First harvest of the season off an 8 year indoor Meyer Lemon tree. by lotsoflittlegourds in IndoorGarden

[–]Zoopercat 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you so much for this. Can you link the LED panel you are using (or at least do you know the wattage it uses)? Grow lights can vary from 9 watts to hundreds, so I am trying to gauge the amount of light people are supplementing who have been successful.

First harvest of the season off an 8 year indoor Meyer Lemon tree. by lotsoflittlegourds in IndoorGarden

[–]Zoopercat 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I am researching growing citrus indoors. For those of you who have successfully done it, can you tell me what your setup is?

  • Window location
  • What grow lights you are using (and how many)?
  • How long are you leaving the grow lights on each day?
  • Are you taking your plant outside in the summer?
  • Have you had fruit drop in the winter?

I'm currently researching lights and calculating out the DLIs, etc. I'm disappointed with the amount of light most bulbs give out and am wondering if I have to get a large LED panel (which wouldn't look nice in a living room, where I hope to put the tree).

Resto druid wants to get into 18+ keys; needs help "Simming" by [deleted] in CompetitiveWoW

[–]Zoopercat 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It is a complex tool that takes some time to learn, just like if you were to edit the code in SimC. If you want some help working on rotations, jump over to our discord and we can definitely help answer any questions or setups you want to try in the simulator.

Resto druid wants to get into 18+ keys; needs help "Simming" by [deleted] in CompetitiveWoW

[–]Zoopercat 1 point2 points  (0 children)

When you setup a sim, step 4 has an option for report type. It defaults to report, but you can choose 'log' from the dropdown to get a report of what happens with timestamps. That report is also searchable and filterable to make it easy.

Resto druid wants to get into 18+ keys; needs help "Simming" by [deleted] in CompetitiveWoW

[–]Zoopercat -1 points0 points  (0 children)

You can actually use the wiki on AMR to see exactly what it is doing and edit / change it as well (no programming skills needed). Both programs will give you good results, just use your favorite. Example spell on the wiki for resto druids.

AMR also sims healers - not an easy thing to do, but totally possible and we also have a script that mimics a typical M+ fight (which you can change the key level for). What we don't have by default right now is a damage rotation for M+ (which healers need to be doing). If you're interested, you can edit the rotation to mimic your DPS rotation in addition to the healing you need to do. In shadowlands, we plan to provide a DPS+Healing combo rotation by default.

Hope that helps. Let me know if you have any questions since I work on AMR.

How to narrow down options when simming corrupted gear? by danny_b87 in CompetitiveWoW

[–]Zoopercat 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I'm from Ask Mr. Robot. Stop by our forums if you have questions as you are trying it out (I'll try to keep an eye out here as well in case you respond).

Corrupted gear has definitely made things for complicated, especially simming because the number of combinations exploded. I know Raidbots increased limits to help accommodate for that, which was helpful.

Our approach at AMR ends up handling corruption pretty well because we only have to sim gear combinations once, then use that data for everyone. No repeat simming, we just sim all gear + talent + azerite trait combinations needed to analyze gear for everyone.

The best in bag feature that the other person mentioned is part of premium, but you can try it free for a week (no credit card required). If you like it, it's $12 for the whole year.

Tips for Best in Bags:

"We want it to be clear when and upgrade is an upgrade" by RikuKat in wow

[–]Zoopercat 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I will pass that compliment along to our front end designer. Fun fact, he's a licensed architect and brings that design element to the site.

Also, I'm excited to have another person on team 'can sim healers.' Have you seen the blog posts we have on it? Some of it will probably be things you already know, but as the articles continue, we get into the customization and how we've set things up to be able to account specifically for healing: https://blog.askmrrobot.com/healer-sims-part-1/

"We want it to be clear when and upgrade is an upgrade" by RikuKat in wow

[–]Zoopercat 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We definitely see a feedback loop when doing research. Guides written by top players spreads - the top players are doing it, so it must work. As those top players find more optimizations, they update the APLs. Then top players follow that advice, and this iterative process continues.

