Before I begin, I just wanted to state I am a very experienced rogue working on Naxx (Thaddius) so I "know my shit". Also, I am combat daggers with 0 Bonescythe. (profile in sig)

I have two small inquiries and was wondering if anyone had any insight on them:
First Attack
I am trying to debate the best way to allocate energy at the beginning of the fight. Obviously I wanna get BF+SnD coupled, but this isn't always easy. On a lazy fight I usually Backstab -> Blade Flurry -> SnD -> Backstab -> Backtab -> SnD. There is a small gap of non BF+SnD coupling and about 1 second of no SnD. I've also tried BF (right before I run in, so I get my energy back) and then Backstab -> SnD and even tried Backstab-> Backstab -> SnD. Any thoughts on a good way to allocate my energy?

Energy Loss
So I was doing patchwerk last night and I noticed at one point as I was waiting for energy for backstab I was sitting at 58 energy (from a backstab that didnt land) and thus had to wait another second to get 78 energy. Now I'm sitting at 18 energy. So I guess my question here is, would it be better to get my full 100 energy (and thus losing out on 18 energy) or would that theoretically be bad? Theoretically, either way aren't i still sitting at 18 wasted energy the whole time anyway?

Your help is much appreciated!

This might answer that to some extent:

http://roguecrap.blogspot.com/2006/0...-oddities.html

Basically energy regen is not 20 per sec but 19.somethingorother.

I've seen random ticks of 21 energy while played a druid alt.

EDIT: Point being, if Rogues occasionally see 19, then your real regen is probably between 19 and 20. Is a Druid's between 20 and 21?

I generally make use of the energy rather than waiting, i quite often get 21 energy ticks (assumed everyone did ) so will just carry on as normal until i get one and it ticks back up to full, or i get another dodged backstab.

Seems the energy regenned is between 19.something and 20.something, hence the 19 and 21 energy ticks we see from time to time. Wierd.

As far as the "how to get SnD + BF" question, I generally like to start by popping off a two-point SnD. This is easy to build to and pop off before energy runs out (combat mace rogue here - daggers will vary), and I have a 40% chance of proccing +25 energy, which immediately gives me my Blade Flurry cost. So, I'm looking at a 40% chance to have a 4-sec "startup" time, and a 60% chance to have a 5-sec startup time, so I average 4.6 seconds to get things unloaded.

Assuming that you SS immediately after an energy tick:

SS - 60 energy - 1 sec GC
SS - 20 energy - 1 sec GC
Energy tick - 40 energy
SnD - 15 energy - 1 sec GC - 40% chance to proc +25 energy

If procced - 40 energy
BF - 25 energy

Total startup time: 4 sec, 15 energy remaining, 3 sec to energy for first SS.

If not procced - 15 energy
Wait 1 sec
Energy tick - 35 energy
Blade Flurry - 25 energy - 1 sec GC

Total startup time: 5 sec, 10 energy remaining, 3 sec to energy for first SS.

Of course, if you SS right before an energy tick, you can shave close to two seconds off of the end.

On the topic of oddly-regenerating energy, perhaps it might be worth it to write an addon that will track energy changes, specifically to watch for +19 or +21 energy increases. Would anyone be interested in running one if I were to write it?

Edit: As far as "wasted energy", don't forget that your finishers are "multiple of 5" energy. At worst, you should only ever have 4 wasted energy, since if you have 18 "wasted" energy, you next 3 finishers will take their last 5 energy from that budget, eventually whittling it down to 3 energy. It's terribly wasteful to regen to full in active combat. Your +25 energy procs on finishers will also help correct that, again, giving you the potential to waste no more than 4 energy.

If you write it, they will run it. But seriously if you throw up a small addon like the Glancing Blow one I'll be sure to run some massive data collection over the week of raiding etc and post my results.

Well, for daggers you basically have three energy components:
Backstab - 60 Energy
SnD - 25 Energy
BF - 25 Energy

Even if i end up with 18 energy, i still need to get another "tick" to get 25. So theoretically you have an 18 energy sitting there with nowhere to dump it.

Alos Antiarc, im dagger so I generate CP less often =(

For that attack, yes. That isn't wasted, though, that's "reserve".

Ignore the minor combo point issue here. It works out in the long run. :P

Tick, 38 energy. Use SnD and you are at 13 energy (5 eaten off of your reserve).

Tick, 33 energy. Use SnD and you are at 8 energy (5 eaten off of your reserve).

Tick, 28 energy. Use SnD and you are at 3 energy (5 eaten off of your reserve).

You now have to wait two ticks for >25 energy, rather than just 1, but you used 15 of that 18 energy. If you had 0 energy, you'd have no "unusable" energy for that attack, but it would take you two ticks to get the energy to SnD/Evis/BF.

Interesting observation: when our server was going through upgrades and the 1.12 patch, energy ticks were really, really off while the server lagged. Instead of getting 20, rarely 19, or rarely 21, I was getting anywhere from 17 to 21. The frequency of bad ticks was much, much higher too.

