As many channels have discussed, Cyclotronic Blast was updated today with a few functionality changes to make the channel and cast perform correctly. The cast/channel both stop melee auto attacks and prevent actions from being used without canceling the channel. As such, the APL for Outlaw and Assassination have been updated. Sub to be looked at in the morning.
Initial conditions for Outlaw: if=!stealthed.all&buff.adrenaline_rush.down&buff.memory_of_lucid_dreams.down&energy.time_to_max>4&rtb_buffs<5
Initial conditions for Assassination: if=master_assassin_remains=0&!debuff.vendetta.up&!debuff.toxic_blade.up&buff.memory_of_lucid_dreams.down&energy<80&dot.rupture.remains>4
#tc-updates
rare swift
Likely will be picked up for Raidbots when Seri rebuilds in the morning
At least for Assassination, it still performs quite well when used appropriately.
It's a bit closer for Outlaw but still strong. As always, sim your own profile once these updates are picked up tomorrow!
stuck sapphire
Its still strong for subtlety too, was around 2% lower on my sim but was still ahead by quite a bit.
Updated condition for Subtlety:
actions.cds+=/use_item,name=pocketsized_computation_device,if=!stealthed.all&dot.nightblade.ticking&!buff.symbols_of_death.up&energy.deficit>=30
worldly nebula
Pushed a couple of APL changes that, as always, appear with the next raidbots nightly:
- Iris improvement on Single Target: Use Iris outside AR for Outlol and outside SoD for Sub. (For sub this also work on multiple targets. Thx to fuu for investigating this.)
- With Master Assassin and Blood of the Enemy, use Blood into Vanish+Finisher after TB within Vendetta. (Thx to Mikihisa for investigating this.)
- Worldvein Resonance Major is not used if at 3+ stacks on the buff anymore, which resulted in Major simming lower than Minor.
- Always use Evis at highest finisher priority with NV buff up, now. This had target and talent conditions that appear outdated and have been removed to make it simple.
- Suuper minimal gain with Blood to not Garrote during Stealth/Master Assassin in the opener, so it becomes
Muti->Rup->Muti->Garrote->...orMuti->Muti->Rup->Garrote->...with Rup at 4+ depending on Seal Fate CP. This is really negligible over the course of a full fight but if you wanna minmax for MA opener burst, there you go.
worldly nebula
Pushed a first pass on Razor Coral APL:
- For Assa, stack the crit conversion use with Vendetta.
- For Outlaw and Sub, it is worth to let it stack up for a while until you reach late "execute" windows below 30% boss HP and then do the crit conversion into either Adrenaline Rush or Symbols of Death. This appears good in any case but also has sweet interaction with the Dribbling Inkpod trinket which damages below 30% and can crit.
pseudo grove
T24 sims are on HeroDamage 😃
worldly nebula
I reiterated over Coral usage for Outlaw and Sub trying to find some better thresholds that can be memorized.
- With Inkpod it is definitely worth to let it stack until 31% and then convert to maximize the chance for inkpod crits.
- Otherwise you can use it with AR/SoD depending on your stacks: 20+ (Outlaw) / 25+ (Sub) is fine, or 10+ (Outlaw) / 15+ (Sub) if you also have the crit chance bonus from Blood of the Enemy.
- Note 1: The number of stacks can be ignored if the target is about to die and you can get another crit window, of course.
- Note 2: For Sub with Blood and no Inkpod this should roughly mean crit conversion with every third Blood (since that question came up).
worldly nebula
Based on some chats in #tc-research, I pushed a little APL update package of which the following might be noteworthy:
- All specs: Crucible of Flame is only used when not energy capping and when the dot is not already up. Also outside Symbols/Vendetta/Flurry.
- Outlaw: Do not use Font of Azshara during Flurry or Adrenaline Rush. Delay AR up to 20s if Font is coming up for it.
- Outlaw: During Blade Flurry change rerolling strat to 2+ buffs (without counting Skull and Crossbones) or single Broadside, Ruthless Precision, or Grand Melee.
