Ask Mr. Robot: What gear should you get?

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

2-09-2011 @ 11:01AM

nordveien said...

This tool, as any other tool with that little calculation time, does not provide the optimal result. It might provide a result that is better than your current setup, but, again, there's no guarantee.

In order to, say, calculate the optimal reforging strategy based on known stat weights (the so-called EP points), one needs to go over all possible reforging options (not piece wise, but set wise), compare the outcomes and pick the one with the highest total EP value.

There is a tool that does exactly that (currently, available for rogues, one may find it in the respective topic at Elitist Jerks). Suffice to say, it gives different results than Mr.Robot with all other input (gems, enchants) being equal.

2-09-2011 @ 11:17AM

revulva said...

You are referring to Korner's reforging script I assume.

You are correct that Mr. Robot uses an approximate algorithm to find "near-optimal" gear setups. It takes a long time to check every single combination - "long" being a relative term. We wanted it to run in less than a second - you can already see the stress on our servers with just that much processing time.

That being said, I posted up an example of Korner's reforging script failing to find the optimal solution. I ran the same character through Mr. Robot and found a comparable result - both tools were about 10 EP off of THE optimal solution.

In his optimizations of the script, it appears that Korner is now also inadvertently doing an approximate solution, although it is still very near-optimal.

Mr. Robot is going to be so close to the optimal solution that the random number generator in the game will make sure that you never notice the difference - I know that will not appease hardcore min-maxers, but it works for most of us!

Keep in mind that Mr. Robot also optimizes gems and enchants for you too, which will often result in an overall better setup.

2-09-2011 @ 11:52AM

nordveien said...

Yes, I was referring to Korner's script (and, in later version, C-based tool).

I do agree with you that it's generally more convenient to get a near-optimal result in an acceptable time and using a pretty user-friendly GUI.
And it's, basically, what most want.

It's probably a matter of personal choice which kind of tool to use. But I think it's important to separate between the tools that use more precise math models (with their drawbacks like longer calculation times and a bigger set of manual config options) and the tools that use more approximate models, that work "in most cases", but, due to their approximate nature, may give random spikes on some input data, while being very close to optimal on most data.

That's why I find it misleading using words like "the most optimal choice" in the article.

In any case, best of luck to you and your project, it's great to see developers' comments in articles like this one.

Add your comments

Your comments:

Remember me

E-Mail me when someone replies to this comment

Please keep your comments relevant to this blog entry. Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments.

When you enter your name and email address, you'll be sent a link to confirm your comment, and a password. To leave another comment, just use that password.

To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br /> tags.