I have a feeling that most of my readers play WoW...probably because like 99% of the people I tell that I have a blog are in WoW. But up until recently, I knew that there was something called SimulationCraft, but I had no idea what it was. I take that back, I knew what it was, but I thought only uber nerds were using it to min/max to a ridiculous degree. Until I downloaded it. And started playing with it.
So, you google Simulationcraft. You click the first link, for simulationcraft.org. You click that "Download Latest Release" in the top right. It downloads the current version that is most compatible with WoW, and just unpack the folder wherever you want, mine is on my desktop, ymmv. After that, open the folder, and you can pin or just double click the SimulationCraft file to run it.
Now you get a lot of options. I don't know exactly what everything does, but I know enough to get to actually running a simulation of myself and getting relevant information.
I start off in the "Options" tab. There are several sub tabs on it. Starting in "Globals", I keep "Version" set to "Live", because I don't play on the PTR. "Iterations" you will want to set to anything higher than the 1000 mark, because having SimCraft run 1000 or less simulated fights is not enough of a sample size to truly find out what is important to you. "World Lag", "Length (sec)" and "Vary Length" I leave at their default settings. "Fight Style" is interesting. Normally I keep it set to "Patchwerk", which is just a setting that tells SimCraft that there is little to no movement, it's a single target fight, just sit there and do the max dps you can. I like that setting because it gives me a max single target dps to look for, and I can use that as a benchmark once in the game.
All the rest of the settings after that I leave at their defaults, except for one of them, the "Threads" options. You can change this option based on how many CPU's you have in your computer, like myself I change this to 2, since I have two cores, again ymmv based on your own hardware. Under "Advanced Options" on the right (or further down if you don't have a widescreen monitor or split screen), I leave all of those on their default settings as well.
Now on the "Buffs/Debuffs" sub tab, you want to make sure you have everything toggled on, because if you are like me, you are wanting to know what you will be doing in a raid environment, not while solo.
On the "Scaling" sub option, this is where it will be different for everyone, whether you are a tank, healer, caster, agi melee, str melee, etc. For me, I play an Enhance shaman, so I'm looking to see what to gem/enchant/reforge for. For that, my stats I'm looking at are Agility, Crit Rating, Haste Rating, and Mastery Rating. Those four options, "Analyze Agility", "Analyze Crit Rating", "Analyze Haste Rating" and "Analyze Mastery Rating", I will check mark. But you might check on something else, like an dps dk may check everything the same except they would check Strength instead of Agility.
The next sub option, "Plots", may seem confusing. since we are dealing with a large amount of stats on our gear, I usually go for a combination of 50 for the "Number of Plot Points", and 250 for "Plot Step Amount". The reason I choose 250 instead of 500 is that usually whenever we're reforging, it's in amounts around 200-350 (except for some trinket reforges, but that's the exception and not the rule). It gives me accurate information, but you can do however much you want to here.
And then the last sub option, "Reforge Plots". You want to go with 5000 on the "Reforge Amount" to see how your stat performs at the widest range of stats possible. "Step Amount" you actually want to set this to a low number, because a lower number here means that the simulations will look at reforge breaks by however you set this to each time. Meaning, if you set "Step Amount" to 500, the reforge sim will give you results based on reforges every 500 points, or just 10 reforge breaks if you have the "Reforge Amount" set to 5k. If you have "Step Amount" set to 50, then it will do 100 reforge breaks. Basically, the smaller the number you put for "Step Amount" the more detailed information you will get. And Since you cannot ever reforge out your primary stat (agi, str, int, stam), you want to make sure you are checking off under "Secondary Stats" the appropriate stats for your class, which again in my case is between Crit, Haste, and Mastery.
Now back up to the main options tabs at the very top, I'll click on "Import" next. Usually I just import myself from Battle.Net, which is the default sub option when you click on this tab. On your screen you will see the WoW webpage, and you have the usual "Search characters, items, forums, and more ..." field at the top right of the page to click in and search for your toon. I look up my character's name, click on the right one, and I see the normal armory page for myself. Don't I look sexy! Then on the bottom right corner of SimCraft, you can then click on the "Import" button.
When you click import, it will flip over to the "Simulate" tab in the main options tabs on the right, and your screen will fill up with a whole bunch of crap, all sorts of code-ish looking things that are important for SimCraft to know what to do. At this point, you can click on the "Simulate!" button on the bottom right.
