crit rates (although I noticed some "hot streak bug fixes" got added today in simulationcraft. Is there some reason for that?

Repasting a few posts to get the ball rolling. Looking at Simulationcraft: It uses a talent build with 2/2 in Improved Fire Blast, which is unnecessary.

The sim doesn't use Fire Blast in rotation at all, and 35 yard Impact range (with 1 point) is more than sufficient. What improvements could we see, if that 1 point was shuffled over to Arcane Concentration instead? Furthermore, you don't need Pyromaniac for almost all fights. You could easily manage a full 3/3 Arcane Concentration by skipping 2 points from Pyro. How much could picking up 1/3 or 3/3 Arcane Concentration alter the Scorch VS Fireball ratio?

1/3 Arcane Concentration: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
3/3 Arcane Concentration: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

The difference is Pyromaniac: One build has it, the other doesn't. As many beta testers concluded, Pyromaniac can be considered too situational for inclusion in standard lvl 85 talent builds. The fights that see it get compelling use are few and far between. Whether any of the aforementioned makes any meaningful difference to the Scorch VS Fireball weaving ratio, should give a good insight as to how unnecessary / useful Arcane Concentration could be for Fire builds (that aren't explicitly speccing for max, albeit situational AOE power - like the current SimC version).

I'm also interested to know how Combustion is being handled by the sim. Is it making the (unrealistic) assumption that it will always be readily (and easily) used with a Pyro DOT, LB, and a Fireball or Pyroblast Ignite up? I say unrealistic because during heroism, and weakened boss phases, you just can't guarantee these will align on demand. I'm not the best at reading all the output, but I noticed this:

I see Lhivera updated Fire to now include Combustion. It appears Combustion is being used under ideal circumstances. But what can options do players have for when the stars don't align so easily?

1 - Use a weak Combustion immediately (Just Living Bomb will be guaranteed). Can use this exactly on 2 minutes every time.
2 - Wait for a medium Combustion. (Living Bomb and an Ignite) Shouldn't have to wait too long for a single ignite / crit, maybe just 3-5 casts. Whether you wait for a Scorch or Fireball ignite is another factor to be mindful of.
3 - Wait for a strong combustion. (The conditions the sim uses: LB, Pyro dot, Ignite) Doing this will mean you will not be using Combustion every 2 minutes, as the wait time for these conditions to align is substantial - compared to the 2 minute cooldown.

If the sim is modelling Combustion using point (3) - but treating it as though it can be used as easily as point (1) - players will need to be mindful of that when interpreting the results. Things just don't happen so easily that way in practise at level 85.

Edit: How long you can afford to wait for optional Combustion conditions, is also going to depend on Fight length. A 7 minute fight has 4 ideal opportunities to use Combustion (At start, +2 min, +4 min +6 min) , so you have some wiggle room with waiting periods - having a spare minute.

Maybe the 7 minute sim results, which have up to 1 minute of wiggle room for Combustion waiting if three are to be used, will be somewhat more accurate than I thought after all. Question will be whether ~15 seconds (x4) is enough waiting per Combustion to get those optimal conditions to align - yet still have 4 full Combustions used for the fight duration. But for a 6.5 minute encounter for example, this will change as having only ~5-7 seconds max to wait per Combustion (if you still want to use 4 total) is probably not enough to get the optimal stars to align.

I did some testing with the lastest version of simulation craft on the Fire BiS ivi372 profile for a 5 minutes fight. It clearly shows that waiting for the 3 dots provides the best DPS. Here are the results:

Condition to be met		DPS		DPET of combustion		Description
All three DoTs ticking		26569 +/- 40		198k
Ignite and Pyro ticking		26536 +/- 40		197k		Same DPS as above. This expected considering LB uptime is very high.
LB and Pyro ticking		26498 +/- 40		194k		Small drop in DPS, but still within the margin of margin. Will do further testing to reduce the margin.
LB and Ignite ticking		25388 +/- 40		118k		Huge drop in DPS, the additional combustion you might get doesn't offset the loss.
At least one of the 3 DoTs ticking		25044 +/- 40		97k		Since you will always have LB ticking, this condition means that you use combustion on CD and hope for the best. Not good.

