How to Sim Your WoW Character? A Guide to Raidbots (2024)

Welcome to our guide to using Raidbots to optimize your WoW character. Onthis page, you will find info about Raidbots in general and how to configure itmore generally. If you are looking to master specific parts of Raidbots, followthe links below to their respective sections of this page.

We recommend reading the sections below before moving on to the TopGear/Droptimizer/Advanced sections, so that you can learn about Raidbots moregenerally and how to set up the generic settings that are shared between allsims.

• Top Gear is the most important part ofRaidbots. It lets you sim your best gear, Trinkets, TalentsGems, Enchants etc.
• Droptimizer lets you find out contentyou should be doing to get thebiggest gear upgrades for your character.
• Gear Compare lets you freely sim itemsthat you do not have and play around with different gear combinations.
• Advanced is a section in Raidbots thatletsyou do sims that are notcovered by Top Gear, for example simming different Racial bonuses and more.

If you are more visual by nature and would prefer to see the contents ofthis guide in video format, we have an entire Masterclass on the topic, available for our Premium subscribers.

World of Warcraft is an incredibly complex game. On top of all the mechanicsand how they interact with stats like Crit, Haste, Versatility, and Mastery,there are RNG elements built into the game that will drastically change yourDPS output from attempt to attempt, even without changing the way that you play.

Because of this, it is essentially impossible to draw good conclusions fromold-school in-game testing on Target Dummies. With perfectly consistent play,your DPS can easily vary by 10-30% just from RNG effects alone. When min-maxingoften entails DPS increases that are less than 2%.

Simulations run tens of thousands of perfectly consistent runs with varioussetups to try and eliminate this problem. With dummy testing, you can easilystill have 5%+ variation even if you do dozens of tests. With simulations, youcan achieve an error margin of 0.1% or less within seconds. It is also mucheasier, and you can rely on the robot to play the spec perfectly andconsistently.

Simulations take ALL in-game spell interactions and mechanics into account,including RNG. In fact, you can even use simulation data to draw statisticalanalysis on results, and for example work out what the highest "possible" DPSmay come from. For example, stacking a lot of random proc effects might causethe simulation to have one run in a thousand where all of the procs activate atthe same time, leading to a massive surge in DPS for that pull.

Simulations are used by Theorycrafters, Guidewriters, World #1 Raiders, andcompletely normal players alike, and we highly recommend that you join them.

Simulating or "simming" yourself is one of the most important tools forimproving your character, especially as a DPS player.

If you have ever visited a Class Discord, you will often have seen peoplereferring to "simming" yourself. On this page, we will introduce you to what itis, and how you can do it yourself to maximize your DPS.

SimulationCraft is a tool thathas existed for almost a decade. It is essentially a WoW Simulator thatperfectly models all abilities and their interactions in the game by reading thegame's actual spell data.

Theorycrafters and Guidewriters have been using this tool for years to workout the best ways to play the game. Since the in-game environment is perfectlymodelled, this tool can be used to test anything from different stats,rotations,trinkets, Legendaries, and much more. None of our guides on Icy Veins would beas accurate as they are without the use of tools like this.

One of the biggest benefits of a simulation tool like SimulationCraft is thatyou can draw conclusions from it that are based on thousands of simulatedfights. You can simulate 10000 5-minute fights in a matter ofseconds. That would take over 800 hours of hitting a target dummy to replicate.The simulation is also perfectly consistent, meaning that there is no humanelement that may alter results. Also, the rotation that simulations areexecuting by default is nearly perfect.

Raidbots is a website createdby Seriallos. It essentially takes SimulationCraft, which is a powerful butcomplicated tool and turns it into a user-friendly website where all of themost useful possibilities of SimulationCraft can be harnessed by just aboutanyone.

In other words, Raidbots is SimulationCraft. The only difference isthat all of its features are configured through a graphical user interface, andthat the simulations themselves are run on Raidbots' own, powerful servers.Running SimulationCraft on your PC is much slower and more stressful foryour PC.

The Raidbots website and how to use it will form the majority of this guide,but it is still worth understanding what SimulationCraft is, which is thefoundation of Raidbots. Everything Raidbots does is just SimulationCraftunderneath.

The frontpage of Raidbotscontains all of the sections you need to start simming your character. We willgo through all of the useful ones and how to use them in the sections below.

Every time you want to sim something new, you will need to import yourcharacter.

1. Make sure that theSimulationcraftAddOn is installed and enabled.
2. Open your chatbox and type in /simc.
3. Now that the SimulationCraft window is opened, hit Ctrl+C on yourkeyboard to copy your data.
4. Open upRaidbots Top Gear andpaste in your data from the addon.

Before we do any actual simming, we should make sure that we have set upRaidbots correctly for our uses. If you enter a section such as Top Gear andscroll to the bottom, you will see a lot of different options.

Fight Style is the actual kind of encounter that the sim will try toemulate. The default is Patchwerk, and we recommend sticking with that for mostRaiding. Patchwerk is a simple 5-minute encounter with no movement. You cangenerally get advice on the best Fight Style to use for your Class/Spec, on yourClass' Discord Server.

