(@Antiarc) I was curious if you intend to refill the item DB before 4.2 (or on the launch of 4.2) with Wowhead's PTR data of the the Firelands raid and rep gear. The alternative is waiting a few days for normal drops to trickle in via armory imports, and Shadowcraft would definitely see more utility in the first week if it were preemptively updated. At this point I doubt there will be any noticeable changes to the gear.

Another thing I want to mention is that I foresee the UI be rather overloading soon when picking between gear, and it arguably is already. While I haven't dug through the code as much as I would like, I expect that it would make it easier on network communications if you create a ceiling and a floor for items that show up. For example, I doubt any rogues who are working on Heroic AC have an interest in [Smoot's Shredded Smock]. It's therefore just another item on the list that should probably be hidden with either an ilvl floor or an EP floor. To elaborate further with something like a floor of items with, say, 10% less EP, it would turn a list of near 50 cloaks into a list of 11 for me. You would just need an option at the bottom to override any limits and list all items, as well as an option to list nothing to handle the case that someone would ever need to check out older items.

Lastly I was wondering if you had any plans to reduce the number of dependencies, even in the distant future. The web app is clearly not coded for just anyone to pick up and run a server of it locally, but it looks like it could be a little less reliant on other projects. This is really a case of "if it's not broke don't fix it", but it would be nice.

My bad on pulling from Wowhead rather than the armory. I could of sworn you said you used Wowhead in the past, but maybe that's just for item links / hovers.

The dependencies concern was more of a pet peeve / personal preference of mine. I was working on setting up a server on my laptop to toy with last night, and it usually irritates me a little when I have to check the dependencies for projects, then any dependencies for those, and so on; all the while making sure updates install right and nothing broke in the meantime. Like I said in the other post, it's not designed for the general public, but more experienced site owners to host, so if it isn't broke then it doesn't need to be fixed.

It's pretty easy to install on Linux.

It's certainly not a one-step deploy, but dependency managers like yum and rubygems make it pretty fast and easy.

Even then it's not quite that simple. For kicks I tried installing it on a fesh VM running Ubuntu and those 10 steps quickly turned into 20+ simply due to needing other dependencies, or having to use alternative install methods such that I would have a compliant version of whatever was needed. Of course, there are other methods to get this to run, but that would just be even more involved.

There's also the chance that I mistyped something, or I forgot a step somewhere, but the point of high dependency usage becoming hostile to run on other computers remains.

Indeed, the web interface and the entire program are incredible!

I have one quick question, exactly what type of in-game situation does Shadowcraft model? For example, Simcraft has options for a "Patchwerk" and a "Helter Skelter" fight, I'm assuming Shadowcraft is modeling a "Patchwerk" style fight? Are there any plans to introduce a target-switching/interrupted dps style fight? I also figure that this has been brought up before, but after a bit of searching I couldn't find the answer.

Shadowcraft is modeling a sustained DPS situation; however, historically we've found that the difference between a slightly interrupted fight and a sustained fight is actually not that large in terms of stat priorities. So it might not be a great model for Omnotron or Ascendant Council, it should be a reasonable estimate of your stat priorities (if not your actual DPS) for most fights in the tier.

Does shadow craft ever take into account Two set and four set when calculating ep values for tier pieces or does it just calculate for that individual slot?
Or is this something I just need to calculate for myself weather or not four set is worth taking over slightly better stats of a different piece.

On a side note, I'd like to say i love shadow craft allot its been a huge help in my dps.

Thank you, for the longest time ive wondered if it did or not automatically, since it doesn't show four set or two set anywhere.

Yes, it does take set bonuses into account. This isn't very well publicized in the UI. Sorry about that.

On a personal note, my wife just had a baby, so I'm going to be somewhat unfocused for a bit. I do ask your patience, and know that we have a patch coming along, so while I'll be working on keeping things updated, I will be a bit slow about it.

CONGRATS! We'll see you when you come back. Thanks for all the great work!

"Optimise gems" is a little misleading. As far as I can tell, it doesn't mean that it min/maxes your gem choices for maximum DPS. I think it's just a shortcut button for swapping all your sockets to your best gem (Delicates) regardless of socket bonus (if it's meant to do something else then I can't figure it out, since it's always been a DPS decrease for me). I just swap them around manually now if the math isn't obvious.