- Outlaw: Do not Vanish for Ambush with Keep Your Wits buff up.
worldly nebula
Updated SimC usage of Font+Coral for Assa. This change seemed to net solid 0.8-1% gains depending on build and the best I've found so far.
- Use font 4s precombat and after that pretty much on cooldown as long as Vendetta has less than 20s on its cooldown.
- Then, with in-fight Font, the idea is to hold Vendetta(+Vanish) a bit to make it also profit from Coral. It's a gain to hold it until Coral is ready (hence the 20s condition above) but...
- If a Toxic Blade is coming up before Coral (which is the case in default fight timings) it's better to Vendetta right before TB and then use Coral ASAP.
- Summary of example timings: 4s precombat Font, Coral ASAP to start stacking.... Font when ready again at 1:56, Vendetta before next TB around 2:10, Coral into it at 2:16.
rare swift
Outlaw hotfix is in SimC now. Should make tonight's Raidbots nightly most likely. On high-end profiles looks like about 10-12k DPS overall loss and a 800-1.2k ST loss on 4T sustain (Orgozoa style) fight. ST loss should be pretty much the same on any cleave fight given the Wits mechanics of not scaling with number of targets. Will update when we have more info on Tuesday.
worldly nebula
It's been a while but time for an update since Patch 8.3 and Season 4 are around the corner.
SimulationCraft has been worked on a lot so that general support for new stuff should be ready in time. Of course, things can be expected to be in flux after release, both in terms of research as well as changes from Blizzard. Raidbots will update on patch day. More about the state of support and Raidbots release notes here: https://medium.com/raidbots/raidbots-patch-8-3-status-4acf90c56e4b
For HeroDamage, we intend to have updated T24 simulations that reflect changes as well as new Corruption charts live by Tuesday. T24 will be used until Season 4 because that is still the ballpark people are in for comparisons and T25 profiles are still in development for many classes. Once Season 4 starts, we plan to move over to T25 profiles.
worldly nebula
Raidbots support is up. The new allied races are not implemented yet. First update is also live on HeroDamage.
worldly nebula
Some of you may or may not notice Echoing Void simming a bit less for low APM specs (like Assa) in the Raidbots nightly that is live right now. This is due to an internal fix in SimC addressing a bug that caused EV to be able to proc on more things than intended. This makes Detection spam more worthwhile now, so I made the necessary changes and added it as a filler when pooling to the default APL. Should be on raidbots with the next nightly. Happy swirly balling everyone!
(Late edit: Detection has been hotifxed on February 11 so you can disregard this now.)
rare swift
Hey all, just wanted to note a few notable APL changes in the last week or two that are already in the default APL (or should be in soon)
Assassination
- Fixed an issue with Subterfuge sometimes not using Vanish on the 2nd Vendetta in multi-target situations and occasionally minorly desyncing in ST--minor ST gain for Subterfuge, major 2T gain
- Adjusted the usage of FoK spam with Echoing Blades as to not use FoK spam on 2T when Vendetta is up. (Notable gain for EB on 2-3T sims)
- Adjusted Vanish to be used "on cooldown" (ignoring Vendetta) for Nightstalker and Master Assassin builds when using Vision of Perfection (minor increase for VoP minor with NS/MA)
- Fixed a Vendetta timing issue when using Font without Coral. (Notable gain for Font+non-Coral gear combos)
Outlaw
- Prefer rerolling for Broadside instead of Ruthless Precision if the profile's number of Deadshot traits is higher than the number of Ace Up Your Sleeve traits (minor increase for Deadshot-heavy configurations)
worldly nebula
We spent some time to re-check the probabilities on Roll the Bones buffs and Loaded Dice. While the main probabilities are unchanged I just pushed an update for Loaded Dice that should be in the next nightly. It used to discard 1 buffs after the changes to it in Legion, effectively causing 5 buffs to be more likely. This does not seem to be the case anymore and instead it just converts 1 buff rolls into 2 buffs. The change either slipped through with BfA release or was stealth changed at some point during the expansion.
rare swift
RaidBots Nightly should now have some updates to Visions of Perfection behavior as reported in #tc-research but also based on testing Outlaw as well.
