hey guys i was wondering if anyone knows how accurate is siming the different azerite traits. guides state to go with stacking certain traits but when i sim for multitarget for mythic pluses its telling me to remove the trait the guides tell me to stack. should i follow my sims or follow the guides like icyveins and such?
Everything is situational. What is best in one situation may not be in others. Your best bet would be to ask in the class forum for specific advice based on what content you are gearing for.
They are very accurate for simulating your current DPS within the specific criteria and fight context they assume you are in. They cannot be used healing or tanking.
The two main dps simulators are raidbots.com and askmrrobot.com. I am completely unfamiliar with askmrrobot and I won’t make any assumptions about it. Raidbots uses the simulationcraft (simc) engine and is just a fancier and more user friendly version of simc. The way simc works is that for each class/spec, it has an Action Priority List written by a player who is an acknowledged expert in that class/spec. The APL covers the “rotation” for every possible racial, spell, talent, trait, gear ability, set bonus, etc… and dictates when and under what conditions you should be using every single one of your abilities. It combines those APL rules with web service calls to Blizzard and other sources like wowhead and it knows exactly what every item of gear you have will do.
From the two things it gets a very accurate simulation, which it then re-runs thousands of times. This gives it a very statistically accurate picture usually with a small margin of error.
But then there’s the fight context. If you’re on the raidbots.com website and select quicksim there is a place that says “Simulation Options” and you’ll notice that its assuming you are using certain consumables (flasks, food, etc…) to buff your stats, and that you are getting bonuses from other sources (like blood lust) and that there is 1 boss, the fight is expected to last 2 minutes and its a “Patchwork” fight style (which is the easiest fight for a dps to deal with). Is it accurate to assume those things? Not always. If for example, you never use a certain buff or very rarely have it available, allowing raidbots to use it will slightly throw off its results.
Personally, I always change the fight style and buffs because I don’t feel like the defaults represent the majority of fights I’m in. If I’m testing a new piece of gear I also run the sim three times: once with Patchwork, once with Dungeon Slice, and once with Helter Skelter.
The accuracy of a simulation hinges on the Action Priority List. If Blizz makes a major change to a talent or introduces new gear (like corrupted gear), the APL’s could become outdated and won’t provide the simulator with the correct instructions on how gear/skills should be used. That has happened at least once during BfA that I know of (a year ago with the Fire Mage spec and the Blaster Master trait) but they very quickly update the APL with the new info.
These experts do have access to the PTR build and will probably have an APL that is very accurate on Day 1 of a major patch but since Blizz can change things whenever they want, its likely that the first week or so after a new patch (like 8.3 in a few days) Blizz will be making many changes and if one of those changes affects when you should use an ability, then the simulator won’t be accurate until updates are made.