SimulationCraft and You...

[Chamomile]

Everyone's probably tired of these endless self-help posts, but here's yet another one...

SimulationCraft is a piece of software for both Windows and OSX. Essentially, it takes your character's equipment and talent spec and simulates a battle to see what your optimal DPS would be.

This is assuming that you use the graphical client for windows (simcqt.exe) and not the command line application simc.exe. When you first start the program, you'll want to set various options. I typically set the Fight Style to Helter Skelter and the Length to 300. If you know that you'll be without certain buffs, you can uncheck those as well.

After you have your options set, you'll want to import your character. Using Armory works just fine, but the Rawr option is good if you want to compare different equipment. For Armory, just use the built-in browser to look up your character then click 'Import' in the lower-right.

Once the character is imported, you'll be taken to the Simulate tab. You can change the text options here if you know what you're doing, but in most cases you'll just want to hit the 'Simulate' button.

When the simulation completes, you'll be presented with a page full of information. Some is relatively important, some is just pretty pictures and details. For now, I'll focus on what I look at: the ability list.

The ability list shows the optimal spells you should be casting and the percentage of DPS you should be getting from those spells. Take for example, the output of my simulation (Note that I've omitted all information but the ability name, the DPS% and the count):

Ability DPS% Count
devouring_plague 21.5% 17.5
mind_blast 10.1% 29.5
mind_flay 32.3% 65.2
shadow_word_death 2.7% 10.2
shadow_word_pain 10.4% 3.5
vampiric_touch 20.9% 18.3

Looking at the log from last night on our fight with Marrowgar (since it is relatively close to the 'helter skelter' and 300 second options), I see the following information (again, cropping the extra information):

Spell Damage %
Mind Flay 32.0 %
Vampiric Touch 21.5 %
Devouring Plague 19.9 %
Shadow Word: Pain 11.1 %
Mind Blast 10.8 %
Improved Devouring Plague 4.2 %

So going down the list, Mind Flay is just about spot on for usage time. Vampiric Touch was a little high, Devouring Plague also a little high, Shadow Word: Pain a little high, and Mind Blast was again just about right on the mark. You'll also see that I failed to use Shadow Word: Death, an instant cast damage spell that I should throw when I have to move. The lack of SW:D is likely where my percentages broke down here.

You'll undoubtedly note that my dps doesn't match up to what SimC thinks I could have achieved. This is most likely due a combination of things such as raid make-up, specific class / race bonuses from other party members, missing buffs, and the fact that I wasn't flasked for the first half of the instance. The important part is that you can see what spells and damage percentages are being used compared to the optimal spells and percentages.

As stated earlier, SimC is also good at checking what equipment or spec changes would do to your dps. It takes just about everything into account, so if you wanted to see how much losing your 4pc would cause, this is your tool.

If anyone is unable to run the software themselves and would like me to run a simulation or two, let me know and I'll run them off for you.