- Vision of Perfection (Major) now fully extends Nothing Personal on both the player and target (this was not previously the case in-game)
- Vision of Perfection (Major) now fully extends the Brigand's Blitz buff on back-to-back (overlapping) procs
These are fairly minor gains, but worth keeping in mind if you ever run VoP Major.
Additionally, I have implemented some new reroll logic that helps with Loaded Dice in particular for a 0.7-1.5% gain depending on the situation, especially with VoP Major. When Loaded Dice is up, the new logic rerolls more aggressively during pandemic windows and also rolls away all Buried Treasure two-buffs.
rare swift
Next Raidbots nighty build will include some changes to the Reaping Flames logic to better implement death buff sniping in dungeon scenarios. This is only a rough approximation and still slightly undervalues the effect since many sim types have adds that "die" at the exact same timestamp, unlike real-world dungeons where things are staggered. However, this should still be a notable increase in Reaping Flames damage for DungeonSlice (2-3%) and HecticAddCleave (1-2%) sim types. This results in Reaping Flames value around 9-10% in DungeonSlice which is fairly typical in raid fights with adds, and quite a bit more realistic compared to the previous ~6% value.
rare swift
Next Raidbots nightly build will include some Exsanguinate updates as researched/discussed in the #tc-research channel. Primarily this is a large (1.3%) gain for ST Exsanguinate using Blood of the Enemy, a small (0.4%) gain for Exsanguinate ST in general, and a very minor (0.2%) gain in Exsanguinate AoE. Changes involve the following:
- Move Blood of the Enemy to only happen after Exsanguinate is used
- In ST, ensure to refresh Garrote with the last GCD of the Subterfuge buff
- Never use Exsanguinate when the Subterfuge buff is up
It also cleans up some of the Vanish logic to match the existing SS/Subterfuge vanishes without Exsanguinate. The previous Exsanguinate-specific Vanish line was mostly not getting used and no longer optimal compared to the recently revamped Vanish conditions from the 02/29/2020 update above.
rare swift
(Note, this is not yet in raidbots nightly as it missed the cutoff last night.)
rare swift
Just made a follow-up commit that should improve the usage of Galecaller's Boon with Exsanguinate. It will also minorly improve the usage of Coral and, in particular, the interaction of Galecaller's+Coral. This is a pretty significant gain (1.6%+) for GCB+Coral and around +1% for GCB alone, although I can't say for sure if it will make GCB competitive again.
The basic logic change is to only use GCB when either Vendetta is up or Exsanguinate's cooldown is <6s remaining and to never, ever cast it when there are Exsanguinated DoTs up (as it is a huge waste to do so.) There may be future tweaks, but this is where I got so far today.
Additionally, Guardian of Azeroth was moved to the precombat list for Exsanguinate as it's around a 0.2-0.3% gain to ensure a full haste stack is reached before the first Exsanguinate cast.
rare swift
As a note, the next Raidbots nightly will have some pretty major optimizations to Ghostly Strike and Blindside usage. It is extremely possible these could become competitive options based on gear and essences. In particular, the interaction between them and Breath of the Dying is quite strong. Will have to sim yourself to see if they make sense for your setup.
rare swift
April 2nd investigations have shown that Ghostly Strike and Blindside are still bad.
rare swift
Next Raidbots build should have some changes that will allow Prey on the Weak to work in DungeonSlice sims on the non-boss target waves. This has no effect on other fight styles that don't spawn adds, and multi-target Patchwerk is still considered all "boss" targets. But should allow some correct impact estimates of Prey on the Weak (and Cheap Shot) for DungeonSlice scenarios.
