StartersGuide.wiki
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- Download the version of Simulationcraft for your platform.
- Unzip it anywhere you want.
- On Linux, you have to compile yourself, see HowToBuild.
- Remarkable files and directories:
- SimulationCraft.exe is the graphical client (SimulationCraft under Unix OS).
- simc.exe is the command-line client (!simc under Unix OS).
- profiles and profiles_heal contains our default profiles with best-in-slot items.
Let's import a character from the Best-in-Slot Tab and perform a basic simulation. First, run SimulationCraft.exe (not simc.exe!). Notice its icon:
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Click on the import tab. Choose the BiS profile you want to import. Then click the import! button.
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Now you will find yourself on the simulate tab. The instructions listed here describe your character and include a default actions list and a couple of options. They're documented in Options.
- Right now, let's just perform a simple simulation, click the simulate! button.
- A couple of seconds later, you will find yourself on the results tab with your report displayed.
The report is full of informations, in this section we want to draw your attention to some important points.
- Among the first informations displayed is a very important one: the number of iterations. This setting is the number of fights that have been simulated (remember: Simulationcraft is a simulation, see FormulationVsSimulation). The higher this setting, the longer the computations times will be. But the accuracy of your results will also increase and they will be more stable across runs (smaller variations).
The fact that results may change across runs is really not that bad: getting slightly different results that are always close to the truth is better that getting a constant result far from the truth. You may be displeased by this behaviour at first, especially if you are used to formulation-based tools but, once you understand how it improves the accuracy of our results, you also understand it's a small price to pay. So, again, take time to read FormulationVsSimulation.
- Simulationcraft then provides you with an evaluation of the accuracy: the error. It will help you to estimate whether you should use more iterations or whether the default value was enough: here, 0.3% is not that bad.
- However, if we give a look at the dps distribution, we can see that some of the worst or best cases have been sampled a few times only. The image below show you what figure you can get with 10k iterations instead of 1k.
By the way, did you notice ? Between our worst and our best fights, there is a 7k dps difference! Yes, the random numbers generator is that much of a tough beast, it's true both in game and in Simulationcraft!
- Below the pretty graphs come some tables. First of all is the spells details. You can compare it to what you observe in game and see by yourself that Simulationcraft does a good job at reproducing the ingame behaviour.
Beware! Some addons or web sites can group together things in a slightly different way: for example, the raging blow spell for warriors involve two hits. Some tools will display two distinct categories, one for every hand, some others will aggregate the results under a single entry, raging blow. Simulationcraft displays both.
- Next comes the buffs data, with their uptimes and the real benefit you got from them (% of time you were able to benefit from a buff). Finally come some special procs data, additional data you may not be able to get anywhere else.
Stats scaling allows you to calculate the weight of every stat, reflecting its importance and affecting your itemization choices.
- Go to the options tab, then on scaling. Check analyze all stats or just the stats you want to scale. Then, go to globals options. Use 10,000 for the number of iterations in order to ensure a great accuracy.
Simulationcraft will compute scale factors by adding a delta to every stat. By default, all deltas are positive, unless the deltas for cappable stats like hit or expertise. Check positive deltas if you want to force the use of positive deltas for those stats also.
- To compute the scale factors, you have to do another simulation: go to the simulate tab. The profile used by the previous simulation has disappeared and the page is now blank. Just hit the "<" button at the bottom of the page and you will recover it. Once it is done, just click the simulate button. In your report, you will now have a section like the one below.
- On the first line, the strength has a 2.65 scale factor: it means that you will gain 2.65 dps for every point of strength you gain. On the second line are the normalized scale factors: all scale factors are expressed as fractions of your primary stat's scale factor. Here, it means that every scale factor has been divided by 2.65 so that strength is now 1.0. It allows you to easily compare strength with other stats.
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You will probably find yourself with cappable stats, like hit or expertise, being ahead since those stats are, for many specs, the best until capped. It occurs even if you were already capped since we use negative deltas for those stats (the scale factors reflect the dps loss you would suffer if you were losing points).
