Yeah, got my hit rating from 296 to 346 with reasonable gem changes. I plan on keeping the hit rating above 330 at all times myself, dunno if it's the best way or not tho... Hey Ald, coming up with new version of sheet soon? One that has the new hit cap n new items, atleast the nynjah's Btw they're the best boots in the game atm, right? Kinda even with shadowamaster's but because you need to stack hit more nynjah's win.

Keep up the good work on the sheet, enjoying it very much ty

I know I'm adding to the cattle-prod of the masses, but when could we expect a 2.3 updated spreadsheet with all the new gear, stats and what not?

Also, I was using T5~ gear on every piece except my gloves and helm (t4 for the 2pc). I got the t6 gloves last night but not the helm (I'm up for it when it drops arghhh), and the spreadsheet says I should probably just break the t4 2pc since I gain almost 20dps. I could switch back to my t4 legs from skulkers so I still get the t4 2pc and that actually says I gain like 4-5 dps (probably from having shorter cycles) but it still says skulkers are a 30ap upgrade over t4 :\. I guess if you account the differnce in the t4 2pc, thats what you get eh?

One thing to keep in mind about this is that 363 is the hit cap against level 73s. The hit caps against levels 70, 71, and 72 are 300, 308, and 316. Hence, in terms of everyday gear - gear that you're going to be using against trash or against boss adds that may not be level 73 - I would argue that getting above 300 hit is not only nothing special but in a very real sense counterproductive. As usual, one wants to select the gear that is independently good rather than focusing on achieving any particular hit number, but personally if I found my gear starting to creep significantly above 300 hit I might regem for less hit.

In terms of hit food: I suspect most combat rogues will find it optimal, but, again, that's why we have spreadsheets. This is another reason to try to keep some separation from the hit cap; if you have 350 hit initially you can't make use of hit food even on boss fights.

Distilling this all down to it's key points: I personally am not planning on re-gemming *anything* based on the changed hit cap. The level at which hit starts to soft-cap (due to hit cap on level 70-72 opponents) has only changed by 15, and against level 73s where you might want a bit more hit than before there is hit food to help close the gap. Moreover, your *actual* chance of hitting mobs hasn't really changed that much, as Weapon Expertise means that even if your miss rate is a bit higher than before, your dodge rate is a bit lower, so in the net, not a whole lot has changed.

Which brings me to the topic of posts like this. I'm not trying to pick on anyone in particular; this just happens to be a post on the very topic under discussion on the same page, but this is certainly a philosophy that has appeared any number of times throughout the first 1400 posts in this thread. So to make the point perfectly clear:

THE CONCEPT OF "NEEDING TO STACK HIT" IS TOTAL BS.

There is no circumstance under which one "needs" to stack hit. As a general rule, items with hit on them are good, yes. But regardless of your current amount of hit, and regardless of the amount of hit on the items in question, if item A is better than item B, you should use it.

In this particular case: for most rogues for whom the comparison is relevant, Shadowmaster's are better than Nyn'jah Tabi. Hence, regardless of your current hit, if you have the choice between them, you should use Shadowmaster, because they're better. Yes, they have less hit, but THAT DOESN'T MATTER. There is nothing special about having your hit being more than any particular number. Using an item that causes you to do less total DPS because you want your hit to be 300 instead of 275 is, frankly, ludicrous.

Now, I'm not saying that Nyn'jah Tabi aren't good. They are. They're great boots, and many rogues are going to use them for a long time. But to say that they are better than Shadowmaster's purely because they have more hit is just plain wrong.

With regards to the question of when the next version will come along: I'm still aiming to make my previous estimate of around Thanksgiving.

I should note, however, that I've started to feel a bit burnt out on the whole "spreadsheet" thing - hence, while I do plan to keep it up-to-date with mechanics changes and whatnot, I'm currently thinking that I probably won't be making significant UI changes as I've talked about in the past. That is, I will keep the sheet more or less updated and correct, but, barring some significant change in my enthusiasm level for the project, there probably won't be a lot of new features from here on out.

Kudos to Aldriana.

I have followed this thread to the benefit of my rogue alt, and posts by Aldriana before this thread existed and I am staggered by the amount of work you have put in - not just to make your spreadsheet the best it can be, but to babysit and handhold and explain when people come up and ask something they should be able to figure out themselves.

