How to Simcraft: Part 2

So last time, we covered how to run simcraft and use the basic settings to get information about your character. Today, we'll cover in more depth what the results mean, and how you should use them.

For the discussion, I'll be using the default Warlock Tier 9 list for the 0/13/58 spec that comes with Simcraft. 3.2.2 rules will be used for 1000 iterations of a 5 minute Patchwerk style fight with full raid support.

This is the top chunk of your information. Most of it is simple information - your DPS is actually one of the less useful stats in the results. Error and Range are statistical figures for how far your DPS varied in multiple iterations. DPR is Damage Per Resource. This is how much damage you convert 1 mana into. RPS out and in are how much mana you spend, and how much you get back from all sources.

The last box here, however, is your Scale Factors. This is how good stats are for you. These aren't constants, they will actually depend on how good your gear is, and all stats are interrelated. If you change your gear, these scale factors will also shift. If you want to know how good an item is for you, multiply all the stats on except hit it by their factors and add up the result. Remember to include enchants and gems as well, as well as test alternative enchants, hitting the socket bonus or stacking straight spellpower, and so forth. I'll be doing a follow up Simcraft Supplemental series, one of those will include much more details on how to use these scaling factors appropriately.

Hit scaling factors work differently. Quite literally, if you're raid geared, the positive scale factor for hit will be 0, picking up more will do nothing. The number given is the negative scaling factor - how much DPS you would lose if you dropped a point of hit below the cap (raid geared you'll almost never be right at the cap, in which case losing a point will still usually do nothing). In general, as long as you assure that you're hit capped with appropriate raid support, you can ignore your hit scaling factor.

Ooh! Pretty colors!

This is the stuff you see posted on EJ a lot. Going from top left to bottom right:

Damage Per Execute Time, or DPET, is how much damage your spells do for the amount of time you spend casting them (one GCD for instant spells).

Damage Sources is how much of your total DPS each spell you're using contributes. This also accounts for non-spell effects, as you can see this gear profile has both the normal and heroic Reign of the Dead trinkets, so the damage effect from the trinkets shows up in this list, but not in DPET, since it goes off automatically and does not trigger a GCD.

Resource Gains is your RPS in from the first block of information. This is where you're getting mana back from, including improved soul leech, life tap, and raid support on the top half of the pie. Related to this is the Resource Timeline. This panel is less useful for warlocks than it is for some classes. Simcraft doesn't life tap ideally, and in practice fight mechanics are better at dictating you lifetap cycle than ideal distribution anyway.

DPS Timeline is an average over the course of the fight - as expected, it's a fairly flat line, destruction doesn't have an execute. If this were a demonology of affliction simulation, you'd see the DPS timeline increase when either spec switches to it's execute phase. The last DPS distribution, which is how much time you spend at any given level of DPS. The far right is the rare cases where chain crits lead to a very high DPS spike, the left is the opposite case, where shit just doesn't crit.

 This is a more detailed breakdown of the pie chart of where your damage is coming from. A number of these columns aren't particularly useful for warlocks, but in order, they are:

• DPS, DPS%: damage per second just from the given spell, and the percentage of total
  
• Count: Number of casts
• Interval: Average time between casts
• DPE: Average damage per cast
• DPET: Average damage per execute (cast) time
• DPR: Damage per resource (mana)
• Hit: Number of non-critical hits
  
• Crit, Max, Crit%: Number of critical strikes, biggest crit, and crit rate
  
• M%, D%, P%, G%: In order, miss, dodge, parry, glancing blow. None of these apply to casters.
• Ticks: Number of periodic damage hits
• T-hit: Largest tick
• T-crit, T-crit%: Critical tick and crit rate

Many of these are self explanatory, and I've covered the rest above already, so moving on. The next several tables are just buff coverage. First there's buffs that never fall (note some of them, like replenishment, may technically fall, but ideally should never). Dynamic buffs are ones you don't directly control - backdraft and pyroclasm, trinkets, empowered imp, bloodlust/heroism, and so forth. The Procs table covers similar dynamic effects, but ones that don't apply a buff - judgement effects, life tap's mana return, Reign of the Dead's damage bolt, and similar events will show in here.

Gains is a breakdown of the resource gains pie graph. This chart notably adds overflow. A look at your pet's overflow numbers will give you an idea why raiding demo builds don't use Mana Feed.

This is your priority list, it's mostly straight forward. It covers self buffs, consumables, and pets first. In this particular build, the important things start at number 6. Spells with no conditions are ones you always use when they're off cooldown or need refreshing. Other spells have conditions - you don't refresh Curse of Doom if it won't go off, for example. There's also a moving=1 attached to several spells, like corruption. This means you only use them if you're moving - they're lower DPET than your lowest priority spell, but that spell can't be used while moving. Life tap appears several times, this is an attempt by the Simcraft developers to finagle close to an ideal life tap strategy to cover both mana needs and buff coverage. It's not quite ideal itself, and fight mechanics are often more effective at dictating your life tap schedule than an ideal plan anyway.

The last pertinent bit of information in the results is this table here. The right column is your gear ratings, the middle column is your actual stats unbuffed - accounting for base stats, andalso translates ratings into their percentage values. The left column is your full stats raid buffed. Note this doesn't include debuffs based support, but does include any buff based support that was turned on when you started the sim. Some of these stats are meaningless to warlocks, but this chart should give an adequate sense of the stat inflation that happens in a raid.