Kobal

Hello everyone,

I am playing a rogue that has recently switched from 20/31/0 sword/claw combat to 17/24/0 dagger combat. While the basic strategy of how to play the spec in Raid-PvE is rather well documented:

- stand behind the mob
- keep SnD up all the time, preferably 5cp SnD
- use backstab whenever possible

not everything about the spec is as clear cut as it seems. So I was wondering if some of the more experienced rogues would be willing to share their knowledge on how to optimize this spec (and its DPS-output) in an actual raiding situation. Any input would be appreciated, but there are also some specific questions I have found no good answer to yet.

- How do you start a fight? Do you use 1cp SnD to get SnD running as soon as possible, or do you prefer to wait a few seconds for a 2cp SnD? Does this depend on what mob you are fighting?
- One of the biggest opportunities to loose DPS in my limited experience is the start of a fight against fast moving targets, where it is not so easy to land the first backstab. (Once you have placed the first backstab you can start SnD and then have at least 6 seconds to properly position yourself.) Examples of this would be the lava elementals in MC. How do you deal with these situations? Do you just rely on your reflexes and skill to land that first backstab asap, or do you - at least for the beginning of the fight - switch to a sword/claw and use Sinister Strike.
- While it seems rather obvious which routine to follow on sustained damage fights like Garr and Ebonroc, I am still not sure I have found the correct routine on in-and-out fights like Firemaw and Chromaggus. How do you optimize your DPS here?

 

◊ chalon

1cp for trash, 2cp for bosses.

Just land the first backstab ASAP. On Lava Surgers it will be annoying of course, but for the majority of trash you run into, it shouldn't be that bad.

Firemaw is too variable to come up with a consistent CP cycle other than just use CPs on SnD when SnD is down. For Chromaggus, usually what I try to do as my cycle is 3 CP SnD when running in after a breath. If I get my 1 combo point from the finisher, I'll then build 3 CP to Rupture (2 CP Rupture if I don't get 1 combo point), then build CP until it's time to back out again.

 

• tsigo

Hope you mean 17/24/10 and not 17/24/0 :)

I get SnD running from the first combo point. Shortly after I respecced to 17/24/10 I found it interesting that Improved SnD gives you just enough time to work your way up, point by point.

Meaning:
- Backstab, SnD (12 sec)
- Backstab, Backstab, SnD with maybe a Feint in there, and the first SnD will almost be over.
- Backstab, Backstab, Backstab, SnD with a Feint in there, and the second SnD will almost be over.

And so on. A 30 second SnD gives you enough time to backstab 5 times and feint twice, with almost perfect timing to start another 30 second SnD.

Usually reflexes.

Firemaw, Chromaggus, and also fights like Huhuran and Emperors are hard because you almost never get the full effect from SnD.

Firemaw: I usually have 325 FR on that fight so it's a little safer for me to do a 5pt SnD, but with less you might want to stick with 2 to 4 points. If you get to 5 I'd do an Evis or even a rupture.
Chromaggus: I only do 5 points if I have 5 points before I back out on an AE call, then I use it immediately after going back in.
Huhuran: SnD is frustrating on the fight with how often you're getting slept.
Emps: I'll do a 2-3pt SnD right when I get to Vek'nilash after having run across the room.

 

• Wodin

With regards to starting the cycle, it's as the previous posters have said. 1 for trash, 2 for bosses.

You get used to positioning automatically after a while. I was surprised how much I'd rusted when I went back to daggers after something like 9 months of swords. It was pretty brutal - I was just outright bad at keeping behind mobs. I'm still not wonderful at it, but it's better than it used to be.

For non-TL Chromaggus, I tend to use the "small SnD, small rupture" strategy. For TL Chromaggus, you get additional time to tee off on him, so it's safer to use a big SnD immediately after the non-lapse breath. It lets you use a much more standard rotation.

For Emperors, I actually use Rupture exclusively. You can keep a 5pt constantly running with the energy recharge you get from crossing the room, and it seems to work better in practice despite being less damage in theory. My current hypothesis is that it happens because all he's got is Sunder.

