Is there a way to see how much a piece of gear will increase DPS as a real number instead of a % gain? My raid lead will only work off of real numbers and I’m forced to go to Raidbots to provide that info for the time being.
We only show % gains (and have done it that way for almost a decade). The reason is that absolute DPS numbers are of little value – I’m not sure why your raid lead wants that instead of % gains.
To illustrate one of the many reasons that we do it this way, go to warcraft logs and look at the top 100 logs for each boss, you’ll see numbers that range from ~85k to 195k depending on the boss. Which boss does your raid leader want a DPS number for?
If that’s how your raid leader wants it… I would recommend messing with as many settings as raidbots allows so that you can get huge DPS numbers.
And to make things worse, the absolute DPS numbers predicted by simulators rarely match what you see in logs anyway. They don’t capture all of the nuances of movement, fight phases, etc. Most people who rely on simc results are still basing it entirely on a “patchwerk” style script. Your absolute DPS in such a scenario is not that relevant.
This isn’t to say that simulators and optimizers like ours don’t work… quite the contrary. They are very good at estimating relative differences between builds and sets of gear. Thus why we show it that way, and why I encourage you and your raid team to think of it in those terms.
All of that said… I know it’s tough to change somebody’s mind. If your raid leader wants absolute DPS values, do the following:
Say our site predicts item X is a 0.55% DPS upgrade for you, and that you used our default single-target raid script. Pick a boss in the current tier of content that is mostly single-target, look up logs on WCL, and multiply the DPS value by 0.55%. For example if top players are doing 100k DPS on that boss, 0.55% would be a 550 DPS gain.
You could also base it on your own logs – that would give a pretty accurate absolute DPS estimate for you – much better than a simulation could. If you are doing 85k on that boss, then 0.55% would be 468 DPS.
That said… I’m sure your raid leader is using these values to decide who gets loot – if you give a really accurate and honest estimate like this, it might low-ball all your estimates compared to other people basing it on simulations with inflated DPS estimates… so you might want to either base it on top 100 player logs, or do a single simulation to get a ballpark DPS, and take percentages of that.
As you can see… using relative percentages would be a much fairer way to compare upgrades across teammates… using absolute DPS values just leads to problems.
Thanks for the detailed reply and the suggestion of how to get numbers just using AMR and WCL. I agree with and see your logic.
One more question though… Even if raidbots is inadequate for measuring real DPS values, does that somehow get negated by everyone using the same sim? As in, all numbers are in relationship to a 5 min patchwerk, and therefore even if real life boss nuances aren’t taken into account, that variance is controlled for by running the same exact sim. Does that make sense?
And like you rightly presumed, my raid lead doesn’t want % gains in order to give the highest real DPS gain to the most appropriate person, and he uses raidbots for these decisions.
I’m considering sending your reply to my raid lead to see what he would think…
If everyone is using the same tool and the exact same simulation settings, then yeah the absolute numbers work fine.
If you are using AMR and someone else is using simc… or someone adjusts a setting… then a % gain will work a lot better.
As a raid leader if I was back in my hardcore raiding days where we did stuff like this for handing out loot, I’d prefer to see estimated % gains. Then I would assess my individual players: are we really hurting on a DPS check, and this person who does 80k DPS on avg can get a 1% upgrade whereas this other person who tends to only do 60k DPS can get a 1.2% upgrade from it… I’ll probably give it to the person who does 80k DPS. But I would use logs of actual raids my team did to make that final decision.
That said… I consider that level of detail pretty nit picky for distributing loot these days (and I run a gear optimization website for a living!)… flipping a coin between those two people would not slow down the progress of my raid team in any noticeable way, so that’s what I prefer for handing out loot. Less time worrying about loot drops means more time raiding and less team sadness.