Hrm.. coulda sworn DT never proc'd WSC, and at 20+ attacks... maybe I just missed one and/or wasn't paying attention to the CD on WSC enough and my actual number of eligible attacks was much lower. Thanks for the input.

WSC procs on EVERYTHING. It procs off of Sap for godssake.

I was about to say that, I got a WSC proc off a Sap yesterday. Why it wouldnt proc off other special attacks such as DT?

Yeah, what I was thinking is testing where you are acutally doing damage. I know the blasted lands mobs don't let you do that and I assume the Dire Maul ones are the same. Not sure if they will be particularly useful ever, just throwing it out there incase they could be.

On the WSC procing off everything, Aldriana and myself tested it and neither of us saw it proc off SnD, so it is reasonable to assume that there could be other finishers that it does not proc off of. I suspect it will proc off everyone that does something to a mob, where SnD does something to you.

Yeah, I think the item text for [Warp-Spring Coil] is actually accurate in that Slice and Dice is not a "special attack" but rather a self-buff and, so, does not trigger the trinket. It would be interesting to also explore trinket behavior on less aggressive finishing moves that may still count as "attacks" such as Expose Armor and Kidney Shot.

Playing around with the spreadsheet, I notice Shoulderpads of the Stranger are for all intents and purposes, better than Deathmantle. Due to the Expertise, that really comes as no surprise to me. I have SotS bagged and ready to equip once I can replace Al'ar's gloves with T6. Maybe this week... fingers crossed.

The question I have revolves around the Expertise "cap". I am currently capped (possibly over-capped) at ~6.5%... haven't seen a dodge (WWS parses) since 2.3. I'm using Al'ar gloves & vashj belt, plus of course the human racial. That being said, if I remove the expertise from SotS, I come out ~1:1 vs Deathmantle. Yet, the spreadsheet shows them as an ~8 DPS upgrade. So I'm wondering if the sheet "sees" the cap or not?

BTW, thank you for putting such a wonderful tool together. I find it invaluable!

As to the spreadsheet not accounting for the cap, that seems to be the case. I set my current weapon to have 500 expertise and checked my dps, then bumped it up to 1000 expertise and my dps kept going up, despite (clearly) being past the cap. Hit rating does however become worthless past cap in the spreadsheet.

Edit: Figures... beat me to it :P

Looking forward to the new sheet, thanks again.

I got a WSC proc off Expose armor, and I got mongoose off KS, I did not bother to see if KS would proc WSC as I didn't feel like waiting for the cooldown many many times. However when I saw mongoose procs WSC proced for those finishers as well.

I just recently got the Chest piece from FLK and was wondering if it is worth replacing my t4 chest piece with and lose

the t4 two set bonus?

I hear the spreadsheet has a good answer to that question.

In a general sense.. FLK chest > T5 even. If you can hold onto any 2 of T4 shoulder/helm/gloves (pants if you don't have skulker).. you might consider that. Often 2pc T4 isn't worth breaking until you have 4pc T5, however if you have most/all of the T5-equivalent offset pieces, you might be fine. Also, it depends on your spec. Most of that ^^ assumes combat swords (or fist/mace I guess.... a sinister strike build w/ proper talent points).

But again, spreadsheet.

Think of it this way. The spreadsheet is the sum of all known theorycrafting. It is automatically more correct than any piece of calculation that one of us could spend a couple of hours hashing out - it has a lot more game mechanics and theorycrafting taken into account.

Every game mechanic you can think of is accounted for by the spreadsheet. The same is true for a large number of valid and known game mechanics you wouldn't think to ask about.

It is not perfect, but it is the best tool we have by a good margin.

Items may individually be better than the T4 piece, but the T4 bonus is powerful, and losing it loses you overall dps. The chest is a very good item, and you'll probably want to use it - if you can keep the T4 bonus using different items, such as perhaps the T4 legs. Try out different scenarios using the spreadsheet.

Not to push this issue much further, but last night in Dire Maul I decided to test this again. I did over 60 deadly throws and not a single one proc'd WSC. Any time the SS/Shiv I used to get the combo point would proc WSC and I'd simply wait until the CD was gone. Even if I occasionally didn't wait long enough - after 60 deadly throws you'd think at least *1* would proc. Consider the 25% chance to proc, well 0.75 ^ 60 isn't exactly great odds for "It might still proc!". I did get 2x DST procs though. It seems weird that it wouldn't proc WSC.. it is a special attack. And yea, everything from sap to Expose Armor to.. you name it.. procs WSC otherwise. Basically anything which applies to the target, and not a self-buff. I wonder if Blade flurry attacks have a chance to proc it...