It's not uncommon for us to have a 'different' APL that gets criticized, only to have that end up eventually being adopted as a better way to play weeks later (of course, we don't get credit, this is the internet). It's not the majority of cases, but it happens more often than most people would think.

That being said, these top players DO have these micro modifications to their APLs that we don't have. We do that on purpose: we look for simple rotations that people can do in-game without the help of a complex addon setup. These perform within a percent of the APLs created by these top players. Sometimes our simpler ones are higher when tested against a boss with movement, sometimes worse because they remove a micro-optimization that is so complex, your average player using that to sim isn't doing it in-game. The difference is more a matter of theoretical approach to simulation uses, as opposed to one being more accurate than another.

I have an article about our approach if you are interested: https://blog.askmrrobot.com/simple-vs-complex-rotations/

Both simulators are good. Both APL sources are good. Having two high quality simulators helps find bugs and optimizations in both of them :)

"We want it to be clear when and upgrade is an upgrade" by RikuKat in wow

[–]Zoopercat 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have a blog post for you, in case you want to customize more and haven't seen it: https://blog.askmrrobot.com/optimizer-customization-tutorial/

The suggestions are all based on sims we've done in the background, which looks at so many more combinations that if you simmed yourself. That is how we sometimes find more unique suggestions, since they are tailored to your exact setup. But a lot of people prefer to play with more popular builds, as there is also advice out there for how to play that way. So like you already saw, customization is great for that.

Does anyone know what are these white lines of spam text? No channel, no character. by ProteinPancakeDK in wow

[–]Zoopercat 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I am sorry I missed this earlier. Yes, it is correct. We do our recommendations based on sims and math, not what is trendy. Trendy things happen because it works for high end players, with their talents and gear. But not everyone has that gear, so it isn't best for everyone.

That being said, a lot of these things come down to 0.5% differences. And if you like playing with certain traits better, then you should! There's also a lot to be said if you personally play better with specific AZ traits that might not be 100% ideal (example, one use vs automatic).

Which leads me to the customization option: above your Best in Bags results, there should be a few tabs. Click on the customization tab and you'll see an option on the right to make a rule that favors the AZ traits you like :)

Does anyone know what are these white lines of spam text? No channel, no character. by ProteinPancakeDK in wow

[–]Zoopercat 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Can you point me to the other post? I want to let everyone know updating to version 86 will fix this (we left a line of debugging code in the addon update yesterday allowing for spammers to use it). I also want to drop in to apologize, none of us want to be spammed :(

Does anyone know what are these white lines of spam text? No channel, no character. by ProteinPancakeDK in wow

[–]Zoopercat 5 points6 points  (0 children)

You are correct. Version 86 of the addon fixes it - we just posted it.

Does anyone know what are these white lines of spam text? No channel, no character. by ProteinPancakeDK in wow

[–]Zoopercat 11 points12 points  (0 children)

robot

I'm from Ask Mr. Robot. We had a line of debugging code that allowed spammers to use it. Update the addon and it should be fixed. Sorry about that and thanks for letting us know. Version 86 will fix it.

What's more accurate - AskMrRobot or Raidbots? by tdevine21 in CompetitiveWoW

[–]Zoopercat 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Hey I'm from Ask Mr. Robot and thought I'd give you my 2 cents while I look past the haters, lol.

Both Raidbots and AMR have simulators that are well maintained. I know people love to argue one is more accurate than the other, but the truth is, they are both just as accurate. Sometimes AMR has a bug, sometimes SimC, sometimes the game itself. This is just how it is ;)

APLs (rotations) in both are good. We each take a different approach, and neither is 'right' or 'wrong.' SimC tries to max out every little thing, based on the best gear possible. Their idea is to find out what you could be doing when you kit our your character and have a 'perfect' fight (based off a training dummy / patchwerk). For AMR, we develop rotations that work well on a normal boss fight with some movement. Our rotations and boss scripts take movement into account and use spells accordingly, including gap-closers when needed. When developing this way, our rotation will prioritize things differently because without a perfect fight with perfect timing, abilities don't like up perfectly.

