2.4*


And yea.. 1 AP at 1k AP will increase your dps by the same amount as it will at 2k AP.. or 10k AP. The PERCENTAGE gain will decrease as you get more and more AP.. but the dmg done will increase linearly. Granted, going from 1k to 2k AP.. you'll almost definately have gained a sizable amount of hit, crit, armPen, haste, expertise, etc... which all scale with AP.

I'm sure you're aware of this, Arindelest, more just pointing this out as further clarification for the guy you quoted.

My guess would be that, while Mongoose scales linearly, Executioner does not. Agility will increase your DPS by a fixed amount (neglecting the little differences depending on Haste, Hit etc.). Armour Penetration on the other hand is a percental increase. So the higher your DPS, the more it will favour Executioner over Mongoose. Equipping a second Warglaive results in a real DPS boost due to the set bonus, so that might explain the phenomenon you've encountered.
A difference of 20 DPS is odd, though. If I switch gear and buffs around, the difference is never more than 5 DPS (assuming 7700 armour).

Edit: I guess this has been elaborated sufficiently before and I should have checked the new replies before I submitted my hour old response :/ My apologies.

Well, it should be noted that while Executioner should scale somewhat better than Mongoose, Mongoose does scale pretty well. Mongoose gives 3 effects: Agility gives AP and Crit + the bonus from 2% Haste. Both Crit and Haste scale as a percentage, only the AP aspect scales linearly.

Just saying as the Crit and Haste contributions seem to be getting downplayed quite a bit.

Sorry about my earlier reply... I was thinking percetages but then it doesn't really apply.

About Mongoose having a part that scales on a percentage basis I had done some math in the executioner/mongoose thread no one seemed to have commented, but anyway I found that the crit and the haste were about a 2.36% increase to your damage. So overall that is 1/3-1/2 of the benifit you get from mongoose. I had also noticed a trend in how the percent damage increase from mongoose seemed to be decaying, but also seemed to have a lower bound.

That doesn't seem correct. If 1 Agility is worth almost 2 attack power, then the crit portion is nearly equal if not equal to the AP contribution itself. Add to that the haste and then the majority of the Mongoose benefit scales as a percentage. Certainly is greater than half.

For example, using the default current sheet, just switching it to Offensive and unhiding DamageCalcs to look at relative AP values...

AP = 1
Agility = 2.21
Haste = 2.10

Mongoose gives 120 Agility and 2% Haste (or 31.54 Haste Rating)
Which gives...
120 Agility (AP only) = 120
120 Agility (Crit fraction) = 120*1.21 = 145.2
Haste rating = 31.54 * 2.10 = 66.2

AP (linear portion) = 120
Crit/Haste (% portion) = 211.4
Total = 331.4 AP Equivalent of which 63.8% scales well (not 1/3 to 1/2)

When I was looking at the percent changes I was looking at all parts of the damage a raiding rogue has. For instance the haste only applies to your white damage which is roughly 60%. The crit applies to the white damage and SS damage, but not rupture. This for me atleast meant that at low APs you would see that the non AP benifit would be 1/3 and at high APs you would see the same part being > 50% of the benifit of mongoose. The AP ranges I looked at went from 1400 to 3800, as when fully raid buffed I'm sure some rogues are getting up there and I wanted to look at beyond what you would normally see to find any trends I could.

Would the AP not be scaled up to 1.1 due to Blessing of Kings? I was under the impression that the +120 Agility is actually +132 in a raid situation. Not that it would make a huge difference anyway (unless the crit component is then scaled down to 1.11 instead of 1.21).

Or is BoK accounted for in the initial weightings already?

My weighings came from the Attack power equivalencies in the default Gear sheet with equipment as it had been saved (switched to total offensive setting to take dodge effects out of the equation). Blessing of Kings is marked active on the sheet so that is accounted for in those numbers.

So to answer your question, it's already accounted for. 2.21 is Agility expressed as an attack power equivalency and 2.10 is Haste relative to attack power with the default gear and buff options as saved in the sheet as downloaded. The 1.21 comes from (2.21 - 1) as we can subtract the attack power portion of agility off the equivalence. Or in other words, 1.21 of that 2.21 is coming from the additional % to crit, while 1 of that 2.21 is from attack power (as 1 attack power is clearly equivalent to 1 attack power). It might have been more clear if I had expressed the 120 as (120 * 1) to show that its relative to the attack power contribution.

I understood that you were taking 1 (the AP component) away from the total weight. I was just confused as to whether that Agility value of 2.21 AP Equivilance was including the extra AP added through BoK.

If the AP value of BoK'd Agility is worth 1 AP Equivilancy then basically 1 AP would actually be 0.909 recurring AP Equivilancy. That seems a little counter-intuitive is all. If I was told that BoK'd Agility was worth 2.21 AP then I would assume that the AP component of that 1.1 (IE the Crit component would be 2.21-1.1 = 1.11). That would lower the crit/haste fraction of the Mongoose benefit.