 

◊ chalon

For Emps I also use the "small SnD, small rupture" strategy as opposed to pure rupture like Wodin. Works well for me, usually I win or am very close to winning DMs ;).

 

Kobal

First, thank you for the helpful replies so far. Hopefully getting used to positioning will be as easy as you describe it to be. :)

What also made me curious is that many of you use Rupture instead of Eviscerate. Now I can understand the reasoning behind this. Without any Talents to boost its damage Eviscerate will do almost exactly the same amount of damage as Rupture, and Rupture will ignore the targets armor.

However, as far as I know (I may be wrong here) Rupture can not crit, while Eviscerate very well can. So assuming the target has a damage mitigation of 20% - which seems a realistic value with 5 Sunders - your Eviscerate will still do more damage than Rupture once it has a crit rate higher than 25%. And you will not occupy a debuff slot.

So what am I missing?

 

◊ Shalas

Rupture costs 25 energy, while Evis costs 35.

 

pitviperz

The rupture is used on the fights where there's a lot of running, and you spend alot of time away from the mob. In these fights you'll get a small SnD, and a small rupture, because SnD while not meleeing the mob is a complete waste of a combo point. If you do a 2 point rupture, you're gonna do 425 damage. If you do a 2 point evisc, you'll do 384 - 480, before reduction. With reduction that drops alot more, and with only 2 points, a crit isn't going to be groundbreaking. But that's just my view on it.

 

Kobal

One more question I have been thinking about (please tell me to shut up if I am getting on your nerves :-)):

What is really the best Mainhand enchant?

Now accoring to Chalon's very good Combat-Dagger DPS spreadsheet it clearly is Crusader. However Chalon assumes a sustained damage situation. Which is not that common beyond MC. In BWL its basically Vaelastrasz, Ebonroc and Flamegor, haven't been past Skeram in AQ40 yet.

Considering that +15 Agi and +5 damage are not far behind Crusader, and both (especially +5 damage, as it is probably the best enchant for unloading your initial energy bar) loose far less in a non-perfect sustained damage situation, I was wondering if one of them might be actually better in the day-to-day life of a raiding WoW-Rogue.

What are your thoughts and experiances?

 

◊ chalon

I think it comes down to either Crusader or 15 agi on the main hand if you're talking about PvE. At the moment my weapons are 15 agi/15 agi, but that's more because my main hand is a BQP, and I will be off-handing it once I get Death's Sting. When I get Death's Sting, I will put Crusader on it. 15 agi of course is a far cheaper enchant, as well, which definitely is a plus if it's something you know you will be replacing.

 

Beergut

So in a fight like firemaw using 2 BQP, would you say crusader still beats out 15 agi? 5 dmg?

 

◊ Kalman

Depends on how much FR you wear. I personally wear enough to treat Firemaw as a sustained damage fight (I rotate out 2-3 times per Firemaw now).

 

◊ Kalman

I think Firemaw is the one fight in the game where sacrificing some stats to get more FR is pretty much *always* worth it. I'm not saying wear Volcanic pants over Bloodfang, but Fireguard Shoulders over Nightslayer is probably an excellent tradeoff.

 

Kobal

One more question. Finally we come to the unavoidable Spec-issues...

What I was wondering about are the first seven points in the Combat Tree and where you think they should be put. My logic was as follows:

The first two go into Improved Sinister Strike without a second thought. Even in Raid PvE there are enough situations where Sinister Striking is the better option.
Since this will allow me to solo-PvE pretty effectively pretending I am still 20/31/0 Combat Fist I do not need Improved Gouge (I PvP almost never).
So I put 3 points in improved dodge and 2 points in improved parry. The reasoning here was that several raid mobs have some sort of cleave ability (and from what I hear it gets even worse in AQ40), against which those should help.

But now I am wondering: Can Cleaves and other dodgeable AoE's (like e.g. Moam's Trample) be parried, or should I have put all 5 points in improved dodge if I have a pure Raid-PvE focus?

