ShadowCraft: Rogue spreadsheet for 4.0
 

Moderator's Note: I realize we're all excited by the great work Antiarc is doing, and if you want to shoot him a PM to express your gratitude/admiration/whatever, I'm sure he'd be happy to hear it; however, in the interest of keeping this thread productive, please keep such observations out of this thread. If you have issues or suggestions or questions or whatever, that's fine - I'm not trying to discourage you from posting - but so far we've had an awful lot of posts with no content beyond "wow, looks great" - and those posts, I will have to start infracting at some point.

-----------

We currently have two implementations against Shadowcraft-Engine:

Antiarc's Shadowcraft: ShadowCraft - Rogue DPS Spreadsheet (source at http://github.com/cheald/shadowcraft-ui)

Major features:
* Armory import and automatic item discovery
* Save and restore multiple snapshots to contrast and compare
* Gem optimizer
* Reforge optimizer based on bsoft's Java reforging tool
* Talent and glyph calculator

Caffeine's Shadowcraft-test: ShadowCraft-Online

Major features:

* Stat breakdowns
* Save and restore multiple snapshots
* More raw data straight from the engine

I've started work on the calcs part - you can see the framework that's in place at Aldriana's ShadowCraft-Engine at master - GitHub

Edit: (11/3/10) Some of you may have noticed that ShadowCraft-Engine has now gotten to the point where its returning a DPS value and EP. This is because it is now somewhat functional. However, there are a couple of very important points I want to make.
1) The results are for level 85 *only*. They have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with level 80.
2) The modeling is highly incomplete. Some things are working, but a lot of things aren't. This is not a completed model, it has nowhere near the same accuracy that my Wrath spreadsheets had in 3.3.
3) There are almost certainly bugs. I would be shocked if there weren't any bugs. So even things that are modeled may not be modeled correctly.

Hence, the takeaway: do not under any circumstances use numbers you get from the engine for level 80 raiding. Be very very cautious about drawing any major conclusions about level 85 raiding. For instance: right now the tool will tell you that Leatherworking is far and away the strongest profession. And that may or may not turn out to be the case as the model improves. So while it's an interesting thing to make note of... I wouldn't start rerolling professions just yet.

Edit: (11/16/10) The assassination model is now somewhat functional for level 85 analysis. There are still bugs, to be sure, but it seems to get agreement around the 1-2% level with more established modeling. It is thus probably reasonable to start basing some decisions off what it has to say, though be aware that there's still room for errors and mistakes in it.

The combat model, on the other hand, is brand new and most likely completely unreliable. Feel free to play with it and post bugs as you find them, but don't draw any major conclusions about the spec until we've had a bit more time to work on the model.

Bugs/Tickets
 

For those of us who will be testing/using this during it's development, should we just post bugs and/or feature request here in a running thread or does github have a place for that. I noticed github has the Issues tab, but I wasn't for certain if that was for bug posting by users/testers or if it was to be used for coders/developers to keep track of known issues.

This looks like a really great project. I wish I could help more but unfortunately I have no coding skills, however, I can test/bug report with the best of 'em :p.

I second the new interface. Holy crap, that looks fantastic.

The gem/reforge/enchant box needs to move to the item you're trying to enchant. Scrolling up and down is tedious.

You might well be aware of this, however I will post just incase:
The auto-reforge tool (or the internal gubbings in general) does not seem to take into account Axe specialisation for Orc's as well as the "New Exp Cap" outlined by Blizzard yesterday.

Generally it is shaping up to be a valuable tool, I look forward to testing and using as the project runs it's course.

Definitely use Githubs issues for reporting bugs/enhancements, it makes it much easier to follow the development of an issue when it's tied into commits on Github.

I'd like to see where I can get those items. You know like craft, Badge of Justice, heroic dungeons etc

Great stuff you have going so far!

Just curious if the intent is for this to be used by more than just Rogues?

The reason I ask is that as a Rogue, if I for instance click on my wrists to see what upgrades are available I get [Scourge Hunter's Vambraces] as an upgrade to [Toskk's Maximized Wristguards].

So if it is intended to be used by any class to evaluate gear based on EP weights, that's cool but either way the query should be fed a variable to limit the items returned to items that are usable, such as leather in this case.

Hi,
I've been working with a guy on creating a reforge calculator (at Reforge Calculator ) and we have a thread up about it in the Public Discussion.

