Rawr works just like a sim/spreadsheet. It's just a more friendly user interface. Saying that you don't use a sim because you use Rawr instead is like saying that you don't use a computer, you use a Mac. They usually have a difference in quality but serve the same purpose.

For many people "siming it" is part of getting some joy out of the game. There are loads of people out there that solve math problems for fun and running simulations and testing different setups in them is one way to make such people happy.

I think that your argument is that of one from a casual perspective (this is not to say you are casual or elitist). Most casuals see the game as an escape, a chance to relax from work/school/life. Other people use books, TV, eating, excercise, etc for the same thing. Part of the factor is fun. Fun is a relative term for every individual, hence why every person does not play the same class nor role nor profession. The game is designed to allow choice and let you have fun with it.

However, there is something about WoW that you didn't discuss. The factor of knowledge and preparedness. In WoW, not knowing the difference between PvP gear and PvE gear can make you look like a nub. Not knowing how to CC will get you kicked from groups. Things that can be learned in game, but not always, is a required trait for all players. This requires players to do things that aren't "fun," by reading articles on their class, learning what the lingo of WoW is, etc. I remember trying to figure out what CC even meant the first time it was said so many years ago. It took me googling it just to figure it out. It wasn't fun to look it up, but was necessary in order for me to participate in the game.

With the gear choices, I don't consider it fun to have to "sim" it in order to figure out the best possible dps increase, but that's where you have a choice. You don't have to. You can simply look at the pieces, reading the articles outside of spreadsheets that talk about stats and such and just know what would be better. Or you could just sim it, using the theoretical dps increase to understand its value to you or to another player. Spreadsheets and sims are tools that are outside the game for the purpose of helping players.

With that in mind, I understand that it takes time to understand and will "suck the fun" out of the experience of WoW. But if the goal is to play the game casually (which means not raiding on cutting edge, not pvp'ing on cutting edge, not getting BiS gear), then that's your choice and a good one if it helps you destress and if you enjoy the game that way. However, if you want to be a part of the raids, the pvp, and the other parts of the game, it requires preparation and knowledge that a casual player will not get by refusing to go use tools specifically designed to enable players to access raids without having to do math and number crunching.

I think someone else mentioned this, but just because you don't find spreadsheets fun doesn't mean everyone else is exactly like you. I mean, I don't like knitting, but there's gigantic knitting communities all over the web, so obviously some people really like it.

One person's "boring" is another person's "fun" ;).

I think it is fun. Some people don't. I'm OK with that.

"Rawr works just like a sim/spreadsheet. It's just a more friendly user interface. "

Based on certain class discussion messageboards, rawr is basically a red-headed stepchild and not considered a "real" sim like EnhSim - and the enhancement shaman commenters out there let you know it.

To the people who enjoy simming and spreadsheeting, I get ya. That's why I said "I think simming is great for those who want to dive deep into the numbers and really get into the specifics of dps." You want to get hardcore mathy about your dps, I think it's great that you can do that. But to be required to do that is where I draw the line at fun.

This isn't necessarily a casual v. hardcore thing. You can be casual and love spreadsheets and sims, and you can be hardcore and dislike them. The point is being required to take time out of game defeats the purpose of playing the game for the people who are not into it - and while you can say something like "I think someone else mentioned this, but just because you don't find spreadsheets fun doesn't mean everyone else is exactly like you" I would respond thusly:

I'm not claiming that everyone is like me. But I think I can make a reasonable assumption that using complicated spreadsheets and simulation programs is something that the vast majority of wow players are not going to find fun or interesting. Especially because what you are "simming" most often is your gear and a gear choice, and to spend precious time outside of the game to make that decision, I'm sorry, that just isn't great game design.

Pyromelter, I totally agree... in fact, I'm on a team that built a simulator back in WoTLK days that was pretty hard core. But we quickly realized that wasn't what the vast majority of wow players wanted. So, we made the new version of Mr. Robot's tool to do what most wow players want: good advice on gear, gems, enchants, and reforges... wait for it... wait for it... all by pressing ONE button.

It is pretty awesome. http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/gear

Sounds like you're pretty educated on all of this, hit us up in our forums with feedback!

I could be mistaken, but I believe RAWR is calculative as opposed to simulative. There's a substantial difference between that approach and say Simulationcraft. In most cases, the results are going to be similar, however, in certain cases simulation is going to show you things that calculation just can't.

