Hello, I’m a pretty bad gamer and I play this game very casual and my ret pally is 599 and i’m dying in Siren Isle like today, I died 25 times in a row and I killed some small AOE mobs but took a big chunk of my HP… I am curious as to how to improve my armor and talent rotations? Is Ask Mr Robot reliable and legit and easy to use? If so, how do I use it? I have the add-on in game right now, but it looks very confusing and kinda overwhelming. Like I stated, i’m very casual and bad at the game I just want to improve better. Thanks for reading my post.
Read Icy Veins for you class, talent, and spec first. Practice the rotation on a target dummy. Get a damage meter add on and either DBM or Big Wigs. Set up macros to make you rotation easier and potentially combine burst cool-downs. Make sure to get your whole rotation on keybinds. You really need everything that isn’t a utility or rarely used ability on a keybind, you should not be clicking on the interface unless you are pulling out a pet / mount / hearthstone.
Do all that before looking into Mr. Robot.
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Im gonna level with you bro, and im gonna tell you this purely to save yourself a lot of stress and headache.
You do not play well enough, for ask Mr.Robot to matter.
Im saying that not to say you are bad, im saying it because Ask Mr.Robot is operating under the assumption you are playing literally a perfect rotation, which you are not going to. In fact most DPS sims are simulating at a level of play that 99% of players are not even reaching, hell not even RWF or gladiators are playing to that level most of the time.
If you wanna know if something is an upgrade just follow this flow chart
Find out what your best secondary stats are.
Is the iLvl higher then your currently equipped? if yes, its an upgrade
If its not a higher ilvl, does it have your best secondary stat as the highest stat? If yes, its an upgrade
If both items are the same ilvl, and have the same best secondary stat as the highest stat on the item, is the second secondary stat your second best secondary stat? If so, its an upgrade.
I would say the two leading simulation for armor/weapons are Raidbots/Simulationcraft & AskMrRobot (AMR; click on Optimize). Similar approaches but different sim engines. I tend to run both to get ideas from AMR and then run them through Raidbots. For DPS I tend to believe the results from Raidbots over AMR when there’s a discrepancy (happens but not often). For Healers and Tanks there’s really no other option than AMR. Both work best with an accompanying in-game add-on that will upload what you have equipped and in your bags to the web-site so they can optimize for the highest throughput in Raid and in Dungeons.
You also asked about improving the rotation of your abilities, but that’s best handled by a separate in-game addon like Hekili or MaxDPS.
AMR is behind a pay-wall (unless that changed recently) so if you don’t have a sub I don’t think you can use it (used to be free). Raidbots is free but you’ll wait in a queue for your sim to run (which can be a shorter queue if you pay a sub).
If you can use AMR it’s pretty easy… click the AMR icon on the mini-map. That should open the panel to the “Export” tab by default, so just hit CTRL-C to copy the text string and then paste that into the web-site.
Use Icy-Veins it’s going to be a lot more useful and user friendly to you at this stage.
Sims are for squeezing that extra % of DPS.
Ask Mr Robot…man, I haven’t used that one in years. Probably not since Cata at this point. Icy-Veins is usually my go-to for this info.
Ways to become better at the game:
Read the abilities in your spellbook.
Read your talents.
Learn and understand what they do.
Then you look at a guide to see how other people work with it and enhance your own knowledge with the knowledge of others.
Practice and always be pushing buttons, if you have a GCD available, you can be pushing buttons, with knowledge and muscle memory you would hopefully know the right buttons to push.
Use your cooldowns.
If you skip past the first three steps, you’d end up completely lost and won’t know why guides say to do things a certain way but if you understand it, it becomes easy.
As for AMR, I didn’t know it was still running, most would use Raidbots for simming (don’t worry about that yet) while using Wowhead or IcyVeins for rotational/talent advice.
Me reading this post: “Wait, Ask Mr. Robot is still a thing?”
Legit thought it died after MoP.
But yea, OP. Read up on some class basics on either Icy Veins or Wowhead before you start worrying about optimizing gear via Raidbots or AMR. That will do more for you than a slightly better gear setup.
Didn’t we do this already yesterday?
What Ask Mr. robot does is run batches of simulations with BiS gear and BiS talents at various item levels. It then compares your stats to it’s stat database and decides what you should equip based on that. It’s fast, but it makes odd decisions sometimes.
I don’t know how useful those things would be for general world content fights, they’re usually looking at sustained fights. It probably wouldn’t hurt though.
If you’re just looking to survive while world questing you could try swapping to protection until you get a bit more gear or practice?
If you want to play ret, I would suggest reading up on guides and your abilities and trying to understand how they work together. Learning to use your dps and defensive cds will also be very important.
If you’re still stuck, you could try a rotation addon like Hekili, but I would suggest you don’t lean on it too heavily. It’s great for getting you to play at a reasonable level but if you don’t learn your rotation without it then you’ll be back to square one if it ever breaks.
Try looking through this a bit, if you’re interested.
It runs sims with the gear available to you (equipped, in your bags, and in your bank). There’s a separate option to show your BiS based on what you already have.
I agree about the odd decisions sometimes… the biggest discrepancies I see are often around trinkets, and trinkets with procs are admittedly weird in both AMR and Raidbots.
The best parts of AMR are paywalled now and generally not useful enough to justify the expense.
These days I just compare Icy Veins and WoWhead guides for the big picture and tweak it for my preference. If you are a new player, which I am gathering you are, you need to probably focus on the delve build because they’re going to be a good mix of basic survival and mob killing efficiency. Mythic+ is vastly built for trash/AOE damage and niche utility spells/survival and raid builds are largely centered around single target and raid utility. Delve builds (and content) is very much about fundamentals and simplicity which is all a new player needs.
Above all, you need to get better at the game. Dying to world trash shows an extreme fundamental lacking of basic competency and understanding. Look at all the world quests and pick those offering any kind of item level gear upgrade…secondary stats literally do not matter over raw ilvl at your skill level. The raw stats and survival are a baseline.
Then you probably go stay in delves for awhile. Let Brann heal (he throws potions you largely are responsible for grabbing) as a safety net while you get comfortable doing single target, cleave, and AOE pulls in a controlled environment and learning the key differences in how your spec plays in each situation. Delves also give the “best” loot available to you in this phase of the game once you reach tier 8.
Once you get up to tier 8 delve levels, you can start being more choosy with what items to consider upgrades vs sidegrades. Focus on a weapon first, trinkets next (ideally passive trinkets so you don’t add complexity as you learn), jewelry third, and other armor slots last. By the time you get good enough, you should have gear and enough catalyst charges to get your 4 set (don’t waste catalyst charges on anything less than champion track).
You can run sims with it, but it’s best in bag feature is based on stat balance derived from pre-ran sims.
We use Raidbots now. I don’t even know if anyone proficient maintains Mr. Robot or if it’s even maintained at all anymore.
Some trinkets are sim traps, that’s about it. Easy to use. For raid use the default setting. For M+ use 5 targets at 20 seconds.
Posters above are correct though. You really want to learn your class/rotation and check your logs before worrying about simming.
Wowhead and Icy Veins are good places to learn.
https://www.mythictrap.com/en
This is the easiest guide I have ever used for raid encounters.
https://lorrgs.io/
Use this to see when the top 100 players used their cooldowns on a boss so you know when you should use yours.
Bonte, you gave spot on advice!
Mechanics and rotation are king. Without those gear it’s pointless.
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