So I seem to remember in I want to say Legion/BFA there was a super comprehensive simulation tool in the AMR arsenal where you could leverage your PC’s computing power and totally customize any WoW related sim that you wanted to run. I think you even had to download some piece of software to your computer in order to run it properly. Anyway, what happened to that feature? I loved that, and I just noticed that I cannot seem to find it anywhere. I have taken several long breaks from WoW over the years and may have missed something…
We discontinued the simulator for Dragonflight. The new talent trees made the number of relevant gear combos we have to test explode in magnitude. Simulation is too slow for us to create our scoring functions. We moved to a mathematical model that can get us good data much faster. Since we aren’t using the simulator as the back end for the optimizer, we don’t have the time to maintain it. We have to spend our time refining the mathematical models instead.
We miss the simulator as well - simulation is fun to tinker with. It isn’t the only way to optimize gear, though!
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As a healer, AskMrRobot was the only platform where I could compare the output of specific item/talent picks by simulating setups against each other.
For me, the optimizer never worked well. It always displayed a lot of very strange percentages that would have led to one bad pick or another. (And in fact it did lead to one that could have easily been prevented: The “Darkmoon Deck Box: Watcher.” At the start of the addon, Mr. Robot said that this was by far the best possible upgrade, which turned out to be completely wrong and set me back in HoF progression).
I’m deeply disappointed that you made this decision, because the simulation was what made Mr. Robot special and exactly why I was so happy to pay the subscription.
Some out of context percentages can be obtained on several other sites for free.
Edit: In fact i just ran the optimizer to see what funny things it suggests now and it still wants me to replace a 415 “Voidmenders Shadowgem” with a 401 "Darkmoon Deck Box: Watcher” to increase HPS by 7%. What a joke.
If you have specific cases that you want us to look at, we’re happy to do so.
A single trinket showing a 7% increase seems strange… if you post a snapshot I can look at your specific case. That item certainly does not rank that high for most cases that I have tested. Instructions on how to create a snapshot here:
Well the 7% were at beginning of S1 thus i am not able to recreate the setup, but even though it still says best craftable item with +3.68% as for now. ( Which still is not realistic at all )
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Since i started using askmrrobot in legion i had many cases like this where it was very obvious that the optimizer values cannot be trusted without verification through simulation.
You mentioned to test specific cases. How do you do that without simulator?
I assume you’re talking about Darkmoon Deck Box: Watcher in your provided snapshot? If you are in a fight where everyone is taking damage, you can get good value out of it. We low-ball the versatility part assuming as a non-tank you won’t use up the entire shield reliably each time you use it (right now for a non-tank we assume you’ll only get the versatility buff 1 out of every 10 times you use it). We also assume some amount of waste (i.e. overhealing) on the shield (about 30% right now).
This is one of those trinkets that is hard to give a single value… it is highly dependent on your fight and situation. If you are not able to make good use of the self shield, lower the trinket’s value on the customization tab. It has a 90 second cooldown… if for example you find that you are only getting good use out of it say every 2 minutes rather than 1.5, add a multiplier of 0.75.
Your other trinkets are not amazing for healing – it seems reasonable to me that a trinket with a good shield effect would rank higher than certain stat buffs. And if you can trigger the vers buff at least sometimes in a tough fight… it’s a pretty good trinket.
When I said test cases, I meant test the optimizer with different characters and different combinations of settings, talents, etc.
As a healer I found Ask Mr. Robot at the beginning of Legion and have paid for it ever since I found batch simming. I know you said it is to hard to maintain but is there any possibility of bringing it back for a higher sub fee? I would gladly pay 2x the sub fee for the ability to batch sim. BiB has never given me accurate results and no I barely use Ask. Mr. Robot, There is no sim out there that fills the void left. Knowing that I had fine tuned a build for a purpose with every variable accounted for… It made me a better healer and honestly… it sure was fun!
I really miss that feature.
I was hoping I’d be able to bring back healing simulation, at least. I’m not ready to say it will never happen… but it will be hard to make it happen. It takes a lot of work to maintain the simulator and not very many people were using it. Of those very few people, only some even smaller number would be willing to pay to use it (it was always free in the past).
With the simulator being too slow to power the back end of the optimizer… it is really not a financially viable project. It would be a pure passion project, which means I have to push it to lowest priority 
Have you considered publishing your simulator on github?
I think if you have no commercial plans for it it would be a good solution.
Unfortunately, I don’t have enough time to make something of my own, but I could participate in development if it was on github.
The simulator allowed you to do a very important thing. Namely, fine-tune the damage for healers.
You could always take your simulation and compare the numbers with the real logs.
Now the only way to check your builds is to play them.
No, we haven’t. The code for the back end is too entwined with the optimizer part of the website.
There is a chance I could get it into a state where we could post it up with the new items/talents stubbed in and then let people use the wiki (like we always did) to update it as they pleased. That is my current hope.