AP (Linear) 120*1.1 = 132

Crit (Scaling) 120*1.11 = 133.2
Haste (Scaling) 31.54*2.1 = 66.2

Total Scaling = 199.4
Total = 331.4

Scaling fraction = 60.2% (instead of 63.8%)
Linear fraction = 39.8% (intead of 36.2%)

It's not a lot different but it's significant.

Yes and No, you will get the same increase in SS damage from Mongoose at all gear levels, and the value scales up with gear (aka you will gain more total DPS from a mongoose proc with 30% crit then with 25% crit), however, the increase in stats from Mongoose is static aka, it is always 120 Agi and 2% haste, whereas Executioner is a % increase in both white and SS damage (not poison or rupture). So for the same reason hit is typically worth more then AP beyond a certain point of inflection, because it is a % increase instead of a flat increase, Executioner passes Mongoose at a certain level of gear due to the fact that it doesn't have a fixed component. The amount Executioner increases DPS by is based on the bosses current armor, so depending on gear, debuffs, etc, the value can vary significantly (I have a BoI with both Executioner and Mongoose, that I swap based on the boss and raid configuration).

This seems correct to me. If BoK is turned on, then you have to account for it in determining what fraction of the agility to attribute as equivalent AP. Incidentally, you'd also have to account for Vitality or Sinister Calling, if those talents were in place. However, Vitality would be only a 4% boost and Sinister Calling isn't modeled on that sheet (last I checked), so they wouldn't be quite as important to account for.

EDIT: It also seems to me that once you take out the attack power portion of the "points", the leftover "crit" part should match up to the value of crit rating in a predictable fashion. IE, you should be able to take the remaining point portion, divide by any %AGI gains (BoK, Vitality), then multiply by the ratio of AGI->Crit% vs. Crit Rating->Crit% and the result should be the same as 1 point of crit rating. If it doesn't, then chances are AGI is getting weighted incorrectly somehow (or that we are missing a factor of gain from agility somehow).

EDIT #2: Putting in a second edit rather than making a new post. I just took a few minutes to come up with the calculation I was trying to describe above.

Assumptions:

• BoK is active
• Vitality is taken as a talent

Equivalency Calcs:
Thanks to Aldriana for catching the error w/ Vitality

Directly, 1 AGI is worth 1.122 Attack Power
1 AGI * 1.1 (BoK) * 1.02 (Vitality) = 1.122 APEP

1 AGI is worth 0.622 Crit Rating
(1 AGI * 1.1 (BoK) * 1.02 (Vitality) )/40 ~= 0.0281% crit
1 CR/22.1 ~= +0.0452% crit
0.0281/0.0452 ~= 0.622
1 AGI ~= 0.622 CR

Further using the CR -> APEP conversion given the numbers on the sheet...
1 AGI is worth APEP via the +crit contribution
1.752 (APEP of 1 CR) * 0.622 (CR/AGI) ~= 1.090 APEP

1.122 (AP portion) + 1.090 (CR portion) = 2.212 APEP per point of agility

The sheet actually assigns AGI a value of 2.207 APEP (a bit less than my predicted value), but this is close enough to be within rounding errors. (I did a good bit of rounding.) They are close enough to say that using the default gear in the sheet, roughly the DPS gain of any AGI increase will be from increased crit, and the other half from increased AP. This means that over half of Mongoose scales up with gear (the crit and haste portions), while slightly less than half gives a static benefit (the AP portion).

D'oh! Thanks for the catch. Yeah, that puts it within rounding error for napkin math; I'll correct my post.

Thanks for the spreadsheet, Aldriana.
After downloading your spreadsheet and looking at the numbers, it seems that my optimal hit is much lower than I thought it should be. Is the goal to get as close to the optimal hit through gems and enchants as possible?

I just brought my hit down from 313 to 242, in strict obedience to the spreadsheet, though I find it rather disconcerting to lose so much hit, now that I'm farming T6 areas with some of of the best rogues on my server.

In book form I'm sure this thread would end up being over 300 pages long, so I'm not ashamed to admit that I've only read some of it, not all. This subject must have been brought up before (like the fact that the top rogues in the best guild in the world all have over 300 hit). Can you or anyone reiterate the argument (it must have been compelling) for moving so far away from +hit?

Thanks

By the way, if sword rogues are doing 2-3% more damage in comparable gear, then Blizzard has made a profound mistake. Swords are for leveling, farming, and are there as another option for raiding. Daggers are more fun, more challenging, more rewarding, and bring out the essence of the rogue...stealth, subtlety, and devastating burst damage in pve or pvp.
Remember when they nerfed weapon expertise to no longer reduce the severity of the damage reduction of glancing blows? That was because at the time the weapon skill talent deep in the combat tree had become so powerful that pve rogues had no other option but to spec combat. There were no choices because any other spec was getting beaten so easily. Now Blizzard has done their best to create dps parity, not just between rogue specs but also between the classes as a whole. Of course, now we know that they overlooked swords. But I don't think it will last.

whoops, double post

I don't know what you're talking about with Weapon Expertise. You have a lot of opinions stated as fact, but the change to weapon skill affecting glancing blows did NOTHING to change combat's PVE sustained DPS superiority. The only major shift in rogue "dps parody" (I think you mean parity) was the recent changes to hemo, which does not alter the basic answer of rogue spec questions "go combat" but merely changes it to a matter of degree (i.e. "How deep in combat should I go?")