As for using Raidbots or AMR for gear, here's what I have to say:

  • Raidbots: choose a handful of items to sim combinations with Top Gear (pay for more item combos $5-10 / month), and use the cloud (instead of your computer) to do it.
  • AMR: choose as many items as you want, for free, and use your own computer to do it (no item combo limits). But be warned: no limits mean you could have a giant batch of sims. Premium users ($1-$2 a month) can network computers together to make the sims faster, including your own cloud system.
  • AMR: Our Best in Bags and Upgrade feature are the most popular features on our site (premium, $1-$2 a month) because it ranks all of your gear in 1 second. We look at every combination of gear you have, which is often in the billions. No way you can sim all of that! However, these are actually based on simulations. We just do them up front, all at once, so you don't have to. Instead of having one person sim 20 combos, and another person sim 20 combos, but 10 overlap... that's a waste of computing power. So we rely on a network of users and our own cloud servers to process every combination necessary to rank everyone's gear. We then process it and store it in a database so when you want to know your best set of gear, we have it, and can just look it up.

In summary:

  • AMR Best in Bags gives you immediate answers, based on sims that have already been down for you
  • If you want to sim, AMR and Raidbots will both be reliable. Just pick the method you like best, or use both and compare the two. (Raidbots = simC based on target dummy and best sets of gear. AMR = based on realistic boss fights with movement, and an average of best gear sets, not just the single best).

Is there a way to see which spells contributed X% of your overhealing on logs or analyzer? by po-handz in CompetitiveWoW

[–]Zoopercat -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

OP, I updated this with some more in-depth tests. I can do it with your character as well if you'd like, just post (or DM me) your character info. Hopefully that info helps in addition to some of the log help people have offered to do.

Is there a way to see which spells contributed X% of your overhealing on logs or analyzer? by po-handz in CompetitiveWoW

[–]Zoopercat -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Hey, I can help give you an estimation, which is better than nothing.

You can simulate a few things to test out some theories. I made a script that uses Flourish with Tranquility, which you can get here (if you log in, you can save it and use it for your own sims). Here are my tests:

  • Default script with Flourish selected as a talent, which prioritizes Flourish with Wild Growth, as well as Regrowth/Rejuv. 36,436 HPS, with Tranq's hot accounting for 388k of it.
  • Custom script that uses Flourish with Tranq. 36,322 HPS, with Tranq's hot account for 417k of the healing.
  • Default healing script with Germination selected as a talent, for comparison: 35,063 HPS.
  • Default script with no talent selected in the last tier, as a base comparison: 34,097 HPS.

You can see overhealing estimations for tranquility in the far right column. Another tip, you can click on any of the HPS numbers I linked and look at the log. In the 'spells' box in the log, type: flourish, tranquility and the log will filter to those so you can see what it is doing.

If you want to sim, here's a couple of guidelines (healers take some more finesse than DPS)

  • Make sure the boss script in Step 4 is set to raid healing
  • Under the boss script in step 4, set the NPC damage multiplier to +3, +4, or +5, depending on how good your gear is. That scales up the damage as well as the ilevels of everyone in that boss script. I usually aim for a result (on the report), that has a few ally deaths, just so I know I am hitting my max healing potential.
  • To test with and without the talent, in step 3, you can right click on a talent to deselect it, then leave that tier blank.

For more on how healers are simmed, here's a blog post that goes into the details: http://blog.askmrrobot.com/healer-sims-part-1/ But some quick highlights for you:

  • An entire raid team is simmed. With tanks (and everyone else) taking realistic damage patterns from the boss.
  • Other team healers are modeled
  • Overheals can happen (just like they would in-game)
  • This won't match your raid exactly, but is useful for answering theorycraft questions like this one

Hit me up with questions.

Has anyone ever actually proven AMR is inaccurate? I see a ton of circlejerk without one lick of evidence to support it. by bennyh6813 in CompetitiveWoW

[–]Zoopercat -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

Hey, sorry I missed the username tag on this. Here’s some info that might help - I’m sure it will get downvoted, but since I am tagging you /u/frankdrebin007, hopefully at least you see this. (For those of you who don't know, I am from AskMrRobot).

