1. How does Mr. Robot decide what optimizations to make?
2. Why Mr. Robot sometimes puts you under the hit cap?
3. Where does Mr. Robot get his stat weights?
4. Mr. Robot takes into account your racials, professions, etc.
5. Mr. Robot’s BiS lists are dynamically generated.

 

1. How does Mr. Robot decide what optimizations to make?

It’s all about the math! Mr. Robot takes your stat weight and multiplies it by the amount of stat on the gem/enchant/reforge. For example, if you have Strength at a weight of 2, a gem with 160 Strength on it gets a score of 320. If you have Crit at a weight of 1.5, a gem with 320 Crit has a score of 480.

Let’s look at a real example: The stat weights for combat rogues are: Agility = 4, Haste = 2.2, and Expertise = 3.9. So at first, you might think it’s obvious that a 160 Agi gem should go in a red socket (socket bonus = 60 Expertise). But, not so quick! Let’s look at the math:

• 160 Agility Red Gem = 160 * 4 = 640
• 80 Agility & 160 Haste Orange Gem = (80 * 4) + (160 * 2.2) = 320 + 352 = 672
• 360 Haste Gem = (360 * 2.2) – (60 exp socket bonus * 3.9) = 792 – 234 = 558
• The winner is the hybrid gem – you get more out of it!

Cappable stats (like hit) have a weight up to the cap, then their value is 0 after the cap. So let’s say you need 300 hit rating to get to the cap. Let’s also say your weight for hit is 1.2. A +320 hit gem would be calculated as follows: (300 * 1.2) + (20 * 0) = 360. As you can see, Mr. Robot didn’t give points to the extra 20 hit, since it would put you over the hit cap, but the rest of the hit rating did get a score.

Since he optimizes everything – he can look at a lot of combinations and move stats between gems, enchants and reforges. This becomes particularly important now that secondary stat gems have twice the value as primary gems (160 Strength vs 320 Hit). So now it’s possible that a secondary stat gem, or a hybrid gem, end up being the best option.

Mr. Robot is programmed to get you the highest possible score. It’s that simple!

 

2. Why Mr. Robot sometimes puts you under the hit cap?

Mr. Robot wants to get you the highest score (which translates into the highest DPS for damagers, damage mitigation for tanks, etc). It’s easy to agree that any hit rating over the cap is wasted. But what isn’t as obvious is that getting exactly to the hit cap isn’t always the best option (sometimes it is, but often times it is not).

Let’s use an example to understand this better. Let’s say +Hit is your highest weighted stat with a weight of 2. Let’s say Crit has a rating of 1.8 and Mastery 1.2. The thing to focus on in this example is that Crit is much more valuable than Mastery, AND there are a finite number of combinations to get you to an exact number. On to the example: it’s possible that to get you exactly to the hit cap, you’d have to reforge all of your Crit to Hit. BUT!!! Let’s say you can get to within 20 Hit rating of the cap but you preserve all of your Crit, and instead reforge all of your mastery – since Mastery is much less valuable that crit. Your final score would be higher. Here are some made up numbers as an example:

To get exactly hit capped:
Lose 600 Crit:   -1080
Gain 600 Hit (get exactly to cap): +1200
Total Score change: +120

To get within 20 of hit cap:
Lose 580 Mastery:  -696
Gain 580 Hit (20 below hit cap):  +1160
Total Score change: +464

A lot of people ask why they can’t change the hit cap in his optimizer. That’s because there is no reason to change the cap. He lets you change modes – raid, 5 man, challenge mode, pvp. Changing the mode changes the hit cap, but he still won’t let you manually edit the caps. There’s no need to   You can change the weights though, as much as you want!

 

3. Where does Mr. Robot get his stat weights?

We wrote a program the interfaces with SimC. It runs through all sorts of sets of gear until it converges on a stable set of stat weights. We then review those weights to make sure they make sense, in case there’s a bug or bad assumptions in any of the programs. We also then work with a lot of theorycrafters to get their feedback and make sure the weights make sense.

That being said, everything is still being tweaked. For example, there will soon be a big update for a couple Monks in SimC, so we’ll run new simulations when that happens. We’re also watching how people play and raid, to see if Mastery is more important for a lock than Haste.

Mr. Robot is all about the math. So you can count on us to continuously check on weights, assumptions, run more SimC trials, and use our human brains (which can sometimes be better than computers, but don’t tell that to Mr. Robot… his head might explode).

And of course, you can always put in your own stat weights! You can also test things out for yourself with SimC. If you click the export button on the action bar, you’ll see an option to export the results to SimC. Mr. Robot doesn’t hide anything, he wants you to be able to compare results!

 

4. Mr. Robot takes into account your racials, professions, etc.

Mr. Robot knows every racial bonus,  profession bonus, etc. He factors this is when optimizing your gear – so don’t worry, he won’t accidentally forget and put you over the caps.

When looking at professions, he knows that if you’re a Jewelcrafter, he can suggest special JC gems. If you are not a Jewelcrafter, he won’t suggest them. If you want to change your profession to see how it would affect your gear, you can do that. Open the options window. At the bottom you’ll see the different professions, go ahead and change them.

5. Mr. Robot’s BiS lists are dynamically generated

The BiS list you see might be different than the one from your favorite blogger, or different from the guildmate you raid with. This is because Mr. Robot suggests a BiS list tailored to YOU and YOUR PREFERENCES! Did you know… based on the options from Mr. Robot, all the classes and specs, there are over a billion different possible BiS lists? We cache about 25 million of the most popular BiS lists, so they load fast for Mr. Robot’s visitors. If you have one not in the cache, no worries, it still loads fast, just not AS fast.

Let’s look at some examples:  if you have 1% Expertise for being a human, well, that might affect the best gear for you – perhaps you need less expertise on your gear, or a piece with different reforge options. Also, when you change options, like ‘exclude valor point gear,’ Mr. Robot will go through the list again and adjust it. Changing stat weights also means you’ll get a different set of gear. That’s the beauty of it – the BiS list is tailored to what YOU want.

Below is an example from my Resto Druid. I selected “Pre Raid” gear, then changed a few more settings along the way. You can see how that affects my BiS list.