That's not exact (and it's a classical error I've seen on many forums).
Yes, the value of hit (in absolute dps, not in relative value to your actual dps) is linear. Note that the same also holds for spellpower, int, crit, haste and mastery...
However, what one should not forget is that the (absolute) value of one stat depends on your gear, and more specifically on the amount of each other stat you have. In almost (if not all) cases, the value of one stats increases when one increase the crit / hit chances, or mastery / haste percentages. This means that changing your hit amount will change the value of haste / crit / mastery / int / spellpower, and that one needs to balance (in a good way) your stats.

In the limit, you can see this effect if you could decrease your hit chance to 0%. In absolute dps, each percentage removed removes the same amount. But obviously, at 1% dps, you prefer to loose the same amount of haste / crit / mastery ratings than your last percentage of hit probability.

Our modeling of the Heart of Ignacious trinket isn't exactly great at present. We just assume it's auto-used when it has 5 stacks and is off its own cooldown. So, no, we're not modeling the shared lockout in this case. We do model it for other On Use items. For example when I simmed your character but replaced the Theralion's Mirror with the Shard of Woe it correctly would only cast Shard of Woe once Synapse Springs had finished.

Spirit scale factors are known to be broken in 406-1. An actual simulation uses spirit fine however the way we compared two sims, one a baseline and one with a delta stat was broken when the delta stat took the stat in question below 0. This has been fixed in SVN and will make it into 406-2.

Your character has 287 Crit Rating and 1036 Mastery Rating. All of these stats are somewhat orthogonal. i.e. If you stack one stat and the expense of another their relative scale factors will change to favour the one that has been reduced. Yes, our Mastery scaling was improved by an on-paper amount of 16% however Empowered Shadows and Shadow Orbs stack additively with some other buffs like Evangelism, Dark Archangel, Glyph of Mind Flay and Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain so the increase would be less than you might expect.

As for Haste, this took me a little while to work out but I've worked out what the issue is.
Devouring Plague gains an extra tick at levels of Haste above that of the Priest_Shadow_T11_372.simc profile but below that of your gearset. There appear to be no more gains of number of ticks of our DoTs for a while after meaning that Haste scales in a far more linear fashion after that point but also means as its not suddenly gaining a tick it is scaling for less than before.

I haven't worked out the exact breakpoint yet but it certainly exists. Basically however once you're at your level of haste, until you can gain enough haste to reach another breakpoint, yes, other stats might indeed scale better than Haste for you.

*edit*: To explain the DP breakpoint a little better, there are actual 2 breakpoints at play there.
The first is when it gains an extra tick. The pushes the time between DP casts out meaning you have more time to cast other spells which leads to an increase in DPS.
The second relates to the "bug" that Improved Devouring Plague doesn't actually base its damage off the number of ticks of Devouring Plague you actually have. Instead it has a different mechanic for working out the number of ticks it bases it damage off. So, it suddenly starts doing 30% of an extra ticks worth of damage at a different level of Haste from when the DoT gains an extra tick, leading to another sudden increase in DPS.

At some point I imagine someone will generate scale factors for given ranges of Haste Rating (as it is the stat that tends to be the most non-linear in nature).

Thanks for the explaination.
I have an other problem with your priority list.
The simC seems to open with : " CDAFJLLHLKL ", in practice, the good rotation should be :

1 - Volcano potion - Berserk - VT - SWP - DP - MF untill orb - MB - MF untill 5 stack of Evangelism - Archangel -
or mine :
2 - Volcano potion - VT - SWP - DP - MF untill orb - MB - MF untill 5 stack of Evangelism - Berserk -Archangel -

We always open with a free cast ( VT ).

What do you think about it ?

2nd question : How Simc can simulate shadow Orb proc, and so the empowered shadow efficacity ? ( and consequently the mastery scale )

3rd question : Do you know what is the level of haste to gain a new tick of VT, DP at the level 85 ?


( and there is an other pb with the offhand and the import from armory :

off_hand=book_of_binding_will,heroic=1,ilevel=372,quality=epic,stats=143haste_143hit_ 215int_322sta,reforge=hit_spi,enchant=100int 100 intel instead of 40 intel )

Clack

@Althor

I'm new to shadow priest as of 4.0 and new to SimulationCraft as of yesterday. I looked over the 372 Simulationcraft Results and ran some sims of my own and had a quick question regarding mana usage. I note down in the Resource Gains section that Vampiric Embrace makes up a large portion of the pie chart. Further down in the Gains section, Vampiric Embrace is responsible for a large portion of mana returned.