The DungeonSlice Fight Style is Raidbots' best attempt at trying toemulate a section of a Mythic+ dungeon. It has a variety of target counts,including a 2-minute boss encounter. Many Theorycrafters do not recommend usingit, but it highly depends on the spec you are trying to sim for.

CleaveAdd is a useful and rather simple Fight Style that lets you mixup two different target counts. The CleaveAdd Fight Style is essentiallyPatchwerk, but for roughly 60% of the sim's duration, it will have oneadditional target active. So CleaveAdd @ 2 Targets will result in 2 targets for40% of the sim's length, and 3 targets for 60% of the sim's length.

HecticAddCleave is a very intense encounter with frequent, numerousadd spawns and heavy movement. We do not generally recommend using it, as theamount of AoE is unrealistically high for Mythic+ and most SimulationCraftModules for Specs do not realistically handle movement.

Number of Bosses is the amount of targets that your sim will befighting. This is helpful for doing AoE sims. For a regular Patchwerk sim, thiswill simply spawn multiple static bosses for your character to fight.

Fight Length is the amount of time that the encounter will take,give or take 20%. This means that a "5-minute" Fight Length will actuallybe thousands of 4-6 minute fights, but that the average Fight Length will be 5minutes. Set this to whatever suits the fight you are doing, but if you areunsure then 5 minutes is a good default.

SimC Version adjusts how up to date that you want the SimulationCraftused by Raidbots to be. We recommend setting this to Nightly at alltimes, only changing to Weekly if you suspect that there may be a bugwith the sim.

Ominous Chromatic Essence refers to which attunement buff you intendto pick if you are using the Ominous Chromatic Essence Trinket from 'Aberrus. You can change this setting over multiple sims to find outthe best buff for your character, as well.

Ominous Chromatic Essence Allies lets you choose whether you want tosim as if there are 4 other group members with the Trinket, all with differentbuffs so that you can buff each other, or 0.

Corrupting Rage Uptime refers to the expected uptime of Iced Phial of Corrupting Rage, which will determine the power of the Phial.A good default here is 85%, based on my experience and log analysis.

Iterations per Actor should be set to Smart Sim and neverchanged unless you know what you are doing.

Raid Buffs and Consumables let you choose which Raid Buffs andConsumables the sim is going to assume that you have. For example, if you aretrying to save Gold and you are not using Potions or Augmentation Runes, thenyou should disable those. If your group does not have a Mage, then disableArcane Intellect, and so on. You should set this to what is most realistic foryour situation.

Detailed SimC Report can occasionally be useful for deep-diving intothe Sim Data, but is generally not necessary. It does not add a lot of extratime to the sim, however, so you may as well just enable it.

The Top Gear section is by far the most important, and most commonly usedsection on Raidbots.

This is where you will find out what Gear, Trinkets, Enchants, Gems, and even Talents that you should use. The vastmajority of people will never need anything except Top Gear.

There are so many things to do with Top Gear that we have created a dedicatedpage below for it.

Droptimizer is a feature on Raidbots that lets you sim all the drops from aRaid or Dungeon on any difficulty/Mythic+ level, to see your biggest upgradesfrom it.

This is extremely useful for figuring out where your priorities should be forgearing up. It is also widely used by high-end guilds to decide on their rosterfor farm bosses, to make sure that as many people get good items as possible.

1. Use Step 1 to import your character intoRaidbots.
2. Select the Item Source that you want to try, for example Castle Nathria.
3. Choose an appropriate difficulty, for example Mythic Castle Nathria.
4. Press the Run Droptimizer button.
5. Wait for the Sim to finish.

In the example above, I have chosen Mythic Castle Nathria. You might alsonotice that Droptimizer automatically does not sim items that I already have tosave time on the sim.

There is also a Socket option. Just like Top Gear, you can choose toadd Sockets to the items being simmed so that they are compared more accuratelyto existing items you have that may already be socketed.

As you can see, by far the most important loot dungeons for me are Uldaman,Freehold, and Neltharion's Lair. Uldaman has two smaller upgrades, whileFreehold and Neltharion's Lair each have one, larger upgrade.

If you have ever wondered how to sim items that you do not actually have,then Gear Compare is for you. This is helpful when you are trying to work outhow much of a DPS upgrade you can expect from an item that you want. You canalso mess around with it and create full "what-if" gear setups.

In the above example, I am trying to sim the best replacement for my Slot 2Trinket between the Ominous Chromatic Essence or the Neltharion's Call to Dominance.

When using Gear Compare for Trinkets and Rings, it is very important to alsohit the Duplicate Gearset button, and making an identical sim using adifferent Slot. This is so that you are testing the new piece of gearagainst both of your existing Rings/Trinkets.

You can apply this strategy to any item in the game. You can even setunachievable Item Levels, and you can of course add Gems and Enchants to the"virtual" items you are trying to compare.

As you can see, I can expect 1365-1622 DPS from upgrading my Trinket toeither of the new options.