Or would you have done things completely different?

 

deric

Any attack which can be dodged can be parried; they both mitigate the same kind of attack - melee/physical.

The only difference, I believe, is that you can only parry frontal attacks, while you can dodge attacks from any direction (unless stunned); of course, this doesn't usually matter unless your back is turned to a mob for some strange reason.

Personally, I went with improved evasion, under the reasoning that the utility of an extra 4sec of evasion when I'm forced to tank outweighs another 2% to my already high natural dodge, but I also got imp gouge for pvp/solo pve utility, so YMMV.

 

red

I also put 3 points in dodge, 2 in sinister strike, and 2 in parry. To my knowledge, you can parry anything that you can dodge. However, I believe that when you parry an attack your next attack is hasted by a small amount (up to 1 second?). One probably insignificant thing to note is that you cannot parry while disarmed, while you can still dodge.

Mobs dodge 360 degrees, but players can only dodge attacks from the front.

 

• frmorrison

Right, Parry on a player on works for attacks in front of you.

When you parry, I believe it resets the swing timer (whatever it is, you get an "instant attack" once a parry happens). You are right it isn't much, but it does make it stronger than Dodge.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Kobal

One more thing I was wondering about as it came up a few times recently: What do you do with excess energy?

To be more precise the scenario is that you are whacking away at the mob, you have 5 combo points on the target, another 5-6 seconds of Slice and Dice and are already at 80-90 energy. This probably occurs more often with 17/24/10 than with 16/25/10. What do you do in this case?

I see three possible alternatives:
- Do another backstab before SnD and do not care about the lost combo point.
- Do SnD now, loosing the 5-6 seconds, but with the still full energy bar be sure that you will effortlessly be able to produce the necessary 5 cp for the next SnD.
- Do another finisher (Eviscerate or Rupture) and use the full energy bar to rebuild to 5cp SnD.

I personally feel option 3 is the worst alternative. What do you think?

 

Faytte

I would just backstab.

Farewell, remorse: all good to me is lost; Evil, be thou my good.
~Paradise Lost (bk. IX, l. 171)

 

Faytte

Actually assuming it was something like p1 cthun (sit down fight) Id be tempted to do 2. Relentless strikes makes SnD free, so your not really loosing anything doing it early vs late, just means you can start on the next SnD early.

Farewell, remorse: all good to me is lost; Evil, be thou my good.
~Paradise Lost (bk. IX, l. 171)

 

Bubba

Wodin, have you ever, under any circumstances, pulled aggro from a Rupture tick on a teleport? We're working on emps atm, and the rogues (myself included) were having an argument with one of the locks about whether or not a Rupture tick can have any effect versus proximity aggro. Our locks/warriors get proximity aggro in the same way you guys do, and as of yet, I have never ever had any aggro issues with Rupture. Yet somehow he's convinced that a rupture tick going off after a teleport can pull aggro. Just wanted to know if you'd ever come across anything like that.

 

Taeme

It's been discussed but in watching two guilds do it I have yet to ever see Vek turn on a rogue and chase down.

So maybe it's one in a million.

you're the one that decided to trust me

 

Faytte

I use rupture on emps as do 2-3 other rogues in my guild. After months of killing em, neverpulled aggro off it once.

Farewell, remorse: all good to me is lost; Evil, be thou my good.
~Paradise Lost (bk. IX, l. 171)

 

Mem

Initial aggro is to high to pull of aggro even with a 5 point rupture. Else it would be impossible to tank Vek with a warrior. I`ve heard that the proximity aggro after port values at about 3000 points. A rupture will tick for about 980 if I remember it right. Factor in the rogues immanent thread reduction and you are nowhere close to pulling aggro.

 

Brilliance

Rupture does not do enough damage on the port for the Emp to pull off. The few times an Emp has switched is when my frostbolt is mid-air, they port, and I land an amazing 2.3k crit 1 second after the port.