Once you click on "Simulate!", you are in for a long wait, unless you have the world's fastest computer. So at this point, go do your normal stuff, because when I say you are in for a long wait, I mean potentially days. Go play WoW, surf the web, etc, just leave SimCraft running in the background. Oh, and make sure you don't have your computer set to auto update and reboot windows or anything like that. If your computer restarts itself, SimCraft forgets everything it was doing. So please, please, please, make sure your computer will be able to stay on for days in a row. It's not something that overly taxes your computer, I can play LoL, WoW, surf the web, do whatever I want, it just takes a lot of time for the computer to simulate 50,000 WoW boss fights, while reforging and plotting data and collecting information and running a bajillion RNG type systems that WoW uses. So really, go enjoy your life. Just every day, a few times a day, click back to SimCraft. You will know it is done when, instead of seeing all that programming crap looking code stuff, you see beautiful looking bar graphs, pie graphs, and charts telling you how much Haste is worth, or Agility is worth, etc.
So when it is done, you will get all kinds of information. I mean all kinds of information. Most of it I ignore, because my brain explodes when I look at it. However, I do look at the first bits of information. Right at the beginning, you should see a chart that says something like it just did for me, which was "Scale Factors for Saichotick Damage Per Second", but it will say your own character's name and role, based on what you simulated.
The nitty gritty, in this chart, is going to be those stats you were focusing on, Agi, Str, Crit, Haste, etc. Look at that chart. For me, my stats I was comparing were Agi, Crit, Haste, and Mastery. In the "Scale Factors" line, you will now see numbers, numbers like 6.30, or 2.95, or 3.45. These are your "stat weights". This means, for example, where my Agi says "6.30" it means that for every point of Agility that I have, I will see a direct increase in damage per second of 6.30. Everyone can then go to their favorite website that they use for reforging and finding their "BiS" list (Best in Slot, meaning what piece of gear is the best in the game currently for them). I like www.askmrrobot.com, mainly because the interface is clean, you can manipulate things in very easy to understand ways, and it is very customizable. On that site, I can go into the options and then put in the values for each stat that SimCraft gives me, and the website then does a whole bunch of reforge and gems and enchants and updating my BiS lists and stuff for me, useful information that I can then apply in-game to make myself the best I can be.
How often should this be done? The whole process? Well, I usually recommend after any patch that changes how much damage or healing or whatever that you actually do, but make sure that SimCraft is actually up-to-date with the changes. Currently, as of the time of this post, SimCraft is updated for 5.3. On SimCraft's website it will tell you what version of WoW it is compatible for. I would also run SimCraft after you have gotten a lot of new gear. Say you go from ilvl 490 to ilvl 505. I would definitely run a sim at that point, because at certain ilvls, you may have gotten enough total amount of stats, or certain tier bonuses, that some stats may actually become less or more helpful for you. Enhancement is an easy case of this. At the very start of MoP, Enhancement Shamans wanted to gem and reforge for Agi and Crit, since the amount of Haste and Mastery we could actually have at the time was very low, since we were dealing with a low ilvl and total amount of stats. Once you get into the 470-490 ilvl range, the stat focus actually shifts to a Mastery build, since we're starting to get enough of the other stats for them to be shifted into Mastery to make a noticeable difference in dps done. But once you break out of the 490 ilvl, Haste now becomes the most effective stat, since we're getting enough crit to make sure our classes passive abilities have an effective up-time, and our weapon damage starts to get higher and higher, to the point where we want as many melee swings as we can get.
But every class is different. Some classes it may be very basic, like no matter how many times you run a simulation, you may end up always just stacking as much of a particular stat as you can. Other times, you may find out that you are getting enough gear to where you may need to regem every single slot into something else
I hope people have found this helpful. I know it has really helped me to figure out a lot about my own class that I didn't fully understand before. Maybe it will help you too.
Saturday, May 25, 2013
Friday, May 24, 2013
"Holy crap! You played that game too!?!" And other such phrases heard in mumble...
Over the years I've played a lot of games. Some of them winners, some not so much. And yet, inside some of the what looks like worst games ever come some of the best moments in gaming for me.