Am I totally missing something about Vampiric Embrace or are there some bugs causing SimulationCraft to think it is returning mana instead of health maybe? If the latter, is it just a display issue in the report or is the entire sim based around extra mana we don't actually get?

Thanks

The dps gain/loss by choosing one opener over another is almost entirely negligible. I prefer to operate based on whether I need to run a significant distance to position myself after the boss is pulled. On a fight like Nefarian I'll start with SW:P and DP as free gcd's to get situated, but otherwise I open with VT. I don't think there's been a single encounter where I haven't had an orb before refreshing dots, so I'm not at a point where I feel I need to invest in that extra SW:P tick. If it ever became a problem I would probably start opening with SW:P. I really don't think it will make a difference whether you open with SW:P or VT in the scheme of things though, but if you are particularly fearful that you won't have an orb by the time VT needs to be refreshed then I would say go ahead and open with SW:P.

The difference in opening is extremely minor over the course of a (on average) 450second fight. There are ways to model a different opening however.

SimulationCraft models Shadow Orbs correctly. Each tick of Mind Flay and Shadow Word: Pain has a chance to proc an Orb (increased by Harnessed Shadows). It doesn't perform any averaging or other magic. Just every tick, it checks to proc an Orb and caps out at 3 Orbs allowed at once.

The off-hand situation is fixed in 406-2.

I have calculated a series of breakpoints for our DoTs and Improved Devouring Plague.
A description, my working and the results can be found at: http://www.simulationcraft.org/Shado...reakpoints.txt and Simulationcraft Results

A quick summary:
The only breakpoints that really matter for us are for Improved Devouring Plague.
Each IDP breakpoint gives around 80 DPS (in 372 BiS gear). The relevant IDP breakpoints for Tier 11 are at 3, 1602 and 3205 Haste Rating.

SimulationCraft haste scale factor runs that cross over those breakpoints will display higher than expected values for haste. By default SimulationCraft generates haste scale factors by comparing the DPS between the given profile and the same profile but with 300 more of a given rating. So if your profiles Haste Rating is ( >= 1301 and <= 1601 ) or ( >= 2905 and <= 3204 ) you will have issues getting a "correct" scale factor for Haste. Outside of these ranges Haste scale factors should be a lot more linear.

Of special note: Today I fixed a bug with the Improved Devouring Plague breakpoints. Despite knowing it calculated its breakpoints slightly differently I somehow failed to code it correctly. This has been corrected which has shifted the breakpoints around to what I have mentioned. The corrected code is in 406-2 which I'm in the process of uploading as I type this.

"Correct" scale factors will follow.

*edit*: 406-2 has the hotfix nerfs to Shadow Power, Moonfury and Raging Blow included.
*edit2*: The results of the BiS profile with 406-2 (no scale factors) can be found at: Simulationcraft Results

Just noticed this from the hot-fix notes from MMO:

We’re in the process of planning for a number of hotfixes that are intended to be implemented within the next day or two. To help give some heads up notice we’re currently looking to make the following changes:

Shadow Power (Shadow priest passive) is being changed from 25% to 15% of Shadow damage.

This seems a little worrying, whilst I respect the fact that the patch did buff us a little too much, I now feel this this will impact upon other issues that blizzard thought were fixed. For example, after raiding on 10 man hard mode maloriak, I felt that mind sear was in a reasonable place - however, wouldn't this change effectively re-nerf our AOE?

Also whilst the mastery change had to occur, as pre-patch the stat was completely useless: From doing a little napkin math I feel that this is an over down 'fix' - effectively nerfing all damage output across the board.

On a sightly different note - and I am sorry if this has been raised before - has anyone else noticed that mind sears damage output increases if empowered shadow is active?

As mind sear ticks can miss it's not a dot and therefore is not buffed by EmpShadows.

About today's hotfix on shadow power, is it relevant to compare Althor's sims for 4.0.3 and the last one?
The 4.0.3-31 is showing 24717 dps for T11 372, while 4.0.6-2 shows 27612. Is the difference due to some changes in simulationcraft between the two sims or is 4.0.6 still a big buff to our dps even after the fix?

Buff or bug? Or did I miss a patch note/hot fix? Masochism seems to now restore mana even if you have power word shield up. I'm 99% sure this was not the case in 4.0.3. I had a macro to /cancelaura power word: shield for use when partnered with discipline priests.

My testing on the PTR showed that Mind Sear *does* benefit from Empowered Shadows.
Also, even after the Shadow Power nerf, yes, we still saw an overall DPS gain between 4.0.3 and 4.0.6. An 8% nerf to our damage via the Shadow Power nerf didn't match that the large gains we got from Shadow Orbs being buffed, our Mastery scaling being buffed and Mind Blast being buffed.