Well, I wrote a little mod and did some testing tonight.

About 26 minutes of combat with one of the unkillables in the Blasted Lands yielded these results:



The way I measured this was such:

- Store the current energy
- When energy changes, measure the delta
- If energy isn't 100 and the delta is > 0, record it.

There are a few "WTF?" entries in there. I think the +1 is a bug somewhere, because it shows up very early and you never see more than one.
The +45 is, I think, an energy tick at the same time as a Relentless refund.
+40 is Adrenaline Rush
+66 is an odd one - an AR tick at the same time as a Relentless refund, with the +1 bug.
I have no clue what +30 is. I have no energize armor.
+41 is an AR tick with the +1 bug.
No idea what the +10 is. Edit: This is probably using an eviscerate AND getting a Relentless refund right as it ticks, for a net of 10 energy gained.
The +21 is the interesting one - it shows up about every 10-11 ticks, and it refunds 21 energy rather than the regular 20. This is extremely perplexing.

In 26 minutes of combat, I was not able to produce a +19 energy tick, but I DID produce one while in Dire Maul briefly. I've been unable to reproduce it since, but I plan to leave the mod running for a while to collect data.

If you're interested in running the mod yourself:

http://wow.tachyonsix.com/EnergyTicker.zip

Two commands:

"/script EnergyTickerData = {}" resets your data
"/script EnergyTicker_Print()" prints out the report.

Thoughts?

Ill just add how i open on thaddius/patch/loatheb.

Im a sword rogue with aqr/iblis and 4bs.

SS,snd,bf,bers,ar

After that i try to maintain 3/5/5 with snd and eventually evisc.
I also trigger BOTSG on the first ss so it gets buffed by all my attack speed bonuses

edit: on loatheb i just open with ss/snd and keep snd running

after damagebuff i do the above

In the Blasted Lands there are these mobs whose lives are tied to a crystal that is nearby (I think the name is Servant of <insert name here>). When you get them to low life, they become invincible for a little while so you can destroy the crystal and make them die, but if you never do this, they're unkillable. They make good mobs for this sort of combat testing.

The "Servants of XXX" in blasted lands. There are 4 different types for a quest that requires you to weaken them then click a nearby stone. If you don't click on the stone (don't think you can unless you are on the quest anyway) they never die.

Quest mobs, they won't drop below 1% hp. You have to kill the stone thing next to them to kill them.

They're frequently trained to Stormwind in order for someone to train weapon skills while they beat on guards :)

Edit: Damn, too slow :(

Ahhh. Thanks for the replies, I do remember one eve where someone got one to IF and people thought it was some sort of invasion. Had like 50+ people just wailing on it and it did nothing. Thanks for the reply.

my theory is that energy ticks aren't "20 energy per tick", but instead, a calculated amount where the server and client both play a part in determining the tick.

Round(CurrentTime - TimeOfLastTick)

If you've ever written or run a mod, you can see that "OnUpdate()" ticks arent evenly distributed over time. It depends on your machine. So, some ticks are thousands of a second apart, some are hundredths, some are tenths.

So, if you had something like:

On server:
TimeOfLastTick = 1523.000
CurrentTime = 1525.000

On client:
TimeOfLastTick = 1523.134 (client delayed a good bit)
CurrentTime = 1525.010 (client pretty close for this tick)

So, the server tells the client: update the energy!
Client machine says "ok, how much - let me calculate: (1525.010 - 1523.134) * 10 , rounded down = 19"

So, the server passes out the ticks, the client calculates how much, etc. It's also consistent with allowing the client to handle adrenaline rush. Maybe it doesnt happen that way, but it's a possibility. It also explains the 21 point ticks we get sometimes. What would be *really* intersting is to run the mod that counts tick amounts on a really slow machine with a high ping, and on a really fast machine with a low ping, and see if a higher percentage of 19 and 21 ticks happen on the slow machine due to being farther off, on average, from the server time.

This is because the OnUpdate() happens once per frame, and the parameter passed to it is the time is the time since the last frame, which is necessary for performing functions that are dependent on time rather than framerate.

But it seems retarded to base energy regen on the client's perception of time. Hello potential for abuse.

I guess we can all agree that the design of energy is pretty dam crappy?

Back to first attacks...i'm thinking of going:
Backstab -> Backstab -> SnD (40% of +25 energy) -> BF

I start off with about 2 seconds of no SnD, but SnD+BF will be guranteed together and have a chance to get BF very quickly. Then I'll start my SnD cycle and try to get a 5pt Evis on a ruthlessness proc and just continue to keep SnD up.

yep, but based on Richie's post, it sounds like it's the way it actually happens.

I always thought it was due to rounding issues in the math engine.

I've seen (infact I think I have vid of it somewhere) of me on zero energy and then ticking to 19.

At the same time, server-side energy regen has problems too (i.e. a 200-1500 ms delay in when I get my energy - see the post 1.11 problems with sword spec for more on why server-side events can be annoying too).

Hense energy is the most stupid form of generate attacks :/