I think this article is focusing more on using any type of thing to calculate DPS, but the difference is important and worth noting.

@Zoop

Thanks for that link. I love that type of "sim" as that it gives me a quick and easy BiS list to shoot for and I can see what I've got and how it compares. Love it! Thanks!

Zoop, hadn't heard of mr. robot. Just checked it, it looks pretty cool. (Any chance you can have the program default to 1h weapons when the character is using mh/oh combo instead of a staff for a caster?)

Jonla, you're right, at least I believe you are right to the extent I know how these things work. I think rawr has some options for rotations and whatnot.

A big problem with rawr right now is that a lot of it isn't working, or is barely working. Rawr depends on individuals (often people on EJ themselves) to contribute the programming and inputs to the program. Rawr is modular, so each class and spec has it's own module. Seems like many specs and classes are not supported at the moment.

@Pyromelter

I agree, Rawr is really weird right now. At the same time, it's a great tool for people that are just getting into theorycrafting or who aren't interested at all, but want to optimize their reforging and such.

For those interested, the difference in approaches is that RAWR is essentially a very complex formula. You plug in certain variables and it outputs a number (your dps) and it can optimize around that. Essentially, it graphs the function and then tells you what X variables (gear, enchants, gems, etc.) are necessary to get to the peak of Y (dps).

Simulationcraft et al, on the other hand, take the gear inputs and plot the function of dps using thousands of iterations. In that sense, it "draws" by plotting all the points along it. This is a more accurate way of doing it and while about 90% of the time the results of the two approaches will agree, I think the 10% of the time they don't is why people pooh pooh RAWR and other similar things. You mention enhance shammies, but I find that RAWR is poor for fire mages atm as well.

@pyromelter Mr. Robot should be defaulted to 'all weapons' - did it not do that for you? Also, when defaulted to 'all' it will rank 2H with the MH/OH combo to find the best setup. Right now I believe MH/OH combos tend to win because of the enchants.

@Zoop: Although the idea of your tool is pretty awesome (and rather good-looking), it has some failures, at least for the rogue's stat weights (and thus every propositions of optimization, as I guess they are based on those stats weights).
So what you have here is a nice tool, with a high potential, but worthing nothing as it is wrong (but, I repeat, I only tried with my rogue, so I can't talk about others classes).

draigars, what is wrong with the Rogue stat weights? They are pulled straight from the Elitist Jerks threads on Combat and Assassination. It seems to be working for me.

Anyway, just change the weights yourself if you want something different.

@Matt:
I have those values with Zoop's tool (as an assassination rogue):
MH DPS 4
Agility 3.5
Haste 1.3
Expertise 1.15
Physical Hit 1.15
Crit 1.1
OH DPS 1
MH Speed 1
Mastery 0.7
Spell Hit 0.25

The agility (though oddly high), haste, crit and DPS weights seem correct (compared with EJ ones). But look at the spell hit (I'm not capped) and the mastery values...
And because of this, it propose me to reforge crit to haste rather than hit, or mastery.

Yes, I can edit the stat weights, but the advantage of www.askmrrobot.com become greatly decreased.

draigars, that is weird, because I just pulled up the default Assassination build (I am Combat, so can not load my character) and the weights match the ones on EJ. However, those weights you listed are exactly what Mr. Robot has for Sub Rogues. So I think you had the wrong build loaded.

However, I think you are confused with how the weights work with the Mr. Robot tool, especially in regards to hit. For Rogues, the "spell hit" weight is added onto the "Physical Hit" weight (which itself has a soft cap and hard cap). This is all explained on the forums, but here's an example.

With the correct Assassination values, Mr. Robot lists spell hit as .65 and physical hit as 1.1 until the soft cap (8%), after which it is 0.75 until the hard cap.

1.1 + 0.65 = 1.75, the yellow hit rating for Assassination Rogues on EJ. Once you hit 8% physical hit, Mr. Robot values it at 0.75 ... which added to 0.65 is 1.4; again, that matched EJ. After you hit the spell hit cap, physical hit is valued at 0.75, which again matched EJ.

draigars, here is the post explaining it on their forums. They did a better job explaining how their tool works.

http://forums.askmrrobot.com/index.php?topic=772.0

Matt, thanks for your useful links.
I couldn't find (well, didn't search much neither) any threads about mastery... While it explains a part of the oddity, there is still the negative value for OH dps and the mastery ranked as one of the weakiest stat.