Why do I get different DPS from Raidbots / local SimC / WoWProgress?

Let me stop you there — it doesn’t actually matter

The Short Story

Don’t worry about it.

In general, local SimC, WoWProgress, and Raidbots have access to different information and/or use different configurations.

Compare DPS from the same app (local SimC vs local SimC). Don’t compare DPS between different apps (Raidbots vs local SimC).

To understand why they are different in case you really want to compare them (you shouldn’t), I’ll provide some background and a long list of things to check.

The Long Story

Background

SimC is an open source project that simulates WoW combat to provide a bunch of data. In very general terms, it has a core engine and a GUI.

It’s a living program that is constantly being updated by dozens of folks in response to new patches, new research, or just someone wanting to solve a new problem.

Raidbots is primarily a web UI and powerful cloud servers that runs SimC. I’ve made a bunch of decisions about how to present that UI and what options you can easily change that is a small subset of what SimC can do. I can also do some things that are more difficult for the SimC GUI (caching Crucible info is one of the bigger ones).

WoWProgress has a “SimDPS” feature that also uses SimC to provide an estimated DPS for your character.

Quick Info

Here are various configurations that vary and can cause the most common differences:

Crucible Data

Blizzard’s Armory does not have your Crucible traits. They didn’t implement it and given that it’s been several months, they probably never will.

WoWProgress only uses Armory data so it will never take Crucible traits into account. Using the “Import” tab in SimC uses the Armory and will not have Crucible traits.

If you use the SimulationCraft addon for WoW, this does have your Crucible traits. Using that on Raidbots or in local SimC will take those into account.

The main wildcard is Armory Import on Raidbots. It will tell you if it has up-to-date Crucible traits or not. Whenever you run a sim using the SimC addon input, it will cache that and reuse it later. This is how you can get Crucible traits taken into account when using the Discord bot since it can only perform Armory lookups.

Fight Length

By default, SimC and raidbots uses 300 seconds. WoWProgress uses 450 seconds. This difference in fight length can have a significant effect on the DPS presented.

SimC Version

As mentioned above, SimC is constantly being modified and updated so the version being used may or may not contain the most up-to-date knowledge about the game or rotations to use for your spec.

Raidbots has two versions you can use — Nightly or Weekly. Nightly is built directly from SimC source code every night at around 10:45pm PST. Weekly is updated once a week on Monday nights.

SimC has a Nightly version that you can download. This is updated manually so you have to look at the date as it’s not updated every day.

WoWProgress manually updates their version of SimC as well — I believe it happens every week or two but you’d have to look at the date/version displayed on their site.

Other Configurations

SimC and Raidbots have a lot of configurations you can change: Fight Style, Number of Bosses, etc. Raidbots, SimC, and WoWProgress all use most of the same defaults (aside from Fight Length).

It’s likely that if you use Raidbots or SimC for a while, you’ll end up changing some of these at various times. If you want to try to compare, make sure these are all the same.

Raidbots also makes some decisions about “deeper” configurations based on a bunch of factors which can also cause variations ( single_actor_batchis one of these that can cause a particular headache for tanks simming their DPS).

So

It can be difficult and time consuming to line all of these configurations up. And ultimately, it doesn’t really matter anyway.

You do not have a single DPS value for your character. Every fight in WoW is slightly different and RNG can swing any single fight in significant ways.

The real value in SimC/Raidbots is being able to compare character setups across simulations to better prepare your character before a fight.

Any single DPS value from Raidbots/SimC/WoWProgress is such a highly diluted number that it signifies very little on its own. The real power is being able to compare those numbers against each other from the same application.