Droptimizer: How Does It Work?
Droptimizer makes it easy to sim all items that come from various sources (raids, M+, PVP, Professions, etc), see which ones are the biggest upgrades, and help figure out where to spend currencies.
Enter your character, choose the source and additional options (difficulty, keystone level, etc), and click “Run Droptimizer.” Raidbots Premium members get access to the full set of options/features (run all M+ dungeons at once, etc).
Once the sim finishes, Droptimizer provides a summary of how good the possible drops are and groups them by boss/dungeon/container to give you some data that’s useful for figuring out how to spend your currencies.
What Droptimizer Does
Droptimizer will test all possible drops from a source against your current gear — it only changes one piece at a time, not simulating all possible combinations.
Trinkets and rings are tried in both slots. Dual wield classes will try weapons in both slots.
On the report, the drops will be summarized by boss and a bunch of useful information is display and calculated:
- Item List: This shows a quick view of all items and the DPS affect (in percent) if you win the item and equip it.
- Expected Value: This is the average DPS increase from a group of items (boss loot table, M+ end-of-dungeon chest, Relinquished item box). Items that are worse than your current gear count as 0 DPS (not negative). Items that are not simmed also count as 0 DPS.
- Best Drop: This is the highest possible DPS gain from the group of items.
- Gamble/Buy: For some sources, Raidbots will evaluate whether gambling or buying a single piece is more efficient.
- Priority: This is an aggregate field that combines Expected Value, chance of getting an upgrade vs getting an item you won’t use, and the Best Drop. The idea is to rank bosses based on the most likely to give you the best gear. More details on how Priority is calculated below.
Below the summary you can see a full list that contains the best version of each item. If you want to see all variations of slots, click “Show All Variations.”
Here’s a made-up example that illustrates the values:
Boss A drops 4 items, one of which is a big upgrade (1000 DPS) and three of which are worse than your current gear (0 DPS).Boss A Expected Value is 250 DPS: (1000 + 0 + 0 + 0) / 4 = 250 Boss A Best Drop is 1000 DPSChance of getting an upgrade from a winning bonus roll is 25% (1 in 4 chance)
Boss B drops 4 items, all of which are smaller upgrades (250 DPS)Boss B Expected Value is 250 DPS: (250 + 250 + 250 250) / 4 = 250 Boss Best Drop is 250 DPS.Chance of getting an upgrade from a winning bonus roll is 100% (4 in 4 chance)
Since Boss A and Boss B both have an Expected Value of 250 DPS, they will have the same Priority. But because Boss B has a 100% chance of getting an item that you can use, Boss B will be ranked above Boss A.
Casters
Caster weapons are a bit more complicated. In order to properly compare what the best next piece will be, you either need to have a main hand / off hand equipped or, if you have a staff equipped, tell Droptimizer what your preferred main hand / off hand weapons are. Since Armory does not include gear from your bags, you can only do this with /simc input.
Other Limitations
Droptimizer is also just looking at the best “next” upgrade for your character. It does not account for multiple gear changes or look further out than 1 drop. It’s very possible that your long term gearing goals will be different than the short term goals shown on Raidbots so, as always, apply critical thinking to your results!
Priority
Expected Value is a good starting point for getting an idea of what you might want to target/bonus roll but Priority adds a little bit more logic.
Priority groups bosses that are close in Expected Value (within 0.2% DPS of each other), then ranks by chance of an upgrade from a successful loot roll (e.g. a boss with 3 out of 3 items being an upgrade will rank higher than one with 2 our of 3 items being an upgrade), then breaks ties with Best Drop (so all else being equal, target the boss with the biggest upgrade). It’s a slightly conservative approach but tries to value getting reliable upgrades a bit more quickly.
You can still sort the list by whichever metric you prefer but I think Priority is a pretty good overview of the drop situation.
Deeply Nerdy Background
If you’re interested in how this feature was developed, I kept a diary over some of the initial development time and grabbed a bunch of screenshots: