The hot fix is indeed on live. On the PTR my conflags were hitting for nearly 19k now they are hitting for nearly 13k. That is about a 30% drop in dmg. I was still getting some good dmg with the spec though, I'm playing around with 41/30 right now but may try going back to 40/31 and affliction.

I decided to check simulator results for 3.1, and only "easy" way I could think of was:
1) remove all raid related things from *.simcraft configs (no pally/dru/war.. buffs, no "optimal raid", only one lock)
2) set up my own gear instead of one in Warlock_T7_Gear.simcraft
3) set up my own talent and glyphs in my Warlock_T8_xyz.simcraft
4) run simulator that way
5) do some TargetDummy tests
6) compare simulator results and my results on target dummy ;p


But I run into problem - when I did above, my Simcraft TXT result shows only pet damage - no damage for me.

After playing a bit with that ("playing" = change line by line untill i found where it stopped showing my damage), I found that if I remove "glyph_life_tap=1" , my damage is also removed.

Then I downloaded source trying to find what is reason, and I found it in:
It is combined error with code and my simcraft file - since in input file it still had "actions+=/life_tap,glyph=1/...", it was checking every time for active Life tap glyph effect, and was casting every time only Life Tap, because without actual glyph, no effect was possible.

One solution would be to always change simcraft file when I change used glyphs, but better one would be to replace code with:


After I replaced that, it worked without problem (BTW, maybe same should be done with "tier7_4pc"). I still didn't get to check TargetDummy results with simulators, but at least now I got some results that I can try later on to compare. At first glance, simcraft DPS gives me numbers (~3450 DPS) that look lower that those I remember from last dummy tests , but it was only 1min test so I need to do it again.

Question for those who know Simulationcraft is if there is maybe some other reason why trying to simulate single player without raid buffs would not work correctly? I could understand getting slightly lower numbers on dummy than on simulationcraft (due to ideal situation in simulation, and non-ideal situation on dummy like not being able to have ideal decimate weaving, or to use DoTs during it ), but I wouldn't expect lower numbers on simulator.

You can create a second "actions+=" line without the Life Tap action and then just comment out the first line.
If you have no desire to preserve the original you can just remove the Life Tap action with no further effort required. No need to alter the code when you can simply take the action out of the line.

Testing on the boss dummy for any spec with a bonus at low life will artificially inflate your numbers. Affliction is an example of this. (not sure which spec you were testing) The sim calculates a real target with real health loss so a higher portion of the fight will be lower DPS and that DPS only gets boosted below the required health threshold.

Well, obviously I know that I can comment line, and I can also temporarily delete "/life_tap,glyph=1" part. Problem here is that it was not obvious that it is reason for wrong simulation. People who could try same spec, only changing glyphs, would get that error without knowing what is reason.

So, for me after I spent time to find reason for problem, there is really "No need to alter the code" , but in order to make simulationcraft more "user friendly" for those less inclined to hunt reasons for strange behavior, code change is advisable.

As for testing, I was planning to test simulator and dummy both with and without "execute". Way to do that is:

1) set simulation time at same as time you can do DPS on dummy (so not 300sec, 150sec is more realistic)
2) find out when would "execute" start on simulator if fight is 150sec. If simulator is not giving that data, estimate at 110sec (take into consideration that DPS in execute is higher ~30%)
3) test on dummy by doing normal DPS in first 110sec, and execute in last 40sec, stop at 150sec by /recount pause

To test other way around, ie simulator without execute, just dont use "/soul_fire,decimation=1" and ",health_percentage>=35", and do normal non-execute damage on dummy for those 150sec. BTW, I was testing 0/41/30 , but will test also Haunt build.

But as I said, I still didn't have time to check on dummy above things ;p

The change you recommended has been made in r2169.

Thanks for doing some "real world" testing. The most effective way to start is to ignore DPS and look at hit values and crit percentages of each spell individually. Once those line up, take a look at spell cast frequency of each spell. Once that checks out, run with log=1 to make sure you are happy with the sequence of spells cast.

I tested last night, and demonic pact still doesn't take into account the extra spell power granted by fel armor from the talent demonic aegis. Has anyone managed to find a life tap glyph and been able to see if they fixed that bug where is wasn't scaling at all from the buff?