The RPG triumvirate:
Dragon Warrior, Ultima III: Exodus, Final Fantasy
Dragon Warrior. The entire series. These games, dating back to the first one on the NES in 1989 (the Japanese version hit in '86), had me hooked on rpg's. This game was my drug growing up as a kid in the 80's and early 90's. I remember saving allowance money to rent this game from my local Blockbuster Video store. I cherished being able to rent this game, and hated having to return it after my rental time was up. You could save your progress, you had three spots to save everything you had accomplished. I would get pissed, PISSED, when I would rent the game again and my saved states were deleted or overridden. But I just got back into the game and slogged through it. By the time my parents would let me start buying games, I had almost won it several times, but I never did beat it until I had bought it, a couple years after it had first come out.
Ultima III: Exodus. This game was where my dad taught me how to get "hardcore" on video games. My dad figured out how to min/max this game to a rediculous degree. In that game, ranged, and specifically clerics and wizards, had the advantage of having free aoe level one spells that could instantly kill the early level enemies, trivializing those early encounters. On top of that, it was discovered that the games graphics telegraphed when to click the button on the controller to guarantee a hit with the spells (yes, if you timed the button press wrong, you missed). My dad figured this out before the secret went global via the internet and magazines that showed two screenshots side by side, the "miss" graphic and the "hit" graphic. My dad cheesed the hell out of the game, spending hours easily winning low level fights to the point where he got a stupid amount of gold, more than enough experience to hit level 25 (max level) on all 4 characters, and then ran through all the dungeons. I literally woke up one day where, the day prior I had seen my dad aimlessly wandering the country side fighting the same fights over and over, and then the next day he had his save state ready to load and walked me through the final dungeon. There were invisible creatures in that one, he had figured out, knew how many spell casts to kill them, where they were, how they would move, and walked me through all of it to the final boss, and how to kill that. My dad was insane, and I loved it.
Final Fantasy. This game hit the US in 1990. By that time, after the Ultima games and Dragon Warrior, I was ready for this game. So was my dad. We both played the game on and off, taking turns playing, or making progress while the other wasn't around to play and then recapping once we were together. If you have played some of the Final Fantasy games, but you haven't played the first, you owe it to yourself to see what this was like. It is an experience. It had content, a lot of it, for that day and age. You grew these characters, quite literally when it was time to class advance. I woke up one day to see my dad playing, and the characters we had been playing looked different. I was confused by it, but after my dad explained everything, it all made sense. It was a race to the finish for us at that point.
China/Japan:
Nobunaga's Ambition series, Romance of the Three Kingdoms series.
Starting with Japan, and my Sega Genesis, we had Nobunaga's Ambition hit the gaming scene in 1988. This was a different type of game all together, yet it had similar elements to rpg style of play. All those games like the Civ games, the Total War series, etc., owe their roots to this game. I played Nobunaga's Ambition I, II, and III across all the platforms they came out on, and I loved every minute of them.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Dear God, if there was ever a game I loved the most, it would be this game. I can spout second and third century Chinese history better than I can American history thanks to KOEI. Cao Cao, Guan Yu, Lu Bei, Lu Bu, Sun Quan (if you know these names, hell yeah!). From 1988 on, I played almost every iteration of this game that I could get my hands on. I destroyed so much of my life playing these games, I couldn't tell you how much I've played. I can easily, EASILY, tell you that I have played Rot3K and all its series more than anything else on the planet. Even if you add up every MMO that I've played together, all of them, KOEI still has held me enthralled longer than every other company put together. I still play the Rot3K games every once in a while. I can tell you family histories, layout of castles, battles that took place, tribes that fought inside and outside of China. I know too much about this stuff. If you have ever loved playing World Sim/RTS/Turn-based strategy games, you have to pick up some of the Rot3K games and give them a shot. Your inner child will thank you.
Arcade Action:
Golden Axe, Double Dragon, Streets of Rage, Final Fight, Black Tiger...this list could go on forever.
These games, I played mostly in the arcades, but again on home consoles once arcades started to phase out, were fantastic. They had action, side scrolling, and rpg elements. Single player, two player, four player, it didn't matter, they were all fun. If you have ever played any of these games in the arcades, you had a great time growing up, and you will always remember them. Nobody left these games without feeling like it was money well spent. Nobody.
