Ask Mr. Robot - Help & Feedback

[zoopercat]

Hi, I'm one of the people behind Ask Mr. Robot.

Update 3/4/13: We updated for 5.2!!! However, stat weights will be in flux for a week or two as we run more SimC simulations and chat with our favorite theorycrafters Here's our 5.2 stat weight progress.

First, I wanted to provide a few resources to help everyone out.

• A tutorial by Hoofit
• How Mr. Robot's Optimizer works (under the hood)
• Info on the upgrade system
• How Haste ratings work
• How we handle trinkets
• FAQ on our Forums

Next, I wanted to start this thread to address questions people might have, gather suggestions, and all that good stuff. This is a great community, so I wanted to reach out and hang around now and then

I'll update this post as questions come in, or as we plan to add new features based on feedback, etc.

If something is acting funny, and you want to report a bug / find out what's going on, please do the following:

• Describe the situations
• Provide a link to your saved profile on AMR. Click the blue save button under your character name. Why does this help? That will save all of the settings you're using, from custom stat weights to the options you have checks and any gear you have locked in.

[Instaqueues]

I want to preface this by saying I really do love Mr. Robot's UI! Also, the way it incorporates gems, enchants, etc. into figuring out your best possible configuration.

My biggest complaint about the site, is even with "Force Hit/Exp Caps" checked under the options, it still puts me at 4% - 6% on either one. I understand that it's possibly better to be under hit/exp so my bleeds are stronger, or whatever it may be! However, I like the smoothness of never missing, so I can count on a combo point to hit before I use my PS proc at the very last second, knowing it'll count towards my Rip.

In a rotation that plans their next move 5-6 seconds in advance, not missing has proved invaluable. If it actually would force the cap, then I'd have no problem with it!

My second, and smaller concern (because I can adjust this manually) is a while back it tried to match sockets for a belt, to get me exp bonus or something similar. When I added the values of all possible socket combinations, adding the bonus when applicable, straight Agi came out much higher value than mixing gems to get the socket bonus. So, I'm not sure how Mr. Robot uses weights to calculate these, but it should be simple math, especially wher Agi is concerned (weighted 2-2.5x higher than any secondary stat, and you can't reforge to Agi, so gems are the only place to get it).

Thanks for the hard work! And I hope to go back to Mr. Robot when everything gets smoothed out

[zoopercat]

Regarding the hit cap, can you give me a link to your saved profile? You'll have to login (it's painless, requires no email verification, and you won't get spammed). Doing that will save all of the settings you are looking at, so I can see the exact same thing. I'll see what's going on then

The socket bonuses are (basically) very easy math: stat weight * gem stats. Mr. Robot adds in the same math for matching a socket bonus and decides which is better. There's one catch: he also looks at caps and decides if getting an expertise socket bonus is going to help or not (based on the available reforges, etc, that you can do). So sometimes that socket bonus (if hit/exp or any other cappable stat) might not be worth it. But, sometimes the value of that socket bonus gets you closer (or puts you over less) than all of the reforge combinations - in which case the bonus would be worth it.

[Terias]

In the top right, click options, then at the bottom of the option list you can check force hit/exp caps.

[Vaporgriffin]

...even with "Force Hit/Exp Caps" checked under the options, it still puts me at 4% - 6% on either one.

[Terias]

I'm blind.

[kaiadam]

I find that with custom weights, the calculator completely ignores my "force expertise/hit caps".

Furthermore, using pre-set stats, the "force expertise/hit caps" often leaves me a full 0.5% over one of the caps, if not both.

I wish the calculator would allow us to edit our caps and such ... I just want my hit and expertise to be above 7.4% each (as to minimize wastefulness of stats over cap) and then maximize dps from then on, and it's a struggle doing so with AMR calculator compared to wowreforge. Unfortunately wowreforge doesn't handle item upgrades, but AMR doesn't actually give me the results I want, so I'm resigned to spreadsheets and hand calculations which is very not fun.

