Midnight 12.1 Patch Updates

Ask Mr. Robot Announcements
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Sometime during server maintenance on Aug 11 we will update the website for Midnight patch 12.1!

LOTS of class changes

There were quite a few class changes, some of them pretty impactful. We have implemented all changes as of the state of PTR on Aug 8th. Once the servers are live we will do another update to see if any last-minute changes were added.

We may need to adjust a few rotations to optimize for some of the changes, but all specs are generally working and updated.

New Gear

We have added all new gear, item levels, etc. for the new raids, dungeons, and Mythic+ season. We know this is a little early as season 2 won’t start for another week, but we like to get it out there early for people to plan ahead.

Set Bonuses

All new season 2 tier set bonuses are implemented. There are a couple non-tier sets that we still need to implement.

Trinkets

All new trinkets and special item effects are implemented and estimated. A few may need some tweaking as we see how people are using them, but they should all have decent baseline rankings.

New Crafted Embellishments

We have implemented all new crafted embellishments, but they need testing. The way Blizzard scales these is always inconsistent and downright strange, so it can be hard to tell from spell data alone.

New Catalyst

We still have to implement the new catalyst behavior: when you convert an item into a set item, the source item’s secondary stats will replace the stats on the set item. The “Venomcursed” effects from some Venomous Abyss items will also transfer over.

In theory the new version of the addon is reading the information required to implement this, but we are still testing the code for it. We will make an announcement when the new behavior is available in the Upgrade Finder catalyst search.

Simulation Reports (BETA)

As we have mentioned before, we are once again basing all optimizations on simulations using our newest, extremely fast simulator. We will start rolling out beta simulation reports for a few specs at a time as we complete them. On launch, Devastation Evoker and Shadow Priest will be available.

Let us know what you think! We are trying to make them a little more fun than a basic/raw report. We have plans to add more information to them as well, such as interesting data on the rotation being used by the simulator.

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Looking forward to be using AMR once again this upcoming season, thanks for all your hard work!

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The site has been updated with 12.1! A few extra notes:

Talents

For many specs your talents will be blank! This happens when Blizzard moves talent nodes around, your existing talents become invalid/impossible builds. You need to go in-game and make sure your talents are up to date and export to the website again. Please make sure to do this before optimizing again or you will get strange results.

Non-tier sets

The only new non-tier set bonus seemed to be Zul’jin’s Guillotine Technique and the associated weapons. That set has been implemented and is ranked.

Anything else

As always, let us know right away if something isn’t working with a big new patch like this. We will fix it as quickly as possible. The site is based on the latest client data that I could pull from the live build this morning, but since we can’t fire up the actual game yet it is often missing any last-minute hotfix data.

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We just posted an update with the following:

Crafted Embellishments

All of the new crafted embellishments have been implemented. They are always a bit tricky to figure out how they scale because Blizzard is weirdly inconsistent with them… but we think we have it figured out now.

Trinkets

We fixed a few errant trinket rankings with the new items, in particular Gebbo’s Bottomless Bag was ranking way too high, and Venomcursed bonus effects were ranking too low.

New Catalyst

The new catalyst is ready to go (even though people won’t be able to try it out for a couple weeks yet). It is a little hard to test… and some of the items look a bit bugged on PTR… so we will see how it goes down when people start getting these items in-game.

Minor Things

Fixed a few cosmetic issues with Venomcursed item tooltips, and fixed a minor issue with the old DISC belt with addon v178.

edit: Of course as I’m doing this update I see another issue with the Venomcursed items: our default lists are not adding the bonus effect, so we’ll look into that for tomorrow’s update.

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thank you so much for all the love you put into AMR. its always been my best kept secret weapon

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Thanks! We’re glad the site has served you well, and we hope to keep improving it!

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Not sure if it was part of this update but I didn’t notice it when using the site before 12.1 - has something changed with the behaviour of locking gear? The lock symbols no longer show for me for gear (they do for gems/enchants/Omnium Folio, for example, however). It’s been such a longstanding part of the visual of Best in Bags, so not sure if it’s intended or not? I’m finding reworking sets a bit confusing and unintuitive as a result.

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We did not make any change to how locking gear works. It still works the same way as always.

It appears there may be a display bug that is causing the lock icon to not show up when a piece of gear is locked in. But, the item is still locked (and you will see the “unlock all” button at the bottom of the gear table become active).

We will figure out why the style class isn’t showing to put the lock on the page and post an update on Monday.

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Thanks for the response :slight_smile: Glad to hear it was unintended and that a fix will be on the way!

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Hey AMR team. I think the post a few above suggested that the new Catalyst behaviour was ready to go? I know no one can even use it yet in game, but looking at the Upgrade Finder for my Catalyst it’s changing the secondaries, rather than keeping the ones on the source item. Am I doing something wrong? Here’s a snapshot ID: c79103273c3e4aeeb01a996c97a9d03b

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Thanks for the snapshot, I’ll take a look. I’m working through a couple other issues with the catalyst (dealing with source items that have random stats), and will have an update later today to the addon and website that hopefully smooths everything out.

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We just posted an update with Blizzard’s tuning patch from last night/today.

This update should also resolve the issue of the catalyst upgrade finder search not carrying over the stats from the source item.

NOTE: for now I removed all non-set slots from the catalyst upgrade finder search (such as feet, waist, wrist). Unless I’m missing something… these are functionally just transmogs now.