I do want to talk about one game here, called Gain Ground. In 1988, this hit the arcade scene, and later a myriad of consoles. Top down, free captured characters, all with different types of attacks and abilities, this game was amazing. This game was crack for me. If you haven't ever played it, you need to. This game is a classic great game.
I also need to devote some time to Gauntlet. In 1985 this BAMF hit the arcades, and it blew my mind. It freaking blew my mind. The first game where myself, my dad, and my two older brothers could all play together, work together. This game gave me some of the greatest memories with my dad and my brothers that I will carry with me for my entire life. I still find moments where I'll chuckle out a "red warrior needs food badly!" or a "blue valkyrie is about to die!" from time to time. This was my first foray into multiplayer raiding. My dad always played the wizard, and always yellow. My oldest brother played the red warrior. My second oldest brother played the blue valkyrie. I always took control of the green thief. We had our roles. I was the key runner. When we came up to a gate, with an entire horde of baddies on the other side, I would be the one to open it and then run the hell back. Both my brothers would be on either side of the gate ready to blast away from the sides. My dad would be far back, launching fireballs as fast as he could. And as soon as I had run far enough back, I'd turn and blast away with daggers. We orchestrated our combat. It was art. We were a team. And usually since I was the fastest, my brothers and my dad would be cheering me on to try to complete a level once they were dead and I was just making a break for the exit. Those rare times in my life where all of us would get together and play this game together, there was no feeling like it in the world. Nothing compares to this type of experience for me in my life. It is such a unique thing, to have the perfect game that all of us guys in the family loved to do, together, I couldn't cherish anything more in my life.
I think I'll cut this post short here, as I really do think I could just go on forever about all the different games I've played and loved. Hell, I'm starting to remember the years spent playing Dig Dug, Burger Time, Tron, Pole Position, Yar's Revenge, Galaxian...
Anywho, just a little bit about me and my gaming. I hope the trip down memory lane sparks something in you that you remember and loved.
The RPG triumvirate:
Dragon Warrior, Ultima III: Exodus, Final Fantasy
Dragon Warrior. The entire series. These games, dating back to the first one on the NES in 1989 (the Japanese version hit in '86), had me hooked on rpg's. This game was my drug growing up as a kid in the 80's and early 90's. I remember saving allowance money to rent this game from my local Blockbuster Video store. I cherished being able to rent this game, and hated having to return it after my rental time was up. You could save your progress, you had three spots to save everything you had accomplished. I would get pissed, PISSED, when I would rent the game again and my saved states were deleted or overridden. But I just got back into the game and slogged through it. By the time my parents would let me start buying games, I had almost won it several times, but I never did beat it until I had bought it, a couple years after it had first come out.
Ultima III: Exodus. This game was where my dad taught me how to get "hardcore" on video games. My dad figured out how to min/max this game to a rediculous degree. In that game, ranged, and specifically clerics and wizards, had the advantage of having free aoe level one spells that could instantly kill the early level enemies, trivializing those early encounters. On top of that, it was discovered that the games graphics telegraphed when to click the button on the controller to guarantee a hit with the spells (yes, if you timed the button press wrong, you missed). My dad figured this out before the secret went global via the internet and magazines that showed two screenshots side by side, the "miss" graphic and the "hit" graphic. My dad cheesed the hell out of the game, spending hours easily winning low level fights to the point where he got a stupid amount of gold, more than enough experience to hit level 25 (max level) on all 4 characters, and then ran through all the dungeons. I literally woke up one day where, the day prior I had seen my dad aimlessly wandering the country side fighting the same fights over and over, and then the next day he had his save state ready to load and walked me through the final dungeon. There were invisible creatures in that one, he had figured out, knew how many spell casts to kill them, where they were, how they would move, and walked me through all of it to the final boss, and how to kill that. My dad was insane, and I loved it.
Final Fantasy. This game hit the US in 1990. By that time, after the Ultima games and Dragon Warrior, I was ready for this game. So was my dad. We both played the game on and off, taking turns playing, or making progress while the other wasn't around to play and then recapping once we were together. If you have played some of the Final Fantasy games, but you haven't played the first, you owe it to yourself to see what this was like. It is an experience. It had content, a lot of it, for that day and age. You grew these characters, quite literally when it was time to class advance. I woke up one day to see my dad playing, and the characters we had been playing looked different. I was confused by it, but after my dad explained everything, it all made sense. It was a race to the finish for us at that point.
