Well, I guess that limiting use of spreadsheet to primary, secondary etc is debatable. Bakka mentioned "to help people get a good idea about what does what and how things interact with each other" which is less limited.

But fact is that it is called "Warlock DPS" and that ultimately DPS is what we want to maximize. Everything else is secondary - we talk of gear only because it influence DPS. We discuss talents only because they differently influence DPS.

Spreadsheet is attempt to model warlock DPS. In order to accurately do that, everything that influence DPS should (ideally) br modeled. That include gear, talents, used spells, consumables, buffs, fight time, spell rotation/priorities etc.

Of course, it is not easy to model all of those. Alternative way to analyze DPS is using simulations. Each of them has limits.

But goal of every model is to be as acurate as possible. Limiting to some imagenary "primary,secondary" goals, or saying "this model is not for that use" are different ways of dealing with model shortcommings - first try to stear you away of them, and second one tells you to live with them.

Saying that fight time do not influence results (even those limited to "primary,secondary") is not correct. If you now in 308b change oom_time from 360 to 155, you will get not only different DPS, but different values fro +hit, +haste etc. Effect on comparing talent values is even greater (for example, value of Meta is much influenced by fight duration). That is not to say difference is huge, but it is noticeable. I presume that same line of reasoning resulted in spreadsheet now having itemlist, effect lists, raid buffs ... even if at start most of those were missing. When people back then asked for those things, answers were similar to these now , along lines of "spreadsheet is not intended for that", or "be aware that its not ideal and live with it" or "make your own changes if you need it" - and yet today all of those are in spreadsheet.

I can easily accept that making accurate model is hard - after all that is why many people on this forum try to help and improve it. But I find it harder to accept not improving model when we have information how to do that, especially if its not hard to do.

Maybe my mistake is in thinking about this spreadsheet as "community model" - where all of us work to make it better. Alternative would be all of us posting on some general "warlocks theory" thread, and everyone (or at least everyone inclined ) makes his own spreadsheets. But I dont think that is right way to do, and even people who "defend" not adding things in this spreadsheet are among those who are first to ask whenever someone makes their own "why you need it when we have one already?". And I fully agree - as long as WE have one already, and that one is not held back (ie not improved when we know how) without good reasons.

Want to start by saying I didn't claim fight length is unrelated to DPS. I said that the two biggest factors that contribute to DPS change with respect to fight length area already accounted for.

On a more general level, however, I would put forward that the goal of this modeling is not to predict perfectly the outcome given the same variables in game. The goal is to create a tool that allows for actionable decisions to be made in game. Accurately demonstrating DPS is not useful by itself, you can just go play the game to see that number! The goal is to let the tool enhance your playing by doing the calculations that otherwise are in the napkin-math realm of this forum smarter and automatically. The areas where we need a tool to help us include (in no particular order):
1) Gear/gem choices based on stat weights
2) Glyph choices
3) Marginal talent choices (1/3 MC 4/5 ISB or 0/3 MC 5/5 ISB)
4) Spell usage (immolate or not?)

Beyond any factors which affect these, making the DPS number on the sheet as close to reality is not useful. This is the reason why including partial resists isn't necessary: they affect every spell the same amount, so it won't add any new insights to the choices we have to make.

Now I am not saying we shouldn't improve the work we have so far. I think it's a fine goal to make the sheet more accurate. I just think we should check on what we want to add to make sure it's accomplishing something that will affect the use of the tool. Changes take time to implement, QA (generally greater complexity leads to more bugs and hard to track down dependencies), and some of them can make the sheet more difficult to use for the important choices. So, I apologize if I came off sounding like I was just crapping on your suggestion -- I think you have good goals. It's just important to make sure the fixes made are necessary and useful to the community.

Bakka thank you and the rest of the community for a great spreadsheet. I have made good use of it for a very long time.

I have noticed that the weighting of gems on the items tab could use a better model. For example,

Titanium Spellshock Ring int 33 Sta 48 Dmg 49 Crit 42 One Red slot with a 5 dmg slot bonus. DPS value on my sheet 115.82

Now a custom item with the same ring with a 19 dmg gem in it
Custom Int 33 Sta 48 Dmg 73 Crit 42 DPS value on my sheet 127.89

A nice addition to the sheet would be a preferred gem selection per slot color.

Thank You
Immortus

We basically agree on major details.

I still thinks , as I mentioned in previous post, that ultimate goal of people using such tools is DPS. And we look for tools to help us select best gear/glyph/talent/spell in order to predict and maximize DPS. In other words, DPS is thing by which we measure "value" of gear/talents.

So we agree that calculating DPS for our current gear and talents is not goal of any modeling tool. But being able to calculate difference in DPS if some gear or talents or whatever is changed is goal of modeling tools - in order to help us decide on that talent, gear etc.

Unfortunately, if we want that calculating difference to be meaningful, we need even more accuracy than if we just wanted to calculate total DPS. For example, most people using tools like spreadsheet will change one glyph/talent with other if they gain 20 DPS. Therefore our "margin of error" in predicting DPS needs to be as low as possible.