[zoopercat]

Kaiadam - can you give me a link to your saved profile on AMR? I'd like to play with it and see what's going on. Mr. Robot almost always gets you to within 0.1% of the hit cap, with that option unchecked.

Also, custom weights don't cause the "force hit/exp caps" to be ignored. However, if the weight on hit/exp isn't high enough, it doesn't make mathematical sense to force the caps. I believe hit/exp still has to be on of the top 2 highest weighted stats. Anyway, send me the profile as you're using it now, so I can see what's going on. Then I can play with settings and weights to see what's causing the problems.

Thanks

[Tinderhoof]

Wow Reforge does handle upgrades. The UI for it isn't intuitive and you will have to manually update the numbers yourself every time you refresh from the armory. Simply click on the item and the UI will be brought up. At the top of the dialog you can adjust the stats to match your items in game then hit apply. I assume this will be updated soonish now that the armory has your updated info. However this method leaves much to be desired.

[Tinderhoof]

However, if the weight on hit/exp isn't high enough, it doesn't make mathematical sense to force the caps. I believe hit/exp still has to be on of the top 2 highest weighted stats.

From a user stand point it really isn't a good experience to say Force Exp/Hit cap and still have it not happen. Is it impossible to just get as close to 2550 for both as possible before doing the rest of the calculations?

[zoopercat]

Tinderhoof - I totally agree with what you're saying. However, currently there are 2 ways to do it - the question is which is better.

Situation: A user puts in their own stat weights and values hit really low. They check 'force hit caps.'
1. They are saying hit isn't important in their stat weights... so do we listen to that?
2. They are saying hit IS important by forcing the cap. Is that what we should listen to?

Either way we choose, we'll have people who aren't happy. So the best thing is probably avoid the choice altogether! For example, maybe we could gray out the force hit cap option if the weights suggest that hit isn't important. Or something along those lines.

As for Kaiaden, that might not be what's going on. It could be something else - I'll take a look once I get the profile URL.

[kaiadam]

http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/gear/0d3e ... a6a3baa133

Default PvE build - leaves me at 7.02% hit
So I check cap hit/expertise - I get 7.96% hit and 800 dps below my manual reforging.
I then try unchecking that thing and selecting the favoring Hit/Expertise build - weird stat weighings results in using hit/mastery gems in green sockets (somehow mastery ended up more than half the value of agi), so I tried to correct by inputting my own stat weights, leaving hit/expertise higher than anything else.
After hitting save, I get expertise at 7.1%
So I check cap hit/expertise, which happens, and now I'm 300 points below my original reforging which I threw together in the 5 minutes between getting gear and pulling the next boss (along with enchants and stuff.)

Very frustrating.


----


If someone checks the "cap hit/expertise" - regardless of what they put in the stat weighings the result should give hit/expertise cap imo. That checkbox is a much more solid statement of "I want cap" vs low weighings which they might have inputted because they're coming over from a rogue class or whatever and hit has value beyond the soft cap which they are inputting for whatever reason.

Wow Reforge does handle upgrades. The UI for it isn't intuitive and you will have to manually update the numbers yourself every time you refresh from the armory. Simply click on the item and the UI will be brought up. At the top of the dialog you can adjust the stats to match your items in game then hit apply. I assume this will be updated soonish now that the armory has your updated info. However this method leaves much to be desired.

Thank you!

[Instaqueues]

Here is the link to my saved profile ( I hope this is how to do it! )
http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/gear/4e43 ... a4c07b1144

But from reading what was posted after the request, it looks like it is a case of custom weights being low value hit/exp and still wanting the values. I use the weights of hit/exp when I calculate gem sockets. I do use the simple math, for instance 2 yellow gems for a crit bonus I have 2 options:
2*AgiWeight*160
(2*AgiWeight*80)+(2*MasteryWeight*160)+(120socketbonus*CritWeight)

I take the higher value of the 2. I understand that Mr. Robot emcompasses that calculation within ALL of my gear, which is why I'd rather use it But, I feel like it should always take the highest value. I think the belt I have equipped currently is weighted higher as pure agi gems, but Mr. Robot is giving me Agi/Hit & Agi/Mastery.

