4. Using the Sim
After you are done selecting your character's gear and configuring the sim to your desired parameters, you can verify that your character is correctly set up by checking the Stats pane on the left side of the screen.
If everything looks correct, click the Sim button on the bottom right corner of the screen to run a simulation with your currently selected gear.
After the simulation is complete, you will be able to see its results: the average DPS your character did with the given equipment & settings, as well as the minimum and maximum amount of DPS dealt in all of the iterations.
Due to inherent World of Warcraft randomness, such as crits and procs, the results will not always be the same. Generally, you may find that the result has a range of +/- 2 DPS between uses of the Sim button. That range can be reduced by increasing the number of simulations in the Settings tab, but the Sim button is intended to give you a general DPS value for your current gear -- use the [https://github.com/TheSorm/RetSim/wiki/4.-Using-the-Sim#sim-gear-dps) for more detailed comparisons.
After you have ran the sim once through the Sim button, you can see more details about the simulation's results through the Statistics tab on the top left side of your screen.
Here you can see a breakdown of your damage, split into the different abilities your character used, the total amount of damage they did, their crit percentage, the amount of times they were dodged, etc. Furthermore, you can see a detailed combat log, detailing all of the events that took place during the fight, accompanied by their timestamp.
By default, you are seeing the result of the median fight, which yielded the DPS value you see on the bottom left, next to the Sim button. If you would like to view the results of the simulations that yielded the minimum or maximum DPS, you can select them through the drop-down menus on the top right and middle right of the Statistics page.
The Sim Gear DPS button on the bottom right side of the Gear tab allows you to easily compare multiple items at the same time.
First of all, by ticking or unticking the checkbox on the top left side of the equipment list, you can quickly select and deselect every item in that slot for comparison.
You can choose individual items to be compared by ticking the checkbox next to their names.
After you have selected the items you wish to compare, you can press the Sim Gear DPS button on the bottom right of the screen to begin the simulation. After it is done, the DPS result of each item will be listed under the DPS column, on the far right side of the screen.
- This feature works by directly unequipping whichever item you had selected (highlighted in blue) for that slot, and instead running multiple simulations with each selected item. This means that if, for example, you needed the currently equipped item for a blue gem it has socketed in order to activate your meta gem, your meta gem will not be activated if the other items do not also have a blue gem.
- The sim will run the amount of simulations that you specified in the Settings tab for each item. If you set it to 10,000 simulations and selected 8 items, it will run 80,000 simulations total, which may take time.
- As mentioned in the Sim button section, this feature is intended to do detailed comparisons between items. It can give fairly accurate results with at 10,000 simulations, but if you are trying to compare items that are very close in DPS value, you should increase it to at least 20,000 simulations for more accurate results.
- Trinkets with use effects or procs are unique, meaning if for example you have Dragonspine Trophy selected in the Trinket 1 slot and you attempt to compare it against another trinket in the Trinket 2 slot, its proc effect will not activate twice, and as such it will seem to perform very poorly.
The sim can help you get your stat weights for your currently selected gear -- meaning the relative value of each stat. You may have also heard of stat weights referred to as "Equivalency Points" or EPs, frequently in addons or services like Pawn and SeventyUpgrades.
In order to use this feature, click the Stat Weights tab on the top left side of your screen.
Like with the Sim Gear DPS feature, you can select which stats you want to calculate by ticking and unticking the checkboxes next to the stat's name, or by quickly selecting and deselecting all of them via the checkbox on the top left side of the tab.
After you have selected the stats you want to generate weights for, click the Sim Stat Weights button on the bottom right of the screen to begin the simulation. After it is done, the DPS delta and stat / DPS value of each stat will be listed in the columns on the right side of the screen.
The DPS Delta column shows how much DPS your character gained by having +1 in that stat. The Stat / DPS column shows how much of that stat it takes to gain 1 DPS.
- This feature works by running a test simulation to calculate your base damage. Then, for each stat you have selected, it repeats the same simulation as if you had a certain bonus amount to that stat.
- The sim will run the amount of simulations that you specified in the Settings tab for each stat. If you set it to 10,000 simulations and selected 8 stats, it will run 80,000 simulations total, which may take time.
- The relative DPS value of stats can be very small, meaning this feature is very prone to variance between fights, caused by crits, dodged attacks, etc. For that reason we recommend that you set the simulation count setting to a higher amount than normal in order to get more accurate results. A minimum of 20,000 is recommended, and up to 50,000 can help give you more clear results.