Above is my general position, not strictly related to fight duration but to spreadsheets and DPS models in general - in order to be more useful, goal of every model should be to get as accurate as possible (of course, within limits of feasibility - if something is too hard to model, then its too hard).

Related strictly to fight duration, I already pointed where it does make difference in what people would select using spreadsheet. Some examples:
1) lock who is deciding between Meta+Ruin or FG+Ember is getting wrong (too low) info from spreadsheet about Meta effect. One reason is because Meta is highly dependant on fight duration. There are other reasons too (not including Immo Aura, not calculating BL effect on Meta etc). BTW, I'm not claiming that end result would be that Meta is better than Ember - just that difference is not that high as in spreadsheet.
2) lock who is deciding if it is worth paying for and using Wild Magic potions on all boss fights. Spreadsheet right now shows estimated 12 dmg/crit (or ~17DPS gain) from those, so maybe some people would decide its not worth paying gold for that. But better calculation that takes into consideration fight duration, BL etc, can get it to 36dmg/crit or ~60 DPS - and that may be worth paying gold

As i mentioned in post #246, there are other cases and examples where it can make difference. But my main point here is that it is easy to incorporate those changes in spreadsheet. This is not something hard to do - I know because I already did it and I posted whats needed to do.

So I still have open question:

If we know how to improve accuracy of spreadsheet model in such way that it is not too hard to implement and it may influence actionable decisions of people who use spreadsheet, why decide not to implement it?

But I would like to point again that we are agreeing on major positions here, so consider this as another attempt to improve spreadsheet. Even if it does not succeed, people like me will have option to include their "corrections" in new versions - maybe time consuming, but doable. Also, there is possibility that in future those differences would become impossible to ignore and will be added to spreadsheet, just like it happened historically to item/gear lists, potions/food lists, gear sets/effects, and many other features that spreadsheet has today but did not have before. Fact that spreadsheet today has much more features that it did year(s) ago, and that most of those new features were incrementally improving accuracy (rather that revolutionary fixing things) support my belief that accuracy should be goal of every model - even if we ignore it, eventually we need to do it or tool will lose its usefulness.

Let me state once again that I will not be adding a fight time to the spreadsheet. It's not as simple as adding a few formulas because you did it. And all the justification in the world for adding it isn't going to make me change my mind on doing so. I'm the one who currently supports the spreadsheet and I'm the one who doesn't want to make this 'small' change because I don't want to have to make the next 'small' change which then attempts to model bloodlusts, trinkets, pots, meta, etc. all at the same time as opposed to an average. And then is asked to make another 'small' change which based on fight duration adds multiple metas and BLs. And then gets asked to make an initial cast sequence because this it really matters for short fights and it would be a small change. I'm staying away from anything that makes this spreadsheet anymore accurate based on real time because if I plan on going that route I may as well scrap the spreadsheet entirely and come up with a real time model.

RE: Immortus
There is. There's a sheet called Sock_bonus that needs to be unhidden and adjusted to fit your preferences.

First of all, thank you Bakka for the spreadsheet. I have been using (mostly) the spreadsheet for some time.

Recently I have run into a problem, and I'm unsure if it is entirely on my end (SOL) or if there is a fix or work around I could use to deal with it. Specifically, my work computer is the only place I have access to MS Office, and we have been using old (97) site-licensed copies for more than a decade. Until recently, this has not been a problem; the armory updating portion has not worked, but otherwise the spreadsheet has been mostly fine.

The last time I tried using the spreadsheet with Openoffice - which I use at home, since I have limited needs - it broke horribly. That was about 6 months ago, and I haven't seen anything on the site about it having been updated to be compatible.

Is there something I am missing? Should it be compatible with 97, and there's simply a single line or two I need to edit? Am I just SOL in this case? If the last, do you know of any alternatives, maybe based on Google's online spreadsheets, or known OpenOffice compatible options?

As a temporary solution, I've been using some of the Lootrank values suggested on Warlock's Den - but I suspect that for my current gear level and spec, they are not terribly accurate. Maxdps.com has always been questionable, and since 3.0 just plain doesn't work [I use 0/41/30, and they have only updated Affliction]. I haven't been able to make enough time in a relatively busy schedule to deal with Simulationcraft.

So.. any suggestions on what I should do to get a definitive list of gear upgrades? [I have a lot of gear not shown in armory, btw - mostly hit gear]

is the bonus crit damage portion of chaotic skyflare diamond modeled? 3.08b only seems to calculate the 21 crit rating in the dps calc...

I've deleted the old FAQ page and future changes pages. Please feel free to post comments in the new FAQ page for FAQs to be added to this page. I will also be adding a 3rd party spreadsheet program collaboration page for people to post their problems and solutions.

Bakka I was just wondering if there are any minor things I could change on my end to allow this spreadsheet to work on the mac version of Excel? I always have #VALUE! errors in a lot of the cells on the DPS_buffs sheet and various other errors. Buttons also do not interact with mouse clicks. I assume this is just a compatibility error with the Mac version of the spreadsheet. I used your spreadsheet on my mac back in TBC but after the release of the 3.0 spreadsheets I received these errors.

