What is a Droptimizer?
A Droptimizer is a simulation that takes every item a raid boss or Mythic+ dungeon can drop for your character, equips each one in turn, and ranks them by DPS gain. Instead of guessing from item level, you get a sorted list: this boss is worth your bonus roll, that dungeon drops nothing you need.
How it works under the hood
A Droptimizer is really a batch of ordinary sims. The engine takes your character exactly as exported in your /simc string, then builds one variant per candidate item: same talents, same rotation, same fight, with a single piece of gear swapped. SimulationCraft runs each variant and reports the difference in mean DPS against your current gear.
The candidate pool is filtered before anything runs. Items your spec can never be awarded under loot-specialization rules are excluded, so a Retribution Paladin never sees shields in the report and a Feral Druid never sees daggers. What remains is the honest answer set: things that can actually drop for you.
Because each candidate is simmed on your real character, the interactions that make gear decisions hard are all included: tier set bonuses you would break by equipping the new piece, stat breakpoints, and trinket effects that scale differently with your build.
Running one on MythicSim
- Export your character with the Simulationcraft addon (type
/simcin-game and copy the text). New to this? Start with the full walkthrough. - Paste the export into MythicSim and pick Droptimizer as the sim type.
- Choose the source: a raid (per boss) or a Mythic+ dungeon, and the difficulty or keystone level you actually run, since that sets the item level of the simulated drops.
- Run it. The report ranks every potential drop by DPS gain over your current gear, grouped by source, so the question "where should I spend this week?" reads straight off the top of the list.
Reading the report
Two habits make Droptimizer output far more useful:
- Compare per source, not per item. A boss that can drop three modest upgrades is often a better use of a lockout than one with a single large but unlikely drop.
- Treat small deltas as ties. Gains inside the sim's error margin are noise. The ranking is reliable at the top; do not agonise over rank 14 versus rank 15. More on this in how to read your sim results.
Frequently asked questions
What does Droptimizer mean?
Droptimizer is a portmanteau of drop and optimizer. It is a sim mode that equips every potential drop from a chosen raid or dungeon onto your character, one at a time, and ranks the results by DPS gain. The name was popularised by Raidbots; MythicSim and other SimulationCraft front-ends use it for the same idea.
What is the difference between Droptimizer and Best Gear (Top Gear)?
Best Gear ranks items you already own, everything sitting in your bags. Droptimizer ranks items you could obtain from a specific raid boss or Mythic+ dungeon. Run Best Gear after a loot session to decide what to equip; run Droptimizer before one to decide which content to prioritise.
Why does an upgrade show close to zero DPS gain?
Usually because the item is a sidegrade: similar item level with a stat mix your spec values about equally, or it competes with a piece that carries a set bonus. A delta inside the sim's error bar is effectively a tie, so spend your bonus rolls on bosses showing clear gains instead.
Does a Droptimizer account for tier set bonuses?
Yes. Each candidate item is simmed on your actual character, so equipping a piece that breaks a 2-piece or 4-piece set bonus shows up as a smaller gain or even a loss. That is exactly the case where eyeballing item level gets the answer wrong.
How often should I run a Droptimizer?
Once per reset is the practical rhythm: before you pick a Mythic+ dungeon to spam or decide where to use bonus rolls. Re-run it after any significant gear change, because every delta on the report is relative to the gear you had when you simmed.
Keep reading
- How to sim your WoW characterInstall the Simulationcraft addon, type /simc, paste it here. From zero to a shareable DPS result in about a minute.
- How to read your sim resultsWhat the headline DPS actually means, when an upgrade delta is real versus noise, and what sims deliberately leave out.
- What is a /simc string?The plain-text character export behind every sim: what each line means, how to generate one, and what it does not contain.
Sim your next lockout
Paste your /simc string, pick Droptimizer, and see which bosses are actually worth running this week.
Start simming