Kytrarewn

I am a dedicated 'Dagger Rogue'. I leveled from 1-60 as daggers. I leveled from 60-70 as daggers. And I raided for more than a year at 60, and 4 months at 70, as daggers.

Daggers would still fall behind for a couple of reasons.

1. Positional requirements: Granted, parries suck for your tank/raid, but it's faster finding your way to a place where you can at least hit the mob as swords.

2. Proc uptime: Because of procs and PPM, you have close to double the uptime of any given MH proc (Dragonspine, Warp-Spring, Mongoose, etc) with a sword than you would with a dagger.

3. Cycles: Swords have the 1s/5r cycle (or 2s/5f) by which to quickly ramp up their damage into a "usable range". Daggers will be spending the first 50 seconds of the fight on their 3s/5s, thus never getting the (for my gear) 85DPS from rupture during the first minute of the fight. This adds up. On low health trash, eviscerate is also an option, yielding 61 additional DPS over "just keep up SnD".

At this point, the only thing that could rectify the difference would be offhand-speed itemization, but they seem content to (even though they intentionally didn't with the S2 gear) put in 1.40 speed offhand PvE-obtained swords/fists/maces, and given how "common" the Warglaives seem to be thus far, any itemization change must be done taking them into account which is, well, impossible.

Hopefully daggers come back to life in the next expansion.

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◊ Shaker

How do you have double the uptime of MH procs? That's totally nonsensical, given that while you can do 5 more SS's a minute with the difference in energy costs, and get (let's be generous) 6 sword spec procs a minute (that's 120 swings in a minute ~40 MH, 60 OH, 15 SS, which is VERY generous) for 11 more MH swings, your dagger is swinging at 1.8 (realistically 1.26 or faster for ~47.6 swings per minute) speed instead of 2.6 (realistically 1.82 or faster for ~33 swings per minute).

This analysis doesn't even include the fact that you do get slightly more energy from Combat Potency, and therefore more "bonus" backstabs (though obviously fewer bonus 'specials' than swords would, since theirs are cheaper).

Summary: Daggers hit with the mainhand (special and white) approximately the same number of times in a minute that swords do, with regards to procs for items like the dragonspine trophy and mongoose. Warp Spring is a special case, of course, and definitely is weighted towards sword.

 

Kytrarewn

Daggers hit with a 1.8spd rating for PPM. Swords hit with a 2.6spd rating for PPM.

That's 50% higher %-chance that any given hit will proc, which the greater numbers of MH specials definitely affects. Also include MH sword procs from MH and OH, and other things... double the uptime might have been an exaggeration... but not much of one.

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saedo

Isn't the whole concept of PPM is that it'd have the same average number of procs over a period of time regardless of weapon speed?

 

Kytrarewn

If only autoattacking with no SnD/Blade Flurry/Dragonspine/Mongoose/whatever haste.

Here's how it works: 1PPM

60/2.6 = 23.1 white MH attacks in any given minute
Thus, 1PPM means that one of those white hits would proc.

So, 1/23.1 is 4.33% chance for any given main-hand swing to proc your enchant.

With a 1.8 speed dagger:
60/1.8 is 33.3333333333

So you have a 3.0% chance for any given main-hand swing to proc your enchant.

Ignoring slice and dice, because that affects both equally, you get:

10 Backstabs + 33.3 white MH autoattacks per minute (+Combat Potency):
Multiplied by 0.03, you have 1.29 total "procs-per-minute) ignoring the internal cooldowns.

15 SSes + 23.1 white MH attacks in any given minute (+ several offhand and mainhand sword spec procs): 38.1 * 0.0433, or 1.65.

Granted, this isn't counting the bonuses from combat potency or sword specs, but it still comes out to 27% more procs. If you include the fact that the haste bestowed by dragonspine, mongoose, etc. also increases your chances to re-apply (not counting internal cooldown on any of the above which lowers the difference), with sword spec also included, I wouldn't be surprised to see a solid 60-70% difference on proc-uptime between the two specs.

I'm not sure why you say that Combat Potency benefits daggers more than swords, given that there's 1.4 speed end-game weapons available for each. You need 3 procs to get an extra SS, 4 procs to get an extra BS.

Where am I getting confused here?

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• Aldriana

Swords do generate a somewhat higher proc rate, but it's nowhere near a factor of 2.

For instance, with the default gear in the spreadsheet (which is sword build), we have the following proc rates/uptimes:

MH Mongoose: 2.8 procs per minute; 51% uptime
Dragonspine: 4 procs per minute; 51% uptime.
Warp Spring Coil: 1.5 procs per minute; 36.5% uptime.

Swapping the weapons to, say, Fang of Vashj and Arena 2 OH dagger, our uptimes become instead:

MH Mongoose: 2 procs per minute; 41% uptime
Dragonspine: 3.4 procs per minute; 44% uptime
Warp Spring Coil: 1.3 procs per minute; 32% uptime

Now, clearly these proc rates are lower, but we're nowhere near a factor of 2; rather, swords generate about 20-25% more buff uptime, which, while certainly helpful, is nowhere near enough to account for the different in swords vs daggers.

 

• Aldriana

I think the argument is that OH daggers are faster than OH nondagger weapons, as such, the combat potency energy recovery is higher (you get more energy per unit time). It's true that it takes 50% more energy for a backstab... but then, backstab does a heck of a lot more damage, too.

This is a perfectly reasonable argument, except that the difference between dagger speeds and sword speeds is just too small for it to matter much.

 

◊ Shaker

Sorry, was still thinking DST was % based, not PPM. :P

 

Macblade

Rough DPS...how rough is this? My spreadsheet is saying 917 and the best that I've ever seen is approaching 700 dps on a tonight's Nightbane attempt. That's pretty much as tank and spank as they come anymore. I keep to a 1s/5r cycle, any ideas why the almost 200 point difference?

P.S. I do have the appropriate raid buffs, or lack thereof, selected.

 

LiteSabre

There's the time when Nightbane takes off, you wait before DPSing the skeletons who're not debuffed and likely facing you which gives them a chance to parry, then you wait for Nightbane to land, then you wait a bit for tank to grab aggro, and you also spend time feared since you're a human. All in all I wouldn't say it's tank'n'spank. In fact the closest thing to tank'n'spank Kara has is Maiden, I'd think.

 

Kytrarewn

Eh, again, end-game gear you have Messenger of Fate(Sword), Warglaive OH (Sword), and Blade of Savagery 1.4.

S2 OHes have a 0.1spd difference, but, as you said it's not enough to make much of a difference.

The main point of my post was as follows: There are major intangibles involved in the difference between swords and daggers that even making them mathematically very similar would not resolve. One of these is the big cycle problem daggers seem to have for low-healthpoint trash situations. Another is the proc thing, which is a contributing factor, and the third is, again, the positioning issue which is especially obnoxious on mobs that spin in circles.

I love being dagger specced, if I had my choice I'd go back to it in a heartbeat, but since I made the switch to swords I really can't justify being combat daggers in a raiding situation (it would probably take Malchazeen or the Solarian dagger actually dropping to replace my blue sword or dagger MH, which seems to be impossible).

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Grunge

You could try mutilate. While people have been skeptical about it, it is viable and even comparable to combat swords in the high end. With the WF nerf and the coming haste rating nerf I assume the build will be even stronger vs swords.

As for Hydross and Loot Reaver being poison immune, I've never found those fights much trouble anyway. At Leotheras Blade Flurry was nice but it's doesn't make or break the kill.
We didn't use melee on the Vashj adds and there's not a single fight in BT or Hyjal I can think of that favor Swords more than Mutilate.

I do wish I could go back and pick up Warp-Spring Coil, as it would compliment the Ashtongue trinket very nicely. (Madness of the Betrayer is a bit of a disappointment to me, being worse for mutilate than WSC. At least according to my math.)

I'd suggest you try the spec out for a few days/weeks since it does require some getting used to. Getting down the right cycles is the biggest issue. (4pc t5 helps with shortcutting your cycles, so much that unless I won't be swapping any of my current pieces for t6 until I get the chest from Illidan. Which hopefully is very soon!)

P.S Messenger of Fate is the dagger (ugly one at that), Blade of Savagery is the sword.

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LiteSabre

Well, there's Gurtogg if you get FR (more of a nuisance than anything) and Illidan P2, which is IMO more important than anything else that comes to mind. I'd try out Mut myself if the Azzinoth elementals were poisonable.

As an aside, do you use slow or fast daggers for your OH? I recall there was a bunch of theorycrafting a while back about how fast daggers in the OH may actually be better for PvE, but I didn't follow it as I was combat daggers at the time.