Maybe just some more clarification and perhaps another checkbox "Are you sure you want caps with weights so low?" or something to that effect would help us users out . I like to run 50k iterations to find my stat weights when I get new gear, so it changes some-what frequently, but I always want hit/exp caps.

[Tinderhoof]

I created several saved profiles to see what kind of results I could get from my Character. Below is the methods I used, the results from AMR, and my observations of those results.

Here is my current armory shot: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/n ... f/advanced
1. Default Stat Weights, PVE: Favor Hit/Expertise (gearing strat), Default Options: http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/gear/49a9 ... f4f8930c89 (saved profile)
Running the optimizer with above settings I lose 1411 Agility, .75% Crit, 3301 AP (from Agi loss), and 42 hit putting me 38 below the cap. I gain 2612 Mastery (13.36%) and 239 Haste (.62%). In this case the optimizer acquires all socket bonuses, but uses no pure Red gems to do so.

2. Default Stat Weights, PVE: Favor Hit/Expertise (gearing strat), Options = Force Hit/Exp cap: http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/gear/f350 ... f82464a96c (saved profile)
Running the optimizer with above settings I lose 1411 Agility, .75% Crit, and 3301 AP (from Agi loss). I gain 2452 Mastery (12.79%), 239 Haste (.62%) and 118 Hit putting me 132 over the hit cap. The hit numbers don’t make any sense to me. I currently have 2564 hit which is 14 over the cap. This profile adds 118 to that to put me WAY over the cap. While I gain some Mastery, I lose Crit and gain Haste which does not match the given stat weights (Crit 2.27, Haste 1.87). I am guessing that the Crit being given by Agility isn’t being factored into the formula which is likely throwing some things off. Same as #1 the optimizer acquires all socket bonuses.

3. Custom Stat Weights (provided by Aggixx most current), PVE: Favor Hit/Expertise (gearing strat), Options = Force Hit/Exp cap: http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/gear/fbac ... 2f6cee79fe (saved profile)
Running the optimizer with the above settings I lose 411 Agility, 1167 AP (From Agi loss), 1116 Hit which is 1102 under the cap, and 194 Exp which is 189 below the cap. I gain 890 Mastery (4.64%), 1451 Crit (2.07%), and 239 Haste (.62%). I understand the Hit/Exp issues as you have described above. The optimizer continues to acquire all of the socket bonuses. Even though The stat weight of Agi (5.06) is more than double that of Mastery (1.93) and almost triple of Hit/Exp (1.65) it still sacrifices Agility to gain these socket bonuses. It is interesting to note that unchecking the Force Hit/Exp cap does not change the optimization at all.

4. I set the Hit/Exp stats just above Crit, checked Force Hit/Exp cap, and Bumped Agi to 5.5 (almost triple Mastery): http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/gear/e383 ... 01169b502b (saved profile)
In this case it finally agrees with my reforging and geming. All save for the Strength glove enchant. Even though Strength (1.91) is rated slightly below Mastery (1.93) Mark of the Wild will put Strength over the top. Is the optimizer not giving the Mark buff to Strength for the calculations?

My question about the Hit/Exp was getting at what Kaiadam wrote:

“If someone checks the "cap hit/expertise" - regardless of what they put in the stat weightings the result should give hit/expertise cap imo.”

To me the phrase “Force Hit/Exp Caps” means ignore everything until these are capped then proceed with the rest of the stats. I figured with gearing strat “Favor Hit/Exp” that would perform the task that someone wanting to get close, but not caring specifically about. If someone sees force, it seems to me to be all or nothing.