I understand the burnout, and my only advice here is: Tend to your burnout before it becomes permanent.

Burnout is fixable, but you need it to go to a slow burn level for probably at least 2-3 months before new ideas and motivation will surface. Don't let anyone guilt you into putting in more effort at a time when burnout is in play. Make sure you feel that you are taking a break from the work related to the spreadsheet in a meaningful way.

While I'm a big fan of the spreadsheet and would certainly love to see a version updated for 2.3, I think we all need to step back and take a deep breath and realize that Aldriana will release it when it's ready and the only thing that can be accomplished by pushing for it is adding to burnout and alienation - and wasting his(her?) time responding to posts. As far as I'm concerned if it comes out in a months time it'll be all the more eagerly anticipated for it.

In the interrim Vulajin's Roguecraft 101 thread is a wealth of information, and for gear selection he's even walking us through how to assess the damage potential of items. If it's really important to you to know which item of two is better - go do some calculations or make some updates to the spreadsheet of your choice. If it's not really important but it'd just be nice to know - wait for the spreadsheet to come out or go look at the dps spreadsheet.

I think the big reason I personally felt they were better off the top was the insane amounts of hit you could get from one item. There are several items in BT/Hyjal that have 0 hit on them and yet are still amazing pieces. I personally will be picking them up for the interim of Sharhaz boots, because they are that good and almost a side-grade to the Shadowmaster's according to your spreadsheet. I agree, don't socket/stack hit like it's going out of style, but to the same degree, you can't go wrong putting hit in a lot of spots.



Def take care of yourself before us. Having a spreadsheet that is up to date and looking pretty is useful, but if its' at the cost of persons sanity over it, not worth it at all, and we'll survive without a spreadsheet. I know that now that I'm in BT/Hyjal, I rarely check the spreadsheet anymore because so many of the items are jsut pure upgrades, no matter how you look at it, but again,

Thank you for all your work on this sheet and time you've spent. I hope it all works out for you but don't let this sheet burn you out in having fun.

Seriously - the sheet as it stands has enough features that it meets its goal. It's a great resource and it's been very helpful. Take it easy and don't let funtime get to be worktime too much.

As for hit stacking - I've just switched to socketing all my red/yellow slots with Glinting. Hit vs Agility is SO close anyway, I'm not really too bothered with the minutae - they each have their strengths, so hedging towards both sides is my plan.

Also, something I know has probably been proposed before, but "What about letting some of us help with the mundane things, even more so than we do now". I know to keep a sheet like this alive, keeping the main architect going is the main focus, and if any of the posters who enjoy your work so much can help out with little things, or updating things, send to you and you can check it. I know sometimes that leads to more work and may be why you haven't already begun to delegate, but if you think it could help, let us know, I'm pretty sure the community has it in them to help out for something they care about.

Well, not to quibble, but: I have actually made proposals of this sort before, and requested that interested parties PM me; to date, I've received exactly 0 PMs offering assistance. The only independent development I'm aware of (since Darlal stopped working on the sheet, anyway) is Katherine's version with the 2.3 items in it, which, honestly, I probably should have looked over in more detail than I did; it came through while I was busy being sick and, as such, didn't get quite as much attention as it might have deserved.

I should note that that's totally fine, of course; I'm not trying to guilt anyone into volunteering. If people don't feel like working on it, that's totally understandable. I'm not complaining; I'm just making an observation that, for whatever reason, offers of help have not been particularly forthcoming.

However, it also should be noted that it's actually pretty hard to review changes made by other people. There's quite a bit of complexity in the sheet, and thousands upon thousands of cells of calculations. The only way I can even effectively verify my own changes is that I made the changes myself and thus know exactly what I messed with and where, which limits the number of things I have to check. I always perform certain modifications in the same way, which means that the number of places they can go wrong is limited. If, on the other hand, changes were made by other people, it's really impossible to know what all they may have made changes to and what implications it may have had. Fundamentally, if someone else wants to take up development on the sheet, it's going to need to get to a point where there is a person or people whom I can trust to get things more or less right without having to directly verify their changes. This is, admittedly, somewhat of a tall order, since the sheet is somewhat complicated and I'm not sure *I'd* be able to keep track of everything that was going on had I not written most of it myself.