 

• Aldriana

It's called rough DPS to reflect the fact that the damage computation pages aren't designed for maximum accuracy; rather, they're designed to make for the best possible gear comparisons. These two goals usually run pretty close, but there are times you have to make a decision that favors one over the other. For instance, cycles in the sheet are allowed to vary continuously, even though in practice there's no such thing as a 3.7 point rupture.

That said, the sheet still should be pretty accurate. In fact, I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself this morning for a reason closely related to this discussion. Last night on Tidewalker I went the entire fight without getting graved, and did 1203 DPS. With the level of buff I had active, the sheet predicts 1199 DPS. So, yeah, seems pretty accurate, at least from that 1 data point .

 

• Aldriana

After the debate of the last page or so regarding swords vs daggers, I decided to take some time and figure out where, exactly, the difference lies, and try to cut down on the amount of rumor and speculation around this topic. The results, I confess, were somewhat surprising to me. In truth, there are 3 main factors contributing to the dominance of swords these days:

1) Murder
2) Mangle
3) Sword Specialization

What do I mean by this? Simple. If one removes these three factors from the damage calculation, swords and daggers are actually very competitive. It's easy to see how to remove the first two; for the third, we shall simply compare dagger spec to fist spec instead of sword spec to start with (since fist and dagger spec behave identically).

So, for instance, taking the gear initially in the spreadsheet, but converting it to fist spec with the Arena 2 fists (including the 2.2 version of the fist OH), we get a damage number, without Murder or Mangle, of 1357.04. If we instead convert the spec to 15/41/5 with Arena 2 Daggers, the damage number is 1346.96. So, if we look at SS builds and dagger builds without the effects of Murder, Mangle, and Sword Spec, we find them very comparable - 10 DPS different, or less than 1 percent.

Now, lets take a minute to look at each of these factors in more detail.

1) Murder.
So, the thing about Murder is that while it is very powerful against selected classes of monsters, one *does* fight other things. In particular, while SSC and TK are very Murder-friendly, only about half the bosses in BT and *none* of the bosses in Hyjal benefit from Murder. So, depending on your progression level, Murder may or may not be a big deal.

2) Mangle.
While Feral Druids are fairly common in expansion raiding, that doesn't mean that Rupture is always going to apply; for instance, if said feral druid(s) are tanking other mobs, Mangle will not necessarily be applied to your DPS target. Moreover, on mobs where you can't/shouldn't rupture, whether because they're immune, or because your guild is concerned with debuff slots, or whatever, this advantage similarly disappears. For that matter, on short fights (read: trash) mangle doesn't always make sense either; hence there's actually a fairly significant set of fights where this doesn't apply, either.

3) Sword Spec
And here, at last, is the heart of the matter. Sword Spec is just really ridiculously potent. If we convert our previously-mentioned fist rogue to a sword rogue with Arena 2 weapons, his DPS shoots up from 1357 to 1384, a full 2% increase. But, the key point here, I would argue, is where this damage comes from. Of that 27 DPS increase, amost all of it comes from the offhand. When you actually break down the numbers, the contribution to DPS of MH SS procs is almost identical to the contribution of 5% MH crit; literally 90% of the damage increase from fists to swords is due to OH sword spec procs. This, however, is unsurprising; since OH attacks proc MH attacks, and rogues use fast OHs and slow MHs, it is easy to see where this imbalance comes from. If MH Sword spec is balanced - that is, generating a chance for a 2.6 speed proc every 2.6 speed weapon is correctly balanced, it's not hard to see why generating a chance for a 2.6 speed procs every 1.5 seconds is significantly more powerful, particularly when you additionally consider the the benefit of Fist and Dagger spec on the OH is reduced by the Dual-wielding penalty, while Sword Spec is not.

What we fundamentally see here is that Sword Spec is relatively too powerful; it is my expectation that we will see one of two things in the next few patches: either 1) Sword Spec procs will again reset the MH swing timer (which effectively halves the power of OH and instant attack SS procs), or OH attacks will start proccing OH swings. Either of these changes would bring SS back in line with the power of the other weapon specializations. It is not that daggers are too weak; it is that Swords are too strong, relatively speaking.

Now, the other side of this argument is that daggers have other disadvantages, such as being positionally dependent and having longer cycles. So lets take a minute to think about these.