Stat Weights are one of the most popular, but also one of the most misusedfeatures on Raidbots.

In simple terms, it tries to give you the DPS value of each stat right now,to give you an idea of what your best stat to stack currently is, but it has alot of problems and we do not recommend using it, since it provides noadvantages over using Top Gear, so we will dedicate this section mostly to whyyou should not use it.

The way your stat weights are calculated is as follows:

1. It gives your character 595 of each stat.
2. It looks at the DPS increase from giving your character 595 of each stat.For example, let us say that 595 Haste gives me 4117 DPS.
3. It divides the DPS gain by 595. So 4117 divided by 595 is 6.92.
4. Thus my Haste Stat Weight is 6.92, because it has figured that each point ofHaste increases my DPS by 6.92, on average.

This seems sensible enough on the surface, but the problem is the "ScaleDelta" used, which is the amount of stats that it gives you to make thiscalculation. When working with secondary stats - often in the form of Gems andEnchants, we are working with much smaller increments. You will rarely beswapping items, gems, or enchants in a way that would swing your stats by such alarge margin in one go.

The second problem is that Stat Weights, at least by default, are purelyusing a Positive Scale Delta. That means it is only giving your characterstats and working out the DPS increase, but it is not doing the inverse, whichwould be REMOVING stats from your character and looking at the DPS loss.

These factors combined with the fact that Top Gear can do everything thatStat Weights does without any need for interpretation or calculation means thatyou should generally not use Stat Weights at all as a normal user.

This section is very straightforward. Quick Sim does not let you comparethings, but it just lets you see at a glance how much DPS that you sim for. Thisis useful when comparing yourself to others to get an idea of how good your gearis. It also gives you some detailed information about the sim, such as the DPS%contribution from each ability and so on.

The Advanced Section is the Raidbots Sandbox. Here, you can doeverything that SimulationCraft can do, but there is no Graphical User Interfaceto help you out. To harness the Advanced section, you need to understand how toconfigure SimulationCraft via text options and commands.

In this section, we will cover some of the most useful things you can do withAdvanced to take your simming to the next level.

If you are really trying to min-max, you may have considered changing yourcharacter's Race to harness the power of certain Racial Bonuses. With a RacialBonus Sim, you can sim all of the Races to see the best Racial for DPS.

1. Use Step 1 to import your character intoRaidbots. Simplypaste the SimC Output into the large text box.
2. Visit this Pastebin and copyits contents.
3. Go back to Raidbots and Ctrl+V the contents of the Pastebin below theSimC Output that you pasted in Step 1.
4. To make the sim run quicker, enable Convert to Profilesets. Thisprevents you from doing certain analysis on the results, but makes the sim runmuch faster.
5. Click the Run Simulation button.

Dwarf and Tauren have the same DPS Racial, so their nearly equivalent statusis expected. However, just behind you find Human, Mechagnome, and Void Elf allwithin 73 DPS of each other, which is the Margin of Error on the right-hand side. Therefore, for all intents and purposes, these Races can beconsidered equal DPS!

As we explained earlier, whenever you set a Fight Length in Raidbots, it isnot actually the exact fight length that the sim will run, because simulationshave a 20% fight length variation by default. A 5-minute sim will thus be acollection of sims that are 4-6 minutes long, with the average sim being 5minutes long.

This can be inconvenient if you know exactly how long a fight is going to be,particularly if you are trying to do Target Dummy practice. Below, we will showyou how to sim a specific fight length, with no variation.

Above or below your sim profile in the Advanced section, enter the following:

• # Set XXX to your desired average fight length in seconds. For example, 300 would be5 minutes.
• # Set YY to your desired fight length variation in percent. For example,"25" would be a 25% fight length variation.
• max_time=XXX
• vary_combat_length=0.YY
• fixed_time=1

An underrated possibility with Raidbots is that you can actually compare yourown gameplay to the sim and see where you fall behind in terms of casts.

Use the following to set up a "Target Dummy"-style sim with no buffs that isexactly 3 minutes in length.

• # Set XXX to your desired fight length in seconds. For example, 200 would be3 minutes and 20 seconds.
• max_time=XXX
• vary_combat_length=0.0
• fixed_time=1
• optimal_raid=0
• potion=disabled
• flask=disabled
• food=disabled
• augmentation=disabled

Put the above string of text before or after your actual /simc output, andthen run the sim.

By pressing Full HTML Report on the Results page, you can get adetailed breakdown of the sim. Most importantly, you can look at theAbilities'Execute tab to see the amount of times that each spellwas cast. You can compare your own casts to these to learn how the sim isplaying differently.

If you have used Raidbots, you may have noticed that there is an option tosupport Raidbots' Patreon andget some perks. The most notable perks includeskipping the queue when you sim, and having a much higher iteration countallowance, allowing you to sim more different things in one go.

Whether this is worth it is up to you. It is by no means necessary to getalmost everything you would ever need out of Raidbots, but it does save you timeand if you sim a lot, it is well worth considering.