So these results mean that you should use Combustion when at least Pyro is ticking (LB is a given anyway). Ignite adds only a small amount of DPS. I will do additionnal simulation on larger samples to reduce the margin of error and will update the post.

Edit: One thing I also noticed is that the sim always managed to fit 3 combustions during the fight, even when the condition was the most restrictive. It means that at least in BiS 372, the 3 DoTs will be ticking together often enough that you can use 3 combustions during a 5 minutes fight.
I will do the same testing with lower gear levels to check if these results remain the same at lower crit rate.

Edit 2: changed the results with new ones with better margin of error. Added the resulting average DPET of combustion.

Which Ignites were you referring to, was it the same one for every condition? (Scorch, Fireball or Pyroblast ignite).

The test is on any Ignite.

And there is no way to improve this without changing the code, because for now you cannot make a condition on the origin of the ignite.

I don't play a mage, but I wanted to comment on this. The simulator is just that, a simulator, iterating through every single step of every one of the 10k simulated encounters and accurately simulating the results of every single action taken by the mage actor. Given the action list entry for combustion quoted in your post, the mage will never cast combustion unless all three dots are up. There's no difference between "in practice" and "in the simulator" when it comes to how often this condition will occur.

Thanks for the catch on the additive bit -- I've passed that along to the main devs.

I'm currently running the sims with the option "aura_delay=0.150" which causes the sim to model both the tick-munching bug and the tick-rolling bug, so it is currently not behaving as if it's been fixed.

There was a fix to Hot Streak yesterday that was causing it to have a chance to trigger on a single Scorch crit. Not currently aware of anything else that's going on, but I'll keep looking.

ETA: Are you looking at Hot Streaks from my output, or are you running the sim yourself? If running it yourself, are you building from the latest source in the repository, or from the release? If you're using last week's release, there are many fixes that have made since that you're not seeing in your results.

A couple more things, gnome racial isn't working in Simcraft (ie. no 5% mana), and removing evocation from the fire action list leads to a dps increase of about 3% either because it's not worth the time or because it's not used properly in terms of priorities.

Most likely just not worth the time. I tried with and without in several different configs, and it was always iffy, easily within the margin of error. Recent fixes have probably settled things down. i'll test it in the full profiles and remove it if it matches what you're seeing.

Yes I run the sim myself. And I built the version I got this morning from the repository (the cataclysm branche).

I did some further testing with a fight length of 250 seconds. It means that only in case 5 (no condition on combustion so combustion is used on cooldown) the sim manages to use combustion 3 times consistently. With the more restrictive conditions (for example case 1 where all 3 DoTs need to be active for combustion to be cast) the sim only uses combustion twice during the fight. Well even in this case 2 strong combustions are better than 3 weakers ones.

It's easy to see if you compare the DPET: 2*198k > 3*97k

So I think for BiS ilvl372 gear, the question is settled. Combustion should be used when the 3 DoTs are active, or at least LB and Pyro Dots.

Now I need to do some testing on ilvl 346 blue gear to see if the ranking changes.

The gnome racial has now been added although it was too late to make the 403-4 release. Look for it in the 403-5 release in a couple of days time.

Actually it seems more to be a case of actions, using this:
Seems to yield a dps increase over not using Evocation. Although it is quite small.

EDIT: adding 3 points in Arcane Concentration is worth about 2% dps increase, these changes actually allow you to cast a healthier ratio of fireballs/scorches and for some reason shift the value of mastery above haste although it doesn't yet include a fix for mastery+critical mass interaction which would probably lower mastery value slightly.

A couple more things regarding Master of Elements and Arcane Concentration;
1. simcraft doesn't proc MoE for Living Bomb explosions it costs 718 mana @80 and refunds 265 mana (not sure why, should be 215 but 265 it is) on explosion crit.
2. Improved Scorch scorches do infact proc MoE (not sure if that's intended or not, but they do)
3. Any clear casted spell still procs MoE despite not costing anything
4. Pyroblast! doesn't grant any mana from MoE ever, which is logical given it doesn't cost any mana and they baked a special spell for HS.

Basically this part in trigger_master_of_elements:
makes sure you don't get any feedback if the spell didn't cost anything.