[SimC] WoD Fire SimC Disucssion

[Frosted]

This thread is intended to serve as a place for people to leave their comments in on the current state of the Mage Module for Simulationcraft. It can also serve as a sort of direct line of communication between the community and the people who work directly with and on the module.

Things like APL discussion, improvements to be made to the default profile gear (BiS), and any sort of bugs that are found in the module should be post here for discussion.

Additionally, things like major discrepancies between sim outputs and in-game logs can be discussed here, but they'll need to be supported by a link to the logs being discussed, sim outputs, and the post should try to steer discussion towards a specific problem. Something like "firesims are doing too much damage" is probably not appropriate; but "firesims seem to be producing 10% more combustion damage than in-game logs" with a link to some logs to support that, might be.

Below is a link to my directory for Simulationcraft. In it you can find the current Highmaul Only gear profiles, latest trinket sims for Fire/Frost, talent comparisons for the two specs, racial comparisons, and multi-target sims. These can serve as "default" outputs for people to work from.

http://downloads.simulationcraft.org/Frost/" target="_blank

[Becks]

We are very grateful for your efforts, Frost. I have two concerns:

- Syncing Copeland's/Shards with PC and Combustion yields a major dps increase, at least for the top logs and my personal testing.

- 4pc PVP bonus is somehow ignored. I've got two profiles with 42% crit buffed each, and the one without 4pc crits more often with Fireball than the profile with 4pc, while we should see a 10%+ increase.

[Frosted]

I haven't tried syncing combustion to Copelands/shards or PC yet. I have tried syncing to DMC 3/3 proc (so you end up delaying combustion building for it, basically). The result was a DPS loss for Meteor builds, and was equal to standard use for PC builds. I'll see if I can put those reports and get them up sometime tonight or tomorrow.

Syncing with PC could be a gain though, depending on how strong the trinket proc. Those would need to be looked into.

mm. Ignored how? It's in the module itself -

Inside pyroblast impact (i cut out all the non-PvP bonus stuff, obviously there is more inside impact!):

Code: Select all

virtual void impact( action_state_t* s ) { mage_spell_t::impact( s ); if ( result_is_hit( s -> result ) ) { if ( p() -> sets.has_set_bonus( MAGE_FIRE, PVP, B4 ) && is_hot_streak ) { td( s -> target ) -> debuffs.firestarter -> trigger(); } } }

And for fireball:

Code: Select all

double composite_target_crit( player_t* target ) const { double c = mage_spell_t::composite_target_crit( target ); // Fire PvP 4pc set bonus if ( td( target ) -> debuffs.firestarter -> check() ) { c += td( target ) -> debuffs.firestarter -> data().effectN( 1 ).percent(); } return c; }

So the set bonus should be working fine. Can you post the results of the profiles (and the profiles themselves - pastebin would be best for this) ?

[Komma]

- Syncing Copeland's/Shards with PC and Combustion yields a major dps increase, at least for the top logs and my personal testing.

If you're referring to Butcher logs, many of them are optimized for predictable fight durations such as 4 minutes, which means that you can sync 2 minute trinkets with the second Combustion without losing usage. This is not the case for all different durations.

- 4pc PVP bonus is somehow ignored. I've got two profiles with 42% crit buffed each, and the one without 4pc crits more often with Fireball than the profile with 4pc, while we should see a 10%+ increase.

That shouldn't be the case. The PVP bonus was implemented during beta and tested. As Frosted said, if you can provide a sim output report, we can look into it to see if something isn't working correctly.

[skiz]

T17 2 PC Combustion sequence:
Idea:
- save 2 x IB for Combustion
- Combustion as in http://altered-time.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1137" target="_blank
- dump pyros after 2x IB -> combustion is mostly a dps loss and not implemented. Implementing a check for it would help. E.g. EDPET.

Problems:
- does not change target back to Prismatic crystal after Combustion - wasting BW on boss instead on PC.
- building up ignite on PC may need some improvements on default and altered APL: basically, if you do not have much pyros robomage uses 1 fireball into pyro dump - basically just one - into 2x IB -> combust.... More fireballs please. Can be a pain to change, because of 4 pc proccs...
- does not work for more then 3 targets, because the >4 targets default AoE apl spreads dots with IB and is unmodified.
- does not change targets on non PC profiles, making them useless


Results with 20% variance, 450 sec fighttime.
1 Target

2 Targets

3 Targets


Profile:
Basically in that order: default APL -> copies -> altered APL -> copies
http://pastebin.com/SCA4U9Jj" target="_blank

P.S. ignore errors. They are caused by a dump apl line which I was to lazy to remove in the altered APL profile.

Edit X: If you guys keep working on it, keep in mind, that 2x IB before combustion can produce weird pyro proccs, including 4 pc, which delays combustion. If it does not get a higher priority. This was annoying to debug.

[Komma]

Seems like the 2T17 trick is really a thing. I'll look into finding a better integration that's less fragile, and works with multitarget Kindling/Meteor.

[Komma]

A change has been made to more aggressively use Pyros and IB when 2T17 is available. It was prompted by a thread on MMOC forums: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/171 ... th-anymore" target="_blank

The idea is: there are instances where we don't wish to Pyro camp, and instead substitute the Fireballs with extra IBs for proc generation. However, this does not provide an improvement without 2T17 and 2 IB charges. Therefore, this optimization is gated by the set bonus.