First off, all rogues do significantly more damage when attacking from behind anyway, hence we're all fairly practiced in staying behind mobs. And, frankly, I haven't noticed any significant issues with staying behind mobs lately. There's the occasional circumstance (such as if Gruul drops a cave-in right behind him, or Lurker during Spout) where you can't stay tucked in behind, but on the whole I haven't really noticed any problem with staying in position. So while it's true that daggers do suffer more from being *out* of position, it also seems to me that for a good rogue this should be a very rare occurrence.

With regard to cycles: it is true the daggers require longer cycles, and, as such, can't keep them up on short fights. However, this is mitigated by the fact that daggers care a lot less about maintaining a good cycle. Backstab is a more efficient move in terms of damage per energy than Sinister Strike is - if you just look at damage done neglecting finishers, daggers are ahead, even *given* the oft-raised issues of proc uptime and the like. The reason why SS builds do more damage is tied to point 2 above: finisher damage. So on a short or interrupted fight where you can't maintain perfect 3s/5r cycles all fight - that actually favors daggers. The interrupted cycles are going to hurt the SS builds that rely on lots of finisher damage, whereas the dagger builds that don't gain as much damage from those attacks are going to be less affected.

So, in the end, the fundamental difference comes down to this:
SS builds have circumstantial advantages, such as benefitting more from rupture on mobs where it can be used, and Murder providing significant benefits against certain opponents.

Dagger builds have circumstantial advantages such as not relying on short, perfect cycles to gain lots of finisher damage.

On the whole, these factors perhaps favor SS builds slightly, but not unreasonably so. I don't think that fist builds, for instance, are particularly more compeling than daggers builds.

However, Sword Spec - and in particular, OH Sword Spec procs - are very powerful, which is currently giving a clear edge to sword builds.

As such, I would say that it is not to much that daggers are weak or disadvantaged right now - it is simply the case that sword builds are relatively strong at the current time.

 

Kytrarewn

Morogrim? Yeah, sure, you're behind him the entire time. Any fight where you have to re-acquire position, ever, you have to re-ramp up your damage, as well as your position. Gruul is a pretty poor example for "imperfect positioning requirements", but here's a better one.

Hydross, if you're low on tanks and have melee assist on the first add.

Karathress, moving to each individual naga in turn.

Magtheridon- continuing to DPS and build CP during the rumble.

Spreadsheet does not, in fact, take into account all of the imperfect factors involved in TBC raids.

Pre-BC, I was combat daggers for well over a year and topped all the meters.

Post-BC, I was combat daggers for 4 months and topped most meters.

I respecced swords (With a dagger offhand), and immediately gained 200-250DPS, with an MH of exactly the same DPS (and less optimal speed) than my dagger MH.

I know how to position myself. I know how to play a rogue, I know how to use proper cycles, and I dislike insinuations otherwise.

You spend 3 seconds reacquiring position? That's at least 20 energy, possible 40 energy lost, which fucks your cycle and DPS a lot worse with daggers than it does with swords, as well as the fact that, well, gaining CP while reacquiring position and doing DPS is a good thing.

That's why I said 'intangibles', they can't be measured with a spreadsheet.

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Jesus don't want me in a sunbeam
Sunbeams are always made on me
Don't expect me to cry, for all the reasons I'm gonna die
Don't ever ask your kick of me.

 

◊ Shaker

Not to prod you, since you're already a bit hot about the subject, but what exactly stops you from hitting the magic Sinister Strike button while you're out of position but needing to spend excess energy and gain combo points in order to maintain/start a cycle? It's not great damage, but if you're at 100 energy and you'll take more than 1 second to reposition so the GCD isn't wasted . . . .

(This is with daggers)

 

◊ Shaker

That all being said - I do think daggers needs a little love (and have said so numerous times on these boards) to at least be equal to swords, if not a smidge better due to positional hassles.

 

• Aldriana

My guild always has melee assist on the first add. Fortunately, it spawns right next to Hydross, so unless the total length from start of transition to add having been picked up is at least 8 seconds, your energy shouldn't be capping out anyway.

With swords or dagger, you run to the back of each add. You can put autoattack on as you run up to start hitting it before you're totally in position.

Sure. Although I confess I haven't has massively good luck with either swords or daggers, but I will agree that it is somewhat easier with swords.

Nor did I ever claim it did. In fact, I feel I've been very clear about the ways in which it doesn't. What I did assert is that inspecting the deviations from theory do not show a clear selection pressure of swords vs daggers.

