Grunge

Pre-2.3 it's one of the best rings for Mutilate rogues if you lack the +5 weaponskill from any other source.
Post-2.3 it's lackluster at best. Think of it this way. -1.25% dodge is somewhat equal to ~1.25% hit.
so it's 25agi, 18sta, ~1.25%"hit" (in reality the benefit from -dodge is better due to less dodged specials, but the difference is minimal at best.)

For combat it's not good in either case.

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

 

Em.

Last night, during Kara, I got the Steelhawk Crossbow. (The Stiletto also dropped, but the other rogue received that.) For all intents and purposes, the Crossbow is better than my current throwing weapon, so I replaced that. But I've got two questions.

1) According to the spreadsheet the Crossbow ranks higher than the Stiletto (57.11 V. 49.21). Is this because the Crossbow does higher DPS? (A fact that would be negligible for any rogue really using it.) Or are the Crossbow's stats (HR 16, AP 30) really much better than the Stiletto's (HR 12, Critical Strike 20)?

2) I asked earlier about what to do during AOE attacks. I've never had the 'shoot' ability before, so I'm wondering - during an AOE where I need to back away from the mob (whirlwind, or Gruul's ground slam), should I use shoot until I can melee again? Or will the DPS gain be negligible and not particularly worth it?

 

• Aldriana

The DPS of ranged weapons is not factored in at all. 16 hit rating and 30 AP is significantly better than 12 hit rating and 20 critical strike for most rogues (including, apparently, you).

Regarding Shoot: The damage is relatively minor; on the other hand, it is better than nothing (which is what you'd be doing otherwise). So if you're stuck out of melee range and stationary anyway, there's no particular reason not to throw in a couple of shoots.

 

AniwenofLothar

except that expertise is hit rating that works on yellow attacks, which would buff its value up by about 25-30%

*edit* apparently I didn't refresh my browser when I read this post =\

"Such ... is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change; the change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again."

 

Mideci

Also, when you get to Al'ar, you'll find parts of Phase 1 so boring, if you don't shoot your bow or use your thrown, you may fall asleep.

It's good to get into the habit of throwing/shooting. On that same fight, since the adds explode on death, we have melee back off at 20% or so and if I have any combo pts, I toss a deadly throw to get rid of them.

I will note that I rarely have a thrown equipped outside of PVP and the Al'ar fight. Usually I have a Sunfury Bow of the Phoenix in the ranged slot and it hits for 800-1000 more often than you might think. So fire away.

 

• Aldriana

Expertise is actually only about 10% more valuable than hit; hence, the ring in question has roughly the equivalent of 22 hit rather than the 20 cited above. Which doesn't change the fact that it's still not very good.

 

• songster

Unless the mob is facing you, which it will be when soloing. Off topic for this thread I know, but IMO it's definitely worth grabbing a high-expertise set for solo grinding and/or PvP.

 

AniwenofLothar

*deleted*

you only lose 8 energy for a dodged SS, so the impact is really only that and the GCD which, unless if you're burning ADRush... so... yeah. I see your point now :P

"Such ... is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change; the change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again."

 

• Aldriana

Except that, having a Sinister Strike (or Backstab) dodged only costs you 20% of the energy of the ability, and thus 20% of the damage. Hence, lowering your chance to be dodged by 1% only increases your yellow damage by .2%; then if yellow damage makes up 1/3 of your damage, and white damage about 2/3, then 1% expertise increases your total damage by (.2*1/3 + 1*2/3)/(1*2/3) = 1.1 times a much as 1% hit. Which is 10%, like I said.

Alternately, one could plug it into the spreadsheet and work it out more exactly - as I did, for instance, in post 1106.

 

Auluras

This is my first post and I'm not really sure what topic to put it in but since this post is over 2.3 I'd like to direct my question towards the rogue gear that I've seen from ZA so far. I guess my biggest question is as follows "Is Haste or Ignore Armor > +Hit" I would think that hitting more often is a bigger DPS boost, however if I'm attacking more often with a lower hit rating then would I see a greater miss rate since I hit more often now?

 

Valen

Dodged specials can also lead to bad cycles. 2 dodged SS or especially backstabs can almost certainly lead to SnD downtime unless you change your cycle on fly. 1 dodged special can get your cycle into trouble if you don't get any energy/CP proc's.

Not to mention the GCD lose, which is important on certain fights or when you got your BF up, dps'ing 2 mobs.

 

• Aldriana

A missed special costs you at most 2 seconds for refreshing your cycle, and unless you're running extremely tight cycles (which is usually a bad idea anyway), it generally won't even cost you that much. Yes, it can occasionally induce and SnD gap, but with careful energy management this will be rare. Regardless, this is implicitly factored in to the spreadsheet calculation referenced in post 1106, which also exhibits a variation of very close to 10%. In practice, of course, it's a hard think to model exactly, so the variance might be a bit larger than that; but it's still a lot closer to 10% than 25%, much less 50%.

 

• Latito

Just wanted to bring this up, what do people think:
[RAID] Boss armor values

Are the warrior tanks going to complain too much?