And that, fundamentally, is one of the major problems with the sheet. I do think it's reasonably accurate and has a lot of nice features, but the cost of that is complexity; it takes a lot of time and effort to make even simple changes, which is why there tends to be quite a bit of time between each revision, and possibly the reason why other people, to date, have not been interested in working on it; this sheet is, quite simply, a pain in the you-know-where to update. It's the unfortunate reality of the situation, and one that can't really be remedied easily without sacrificing functionality or accuracy, neither of which I'm particularly inclined to do. Or, I should say, it's a limitation of spreadsheets that that's going to be the case; if written in an actual programming language, these effects would be somewhat reduced and it could probably be made more accurate, more functional, and easier to maintain. This is actually something I've thought about previously (I'm sure you can find repeated references to it in the prior posts within this thread), but the initial overhead of doing so has been, to date, sufficiently high that I haven't felt like working on it (see also: the above comments re: burnout). If, however, this is a project that people are interested in, and in particular if you're interested and have some coding experience, feel free to send me a PM (or otherwise contact me) and we can talk over the possibilities.

Anyway, long story short: I am not averse to offers of assistance in terms of maintaining the sheet, but in such a partnership it really would need to work toward a situation in which said maintainer took a certain level of responsibility for updating things with enough attention to detail that I don't need to review every single change, or it doesn't actually help matters much. This, coupled with the fairly high difficulty of maintaining things in the first place, provides a reasonable basis for why help has not been forthcoming to date, which is, as mentioned, totally understandable. As always, if you feel up to the challenge I would definitely like to hear from you, but I don't want anyone to feel obligated or pressured into doing so.`

In random other news: it appears that the best rogue ranged weapon in the game - by a lot - is now a BoE epic. Swing by World of Raids and check out the screenshot of Spinesever, which trades 3 ap and 2 hit for 20 AP and 12 stamina relative to the previous best, Arcanite Steam-Pistol. By my count that's about an 8 AP upgrade offensively, with an extra 12 stamina to boot. Not too shabby.

Given that other BoE world drop epics are ilvl 100 it's likely this is either a misplaced drop, or the stats are completely wrong. I'd caution people that one of those two is likely to change. Just sayin', it'd suck to have people spend 2k+ gold on an item that ends up being retrofitted.

Of course, if they don't retroactively change them... :P


Edit: the DPS on it puts it between ilvl 100 and 110, so it is almost certainly just wrongly statted.

Aldriana, don't worry about that. I did it merely for myself and thought i could help you out. Thats why i mentioned each cell i modified.
I'll gladly add new items and do documented minor mechanic changes like the version i pm'd you before. Just drop me a line when you finish a new sheet and i will see that i get the new items in for example. I know its that kind of work that really is annoying.

On topic of the [Spinesever]... [The Night Blade] anyone? At least i got one for 2000 Gold sitting in my bank :X

According to this screenshot it's a level 100 epic, just like every other world drop. It also has exactly the expected dps for its level.

The lowest level epic throwing weapon in game before this was added was [Xavian Stiletto] (115). Just comparing the stats on these two it should be pretty clear [Spinesever] is way over budget so I wouldn't spend any gold on one yet

edit: [Veteran's Musket] is a level 100 ranged weapon with similar stat distribution, it makes the difference very clear.

Might be true, but doing it on a §$%&! BoE worlddrop??? It's making me furious when I see every single ranged weapon available in the game for rogues to be dwarfed stats-wise by this thing found in a lockbox.

Afaik there is no iLevel Calculator left that can propperly calculate sacrificed dps into the ilevel (not to say any remotely working ilevel calculator at all). Entering the stats on Spinesever into this Calculator results in an iLevel of 146 and since the calculated ilevels in most cases are quite some points lower than the in-game-ilevel i would guess that the real ilevel of Spinesever stats-wise is around 151-156. Of cause the dps doesn't fit into that ilevel range. Whereas the dps-range fits perfectly to the in-game-ilevel of the item itself (100) so it's quite possible that there has been made a n error in stats distribution on that thingie.

/edit: just playing around a little with the Calculator : seems like the +17 agility is cauing the huge stats-increase in ilevel. leave them out and everything else the same and you get an ilevel of around 109.

[Spinesever] very much feels like an epic version of [Felsteel Whisper Knives], small min/max-range, speed, high ammount of stats. Still seems to have too many stats points allocated.