The official support for this spreadsheet is Excel 2007. The community may have found work arounds for other programs. You have to be able to run VBA macros for this spreadsheet to work and some of these macros can only be found in 2007.

You may also need to replace _IFERROR. After I did both of these things the spreadsheet worked for me. The NG/GoC Proc (and SB) on the DPS sheet errored until I switched it to 0 and then back to 1.

Hopefully this helps someone else. (by the way, awesome tool now that I've got it working with excel 2003)

Rigid Dragon's Eye seems to be missing from the gem selections.

This is regarding Chaotic Skyflare Diamond and how its DPS value is calculated under Advanced infos in 3.08b of the spreadsheet. The signifance of this issue I raise has direct bearing on whether or not the spreadsheet user chooses to gem CSD or ESD for affliction, as I suspect CSD to be largely undercalculated by the current formula.

According to wowhead's comments for the TBC metagem Chaotic Skyfire Diamond and a couple of posts I found on the EJ forums, the crit bonus clause is more than meets the eye.

Apparently the correct interpretation of the clause is that for a crittable spell of normal hit dmg x:
Total Crit dmg =1.5x
Total Crit dmg w/ CSD =1.545x
Crit bonus w/ CSD =0.545x
therefore Crit bonus w/ CSD & Ruin=1.09x
therefore total crit w/CSD&Ruin =2.09x

Of course, this means that the CSD's special component scales with Ruin, an effect that is not reflected in the spreadsheet's formula for it. I refer to that exact formula used:

Suppose I lay down a scenario where we are only interested in the special component, we remove all pet involvement, hence also tier7 calculations, we can greatly simplify the formula. Also the scenario only involves the usage of SB (whose dps is known by label to be DPS!G34). Devastation (+5% crit) is not used. 5-point Ruin is used. The reduced formula is:

where crit is the crit rate of SB in % form, (DPS!G34) is the total dps of SB spam (hits and crits) without CSD, and crit_bonus is the label referring to CSD's special component.

This special component is listed as 0.03, which is in accordance to the ambiguous item tooltip that I believe to be wrongly used. Since the current formula does not account for the scaling of this component from Ruin, the value must be changed to 0.09, and the player be assumed to have 5/5 Ruin.

I attempt to prove this with the following scenario which should yield a certain gain when CSD's bonus is involved:
-1000 damage sb hits @1second cast time
-5pt Ruin for 2000dmg crits
-@100% crit rate for 2000dps
-CSD component should increase dps to 2090

Substituting values into the reduced code above:
Had the 0.03 value been used, the calculation would have severely undercalculated CSD's special component. Unless there is something different between the special components of chaotic skyflare and skyfire of TBC that I dont know about, the current CSD calculative formula or by inference, that of all crittable spells in the spreadsheet must be amended to allow Ruin scaling, should the current crit_bonus constant be decided to remain at 0.03.

Bakka, could you add Greater Spirit to the Enchants_Consumables tab? If you are hit capped, the value of Icewalker decreases such that Greater Spirit is better in terms of dps.

From the affliction thread:
10 spirit = 3.74 dps -> 4.12 dps
10 crit rating = 3.74 dps -> 5.58 dps
just using ratios: 6.18/5.58 = 1.1075 so greater spirit is almost 11% better than icewalker if you are hit capped. Making this change on my spreadsheet resulted in a dps increase.

Hey Bakka, would it be possible to get a Doomguard and infernal tabs for pets in there? Cheers

abit meaningless to gear around doomguard numbers since you can only use it for one fight. that and theres no talent that procs off dg or its abilities. dg dps is just a flat number that does not influence player dps.

I will transcend the discussion on Warlock DPS and comment only on this point (note that I am commenting ONLY this point and not the content of the rest of the post).

What you are saying is very rarely true. In general, you do not want to have the most accurate model possible, but a model which is accurate enough.

Which obviously depends on what you want your model for, and the resources you are prepared to invest in elaborating, implementing and using it.

Thanks for all your hard work and if you ever change your mind you know where to find us

Aww man that dude is a jerk! Don't leave us Bakka!

Agreed! The sheet is AWESOME! I love it! Don't let the rants of one idiot who isn't helping bring you down...if you do, he wins.

I e-mailed that guy, attempting to be stern yet courteous.

Personally, I sincerely appreciate your efforts, Bakka. You are credit to Warlocks and WoW players the world over.

For those who can not use the spreadsheet because of this, I'd like to mention that we are actively working on Rawr.Warlock and it is now in a beta phase. Click here for the website.
There are still some issues with haste not scaling properly and Spirit doing weird things when you choose a pet, but we are working on that. Other feedback is very welcome, but please put that on the Rawr forums, not in this thread. I will make a seperate thread for Rawr.warlock here when it is out of the beta.

Thanks for all the work Bakka. If you do decide to continue develloping the spreadsheet for all the locks out there, it would be nice to see if we can help each other out with our models!