I still love your UI over every other gear/reforging method. It is the easiest upgrade, pick gems, and change reforges. My one suggestion is to make it easier to see all of the actual number stats that each gear set provides. Provide both the % and the actual number side by side for every stat that has both expressions. Having to use the “From Gear” check box to go back and forth to see both numbers is a little un user friendly.

[zoopercat]

I'll go thru these one at a time.

Kaiaden, here's what's going on with yours:
1. Your starting score: 171025.
2. If you check force hit caps, you go pretty far over. That results in a score decrease, but Mr. Robot gets hit capped. Score: 170277
3. I tried to play around with it manually to get capped. I can get you to about 7.6 on both of them. That took about 30 minutes (ah, humans), but I was able to improve on Mr. Robot's forced hit cap score, getting you to 170737. It's still below your original score, because of the forced hit-caps.
4. If you DON'T force hit caps, you get the best score, 171113.

But really, those scores are all splitting hairs:

• If you FORCE hit caps, your original score decreases by 0.43%
• My manual version gets you back up an extra 0.26%. NOTE!!(See below)
• If you don't force hit caps and go down to 7.02 hit, your score increases by 0.05%
  
  NOTE!! We try to get everyone to within 99.9% of THE best solution. Why not 100%? Well, since it's an online optimizer, it takes a lot of servers to run through these calculations. There are 250k-500k combinations to check and that's too many to do quickly. So we have an algorithm (just like other optimizing sites) that tries to be smart, but isn't 100% optimal. Does that make sense?
  
  So, in this case, after 30 minutes of putzing around, I got you 0.26% better than Mr. Robot's solution. That's outside our margin of error. So we'll use this as a test case to improve the algorithm

[zoopercat]

Insta,
So I checked out your case too. Here's the math, to show you are not crazy!

• 3 agi gems = 2376 points
• Matching sockets: 2358 points
• It would see like a simple enough solution to check all 3 agi gems, so we're seeing what's going on. However, it changes the score by 0.01% of the total (well within the margin of error we shoot for). But, better is better, RIGHT? So we're taking a look at this one.

You guys will have to start posting scores where Mr. Robot is AMAZING, or he's going to start feeling bad Seriously though, these cases help.

[Instaqueues]

Haha, I've used Mr. Robot plenty of times, so maybe that'll make him feel better! I wouldn't have noticed, and really don't care, about the belt issue But I had been messing around, bored at work, with gem weights and just happened to notice it.

I, and I'm sure everyone, appreciates the time you're putting in to fixing some of the bugs/complaints! We'll have to send the robot a big gift basket to make him feel loved

[zoopercat]

Tinderhoof, here's some feedback.

1 & 2 are results of the hit rating being ranked so low. We covered why that is, and that we can maybe come up with a way to make that a better experience.

#3. 2 things are going on here:
A. You said unchecked 'force caps' doesn't change things, but I see it change here.
B. It looks like you get a score increase by using hybrid gems in some of the pieces (see here). But not in the belt. Since that's the same problem insta came across, I'm wondering if something's up with buckles that is making the algorithm miss some of the gem checks. We're looking into this.

#4. The optimizer accounts for all buffs when calculating total stats, caps, etc. The stat weights themselves should include stat multipliers though --the concept for DPS classes is typically "how much will adding 1 point of this stat on my gear increase my DPS?" If you take AP and STR as an easy example, it is clear that if the weight for AP is 1, the weight for STR should be 1.05 -- 1 point gives you more. You are basically double-counting the MotW buff if you multiply 170 STR by 1.05 and then by your weight. Does that make sense?


/whew. Thanks for your patience and for playing around with it. It really is helpful, and people tend to expect different things so it's good to see what everything thinks

[zoopercat]

Instaqueus: awww thanks. Mr. Robot is fighting me over the keyboard right now. He's VERY excited about a gift basket and wants to let you know he likes cookies (oatmeal raisin, chocolate chips, gingerbread, and girlscout cookies). He also wants a puppy.

Really though, thanks for posting. All of these cases help us make minor itty bitty adjustments to squeeze out even more power.

