Honest question about the dreaded sim

[Aravell]

In my opinion, the sim is basically a more user-friendly version of what some prog statics already do.

When some groups reach a new mechanic, they review the mechanic, draw up a plan, then they queue into T4 and the raid caller opens a recording of the mechanic and calls out what's happening when while marking people and those people will move according to the plan.

The sim automates the mechanics so the calling according to a recording of the mechanic doesn't need to be done. In essence, it's a more pug-friendly version of queueing into T4 to plan as it doesn't require voice chat or a video recording of the mechanic.

The sim does have the advantage of having accurate mechanic timers and AoE sizes. But is it really cheating? I'd say it's probably about as much a cheat as pre-planning in T4 with a raid caller on voice chat is. In essence, both ways is your team preparing for the mechanic before queueing into the fight, the sim just has the advantage of being game-accurate.

[Jeeqbit]

In my opinion, the sim is basically a more user-friendly version of what some prog statics already do.

When some groups reach a new mechanic, they review the mechanic, draw up a plan, then they queue into T4 and the raid caller opens a recording of the mechanic and calls out what's happening when while marking people and those people will move according to the plan.

The sim automates the mechanics so the calling according to a recording of the mechanic doesn't need to be done. In essence, it's a more pug-friendly version of queueing into T4 to plan as it doesn't require voice chat or a video recording of the mechanic.

The sim does have the advantage of having accurate mechanic timers and AoE sizes. But is it really cheating? I'd say it's probably about as much a cheat as pre-planning in T4 with a raid caller on voice chat is. In essence, both ways is your team preparing for the mechanic before queueing into the fight, the sim just has the advantage of being game-accurate.

Agreed; you can do this in the game. What I did one time was queued into a dungeon in Explorer mode, found a perfect arena and setup waymarks to act like mechanic obstacles and practiced the movement. Other times, I've used the normal mode to practice the movement since it often has the exact same arena. Sometimes I just do the normal mode just as a warmup if I didn't do the fight at all for a while.

There are also simpler sims I've seen that use HTML and Javascripts. Meanwhile, when I've watched someone prog and wipe repeatedly on a twitch stream, it has actually given me a lot of the muscle memory for the fight purely from watching them wipe for hours. If you haven't done that you would have to watch a stream of someone wiping for hours to understand, but if you do, it can actually make you really good at the fight yourself - except the mechanics that you didn't understand from watching them.