(Also note for your specific case @johnnyquest , you need the Pyroclasm talent for the set items to rank properly. Several of the season 2 set bonuses require specific talents to operate.)

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Thanks @yellowfive I can confirm that it seems to be working correctly now, once I talented into Pyroclasm (the list is entirely empty without it). The stats carry over, and the items I expected to get suggested are now being shown as upgrades.

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We posted another significant update for Midnight 12.1 today.

This update has some new Catalyst features and a couple more specs with new simulation reports (beta).

Catalyst

The major change to the catalyst this season is its ability to transfer secondary stats from the source item to the set item. This has a lot of people trying to figure out the best items to convert to set items. Below is a summary of new behavior based on user feedback in early season 2.

Best in Bags

There is a new checkbox in the options called “Catalyze Items”. If enabled, when running Best in Bags it will try converting eligible items in your inventory into set items to see if they result in a better solution.

You will see the lock icon replaced by a “C” in the result table. Mouse over the “C” to view the tooltip of the source item.

Some people may prefer this over the Upgrade Finder as a way to decide which items to convert via the catalyst. Note that this could recommend converting an item even if it wouldn’t activate another set bonus – it might just have better stats from the source item.

Best in Slot

There is a new checkbox in the options called “Allow Catalyst Set Items”. This will try every relevant version of set items converted from any end-game item source that shows up in our lists.

The result display is similar to Best in Bags: a “C” will appear next to the set item that you can use to view the tooltip of the source item.

Upgrade Finder

We have improved the upgrade finder to work for any season. You can still convert season 1 items into season 1 set items via the catalyst if you wish. The upgrade finder will now show those in addition to season 2 items.

A note on expected gains from the Catalyst

The actual increase in your output/damage from this new catalyst behavior over simply using the base versions of the set items is small. Our tests show a range of 0.5-1.5% total increase were you to use perfect sources for all 4 of your set items. Most specs sit at or just under 1%, higher is rare.

We find this to be a bit disappointing… Blizzard introduced this new level of complexity and player stress for almost no gain.

If you are just trying to get your 4pc set bonus as early as possible (as you should because they are worthwhile even if the stats aren’t perfect on your items), this change is net neutral on average – sometimes you’ll get lucky and have a source item that is slightly better than the base set item, sometimes slightly worse.

Our advice: certainly use the optimizer to choose your best source item option at the moment, but never delay activating your set bonuses by a week to hold out for a better source item.

Simulation Reports

The new simulation report beta is now available for:

  • Devourer
  • Devastation
  • Shadow
  • Subtlety

Check them out! It appears as an expandable section just below Best in Bags or Best in Slot.

Catalyst Upgrading Season 1 Items to Season 2 Set Pieces
Does Best in Slot account for Season 2's catalyst changes?
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I also noted a “Exclude ilvl 344 Drops” checkbox in BiS that I haven’t seen before - or completely missed.

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Forgot to mention that one – someone requested a way to see the regular Myth track version of those items that drop at 344, e.g. if you were to obtain it via a bonus roll. When you check this it will exclude the 344 version and instead use the Myth track version upgraded to your desired level.

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We did a small update today that brings back an old feature: the Bonus Roll search for the Upgrade Finder.

Some of you may remember this feature from way back, we have revived it pretty much as it was. It will rank the various places you can spend a bonus roll in three ways (pick your favorite, there is no right answer):

  1. Weighted Average: This is the average value of upgrades that you could get from this bonus roll, but weighted by your overall chance to actually get an upgrade (e.g. if most of the items are bad it will drag the average down).

  2. Biggest Upgrade: Pretty straightforward, simply ranks by the biggest upgrade you could get with this bonus roll, ignoring any other reward or the chance of getting it.

  3. Highest Chance: Rank by the chance that you will get an item that is an upgrade with that roll (regardless of how big of an upgrade it is). For example a boss where every item is a small upgrade would rank much higher than a boss where only 1 of 5 items is a big upgrade and everything else is a downgrade.

New behavior for Midnight:

  1. You can check “include catalyst” to try converting the reward to a set item. If the set item ranks higher, we use that ranking in place of the base item that drops (and the expanded list will show the set item and the item that was converted into it).

  2. If you already have one of the items in the list it will be removed from the available drops, and all scores will be adjusted appropriately. This was the hardest feature to test so please let us know if it is not removing already-obtained rewards as expected. One thing that we weren’t sure about: if you already own a Myth variant of an item, we weren’t sure if it would remove that from any lower variant’s bonus roll (e.g. were you to roll on a Heroic or Normal boss that drops the same item). We assumed yes for now.

  3. The “Max Upgrade Threshold”, “Upgrade Equipped Items”, and “Set Bonus Prediction” options work just as they do on the other searches.

Notes:

This uses the “quick rank” style of ranking because there can be quite a lot of items to rank at once. We are still working on a unified ranking technique that can give the higher accuracy of the other searches but on larger lists of items like you might see on quick rank or bonus roll, but that’s not ready yet.

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Great work! Is it possible to add a filter to only show the items that’s in my BiS selection? I’m not interested in bonus rolling for a rank 1 staff according to the list if my BiS says I should aim for a 1h dagger.

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FYI the Ula’tek items (e.g: Gaze of the Coiled Watcher) when rolling in hero for the mythic 1/6 items are missing their cantrip effects in the upgrade finder lists.

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Thanks I’ll take a look, the bonus ID must be getting accidentally dropped when generating the lower item level version.