Currently only the Outlaw APL will really take advantage, other specs probably will get reviewed shortly if it is a DPS increase. (Probably unlikely for Assassination. Possibly for Subtlety.)
rare swift
Exsanguinate tweaks and Crimson Tempest support will be in the next Raidbots nightly. Brief synopsis of the changes:
- Pre-Exsanguinate it will attempt to Garrote -> Max CP Rupture -> Exsanguinate regardless of existing Garrote duration, if Garrote is available in ST and adds won't spawn within 6 seconds (minor 0.4-0.6% gain for ST Exsanguinate to do this when it aligns)
- Exsanguinate and Pre-Exsanguinate DoT lines will check to see if the existing DoTs are already long enough on low-duration enemies (e.g. if the time_to_die is 10s, it won't refresh a Rupture that has 20s or more remaining, because there is no point.) This is mostly a gain for multi-target sims/DungeonSlice.
- Crimson Tempest will be used in ST if it is in pandemic, it isn't Exsanguinated, TB isn't up, MA isn't up, and TtK isn't available
Note: You will have to check your own gear to compare Crimson Tempest vs. Poison Bomb in ST. It takes pretty extreme amounts of haste for it to be better in pure ST, usually in the realm of Expedient 12+
However at even moderate levels of haste, Crimson Tempest is worth using in ST if you have it talented already as long as you follow the exceptions above. This is pretty relevant for M+ and multi-target fights. (For example, even if you are on the boss on Hivemind with no adds around, you would still be able to use it on ST as long as you follow the rules.)
rare swift
Did a bunch of APL testing and trial-error today for a few hours, and with the current tuning levels and gear I was able to come up with a pretty significant improvement to some of the 
Crimson Tempest AoE priority rules that was a gain in a few fight styles and for practical play.
Previously, CT AoE rule was to use at 3+ targets above Rupture priority if it was <2-3s remaining on the primary target, which was the only CT AoE-specific handling. Tab-Ruptures were always applied if the target will survive at least 4 seconds.
Currently, the new rules are as follows:
- At 4+ Targets, apply CT if it is <2-3s remaining on any target. This is higher priority than non-Exsanguinate Ruptures
- Tab-Ruptures now should be applied if the target will survive 4+ seconds if you have fewer than 3 poisoned bleeds up, but if you have 3+ poisoned bleeds, only put Ruptures on targets that will survive 10+ seconds
- At 2-3 Targets, apply CT if it is <2-3s remaining on any target. This is lower priority than keeping Ruptures up following the rule above.
- At 6-7 Targets, you can replace Envenom with CT unless Vendetta or Toxic Blade are up, with all the same pooling and CP rules as Envenom
This is only a minor increase in DungeonSlice because DungeonSlice does not have a primary target and thus the APL was already doing a lot of this due to the adds being a fresh set every wave. However this is a very significant increase on fight styles with "streaming" adds and a primary target, such as HecticAddCleave or custom fight styles. It is also pretty good rule of thumb for real-life situations when you are often cleaving off a single priority target.
This will be in the next Raidbots nightly.
Additionally, Outlaw APL is being updated with logic to prioritize 
Broadsides over 
Ruthless Precision when having over 42% character sheet Crit%
rare swift
Hi all--thanks to a really good report from @livid dock, a bug was tracked down that was preventing secondary procs from triggering from the instant component of Deadly Poison.
This flew under the radar as it had very little impact in a general sense, other than for Blood of the Enemy and Unbound Force minor traits, where the raw trigger count of crits/non-crits is actually relevant. (For RPPM effects, there was no measurable difference.) And the difference even in those proc rates was only noticeable at the more extreme gear levels.
This is fixed now in latest Raidbots nightly.
The fix here is a quite minor change for almost all Expedient gearsets and was mostly relevant for high Crit% builds. It does mean for Haste-oriented builds that BotE minor may go up by around 0.4% or so. This may be enough to supplant CnS/Formless minor in some cases, so it's worth checking out, even if running CLF major. It's a much larger fix for Severe setups, where it potentially around 1%. (Although I suspect most Severe setups were already running BotE!)
rare swift
There are are a considerable number of bug fixes and tweaks in the current beta build. Excite!