Affliction has one instant CoA which you cast every 28 seconds. It has two 1.5 second casts(using unmodified by haste since everyone has haste, affliction may have more with eradication but demo specs may have more with imp conj spellstones), then 2.5 or 3 second cast fillers. All other specs have a 1.5 second cast, 1 instant dot, 1 instant curse probably cod and either 2.5 or 2.25 fillers. Deep Demo has the highest damage pet and super fast soulfires. Any conflag spec has a really hard hitting instant. Deep destro has backdraft for faster fillers, a fast chaosbolt and a high damage pet. Any decimate spec has fast soul fires.

There is nothing really special about affliction's damage when it comes to movement heavy fights these days. It is also especially susceptible to required movement just as haunt comes of cooldown and during drain soul ticks. Just as Decimate specs suffer from interuption of their soulfire weave.

This took some investigation, but it turns out an architectural change in simcraft changed how raid-wide spell power buffs interact with pets: Previously they were not taken into account when calculating how much spell/attack power the pet gains from the warlock's spell power. Now they are. I believe this new behavior matches in-game behavior though, so the new numbers are correct whereas the old ones were wrong.

I've updated the OP to reflect new simcraft standards now that 3.0 mechanics are irrelevant: T8 is Ulduar gear (best known set), T7 is pre-Ulduar gear (best set). I'm aware that my T8 set is pretty outdated, so feel free to post better suggestions.

Is chardev updated with the latest known Ulduar gear now?

Could you add an option like the debuff=1 of haunt for shadow bolt? We could then calculate the sacrifice for a destro lock if he has to keep up and skill for the 5% crit debuff.

Wasn't doomguard dps nerfed along with hp and summoning time?

Before the nerf to Conflagrate, it was shown here that without the 4p t7 bonus, the highest dps spec for Deep Destro is one with Improved Soul Leech, and using Glyph of Incinerate instead of Glyph of Life Tap. Since you've updated the OP by replacing tier 7 with tier 8, could you please test this now and update the OP if it's still true?

So you mean in any case, when not getting the full benefit from life tap (no 4p t7), we should rather glyph incinerate than LT?

...this'll take the lt out of the early rotation too.

It seems to depend on gear and being specced into ISL. Having more spirit and 4t7 favors the Glyph of Life Tap. Having more intellect and 4t8 seems to favor ISL and Glyph of Incinerate.

Only the DG was nerfed due to its cooldown being reduced to 30mins and the voidwalker had the amount of health it gains from us reduced to 10%.

With the nerfed Conflagrate, the Incinerate glyph would be better than the Immolate glyph for 03/13/55.


The damage gained from the Immolate glyph is:

And the Incinerate glyph would increase the damage by:


And wowhead changed the talent planer link URL. Simcraft does not understand the new URL, you have to replace the # with a =.

I did some tests on Target Dummy, and initially it seemed like there are significant differences, but after some double-checking of my gear setup, I managed to get closer numbers. But comparing was not so easy because I had to look at simulator data in one format (output TXT mostly), and at test data in other format (wowmeteronline or WWS). And while it is not problem for checking averages, I was never sure if averages on both sides were calculated same way. Output file for example does not have total damage per any spell, nor DPS per spell. But even more differences are in how they calculate/show spell or effect uptimes.

After losing about hour in manual comparing few tests, I decided to add some code to simulator to be able to generate standard WoW compatible log file if "log=1" option is on. Since I saw simulator code first time few days ago, I lost bit more that I expected (another several hours) doing that, so it would be probably faster if i just continued manually, but ... ;p

Anyway, example of end result is something like:

Original WoW log from TargetDummy, on WMO

Simulated log, also on WMO


So far I only tested 0_41_30, and some conclusion would be that simulator is fairly close. For some reason it shows slightly higher average damages than real test, slightly higher crits and lower misses - which ends up in higher DPS shown on simulator. When you include my far from perfect weaving on real test, you get 3370 DPS on simulator vs 2870 DPS on test (again, no external buffs, solo , on boss dummy). In addition, some uptimes are higher (can be seen in "Buffs and Debuffs on WMO, and I dont mean Decimate one since it is artifically high on TargetDummy because it trigger from start ... one that is higher is Demonic Soul, but may be due to how WMO calculate it).

But since I spent more time making it easier to compare than testing, few more tests should give more precise result, and I plan also to test and compare Haunt build.

On a side note, it would be nice if option to generate standard log files could be added to regular version of simulator, since it greatly simplify comparing. Beside seeing both data in same way, both tools (WMO&WWS) have good log search/filter options for event comparison. If someone who manage simulator code is interested in that, you can PM me and I can send you what I did so far.