China/Japan:
Nobunaga's Ambition series, Romance of the Three Kingdoms series.
Starting with Japan, and my Sega Genesis, we had Nobunaga's Ambition hit the gaming scene in 1988. This was a different type of game all together, yet it had similar elements to rpg style of play. All those games like the Civ games, the Total War series, etc., owe their roots to this game. I played Nobunaga's Ambition I, II, and III across all the platforms they came out on, and I loved every minute of them.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Dear God, if there was ever a game I loved the most, it would be this game. I can spout second and third century Chinese history better than I can American history thanks to KOEI. Cao Cao, Guan Yu, Lu Bei, Lu Bu, Sun Quan (if you know these names, hell yeah!). From 1988 on, I played almost every iteration of this game that I could get my hands on. I destroyed so much of my life playing these games, I couldn't tell you how much I've played. I can easily, EASILY, tell you that I have played Rot3K and all its series more than anything else on the planet. Even if you add up every MMO that I've played together, all of them, KOEI still has held me enthralled longer than every other company put together. I still play the Rot3K games every once in a while. I can tell you family histories, layout of castles, battles that took place, tribes that fought inside and outside of China. I know too much about this stuff. If you have ever loved playing World Sim/RTS/Turn-based strategy games, you have to pick up some of the Rot3K games and give them a shot. Your inner child will thank you.
Arcade Action:
Golden Axe, Double Dragon, Streets of Rage, Final Fight, Black Tiger...this list could go on forever.
These games, I played mostly in the arcades, but again on home consoles once arcades started to phase out, were fantastic. They had action, side scrolling, and rpg elements. Single player, two player, four player, it didn't matter, they were all fun. If you have ever played any of these games in the arcades, you had a great time growing up, and you will always remember them. Nobody left these games without feeling like it was money well spent. Nobody.
I do want to talk about one game here, called Gain Ground. In 1988, this hit the arcade scene, and later a myriad of consoles. Top down, free captured characters, all with different types of attacks and abilities, this game was amazing. This game was crack for me. If you haven't ever played it, you need to. This game is a classic great game.
I also need to devote some time to Gauntlet. In 1985 this BAMF hit the arcades, and it blew my mind. It freaking blew my mind. The first game where myself, my dad, and my two older brothers could all play together, work together. This game gave me some of the greatest memories with my dad and my brothers that I will carry with me for my entire life. I still find moments where I'll chuckle out a "red warrior needs food badly!" or a "blue valkyrie is about to die!" from time to time. This was my first foray into multiplayer raiding. My dad always played the wizard, and always yellow. My oldest brother played the red warrior. My second oldest brother played the blue valkyrie. I always took control of the green thief. We had our roles. I was the key runner. When we came up to a gate, with an entire horde of baddies on the other side, I would be the one to open it and then run the hell back. Both my brothers would be on either side of the gate ready to blast away from the sides. My dad would be far back, launching fireballs as fast as he could. And as soon as I had run far enough back, I'd turn and blast away with daggers. We orchestrated our combat. It was art. We were a team. And usually since I was the fastest, my brothers and my dad would be cheering me on to try to complete a level once they were dead and I was just making a break for the exit. Those rare times in my life where all of us would get together and play this game together, there was no feeling like it in the world. Nothing compares to this type of experience for me in my life. It is such a unique thing, to have the perfect game that all of us guys in the family loved to do, together, I couldn't cherish anything more in my life.
I think I'll cut this post short here, as I really do think I could just go on forever about all the different games I've played and loved. Hell, I'm starting to remember the years spent playing Dig Dug, Burger Time, Tron, Pole Position, Yar's Revenge, Galaxian...
Anywho, just a little bit about me and my gaming. I hope the trip down memory lane sparks something in you that you remember and loved.
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Where do we go from here?
Things are a little different now. I'm never going to use the internet to air dirty laundry. It's tacky, plus, what can you really believe from the internet? Just like radio, tv, books...who's telling the truth. All I can do is put myself out there, and people can belive what they want.