Code commit: https://code.google.com/p/simulationcra ... 3fbcf69391" target="_blank

The double spread trick still isn't implemented yet. There are some technical hurdles to solve before it can be done properly.

[Frosted]

So there was a fairly significant bugfix that I just pushed.

There has always been questions about the way SimC was doing RPPM procs (particularly, the T17 4pc). Today Komma and I were looking into the RPPM proc rates of the 4pc for Fire and noticed it was too high compared to what others were experiencing, and what the formulas for them said we should be having. Ended up concluding that the module was mistakening giving haste scaling to the proc rate - causing it to be heavily inflated on the pull, and generally inflated elsewhere.

This is now fixed for both the Fire and Arcane 4pc procs. Resulted in about a 1.5% DPS loss for Fire overall, and a loss in 4pc strength from 6.35% down to 4.67% DPS gain - which is quite significant.

Ultimately, this is my failing. I had gone and investigated this weeks ago when the 4pc first went public and people were complaining it was overvalued in SimC due to it always procing on the pull - and indeed, I saw a >100% proc rate on it when I checked it. But I was stupid and didn't look into it further to figure out why, and just assumed it was right, or that there was some technical reason that was occuring (even though I knew it couldn't be right - since we never experienced 100% procing on the pull).

[ting92]

Is that why when i sim haste is the one scaled highest, both on cleave and single target? Im at 681 ilvl.

[Komma]

Is that why when i sim haste is the one scaled highest, both on cleave and single target? Im at 681 ilvl.

No, and this isn't the right thread for that discussion. This thread is meant for discussion on sim development. Dutch's thread on 2pc/4pc includes a few posts on haste breakpoints that should answer your question.
http://altered-time.com/forum/viewtopic ... 370#p13029" target="_blank

[Komma]

A new target choosing function was implemented for Mages today, allowing us to dynamically select targets based on specified conditions. This allows us to do things like "target the enemy that has the highest ignite tick damage", or "target the enemy with the shortest remaining Living Bomb DOT duration". It's the missing piece of the puzzle for managing Fire DOT spreading with IB.

With this change, we can actually work on a functional sim (without fragile hacks) that performs some of Fire's crazy DOT spreading strategies, such as 2T17 double IB Combustions and staggered LB explosions

Google Code link: https://code.google.com/p/simulationcra ... d2148b6873" target="_blank

[Komma]

An overly complicated, buggy, prone to hanging/crashing/exploding prototype APL for 2T17 Combustion has been committed to the repository.

https://code.google.com/p/simulationcra ... 0b4b6aaa45" target="_blank
https://code.google.com/p/simulationcra ... ec64f5427e" target="_blank

It's kind of hard to fully explain how it works, because certain lines don't even make complete sense to me, despite giving the best numerical results.

[Komma]

How strong is 2T17 double IB Combustion?


(450s, single target patchwerk, 0.05% target error)

Extremely strong.

Note: There is currently a known bug with RPPM values not matching in-game experience. Ths 4T17 procs slightly more often on the pull than in game, with the above sim result.

[TLTeo]

Holy shit. Is blizzard aware of this?

[Komma]

Holy shit. Is blizzard aware of this?

Yeah, they are. In fact, they've responded to a few tweets about it already, I think.

[Komma]

Some notes about the last week of fixes to the fragile APL:
1. Multitarget/Kindling/Meteor cases no don't break anymore.
2. Added some failsafes in case of double non crit.
3. 4T17 is ignored if it procs before PC is placed. There's basically no good way to utilize it!

[beatle]

Simcraft default action list tries to use the incanter's flow stacks for living bomb. This is not optimal because we lose uptime on living bomb.
Using this line provides quite a noticeable difference, more visible for 3+ targets.
actions.living_bomb+=/living_bomb,if=target!=prismatic_crystal&remains<3.6&target.time_to_die>remains+12

If you still think living bomb should be aligned with incanter's flow maybe the timing should not be exploding the living bomb on main target at 5 stacks, but at 4 stacks because there is always a additional close target with living bomb when we use this talent and the explosion on close target is delayed by 2 seconds. This wont be a increase in 2 target fights but should be a increase on 3+ targets because we will have multiple explosions at 5 stacks and only the main target at 4.

[Komma]

It's not trying to explode at 5 stacks. It's trying to delay to the final second of the DOT when flow is rising, which usually doesn't cause any loss of usage. The current problem is related to multitarget management, created when we implemented target swapping with 2T17 Combustions. It has nothing to do with Incanter's Flow. This is noticeable because there is a small difference even when the sim uses Rune of Power instead.

Your suggested line aggressively uses LB, without taking into consideration whether there is another active ticking LB. I'll look into how this can be handled better.

[Zenith]

Small thing I noticed on the simcraft website. The robo-mage still has a heroic GSR instead of mythic (not sure if this is intended or not)

[Frosted]

I cannot remember if we made a judgement call on that to say if you are not mythic geared you don't get mythic BRF gear or if it's just an oversight on our part. I'll talk to Komma tomorrow and get back to you on it.