I’ll preface this by stating that I appreciate what whoever makes Bloodmallet is trying to do…I’m sure it takes a lot of time and effort and kudos to them for that.
But looking at spec guides (Icy Veins, Wowhead), the default stance these days seems to be to link charts from Bloodmallet for things like Azerite traits, essences, and trinkets, and call it a day. While maybe looking at Bloodmallet data is better than nothing, I also feel like the people writing spec guides have gotten really lazy because Bloodmallet is by no means a perfect solution.
Bloodmallet sims are done using BiS gearsets, many of which (especially now with the RNG involved in collecting good corruption effects) are simply out of reach of all but the tiniest sliver of the player base. These are sims designed for a very tiny subset of the WoW population, which in a way is strange since I’m sure the players in that group are running their own sims and don’t need Bloodmallet.
If Bloodmallet is meant to bring simming to the masses, then it should be designed for the masses. There are always wonky things you can do in this game at extreme gear levels…that doesn’t mean they are optimal for average players who won’t be able to take their gear to those extremes. For example, a BM hunter might look at the essence chart and think Vision of Perfection is far and away the best major essence they have. That may be true for the specific gear set that the chart was simmed with, but I can guarantee it’s not true for most players. It’s not even true for my hunter and I have decent gear.
There’s a fundamental problem with making simming accessible in this way, because ultimately simming is a highly personalized thing. Of course there’s nothing terribly new here - players for years have been reading the very spec guides I mentioned above and doing exactly what they say without any further thought. The difference maybe is that guides used to have to write more justification for why they recommend the things they do…now it’s just link to Bloodmallet and done.
There are things that could improve Bloodmallet’s usefulness, but as it is currently designed there are a lot of people out there who are making decisions based on gear sets that they will never come close to obtaining. This can actually lead to sub-optimal decisions being made.
In the end, the answer is still “sim your own gear”. But most people won’t ever do that, and want something easy to digest. That’s all well and good, but spec guides should then be written taking this into consideration. Telling someone to look at a Bloodmallet chart and pick whatever’s sitting at the top with no detailed explanation is not really an improvement, IMO.
Am I way off base here? Does everyone else think Bloodmallet is amazing?