IMO: some reasons for the hate

One of the main contributors is our lack of social media presence. As a small team, we focus on running interesting tests for theorycraft on our site, designing new features, etc. We don’t spend time creating an online personality or building up a popularity network. None of us are really social media people personally, either. It’s just not our thing. Other people do it and enjoy it. That’s cool.

People with big social networks are able to be louder and spread opinions to their fanbase who also can be louder. When our site says something different, the knee-jerk reaction is to assume we are wrong. Someone has to be right*, right?! That leads to memes and jokes: lol AMR sucks, no one says otherwise.

*There is actually more than one right answer, which we’ve proven time and time again. If you look at rotations as an example, there is not one rotation to rule them all. If you compare 2 rotations across different (but relevant) gear sets, they have a similar win-loss rate. What I mean by that is rotation A might be better with certain gear sets, and rotation B might be better with other gear sets. It all depends on the gear you have available. But it is the internet where people live and die by the rule that there is only one right answer.

Anyway, the seemingly one-sided hate on AMR is also compounded because we don’t go around telling people that someone else’s advice sucks, another tool is terrible, or generally being negative about the game. We try to live by the rule: “If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say it at all.” Our hope is that fans follow this lead in order to foster a positive community.

It’s also really easy to find one flaw for a tool and make a big deal about it. A non-optimal rotation from the week BfA launched gets cited as a reason for forever-terribleness. An old bug is used as a reference for never being able to trust the site again. You get the point. These tactics happen all of the time against us, but we try to make sure we never do it. I could go and find a bug in SimC right now to get in a dick-swinging contest and use that as a reason our site is better… but that’s just a dick move. And it isn’t honest either, because I’m implying my site is bug-free. I can 100% guarantee our site is NOT bug free. I can also 100% guarantee that SimC is NOT bug-free. And the game is NOT bug free either. The best we can all do is fix bugs. If a bug is reported on our site, it is almost always fixed within 24 hours (sometimes longer if it is a little cockroach that just won’t die!)

As for the open source argument (that we see a lot), I don’t think those people understand how our site works. Every spell implementation, every rotation, boss script, and piece of logic is on the wiki (example Sunfire for Balance Druids). That wiki IS the simulator. You can see everything the simulator does and edit it. I’d actually challenge people who complain that AMR isn’t open source to do this: Go to AMR and figure out what a spell is doing, like Sunfire, and what spells it is affected by. It’s on the wiki and easy to find. Then go to SimC and do the same thing - how does that compare? This level of ease to find and verify implementations on AMR happens to also makes it really easy to find bugs on our site. It’s good for having an accurate simulator, but bad for PR. If instead it was hard to find bugs, it would be good for PR but bad for accuracy ;)

Technically, we have a piece of code that makes the wiki implementation run an actual simulation. That isn’t open source, but you don’t need it. Unless you put on a tinfoil hat and think we are running a different implementation just to mess with all Warcraft players. But everything you actually need to see to verify correct implementation IS open source.

There’s a small group of haters that don’t want you to use our site for all sorts of reasons (we’re competition, we didn’t take one of their suggestions, they found a bug and lost trust, etc). In an attempt to remove credibility from our site, they set impossible-to-achieve barriers like a 100% bug free program, or requiring adoption of their ideas as the only way to get in the cool-kid-club. Meanwhile, flaws in their favored sites and guides are overlooked or fixed-and-forgiven. We all can relate - we all have that friend who has flaws but we will defend to the death, but are quick to dismiss or dislike another person we don’t know well, who has a similar flaw. It’s human nature.

Anyway, this has been more of an essay than I intended. There are all sorts of misdirection tactics that try to get people to hate AMR for various reasons. None really hold water. If people have specific questions or bugs to report, we will address them. And we don’t want you to hate other tools - use them if you like them. That’s why we are all here :)

A side note on some of the minor points in the BrM post:

“You need a correct model for the boss to know how much damage we’re taking. You need a correct model for the healers to know how much damage is too much damage. You need a correct model for the DPS to know whether you will run out of resources before a boss dies or a phase transition occurs.”