I and many of the people I've gamed with are in a new guild. There is a bit of reformation that always takes place with these things. It may mean a mild step backwards for a little while, but soon the machine keeps moving forward at the same speed.
<Equilibrium>
That's the name. A state of physical balance. It's also an awesome movie. Yes, I made "Tetragramaton" a rank, and yes, I'm it! I'm not going to get all asian philosophical. But it represents a lot about Cillie (my wife, the one who really runs the show) and I, how we think, how we view things. There has to be balance in everyone's lives, and it has to permiate into all things. You can't always be a goofball, and you can't always be deathly serious. You can't always be yelling at people, and you can't alway be letting them walk all over you either.
My style of leadership, which I hope people have come to enjoy, is that more can always be done by building up instead of embarrassing or breaking down. I see the latter strategy constantly employeed in real life, and I've seen it happen online in games I play. Hell, play League of Legends at least once and you'll see the worst of people if things don't play out perfectly. You'll get the most heinous amount of vitriol ever. Maybe that's a symptom of the extreme annonimity that the internet can provide people. That's a whole different topic.
So yeah, I want to lead as someone that is a good player, always improving myself, and is level headed and respectful. There is a way to lead people, to point out what is being done wrong, what needs to be done right, and to admit when you are wrong, without being confrontational, overbearing, or generally an asshole. There is an excellent pic on imgur that kind of illustrates where I'm coming from.
http://imgur.com/gallery/Sm3blE2
I want to never have unreasonable expectations, but I also don't expect to have slackers around me. I'd like to think the people that follow me trust me, know that I know what I'm doing, and enjoy playing with me. I think I've proven that, with getting our team to finish this tier, getting the team the "Ahead of the Curve" for Lei Shen already. There is a certain style to leading a team, to being part of a team. There is an atmosphere, the collection of people have their own character. Personalities change, maybe just slightly, and in a million different ways based on the type of people that come together. I like this team, I like it's dynamics. There are subtle unspoken things we all do, ways that we play, we can "feel" when we are together. We develope a rhythm, and it's a very real thing, and I want that to always be improving, building, getting stronger.
Leave a mark. Be a part of something special. Have fun. That's where I'm going.
I and many of the people I've gamed with are in a new guild. There is a bit of reformation that always takes place with these things. It may mean a mild step backwards for a little while, but soon the machine keeps moving forward at the same speed.
<Equilibrium>
That's the name. A state of physical balance. It's also an awesome movie. Yes, I made "Tetragramaton" a rank, and yes, I'm it! I'm not going to get all asian philosophical. But it represents a lot about Cillie (my wife, the one who really runs the show) and I, how we think, how we view things. There has to be balance in everyone's lives, and it has to permiate into all things. You can't always be a goofball, and you can't always be deathly serious. You can't always be yelling at people, and you can't alway be letting them walk all over you either.
My style of leadership, which I hope people have come to enjoy, is that more can always be done by building up instead of embarrassing or breaking down. I see the latter strategy constantly employeed in real life, and I've seen it happen online in games I play. Hell, play League of Legends at least once and you'll see the worst of people if things don't play out perfectly. You'll get the most heinous amount of vitriol ever. Maybe that's a symptom of the extreme annonimity that the internet can provide people. That's a whole different topic.
So yeah, I want to lead as someone that is a good player, always improving myself, and is level headed and respectful. There is a way to lead people, to point out what is being done wrong, what needs to be done right, and to admit when you are wrong, without being confrontational, overbearing, or generally an asshole. There is an excellent pic on imgur that kind of illustrates where I'm coming from.
http://imgur.com/gallery/Sm3blE2
I want to never have unreasonable expectations, but I also don't expect to have slackers around me. I'd like to think the people that follow me trust me, know that I know what I'm doing, and enjoy playing with me. I think I've proven that, with getting our team to finish this tier, getting the team the "Ahead of the Curve" for Lei Shen already. There is a certain style to leading a team, to being part of a team. There is an atmosphere, the collection of people have their own character. Personalities change, maybe just slightly, and in a million different ways based on the type of people that come together. I like this team, I like it's dynamics. There are subtle unspoken things we all do, ways that we play, we can "feel" when we are together. We develope a rhythm, and it's a very real thing, and I want that to always be improving, building, getting stronger.
Leave a mark. Be a part of something special. Have fun. That's where I'm going.
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