To simulate your character over on raidbots you need only head over to the website and "Quick sim." Select your character’s realm and region, put in your name, and sim away. There are a lot of options and other things to consider when simming but if you’re just looking for that one number at the end of it this will get you there.
There are a few limitations on Raidbots when simming your character. To get to these we have to get some terms defined and some concepts explained that are very important to simming and to Raidbots, as well as a few of the more common options to change and what their defaults are.
- Iterations: every time that simulationcraft runs a simulation it does so a large number of times. Each one of those times is considered an iteration. More iterations will increase the accuracy of the sim but also make it take more time. The default is 10 thousand iterations, which most have found to be a good number. The other side to iterations is that since Raidbots is running on ‘the cloud,’ it’s being shared amongst everyone who is using it. To keep things under control each sim is limited to a maximum number of iterations, for example the top gear comparisons let you have up to a total of 300 thousand (300k). At 10 thousand per set this usually means you can run a few dozen combinations, but remember that the number of combinations grows quickly.
- Fight Type: There are different types of fights that simulationcraft has pre-defined events for. Obviously a fight like Antoran High Command would be a very different fight compared to Garothi Worldbreaker. On raidbots you can only make a selection from the pre-built fight types, but in case you're running locally, you can build your own fights. The ones that are pre-built will cover most situations, especially when combined with the next option.
Patchwerk: This is the default, a single target no adds no movement nothing special just kill the boss. A great baseline and when most people compare results this is what they’re talking about. The casting variant of this fight will make the target cast abilities occasionally which may be desired for things like Sephuz' Geheimnis - Helter Skelter: Similar to patchwerk in that it’s a single boss but this fight type adds interruptions to your damage windows. This includes getting stunned occasionally and a few movement windows.
- Hectic Add Cleave: Similar to helter skelter with movement and interruptions to damage but also adds periodic spawning of extra targets.
- Light/Heavy Movement: Exactly what it sounds like.
Target count: May also be called “number of bosses.” This is the number of targets that are up for the entire fight. Something like the Hellfire High Council from HFC, or the Illidari Council way back in Black Temple. When the extra targets are up for the entire fight this is what you’d change. Default is set to 1.
Fight length: If you want to sim longer or shorter fights. Since few fights in WoW last for the same amount time, you can change it here. Thinking back to fights like the Butcher from Highmaul that had an enrage of 2 minutes, or something like Lei Shen which had a significantly longer one, you can see where changing this would be helpful. The default is 5 minutes. It’s also worth noting that internally Simulationcraft will vary the fight length by 20% throughout its simulations. This means that with a default of 5 minutes it’s actually simming fights of 4 to 6 minutes to make sure that the fight length isn’t going to change the values too much. Fight length can be a topic of some debate but these defaults are fairly typical of encounters in WoW and make it easy to discuss sims with other players.
Pantheon trinkets: While specific to the Legion expansion it may be important to sim additional members in your raid using their pantheon trinkets such as
Khaz'goroths Kühnheit. Without this you wouldn’t be able to get an accurate picture if you are using the trinkets from argus. This setting will ask you how many other people in the raid are using these trinkets. It’s not a perfect example since it will assume they are using the wild card trinket
Aman'thuls Vision but it is close enough. It can be helpful to ask your raid team for the right number to put in here although, most will be around the 15-20 range.
Consumables: Raidbots allows you control over which flasks, food and potions you want to use for your sim. By default, raidbots will automatically select the one most appropriate for your class and spec, however if you want to change it (to compare consumables or because you use a different one) that option is available to you here.
APL: Action priority list. This is basically the way simulationcraft handles the rotation. It treats your rotation as a series of priorities and goes down the list until it finds something you can cast and then starts at the top again. The default one is usually the best and if you’re curious about it you can always go ask the theorycrafters (TCs) for your class spec about it. They like to hang around on the class discords (usually). You can edit the priority lists but that’s a much more advanced topic.
Many of the options can be changed in any sim and it’s always encouraged to play around with different sims to see what works best in many situations.