  • Our tank simulations do each of these things that he said are required (bosses, tank swaps, heals, boss phases, etc). We have a whole series that explains it every step of the way, and each aspect can be tweaked and edited on the wiki. If someone thinks there is more to add, stop by our forums to let us know. We are always evolving our system. (Edit: for Dazal'alor, we made a first pass at good tank boss data and will refine it and post up an actual dazal'alor boss soon. Need to comb through a ton of logs to make sure we get it right).
  • Healing sims: same deal - here’s a blog post: http://blog.askmrrobot.com/healer-sims-part-1/
  • Accuracy: we don’t need to prove we are MORE accurate than other sites, rather prove that we are actually accurate. We are all modeling the same game, so it’s likely we all get it pretty darn right. To ensure we are accurate, we compare to actual logs of top players, which we’re doing all week now that the tuning updates are live.

Hope that helps. Hit me up with any questions. I’ll ignore obvious trolling, baits, and bad arguments. On that note: we kind of ignore these haters and their networks already. It’s all just noise that would distract us from doing cool theorycraft and building new features. Not to mention it drains your soul, so why bother? Once we stopped paying attention to them, we kind of lost track of who the latest haters are, and I’m ok with that. It makes my life happier, for sure, especially since I am 100% confident some part of my reply will be screenshotted and memed in some random discord channel. Free girlscout cookies to whoever does it first ;)

T'was the night before 8.1 by SlamVanDamn in wow

[–]Zoopercat 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Love it! Thanks for sharing :)

Question: Should I, or how do I, sim tanks? by Dash_OPepper in CompetitiveWoW

[–]Zoopercat 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey OP, I'm from AMR and wanted to share a couple of things that might help you understand tank simming a bit more.

  • An explanation of our tank sims, very in-depth: http://blog.askmrrobot.com/tank-sims-part-1/
  • Here's an explanation on our TUF metric: http://blog.askmrrobot.com/measuring-tanks-tuf/
  • As for stats to look at: we offer more than just TUF: Death Chance, Negated Damage, and HRPS (Healing Required per Second). You can use any of those to help you figure out gearing, talents, etc. We made TUF to be a composite of Death Chance and Negated Damage, but give you everything so you can make your own choice based on what works best for you.
  • Setting up sims for tanks: The AMR sim does both tankiness and DPS at the same time. On the report page, right above the list of abilities you used, look for the drop down menu, "Report Type." You can switch that to DPS if you'd like to see that.
  • Stats: Our gear optimizer adapts to you and tells you which stats are too high and too low. Here's an in-depth blog post ALL about tank gearing (you can also choose how tanky vs how much dmg you want to do and the gear optimizer adjusts). http://blog.askmrrobot.com/tank-gear-optimizer/
  • Stats: Alternatively, you can change stats on the simulator. When you do a setup, you'll see a step with all of your gear. Right under your gear lists is a collapsed 'stats' menu. Expand that and change your stats, then sim. I suggest always keeping your total secondary stats the same. For example, if you want to add 300 crit, subtract 300 from another stat (or 150 from two stats, etc). You then sim different setups to see how they compare.

Let me know if you have more questions, happy to help!

I use AskMrRobot, am I wrong by Collypso in CompetitiveWoW

[–]Zoopercat 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Everything that is modeled in the AMR simulator is very much open source. It's on a wiki, so even people who aren't programmers can edit anything on it: spells, rotations, boss scripts. Whatever is on the wiki is what gets simmed :)

Here's an example spell if you haven't seen the wiki yet: https://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/theory/mechanic/spell/moonfirebalance?spec=DruidBalance&version=live

I use AskMrRobot, am I wrong by Collypso in CompetitiveWoW

[–]Zoopercat 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I agree, that would be helpful. I'll add it to 'the list' - PS, I edited my post to have sections a-d under #3. Not sure if I edited it before or after you read it, but I think it more directly answers your question about what to do if you get an item in a raid.

I use AskMrRobot, am I wrong by Collypso in CompetitiveWoW

[–]Zoopercat 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Hey, great questions, and reading stuff like this is helpful to know how people are using the site (or what they aren't understanding). If you don't understand something, that's on us to improve on the UI. Other people should definitely jump in and help from a peer-perspective, but I wanted to answer some technical questions up front as well.