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As a result, equipment pieces with a lot of those stats may be ranked on top for all slots. Of course, if you were only equipping those pieces you would find yourself overcapped and this would be a dps loss. Here is how you should deal with this problem: look at the slots that have good pieces with cappable stats and only poor alternatives. Now, look at the slots with good alternatives free of any cappable stat. Your goal should be to get your cappable stats from the first kind of slots (those with poor alternatives only), so that you can get the best possible stats from the other slots. You can ease this process by opening the same page twice and, in the second one, manually changing the stats weighting for cappable stats.
Here are some nice tips and tricks you can try out.
Don't forget that you can import not only from the BiS Tab but also from other sources. One of them is AskMr.Robot: it provides a nice web UI to edit your character equipment. It can be used with Simulationcraft to get an equipment editor. You just have to remember to save your profile before you click the import button.
The existing options in the options tab allow you to use 80% of Simulationcraft's power. However, if you want to use advanced features, like multi-players simulations or custom fights, you need to use the Textual Configuration Interface (TCI). Basically, it's a set of textual options and commands you can write in the overrides tab or provide to the command-line client.
For example, the options in the GUI only allow you to choose between a "Patchwerk" fight (tank'n spank) or a "Helter Skelter" (a crazy fight will every possible raid event). Now, if you just want tank'n spank fight with some 10s movement phases every one minute, select a "Patchwerk" fight and write the following line in the overrides tab:
raid_events+=/movement,cooldown=60,duration=10
At first, Simulationcraft was a command-line tool and people had to use the TCI through configuration files passed as arguments to the command line. Nowadays, although the GUI cover the needs of most of our users, the command-line client remains and many people still prefer to use it. Actually, once you're used to it (and it's really not that hard!), it's far more convenient to use than the GUI.
The command-line client is the "simc.exe" file ("simc" under unix). Remember that the TCI is fully supported by the command line: you do not have to create any external file and you can directly use all options from the command line, for example:
# Let's import a character from AskMr.Robot, compute the scale factors and print out a html report
simc.exe mrrobot=e435e565-2098-478e-a496-1ed702af2648 calculate_scale_factors=1 html=zoopercat.html
However, most of the time you will prefer to use independent and reusable configuration files, usually named with the ".simc" extension.
# Here is a file named zoopercat.simc
# The following line is for unix systems only (it associates this file with the simc binary)
#!./simc
mrrobot=e435e565-2098-478e-a496-1ed702af2648
calculate_scale_factors=1
html=zoopercat.html
# Now, let's make simc.exe use zoopercat.simc
simc zoopercat.simc
# We can also force simc to write its output to a file:
simc zoopercat.simc > zoopercat.txt
# Under Unix, you can also flag the file as an executable
chmod a+x ./zoopercat.simc
./zoopercat.simc
Note: your files must be encoded as latin1 or utf-8, please take time to read TextualConfigurationInterface#Characters_encoding if you encounter problems.
You have many ways to work with .simc files on Windows: creating batch files, drag'n dropping the files to Simulationcraft.exe, directly associating them (not simc.exe! beware: when reassociating the file with a newest version of Simulationcraft you may encounter a bug on XP where the change is ignored because the two exe files have the same name), etc. However, those methods all have cons, the most notable being that the working directory will be the executable's one, not the one where your files are located.
As a result, we recommend you to directly use command-line prompts. See the instructions below.
First, the setup.
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Run the windows_env_path.vbs script (bundled with Simulationcraft, double-click it in the windows explorer). It will add the script's directory to your user path environment variable. You only need to do it once. If you had command line windows opened, you will need to open new ones.
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You need an open command window here on your folders' context menu. On Vista and later versions, you only need to hold shift while you right-click a folder to open the context menu. On Windows XP, you need to install the "OpenCommandWindowHere" power toy from Microsoft, it is available here: CmdHerePowertoySetup.exe (download.microsoft.com).