Hi. I was hoping I could get advice as to which faction to choose as a rogue: Aldor or Scryers, in terms of dps for end game raid pve. For me, the choice will probably come down to the better shoulder enchantment because that is the one award that seem least likely to be replaced soon through raiding or pvp rewards.

(I apologize in advance if these questions have been answered before. I tired looking for what I needed but could not find it.)

To preface, I am a combat swords build and will be 19/42/0 in a few levels. My main focus is end game raid encounter dps and not so much pvp.

Looking at the melee dps exalted shoulder enchantments for the two factions, we have:
Aldor: +10 crit, +30 ap
Scryers: +15crit, + 10 ap

So my questions then are:

1. Which shoulder enchantment is best for rogue dps for lvl 70 end game raid pve?

2. I know crit rating scales so that at higher levels the same crit rating gives less percentage increase in crit than at lower levels, but is the same true for attack power? Example, will 2000 ap at lvl 70 give less dps increase than 2000 ap at lvl 60?

3. Do stats such as crit rating, attack power, hit rating, etc have diminishing returns? For example, will having a base crit rating of 200 and then gaining 25 more crit rating give less of an increase in crit percent than having a base of 100 crit rating and gaining the same 25 crit rating? For example, does each point of attack power gained if you are at 2000 ap give less dps increase than a point of attack power gained when you have 1000 ap?

4. What is the reason behind "balancing stats"? Is it due to diminishing returns?

5. I have heard many say that + crit seem to be less and less seem on end game gear. Is that, along with trying to balance stats, a reason for going Scryers?

I hope some seasoned players with intimate knowledge of rogue dps mechanics can shed some light on this matter for me. Thanks in advanced.


PS. I tried to find the rogue mechanics thread but could not. Where is it located?

Thanks for the reply.

I think I follow your example of why stat balancing is important. I understand that when you multiply damage together that, given a fixed total value of points, multiplying values closer together result in a higher number. What I don't understand yet is why they are multiplied in the first place. Or rather, why does ap affect crit and crit affect ap?

What he is trying to say (since the multiplication doesn't work that way) is that if you have high AP but lowish crit, adding crit will have a more noticable impact than adding yet more AP. If you're sitting on 2k attack power but can only manage 20% crit, adding crit is your better option.

Personally, I checked the recipies when deciding. The difference in the enchants is tiny. But the difference of crafting arcane resist items (for blacksmithing skill ups) compared to fire resist is rather large. I gather prices of shards have risen a bit lately, but when I was grinding BS I could do it much much cheaper through Scryer than through Aldor.

Not to mention that Aldors are space-goats and no friends of mine...

But the billygoats!

In all seriousness though, I'm still confused on the crit and ap working together. What you are saying Pane, that if you have a high ap but low crit that you would benefit more from crit implies that ap has a ceiling or diminishing returns. But if that isn't the case, as Vulajin stated, I'm just lost, hehe. If you have a huge ap and low crit, wouldn't either an ap increase or crit increase bring about the same benefit - assuming you are getting relative amounts of each?

Anyway, do any other rogues have some thoughts on my questions in the first post?

I just thought of another question that has been eating at me for sometime.

6. Abilities like backstab and sinister strike factor in weapon damage so generally a higher base damage weapon for the MH is preferred. But does bs and ss look at the max weapon damage or the average damage ( (min + max)/2 ) or just use values between the min and max (in essense an average but more variable)? The reason I ask is consider Gladiator's Slicer (183-275 dmg / 1.8 speed) and Gladiator's Right Ripper (160-298 dmg / 1.8 speed). Both have 88.1 dps and both have the same average dmg. Would bs or ss hit more with Gladiator's Right Ripper because the abilities look at the max dmg or would they be the same because they have the same average dmg?

I feel the need to ask, have you played your class at all before now? Half of your questions are things you should know just from leveling up. The other half can be answered on other threads here:
Rogue emo thread.
Rogue DPS Spreadsheet

Without going into a lot of details, the answer is "it depends on how much AP you have". According to my estimates, the crossover point is somewhere over 3k AP... which is pretty much what you have with full raid buffs + flask + consumables in good 5man/Karazhan gear. So, in current gear, since you will rarely have more AP than that, Aldor is better. In the long term, Aldor will remain better at low levels of buff, but when fully cracked out on consumables (i.e. new content fights, where dps is most critical) Scryer's will take over. All in all? Sort of a wash.

14 AP is always equivalent to +1 to weapon dps. So, no, there is no explicit diminishing returns as you increase in level.

There is no explicit diminishing returns on any stat, although it is possible to hit implicit limits. For instance, if you have up around 300 hit rating you can reduce your miss chance to zero, causing further hit rating to be useless.

In general, the more AP you have, the more you benefit from crit and hit. Similarly, the more crit and hit you have, the more you tend to benefit from AP. So there is some implicit balancing going on there. However, I've never made any explicit effort to balance my gear; rather, I make an estimate using an AEP-like system to figure out what's going to be the highest dps piece for each slot, and then go for the best option for each slot. In practice, this leads to a reasonably balanced stat distribution, since there are very few really good pieces of gear that only have one stat on them.

There's not a whole lot of gear with +crit on it, but there's plenty of good gear with +agi on it, which boosts your crit rating nicely. This is particularly true if you, like me, believe in socketing stuff with Delicate Living Rubies as much as possible. In general: Scryer's and Aldor's are actually pretty well balanced against each other - I ended up going Aldor because the Aldor sword is a lot more useful in general than the Scryer's dagger more than any other reason.

All special attacks use the full damage range of the weapon; hence, the average damage of a SS or BS is based on the average damage of the weapon, while the maximum damage a SS or BS can do is based on the maximum damage of the weapon. Basically: two weapons of equal speed and dps will, on average, yield the same yellow damage. However, the one with the larger range will have the potential for both larger and smaller attacks - but on the average, it works out to be the same total damage.

If you're Horde, go Aldor. If you're Alliance, go Scryer. For the simple reason (from my experience) Alliance wishes to ally more with the Draeni as it's their factions race and Horde with the Scryer/Bloodelves. Which, will drive reputation prices up on either side of your server. It costs twice as much to rep up with the scryer than Aldor, Blackhand Horde side. And on my Paladin on another server I've seen the same trend, twice as much for Aldor Alliance side.

Like it's been said, it's a wash in terms of dps gains, and if you're going to raid you'll be upgrading the reputation bought gear fast. The only thing that can really sway you is the recipes available to either faction, or how much you are wanting to farm to get exalted (or pay out the ass).

Go scryer for the simple fact that Aldor can't ever get this quest which rewards you with one of the best if not the best belt known right now: http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?wquest=10507

Hadn't even realized the belt existed till I finished the quest line. Glad I made the decision now.

or even: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=27911