Also, I'm not sure who you're alluding to in your post about the "top rogues in the best guild in the world", but I'm going to assume it's Nihilum, to which I'll say - world firsts are not generally about 2-3% differences in DPS. Raiding 7(?) nights a week will have MUCH more effect on progress than even 10% extra DPS. World firsts are about coordination and dedication, not optimization. Now, I will admit that their rogues obviously cannot SUCK, but we're talking about the last 5% of a rogue's DPS, at which point differences like slight changes in dps due to gem choices (especially at a hit/Agi inflection point where they're so close in value to one another) just won't make that major of a difference.

I personally tend to gem with agi/hit in everything, regardless of the spreadsheet's whims, because it values the 8 agi, 4agi/4hit, and 8hit gems very very close for my gear.

Please leave this kind of crap on the WoW forums, where intelligent people won't have to read it.

Couple of points here:

1) Just so we're clear, "optimal" hit in the spreadsheet doesn't mean "the best amount of hit to have", it means "if you socket everything 100% optimally, this is what your hit will be". I'm not sure if you were unclear on that or not, but I figured I'd throw it out there.

2) As an addendum to Shaker's point: there are actually some reasonably ignorant rogues in top-end guilds; success is correlated more strongly with playtime than game knowledge. The knowledge helps, to be sure; but playing 50 hours a week will get you through endgame bosses faster than any amount of theoretical knowledge if you only play 20 hours a week - as exhibited by such errors as the following:

*One of the Nihilum rogues, a while back, posted a guide indicating that Dragonspine Trophy was the 3rd best rogue trinket, behind Madness of the Betrayer and Ashtongue Talisman of Lethality. Spreadsheets tell us that this basically isn't true for anyone.

*In the early days of the expansion (like, around the time of the world first Hydross kill), I armoried one of the Death and Taxes rogues (this being back in the era with D+T was still getting world firsts), and saw him wielding Spiteblade MH/Hope Ender OH. Even in those early days of expansion theorycraft, it was well established that OH weapon speed was very important... my off-the-cuff estimate at the time was that he would have been better off using a [Proximo's Rudius] rather than Hope Ender.

*Or as an example closer to home: I have been told by rogues in my own guild (which, while not quite on the level of Nihilum or D+T, is still a fairly respectable guild that has now killed Illidan over 20 times) that they select gear by - and I quote - "how much of a woody I get while looking at it". There's no analysis going into at all; they just pick based on guy instinct.

Point being: being in an advanced guild does not guarantee theoretical knowledge of the game. For theoretical background, you're better off coming here for advice than going to any rogue in a high-end guild.

3) Addressing the actual point about hit: this is a matter that a lot of people, even in the theorycraft community, seem to have trouble with; I admit it's a subtle one, but it's very important to understand.

Hit is just a number. Damage is what matters.

Hit is a beneficial stat that tends to appear on lots of items that have good DPS scores. However, there is nothing magical about it; there is no critical amount of hit that you absolutely must have to deal good damage. It's true that if you select the highest-damage gear available to you, you will tend to have 200+ hit rating; but that doesn't mean you need 200 hit to do good damage; it means that if you select good gear, you tend to have high hit rating.

I've heard rogues make comments like the following: "I know item A is better, but I'm going to use item B instead because I need the hit." This drives me nuts. If item A is better, it's better. You'll do more damage with it. Why, then, would you choose to do less damage in order to make one of the numbers on your character screen larger?

So, to answer the question: your hit goes down because you are using better, higher damage gear, that happens to get that damage from stats other than hit; hence, you do more damage, but have less hit. Some high-end Illidan rogues have 300+ hit, either because A) the gear/socketing they've chosen happens to have that much, or B) because they're stupid and are using suboptimal gear so as to have a larger number on their character screen. Either way, it's nothing to worry about; after all, hit is just a number. Damage is what matters.

This is where this spreadsheet delivers as promised, it gives you a pretty good idea of what items are better than others in terms of your current stat distribution and spec. It's by no means an universal source of incredible DPS but will certainly help you improve if you are new to the end game PVE.

Feature request for woodiness to be included in the next version of the spreadsheet please.

Our MT is about -800 DKP just because he loves to look good...even if it cloth/leather/mail healing or caster gear. lol, so for him "woodiness" is DEF an issue.

I was wondering if it was worth running ZA for the 2 armor pen pieces ring/bow to replace the exalted hyjal ring and twisted blades of zarak, i have all the other armor pen pieces and trinket from bt and exec on MH. Just want some opinions thx

Use the spreadsheet.