Pre BC, I was basically always daggers. All 5 mans, all 20 mans, all 40 mans except the last couple bosses in Naxx. I too was always atop the damage meters. In BC I was daggers for a while as well. I've done half the bosses in SSC/TK as daggers. This is not to say that your credentials as a dagger rogue are not impressive. This is simply to say that I have some idea what I'm talking about as well.

In BC, I used Malchazeen for quite a while, and topped the meters. Then I switched to Talon of Azshara, and while I did notice a damage increase, it was not on the order of 200-250. It was perhaps 100 DPS, which, given that most of the SSC/TK bosses are murder-able, is totally within the range I was discussing.

I never insinuated otherwise. My little essay was not directed at you, or anyone else. This has been a topic of discussion on these and other forums for months if not years. I made my conclusions based on the spreadsheet and my personal experience. I explained why I felt that the disadvantages of daggers were not as glaring as some people seem to believe. You are free to disagree with me. If you'd like to present an argument to the contrary, I would applaud your initiative. I simply asserted that, in practice, I feel that the main persistent benefit that puts swords ahead of daggers is sword spec.

Revisiting your examples above:

On Hydross, neither murder nor mangle apply. The only advantage swords have is a possible positioning advantage (although one that almost never comes up for me) and Sword Spec.

On Karathress, your feral druids are usually tanking. Not all mobs will have mangle, which reduces that advantage. The positional requirements affects both classes equally, with the possible exception of a tick or two of energy being wasted due to not being able to attack while running through the mob. Said tick or two of energy equates to maybe 1k damage. On a fight where I regularly crest 500k damage, I have no problem with saying a .2% damage loss to positioning time is not a major factor holding swords and daggers apart.

I have never felt that it takes 3 seconds to reacquire position, and even if it does, you only lose energy if you were sitting at the energy cap anyway. If you are backstabbing continuously, you should never have more than 60 energy saved up, meaning that you can make repositions of 4 seconds or less with a low probability of wasting energy ticks.

Moreover, as discussed, daggers suffer less from perturbations of their cycle than do swords, as they're getting more of their damage from the backstabs directly and less from the carefully crafted rotation of finishers.

You're right. They're not measured in a spreadsheet. That's why I explained independently why I don't consider them to be major issues. If you disagree, that is your right. Feel free to refute them. But writing them off as "intangibles that cannot be measured by a spreadsheet" does not strike me as a reasonable response, given that I provided specific arguments and reasons why I did not feel they were major factors, that, while making use of the spreadsheet, did not totally rely on it, either.

 

Gryzemuis

How about if Blizzard would change dagger spec (and fist spec) so that 5/5 dagger specialization would give a 7% increase to crit rate ?

It would make pve damage more balanced with swords.
But it would also make the pvp crowd more likely to pick daggers.
And it would make people happy, who still live in the pre-TBC days, and who think that crit rate is the most important stat. And that seems to be a lot of people.

 

Rajni

As combat daggers seems to have a similar dps with equivalent gear to sword spec, increasing the crit rate on dagger spec would probably cause more problems than it would help.

Although, the 2% crit increase to combat fists would help bring it more into line with the other two combat specs.

 

Balkoth

More information has come in, ignore this post.

 

Idris

I think it's a bit of both to be honest. I recently changed from daggers to fists and while the versatility gain may be all intangibles, I felt it was really a huge advantage, particularly as I didn't lose any dps but rather gained it. Our raid progression is currently going in late SSC and TK, so the Murder issue certainly applies.

 

Grunge

Uhoh. Since we've passed t5 instances and won't probably run them much after Illidan it seems I'm out of options to get my +5 skill from any of those. There is a certain ring in Lower City.
For spreadsheet calculations can I simply replace the +5skill with 2.5% hit? (vs Bosses at least)
In fact I'll check that now.
*a few minutes later*
This change implied to me that (at least for mutilate) Shapeshifter's Signet is the 6th best ring for mutilate if you do not have any of the three alternatives mentioned above by Aldriana.

Of course seeing how these results are from the other spreadsheet they probably hold no relevancy to this thread. Perhaps add this to the Rogue theorycrafting thread?

Edit. Hmm, actually wouldn't it be relative 3% hit increase ? 2.5% from the 350->355 and then 0.1% from the skill itself (0.1% per skill or whatnot). Or am I wrong at this?

Fans glory to the Gladiators,
Gods glory to the Heroes.

 

kohaku

the haste rating nerf is pretty much confirmed :<

from WoW -> Test Realm Patch Notes