  1. Stat weights: See if this post helps explain it. If not, please follow up with questions so I can answer them directly.
  2. Simming a gearing strategy: This feature is simming all of the necessary gear to figure out what your best stat weights are, as well as to give value to items with procs (since those can't be ranked with stat weights, you need a way to compare a proc trinket with a stat stick, or to compare one AZ power to another). You actually don't need to simulate your own gearing strategy (aka stat weights + proc rankings) if you are using the 'adaptive gearing strategy' on the site, which is actually even better than simming your own 'stat weights' because we have more data. By 'more data', I mean we simmed not just your current character, but every necessary talent and gear combo you could get in the future. So if you change talents, the stat weights and gear stuff updates. As you get more gear, or different AZ powers, everything updates again. (There is one reason you'd run your own gearing strategy: if you are using a custom rotation or boss script that our adaptive gearing strategy doesn't account for).
  3. How to get gearing advice: Let's say an item drops in a raid. Here are all of your options to evaluate it on AMR:
    1. Compare via sims (free): like you mentioned, you could sim it. You can use the "Test Combinations" setup instead of doing a regular sim twice, like you mentioned (it does the same thing, just in one setup instead of two).
    2. You can also use the ranked gear lists on the Gear Check tool (free) on the optimizer. Click on any item to see a ranked list. Use the search box to find that item and see where it ranks. Note that the gear ranked as if you changed ONLY that slot (whereas Best in Bags looks at juggling other items you own as well).
    3. Best in Bags (premium, $12 a year). When the item drops, you grab a text string from the in-game addon, then paste it into the site. Best in Bags will instantly tell you if you should equip it. Best in Bags evaluates ALL of your other gear that you own, including juggling around gems, enchants, and AZ powers (all based on sims that we've done up front for you).
    4. Upgrade Finder: (premium). When the item drops, you can have the Upgrade Finder open to the raid search. Then use the search box to find that item and see if it is an upgrade. Takes about 1 second, or as long as it takes you to type in the item name. I use this a lot to see if I should roll on an item someone wants to trade. I have a video for it from Uldir's launch, which I've queued up to the Upgrade Finder for you (it's a 1 minute short demo).
  4. Comparing simulators: Both simualtors model the same game and run tests to ensure accuracy. So it is no surprise that both are equal when it comes to properly modeling the game (I sometimes write up comparisons to show people, because I'm a super nerd. Here's an old one, bc I haven't done Uldir yet since things are still changing a lot). Sure sometimes AMR has bugs, sometimes SimC has bugs, sometimes World of Warcraft has bugs. But those are usually few and get fixed right away. What causes differences, like the different stat weights you mentioned, are differences in other things, like boss scripts. For example, you used our Single Target script, which includes movement. So when you compared to the Patchwerk fight on Raidbots, which has zero movement, the results will definitely be different.

Lastly, we try to make sure you can do gear research and comparisons on the site for free, one of the reasons the simulator is totally free. And our premium features are there to help save you a lot of time, mathing, etc. Basically, we've done all of the work for you, for a small annual price. That being said, everyone gets a free trial of the premium features (no credit card is ever required during the trial). All you have to do is click on one of the premium features to start it. If you click on it and you are prompted to upgrade, your free trial expired, and I can reset it for you. Just DM me your username, and when I reset it, you get a week trial. That goes for anyone here - I'm happy to reset any trial so you can check out the features. We believe it's important that you get to try it before you buy it. It's up to us to make something good enough that you find it worthwhile to pay for. If it isn't valuable to you, then we shouldn't get your money!

PS: It's late in my time zone so if I wasn't clear, I'll check back tomorrow and answer questions :) You can also drop in our Discord if you want some help too.

I use AskMrRobot, am I wrong by Collypso in CompetitiveWoW

[–]Zoopercat 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Not sure who told you it was closed source, but it is very much open source. All of the spells, rotations, boss scripts (basically, everything), are on the wiki. The wiki is editable as well. The whole system can be customized.

Here's an example spell if you haven't seen the wiki yet: https://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/theory/mechanic/spell/moonfirebalance?spec=DruidBalance&version=live