Obviously the dps hit of 2 talent points out of imp/vile poisons is negligible, you could do a lazy 5s/5ea cycle gear a super-easy cycle or put in some ruptures if you had a lot of spare combo points. Certainly any time your guild had a bear or pally tanking this would be better than getting a dps warrior to sunder.

Comments?

 

Carnivori

I noticed a lil thing in the spreadsheet: When i choose Deathmantle Shoulderpads and put 8agi and 4agi 6stam gems in them, the socketbonus of the shoulderpads doesn't activate altho it should.

Great job with the spreadsheet, just love using it.

*EDIT* Aw fuck i typoed :P 4agi 6stam not hit

 

Garrodd

The sockets on the deathmantle shoulders are red and blue. The gems you mentioned should not activate the socket bonus.

 

Katherine

And on an additional note Carnivori, the column "Socket Bonus" yes/no does only tell you if its worth to socket for the bonus or not.

 

• songster

Entirely depends what the interaction of EA and Devastate is. If you put up an EA, can the tank still Devastate, or does he get the message saying "A more powerful skill is in operation". If he can Devastate on a mob with EA, how much threat does it generate?

 

royaljester

Hmm, would that mean a 2pc T5 would would become better?

 

baldycenarius

Devastates threat scales with the amount of sunders up, i believe, so EA would indeed reduce your tanks threat, probably pretty significantly. In the end the damage you'd gain would be lost overall because of the lower threat of your tank.

Baldy, officer of <Focus>

 

Rootuser

So I have been reading the posts back and forth and have come to some confusion when it comes down to balancing Lethality vs Ruthlessness vs Murder for a Combat Dagger rogue.

Typicall on those three talents you have six points to spend. Two have to be spent on either murder OR Ruthlessness at a minimum. Where are the points most effecitvely spent with the follow assumptions:

1. At least 2/3 if not all mobs are murderable. (SSC/TK style break downs)
2. Combat Rogue build of 15/41/5


If a single mob isn't murderable the choice is obvious due to the fact you have to spend the two points anyway and they are best spent in Ruthlessness but the waters muddy in my opinion when you look at the three vs each other.

Is it ever worth putting 2 points in murder and three in to Ruthlessness and then one in to lethality? Or is there some other combo (2,2,2 or 2,1,3 or ??? respectively) that may work better in practice?

I can run it through the spreadsheet but I am wondering how well the extra combo points gained by Ruthlessness scale with the other two.

Now let's go on to assume murder isn't viable against a mob. Is it ever worth maxing out Ruthlessness and sacrificing lethality? Just curious on that one.

 

• Latito

Good call. My guild may fair a bit differently however though considering we OFTEN have a druid tanking. Also, would the *slight* dmg (and thus threat...) increase for the prot warrior at all balance the lost threat from Sunder/Devastate? I'm not terribly familiar with warrior tanking.. sorry if thats like asking "would losing SnD hurt rogue dps?"

 

• Aldriana

Tanks are fairly reliant on Sunder for aggro, so if using Expose prevents them from doing so it's certainly a bad idea. However, what's not clear to me is what happens in the following situations:

1) Tank puts Sunders up.
2) After 5 sunders are up, rogue puts Expose Armor up.
3) Tank uses devastate

That is: does Expose Armor actually remove the existing Sunders? And if it doesn't, can Devastate still refresh the Sunders even if they couldn't normally be applied? I sort of doubt this works, but I've never actually tested so can't say for certain.

Regarding Murder/Lethality/Ruthlessness: I believe there are numbers earlier in this thread regarding the relative merit of some of these talents, but my recollection is that the answer is something like the following:

Murder, on those mobs that it affects, is better than either of the other options, and by a fair amount. Hence, if you're in an area where most things are Murderable (which may include SSC/TK but certainly does not include Hyjal/BT), it can make sense to put the talent points there.

At least 2 points in Ruthlessness are borderline essential for most dagger rogues, as it's very hard to maintain a decent cycle without it. The third point is, also pretty good.

Hence, most people tend to do 2/3 Ruthlessness 4/5 Lethality. 3/3 Ruthlessness 3/5 Lethality is also a viable option, particularly with 2/5 T4 in that it allows you to use a much shorter cycle than you otherwise could. Dropping 2 additional points from Lethality for Murder is uncommon but not totally ludicrous.

For more detailed comparisons, I'd recommend plugging your gear into the spreadsheet and trying out the various options. There will be some degree of personal preference involved, as, for instance, the Ruthlessness/Lethality tradeoff is a matter of whether you get more DPS from cycles (i.e. finishers) or more DPS from backstab directly.

 

• tsigo

Expose Armor, assuming its final armor reduction will be higher than the applied stack of Sunder, will replace Sunder, and prevent the tank from applying Sunder at all for its duration ("A more powerful spell is already active".)

 

Katherine

When did you test that? Last time i had a look at that matter i go a "more powerful spell" with 2/2 EA already at 2/5 SA when i tried to apply a 5pt EA, but thats quite some time back.

 

Carnivori

8agi and 4agi 6stamina, sry i typoed there :P So using 8agi in the red socket, 4agi 6stam in the blue one, so it should activate...