Rogue Questions!!! :)

Fakattack · 06/26/06, 1:47 AM

Hey guys, i just have a couple questions.

First off these questions probably have been answered here, but i looked for a bit and couldn't find what i was looking for, so my apologies.

Swords Vs. Fists

My guild is clearing BWL every week and i am going to spec combat as soon as i pick up a weapon for it. Does anyone have any good math on swords vs. fists in PvE/PvP settings? I am probably going to just pick up what ever i can first, but i am just curious about the numbers and heard this was a great place to come for some theorycraft for rogues.

Crusader vs. 15 agi

I am guessing this is a dumb question, but what is better? i just haven't seen solid math here either. Also for crusader to really get the best bonus, do you need to go dual crusader or would you guys go MH crusader/ OH 15 agi? I am thinking that if i pick up a claw of the black drake i am going to put crusader on it, and keep the 15 agi enchant on my Core hound tooth. Just a couple things that i would like to see some solid stats on. thanks in advance.

Fak
60 Troll Rogue
Stonemaul
Oblivion Awaits

Darkmantle · 06/26/06, 2:39 AM

I believe swords will always be better due to the way its spec works.
Say you average 200 damage a hit every 2 seconds with 30% crit giving a dps of (200 + 200*0.3)/2 = 130DPS
If you became fist spec you would do 200 damage/2 seconds 35% crit giving a dps of (200+200*0.35)/2=135DPS
If you became sword spec you would do 200 damage/2 seconds 30% with a 5% chance for extra attack giving a dps of (200 + 200*0.3 + (200+200*0.3)*0.05)/2=136.5DPS

Now rogue combat mechanics are far more complicated than that example with crits on sinister strikes being multiplied by Lethality and off hand swords procing main hand sword spec procs and the like but you can see the general gist of it. Fists will scale slower than sword spec because it just bumps up your crit whereas sword specs gets a whole new attack which can crit itself.

However perhaps the biggest reason why swords is better is that there are good swords available i.e. cts/maladath and if you move to aq then aqr becomes available. Whereas there is Claw of the black drake and not much else for fists in those instances. This is a common complaint of rogues :(

Edit:
Also MH crusader procs a nice amount and gets additiional procs from sinister strike and sword spec procs, it is probably better than 15 agi depending on your current gear. OH crusader only procs 50% on normal attacks by programming and doesn't have other ways to proc so for a rogue 15 agi is probably the best choice.

There are plenty of Rogue dps spreadsheets on these boards you could look at those for a good idea of what would be optimal.

kharen · 06/26/06, 8:52 AM

Theorycraft and itemisation tilt in favour of swords (even regardless of sword spec vs fist spec, CTS/Maladath is simply a much better combo than CotBD/any offhand). On the other hand, drop rates can be a bitch*, and the CotBD is still a very nice weapon, so just pick up whatever you can get your hands on first, unless you have some deep-seated dislike for non-sword weapons.

And yeah, Crusader MH/15 agi off is probably the best combination for enchants, although i've got 15 agi on mine, simply because buying a few essences of air from the AH was less of a hassle than running strat again (i'm on a fairly low-pop server, so orbs on the AH are rare, and stupidly expensive when they do show up), and it wasn't originally going to be my main weapon (i respecced after picking it up just to try out full combat fists, and i'm quite enjoying it, so i'm probably going to stick with it until 1.12 now)

* We've had 4 CotBD now, compared to a grand total of 3 swords from mc/ony/bwl combined - two brutality blades and one vis'kag (and one of the BBs and the Vis'kag only dropped this weekend), so naturally, when i was wanting to snag a good SS weapon, i just picked up a CotBD which was otherwise going to be DEd.

Kalman · 06/26/06, 9:01 AM

We actually ran into the opposite problem: our sword rogues all had Maladaths, so no one wanted the Claw whe it dropped.

If you're planning to shift a weapon into your OH, even if you're currently MHing it, I'd just slap +15 agi on it. I only bother with Crus or LS (never have decided which I like better, though I lean towards LS) on weapons I know I'll never offhand. But I'm a cheap bastard.

(My enchant theorycraft spreadsheet is still down, until I get time to restore my server's directory structure, but someone else may have a mirrored copy, and Chalon's spreadsheets mirror that functionality anyway.)