Will write them all up all the relevant ones in this channel later tonight after we can test things in-game.
rare swift
Synopsis of the changes today:
- Akaari's Shadowstrike proc was changed to a new spell, and no longer has the damage multiplier double-dipping issue. It also no longer generates Combo Points and deals 50% of the base damage as before. However, it now deals Shadow damage and bypasses armor, can Weaponmaster proc itself, and has some synergy with Deeper Daggers. This is a large "nerf" but one that was totally expected considering the legendary was a 50-60% damage increase. It is still looking like the best Sub ST legendary by a few percent.
- Celerity was changed to only work for Outlaw. Sad times.
- Bloodfang now procs from basically everything it should, including AoE like Fan of Knives, but has a 0.2s ICD
- Quite a large number of minor bugs were fixed (Doomblade functionality, Dancing Steel cooldown increase, Bone Spike facing requirement, etc.)
rare swift
Legendaries were largely given a tuning pass. Initial glance seems to be they are targeting ~5% contribution for a legendary. This means a lot of the stronger ones (which were 15%+) were nerfed rather heavily. Many others were untouched since they were already in the 4-6% range. Will have sims this evening.
Flagellation was also redesigned, impact of that is somewhat unknown and will need to reimplement it this evening! (Note: Flagellation is somewhat bugged with the redesign, but the spell data looks solid enough to implement the 'correct' version of it based on inference.)
pseudo grove
Everything regarding 9.0.1 (prepatch) is online on HeroDamage 🙂
rare swift
As a note, with the prepatch sims (Shadowlands SimC branch) there have been some tweaks to DungeonSlice that people may want to be aware of.
- Due to some systemic changes in the branch on how spawning events were handled, DungeonSlice needed some tweaks to still maintain enough re-stealths to be suitable for Rogues. These changes ended up modifying the add wave spawn patterns in a somewhat preferable way, so we decided to run with it.
- As such, there is a higher preference towards larger pulls than before. It will be more common to have overlaps of 6 and 7 targets in the DungeonSlice sims.
- This should address some concerns about not representing larger pulls.
- As another note for restealths, once the boss is finished at the start of the sim, Rogues should see a natural (non-Vanish) restealth every 38 seconds on average. This seems more than sufficient to represent Stealth gameplay and weight things like SS/Subterfuge/MA appropriately.
For documentation-sake, here is a rough breakdown of time spent by target count in DS sims:
pseudo grove
HeroDamage update is ongoing, you should be able to check it before/during the leveling.
Enjoy the new expansion 🙂
pseudo grove
And it's live 🙂
pseudo grove
Subtlety has received a lot of updates (and bugfixes) the last few hours (big 👍 @rare swift), you might want to check it out.
Spoiler, Kyrian is not that bad anymore 👀 (the biggest issue was that RS and DSh procs were not correctly considering Anima CP)
Both HD and RB should be up-to-date.
Considering Subtlety is FotM, do expect more optimization in the future (especially for tricky spells that asks for tradeoffs/good timing like ER) 🙂
rare swift
Also did some updates regarding Premed for non-Kyrian. Should be a bit of a boost to Premed in ST and sustained situations of 0.3-1% depending on the covenant. Kyrian didn’t benefit due to complicated reasons.
worldly nebula
Just putting an explicit note here that many melee trinkets are not yet implemented in sims. This can make both Raidbots sims and HeroDamage charts misleading, at the moment. I think it is good practice to hold onto your trinkets at the start of an expansion until this data is more reliable. Don't disenchant or sell them based on sims.
worldly nebula
For those fiddling with sims often and after this has come up a lot, starting with the next raidbots builds the new temporary_enchant option should be available. Similar to food, flask, and potion options this can be used for sharpening stones and oils without having to change any gear input.