One of the biggest things I've found is that you'll want to provide the option to "lock" some items or stats and *not* reforge them.

For instance, let's assume you have a combat spec and assassination spec and they use the same gear except for the weapons. Then you reforge to get to the expertise cap, but part of the "auto-reforge" used your weapons. Now when you go to Assassination spec, you're no longer expertise capped.

A second example would be the current situation with expertise. The number is ideally calculated at 200, but for right now, everyone should be setting a target of 172. So I want to hit *exactly* 172 expertise and then just leave that stat alone and don't reforge it any more, even if the calculator says I need 28 more.

Also, since stat weights can change relative to each other, it may make sense to allow a more iterative process on reforging. The way we're doing it is that you can reforge to a specific target, then lock those values in and reforge again for another goal (maxing another value or hitting a specific target).



Edited to add:
I'll also note that I'm finding it impossible to actually achieve 172 expertise in the reforger even though it's dead simple to get with my gear set (Ikirus keeps exp +106, reforge 277 DBW to +66 exp equals exactly 172). I tried changing the boss dodge number and if I set boss dodge of 5.24509% it gives me a rating of 175 and if I set 5.24508% it gives me a rating of 162. I'm not sure why there would need to be +13 "step" between the two when as I said, I *can* get exactly 172.

From what I understand of the system, it goes iterates through multiple times and goes by whats the highest total EP value of your character with the lowest expertise. Now, while you may be able to get exactly 172 rating, you may be giving up the ability to, lets say, reforge your 277 DBW to +66 haste, when you could have reforged pieces of gear with haste and crit already on it.

I do have a question, it seems that the values for spell hit cap are not taking into account the precision talent, or it's just valuing all hit at the spell hit cap. Anyway around this or is this a known bug you'll be working on when you can?

It's definitely doing some sort of iterative process because it appears to come up with different numbers for expertise based on where it started from.

I think for right now, maybe it'd be better to set "target expertise" instead of boss dodge chance? I'm not sure how the mechanics are going to work in Tier 2 of Cata when they said we'll need more hit rating for instance.


As far as giving up ability to reforge DBW to +66 haste, that shouldn't matter. Expertise is my highest EP stat. There is no stat that's better for it to be reforged to. The only good reason to NOT reforge it is because the calculator isn't trying to get to exactly 172.

But if it's goal is to get to an exact number, there shouldn't be a better solution than reforging one item with just one stat that's the lowest EP stat the *exact* amount you need to get the target amount of the highest EP stat. Once you get into an item with multiple stats then yea, you may be better off reforging the crit / haste item instead of the hit / expertise item. But there shouldn't be any better item to reforge than the one that just has crit.

After having used this tool abit, there is one thing I do miss, and thats a button to re-import my character from the armory to get an updated profile.

To answer the larger question: for the calculations piece, at least, I'm trying to leave the possibility that other classes may want to use this open. I've organized this in such a way that if a druid or warrior or whatever wanted to write a module, it would be reasonably straightforward for them to do so. I haven't looked at the UI design, but it seems to me it should be reasonably straightforward to make similar allowances there. So for the moment, we're just building towards a rogue tool; however, depending on the level of success it achieves, that may not remain the case indefinitely.

To answer the question in specific: I agree that there should be some way in the UI of limiting results to stuff that is usable by a given class - not just to deal with the leather vs mail question, but also to prevent, for instance, druid set pieces from appearing in the rogue list.

I agree the option to cover additional classes should be left open. For instance my main is a rogue but I have an alt DPS Warrior. It would be nice to use the same simulator rather than having to find another that I trust.

GitHub's issue tracker would be great. That lets people take issues to work on them as they want to, and keeps all the problems consolidated in one place.

No racials are implemented yet (make an issue for it!)

This would be valuable, but it's low-priority, since associating that data is somewhat tricky. There will be an ilevel filter in the interim, though.

It should be usable by anyone. Right now, it'll only be useful to people with rogue stats, since I fully ignore stats that rogues don't care about in the interest of keeping the data size down. It'll be extensible though.

This is a fair point; I'll see about locking certain properties of a given item.

The reforger right now can find a local maximum rather than a global maximum for a reforge loadout. This'll need to be addressed at some point, but it's Good Enough for a first pass. :)


That'll be in shortly.