I managed to grind out all 4 covenants on my Monk (Mistweaver/Windwalker), and I’m utterly confused as to which covenants AMR thinks (sims?) is the best for each role. Let me get some precise numbers here…
I am currently Night Fae. All gear and soulbinds as AMR recommends, the % increase is, of course, 0%. I go “back to setup”, and try out Necrolord as the Covenant. It doesn’t assign soulbinds at first (not sure why?), so I unlock, the soulbinds, re-optimize and… it’s a 0.12% increase.
Okay. Am I braindead, or shouldn’t that mean if I switch to Necrolord, then Night Fae would be a 0.12% decrease? Let’s see.
Switched to the Necrolord covenant, got all my gear and soulbinds according to AMR. I’m at 0% again. Now, compare it to NightFae, unlock soulbind and re-optomize and… it’s a 9.79% increase.
If you post a snapshot we can take a closer look, you can do that by clicking the “help” link by the big Best in Bags section header, then press Create Support Post and copy the generated ID here.
That said, the optimizer isn’t really set up to show you comparisons across covenants. The score increase is comparing the optimization result to what you currently have equipped and chosen for your soulbind tree and conduits, and it assumes those will be for the same covenant as the optimization result. If your setup is for a covenant that you don’t currently have active in-game, we have code set up to remember the last thing you had chosen for that covenant, and it should use that as your starting point before optimizing.
To get the most consistent results, whenever you change covenant in-game, be sure to immediately export to the website so that we can record the last-seen soulbinds and conduits for that covenant.
I believe I understand what you’re saying. Going back to setup and checking a different covenant only compares it to what the robot had set … let me start over. lol. If I’m currently Necrolord, and I “change settings” and switch to Night Fae, the robot is checking vs… what it previously saved as my Night Fae build. So if it didn’t have soulbinds, and I added soulbinds, it was inflating the % because it didn’t previously have soulbinds. Not, Night Fae vs Necrolord.
Okay! Okay. I do understand now. Thank you.
My question then becomes… how do I compare/sim different covenants? Is that possible with AMR, or would I sadly have to look elsewhere?
You could use our simulator to run simulations and compare the results: Not Available
That should give you a decent idea of how the different covenants will stack up against each other. The easiest way is to choose “Single Sim”, then choose your character from the recent character list. There is a list of 4 steps on the left of the screen that you can use to modify various settings, such as choosing a different boss fight to simulate against, changing buffs and debuffs, etc.
At the bottom of the Create Setup step you can directly load one of your optimization results from Best in Bags as well.
Note that while the simulator and optimizer are related – we use simulation data to create our optimization models – they are different tools that can give slightly different results. We put a lot of extra mathematical modeling into the optimizer to try and smooth out the “noise” inherent in simulation models.
You can also look at the Guide section, the links are up the top right of the webpage.
Having said that I don’t know how often that data get updated, perhaps @yellowfive can let us know that.
I update those whenever any significant changes are made to the game or a spec that would shift the balance – anything that would cause the optimizer to produce different results.