Example: temporary_enchant=main_hand:shaded_sharpening_stone/off_hand:shaded_sharpening_stone
Edit/Update: Raidbots now has this alongside food etc. in the settings. Also, Stones are default so you don't need to set them explicitly. You can set it to disabled to see results without any.
pseudo grove
In addition to Raidbots, HeroDamage has added consumables too.
worldly nebula
From the data after the hotfix that we have seen today it looks like the slightly negative bug on Finality: Black Powder was replaced with a positive one. It looks like it now affects the physical damage in the intended alternating pattern but due to trigger order shenanigans every shadow damage attack is buffed. Just pushed a change to SimC that should make it to the next Raidbots nightly.
worldly nebula
All of the melee Agility trinkets from the raid should now have their basic implementations done for better data on HD and Raidbots nightly.
rare swift
Raidbots Nightly now includes the Assassination hotfix based on assumed values prior to Tuesday. So sims should now reflect the expected performance after the hotfix.
rare swift
Just as a note, since it didn't show up in the wowhead diffs as far as I could tell, but I caught it during SimC datamining--Master Assassin appears to be whitelisted on PTR, which means it will no longer affect trinkets or things like Necrotic Wake weapons.
Additional noteworthy observations:
- Assassination Mastery now appears to affect Serrated Bone Spike
- Improved Poisons auto-crit effect from Stealth looks like it may be functional now
rare swift
Since many people have been asking--
Despite the initial WoWHead datamining, it appears SnD Rank 2 on PTR is completely removed, not "available for all specs." It's possible this will change, but this is the case currently on PTR.
SimC should be updated for the various PTR changes sometime tonight or tomorrow. Until then, we don't know for sure how the Venthyr or legendary tuning changes will shake things up, since the changes were large and it's very hard to estimate without simming for real. Updates to come tomorrow.
rare swift
The updated PTR build notes have mentioned that Venomous Wounds is now intended to go from 7 to 8 Energy, presumably now to balance out the R2 SnD removal. However, this is not currently on PTR yet and was only added to the notes a few hours ago.
This should roughly be neutral with the previous Energy regen from SnD on single target
rare swift
As this is a notable topic for all: At a glance, it does appear Winds of Winter is likely working far more reliably than it did before the patch. There are still potential issues that need to be tested via logs today and controlled testing is somewhat difficult. However, initial results appears to show it behaving pretty reliably. Further updates will be noted as logs can be reviewed.
rare swift
Relevant note from the SimC Discord:
just FYI, Frost will be oversimming a bit at higher ranks right now
working on a fix now
There are actually different spells for each rank, and because they wanted to use integers for the % for all Frost ranks, they were not buffed evenly
Rank 1 was buffed the most
So due to this spell data change, some minor updates will be required. Will make a note of this when it is live on raidbots. (This is mostly relevant to the updated coefficient this morning, Fuu's sims for R5 before today were likely the same value used.)
rare swift
This is now updated on Raidbots.
rare swift
Relevant note for Frost set and primarily Outlaw, but other specs to some small degree.
It was recently discovered that a very uncommon spell flag was added to the Winds of Winter damage spell so that it bypasses all positive (but not negative) target modifiers.
Most target modifiers these days are whitelisted, but there are a few that are not, such as Ghostly Strike and the Sinful Revelation weapon enchant.
These will be removed from the Frost calculations in the next nightly build.
This will result in a small but noticeable (in sim numbers) DPS loss for Frost, but likely does little to change Frost's relative positioning to the other sets for whatever specs. (It will still easily be BiS for Outlaw, and Assassination/Sub valuations will change much less due to only generic weapon enchants being impacted.)
rare swift
Raidbots Nightly should be now updated with the Legion TW trinket damage splitting as well as the damage hotfixes. With the caveat that Mark of Dargrul has not been confirmed if it splits or not. (In SimC it does not currently split, since it was not specifically announced that it would in the hotfix notes. If anyone gets one and finds it does split, please let me know!)