Edit: I tested on WWS too , and it works also:
Warlock_T8 raid on WWS
Raid_T8.simcraft on WWS

Anyone that have done some serious math on Meta vs Immo glyph as DP-build? Some very basic math make them look pretty similar (around 1% more dmg). Those extra 6 seconds can be pretty important when you got hero and/or decimate is there someone which have done the calculation abit more serious?
Simcraft says Immo glyph but my oversimplified math says Meta. Any input is welcome.

BTW, I redid my previous tests on normal boss dummy (lvl 80), instead of lvl 83 one that I used previously, because miss chances are unrealistic (since in raid setup we have hit buffs). Also I simplified test without using "decimate" part , because that is one which on simulator is always done more perfectly than on dummy.

Results ended up much closer this time (this is still for 0/41/30 @ 1928dmg, 306hit, 448crit, 327haste, 660spi, eff:Sundial+DCurse+T7_4pc):

Real 0/41/30 test on dummy(lvl80) without decimate

Simulated same situation, on WMO


I noticed some things that are still slightly different tho:
1) average incinerate damage is still higher on seimulator
2) pet did not have any miss on simulator, and had ~3.5% misses on test

Second one is not so noticeable, because pet also had slightly higher average damage per hit on real test compared to sim, and when misses are included it ended up almost same.

First one is probably due to Molten Core uptime, which is much higher on simulator (60% vs 20% on test), even if number of shadow dot ticks is almost same (126 on sim, 120 on test). When I did 50k iteration test on sim, MC uptime was still 65%, so maybe I was just unlucky on test dummy - which looks possible since fast math also says MC uptime at 2/3 MC should be higher.

Edit 1: I retested on lvl 83 dummy, with Decimation, but used more +hit gear (for 0/41/30 @ 1902dmg, 426hit, 354crit, 263haste, 667spi, eff:Sundial+DCurse+T7_2pc). Results are now much closer:

Test on lvl 83 dummy ~ 3250 dps

Simulation of same case, ~3450 dps


while simulator still have slightly higher average damages per spell, it can be explained by higher LT_glyph uptime (I didnt LT during decimate). But more impoertant here is that main thing I changed from previous tests is "hit" - and in real tests it seems that negative impact from not enough hit is higher than on simulator - which can be expected, since unlike me, simulator can immediatelly notice if it missed ;p


Edit 2: Did also affliction build test, on lvl 83 dummy (for 53/1/17, same gear as above in Edit1):

Test on lvl 83 dummy ~ 4100dps

Simulation for same case, ~3900dps

Here I had opposite situation than at demo - real test showed higher numbers than simulation. BUT due to crowded dummies, several people were testing during my test, so it is possible that some additional debuff was on dummy. Even if i couldnt find such debuff in log, it could have been put before log started. As it is now, average spell damage for spells like SB or Corruption is 16% higher on test. Some 8% can be explained by Eradictions 12% being present 65% longer, but will need test without anyone else on dummy to be sure for reason of remaining 8%.

On the other side, crit rate for SB on simulation (~30%) is significantly higher than on test (14%), and that can not be explained by debuffs on dummy. When run 50k iterations, crit on SB was 25%. One reason could be much higher uptime for Demonic Soul on sim, but would have explained only 2-3% of difference - maybe was just unlucky on SB crits during test.

BTW, seems that some WMO links from above expired - maybe because I was posting them as private logs, or maybe those links to players are not persistent. I refreshed last link, this time with link to fight not to player. Will refresh others when next time I do tests.

Quick question on the simulation results. What does the "_DG" at the end of the top-performing simulations mean?

It means that a doomguard is used as your pet, meaning that it's only possible to do for 15 mins every half hour.

I tried looking on the Simulationcraft page for a guide or explanation as to how to read the "actions" line, but I couldn't find one. Could anyone point me to the right reference or help me understand how to read these two lines:

actions+=/haunt,debuff=1/corruption/curse_of_agony/unstable_affliction/haunt
actions+=/drain_soul,health_percentage<=25,interrupt=1/shadow_bolt/life_tap

How does it prioritize spells, or is that based in the Simulationcraft logic, and this is just a list of abilities it will use (I'm assuming it's not since haunt is listed twice)? Also, what does the "debuff" mean in "haunt,debuff=1", any why don't the other abilities have that parameter?