[Tinderhoof]

I had this whole nice thing typed out and then lost it. Poo.

1 & 2 are results of the hit rating being ranked so low. We covered why that is, and that we can maybe come up with a way to make that a better experience.

I think there might be some confusion here. The examples of 1, and 2 are using the Favor Hit/Exp profile weights. This puts Hit and Exp at 2.8 which is above every secondary stat and Strength. The only difference made was 1 had default options and 2 had "Force Hit/Exp Caps" selected. As they are the #1 secondary stat I don't think the issue is because they are set to low.

I do think that the built in stat weights are favoring Mastery a little to highly. I know Aggixx provided those stats at the start of 5.01. He has updated stats found here

http://fluiddruid.net/forum/viewtopic.p ... 883#p11155

. While his updated numbers show Hit/Exp so low its due to the fact that they are worthless past the caps (ie not made to fit with Ask Mr Robot). Example 3 and 4 used these stat weights. Example 3 results are clearly due to how low Hit/Exp are rated. I said as much in my discrpiton. I just wanted to see exactly what would happen. Example 4 is the updated weights from Aggixx but I bumped up Hit/Exp to be the highest possible. Adjusting to the updated stat weights may resolve a lot of the behavior folks are seeing where it says "GEM ALL THE MASTERY" ;^ )

For 4 I did some math excluding AP, and excluding Stenght. I don't have time to go into is cause my wife is dragging me out the door for our trip. I will touch base later.

Mr Robot, don't feel sad! Feed back only means we want to use you! Really thanks for engaging us. It is nothing but a good thing to have more of the community involved. Have a nice vaction!

[zoopercat]

I'll look at #1 and 2 again. I thought I saw hit/exp low in the list, but my mind might have been...
a) fried from looking at the other profiles
b) coming down from a cookie sugar high

I'll check it out again.

You make a good point about some of the stats 'not working for Mr. Robot.' In fact, we manipulate some of the stat weights specifically so they DO work with Mr. Robot. When we do this, we run them through SimC and compare them to the non-adjusted stat weights. We are looking to make sure reforge/gem/BiS lists are still in-tact. If that makes sense. I'll see if that's the case for any of our druid weights (I don't do our weights, I just talk to nice people like you guys).

I did talk to our developer and he's cool with updating to the new weights. We'll run some checks to make sure those weights do what we think they should do, as well (in case the hit/exp isn't working right). However, we're going to hold off on updating the weights for a couple more weeks - we're tweaking the optimization algorithm to be faster, so we'll make all those changes at once. (I feel bad every time we make changes - people who had perfectly optimized gear sometimes get new magical changes... and everyone likes to see those green highlights go away! haha).

[scorpio0920]

Have to be considered to support the Asian version of the equipment upgrade it?

[zoopercat]

Hey guys, I'm running out to catch a flight but wanted to share this. You all have been super helpful, so be sure and check out the new features on our beta! http://blog.askmrrobot.com/2012/12/new- ... -upgrades/

Although Mr. Robot denies every coding a bug... ever... post if something doesn't seem right

[zoopercat]

We've updated for 5.2!! Stat weights are in flux while we run more SimC simulations and chat with our favorite theorycrafters. You can track our progress here

I also thought you might find our trinket pages interesting. We've simulated all of the new trinkets to get the average stat bonus from the procs. For more details on exactly how we do that, read this blog post.

As with any major update, let me know if you see anything suspicious, whacky, confusing, etc. We'll be doing a lot of updates this week to tweak things and fix bugs!

[Tinderhoof]

Cool trinket page. Would it be possible to sort by the values, and maybe add a filter? You know like I want to compare just the Agi proc trinkets and so on.

Just one quick issue. The Strength trinket "Gaze of the Twins" or something like that won't proc at all for agility users. This was to prevent it from being an amazing Guardian trinket. Should likely remove it from to list to prevent confusion. While they haven't said yet, I wouldn't be surprised if Rune gets the same proc fix for Strength users.