I was talking to a friend last night and came up with a (crazy, but nevertheless) interesting idea. So, random crackpot theory time:

Observation 1: Spinesever has the look of an item designed specifically for rogues. The stat distribution is exactly what we'd want, and while the dps of it is fairly low, it's relatively slow for a ranged weapon leading to decent-sized Deadly Throws anyway.

Observation 2: Spinesever appears to be incredibly rare. After 3 days of patch, only one has been found on any server; now, I haven't actually run the statistics on this, but it seems to me that your average world-drop epic would appear a little more frequently than this when you look at all 300 servers.

Observation 3: The only known Spinesever was found in a pickpocketed lockbox, that is, from a source that only a rogue has access to, and that most rogues don't actually bother with.

Random crackpot theory: What if Spinesever *only* drops in pickpocketed lockboxes? It would explain the scarcity, and it would make a certain amount of sense if a rogue-optimized item came solely from a rogue-specific source, and might even justify the over-budget stats. I'd be a little surprised if this were the case, if for no other reason than because I would have expected it to be BoP were this true. But it still strikes me as an interesting idea, so I figured I'd share and see what other people thought.

So it for sure came from a "Strong Lockbox" pp'd from the terrormasters? If that's the case, and I've only gotten 2-3 greens a week when I'm full out farming, that would make this item the rarest item in the game.

Also, That is kind of a crackpot theory, but it almost works. Sadly, I doubt seriously that blizzard is this incredibly smart when it comes to itemization for, of all the classes, rogues. :\


BTW, I've been pp-macro'ing those locks/terrormasters at legion hold for 3 days straight, if i get that, I'll probably actually sell, since I have an arcanite-steam pistol. 4-5k gold is well worth it imo, then again, I might keep, who knows.. :\

I should note that that's the other thing that would support this crackpot theory: I've never heard of an epic coming from a junkbox before, like ever. I've heard of people finding some greens, and I believe I've even heard of getting a blue from time to time, but this is the first time I've ever heard of an epic.

My theory is like yours. I believe since blinding powder has been essentially removed from the game, this is an item specifically placed only in junk boxes as an incentive for rogues to use the pick pocket ability.

I do not think the item will be nerfed or modified. Spinesever is the best BoE to ever drop so I think Blizzard has a plan behind it. If they overlooked something it would be a huge mistake on their part. Of course, everything is speculation at this point.

VERY VERY VERY good to know.

And it sort of does support your friend and your own "crackpot" theory. I've yet to every hear of a blue coming from a junkbox, mainly just a green every year or so. And the number of rogues that potentially pp-cs macro mobs while farming, especially at legion hold is astounding, so I'd expect to see every rogue using that macro and going at it. Like it's been said before, the coincidence that a brand new (3 days old) BoE epic thrown weapon itemized perfect for rogues would come from a pick pocketable item is insane. I hope it holds true, I pickpocket the crap outta stuff when I farm.


On that note, is there anyway to put like a 1 second delay after the PP so that even with lag, you still can loot the items with auto-loot? I have around 150ms on my new server and noticed that sometimes I see more than 1 item in the loot screen but only seem to loot 1 thing. Maybe it's my eyes playing tricks, but I'm guessing that the lag is causing me to miss some of it.

I have the macro set-up as:
/#showtooltip Cheap Shot
/cast Pick Pocket
/stopcasting
/cast Cheap Shot

With the in game autoloot feature turned on, the only time I don't get all the items in the window is if my bags have gotten full. As a jewelcrafter (kit+gems = 4+slots), miner (ore + motes/primals = 6-10 slots), and rogue (poisons galore, flash powder, tools = 8 slots) with some PvP gear (8 slots), it seems like my 18-slot bags get full inordinately fast which has been only slightly improved by the Blinding Powder change.

I run 20 slotters. I'm a JC/LW, but don't keep any gems on me. People are usually more than willing to meet me in shatt or whatever so I have almsot 40 slots open. I turn on itunes or winamp and usually go through a couple gooood cd's before I stop farming when I get into that mode.

The problem is, like I said, I think I'm seeing 2-3 items in the loot screen and i only see "you receive money" and not "junkbox" or whatever else I might pickpocket. I dunno, maybe I'm paranoid, just dont wanna miss the lockbox with the thrown wep in it :\....

I had this problem too. I tried some closing programs thinking it was lag that was causing it but nothing fixed it. Went back to manually using PP then doing CS as completely separate actions and haven't missed a drop yet.