That said, this whole thing doesn't really matter in terms of a DPS modeling, as DT (or almost all of these other abilities) aren't modeled in a consistent long-term DPS scenario.

All of the above is indeed true and the spreadsheet can -- and usually should -- be trusted. In case the others did not hit upon your question, the reason the 2-piece tier 4 set bonus is powerful is because it allows the rogue to shorten his/her cycles down to 1s/5r or 2s/5r. Essentially what this means is that it enables you to redistribute energy use towards rupture uptime whereas before you would need to use that energy for a longer slice and dice. Without the 2-piece tier 4 set bonus, most sword rogues will find themselves falling somewhere between 3s/5r and 4s/5r while [Ashtongue Talisman of Lethality] users go for 5s/5r. The details behind this have been explained several times in different threads and I am confident that you can find it with a little search effort. ;-)

Version 0.9.2, 1/7/08:

Excel Version: Free file hosting by Savefile.com
OO Version: Free file hosting by Savefile.com

*Fixed bug that was causing Expertise to increase crit chance.
*Added Expertise cap.
*Fixed bug that would sometimes cause the 5s sheet to overestimate the damage of that cycle.

Is there a method for bulk copying over added pieces of armor from an old version of the spreadsheet? I've tried copying and pasting and get N/A errors for the rank column. It usually appears for the last couple of items per slot and not necessarily for the items I've added.

So, at least part of the difference is going to be the fact that Spicy Hot Talbuk is one of the default buffs, so if you haven't changed that the 316 hit is going to be counting 20 hit from that. As for what the other 8 difference is... I can't imagine. I'd start by doublechecking your gemming to make sure you have them all in correctly; if that's not it, I'd have to see your copy of the sheet to diagnose it further.

ok, I"m having trouble with the new version. How do I expose items that aren't in the dropdown menu or how do I add items to the list of things to choose from?

Check the drop zone selector.

Shameless outdated copy & paste incoming...

So if you want to add [Master Assassin Wristwraps] to any spreadsheet, you will have to open the spreadsheet.

(Using german version of excel, trying to translate to english)

- Format -> Sheet -> Show -> Armor -> klick 'OK'

- Find Nightfall Bracers (line 68) -> copy whole line by clicking on the 68 and hitting CTRL + C -> right-click the 68 and select "paste cells"

- Rename Cell A68 to Master Assassin Wristwraps
- Change J68 to 17 (Agi), M68 to 50 (AP), N68 to 18 (crit), AC68 to 1 (yellow socket), AK68 to 2 (socket bonus 2 crit), BL68 (drop source) doesnt need to be changed (clever me took a heroic item to copy paste Wink )

- hide the armor page (or leave it there if you want to add more armors)
- save sheet

- you can now select the new item like any other item from the drop down.

So, I know that it is typically reccomended to drop 2 pc t4 when you get 4/5 t5. I'm just a bit confused then why the sheet values t5 gloves at 55 ap and the 2 piece t4 as only 51 ap. I'm currently using Head/Gloves of t4. I don't think there is much different in the sheet that I changed. I put Spinesever back to the un-nerfed state (I don't like thinking about mine getting nerfed) and put in my gear and buffs. Though I must have done something, because Deathmantle chest is also reading as better than Bloodsea Brigand's, which I'm pretty sure is not the case. Only thing I can think of is the sheet is telling me to socket with agi over hit.

On a side note I have noticed that either as newer versions have come out, or as my gear improved, not sure which but one of the two has slowly lowered 2pc t4 from the 70 or so I remember it at to the 50 it is now.

One last thing, would it be possible to change the recomended trinkets to detect what trinkets you are wearing, I've got WSC and Bloodlust brooch and it keeps telling me to get DST and WSC.

One thing to note is that the relative value of the 2pc T4 set bonus is going to get lower as the 'cost' of moving towards a 5s/5r cycle gets lower. That is, if 5s/5r gives better DPS than 1s/5r, and it's sustainable w/o 2pc T4 (which it is), then the 2pc T4 set bonus has 0 real value. As you get better gear, you move further toward a point where your Sinister Strikes do enough damage to outweigh the lost rupture DPS, and I think that's what you're seeing.

Also, the 2pc T4 till 4pc T5 thing still SORT of holds (though is MUCH weaker with S3 hat/chest/shoulders being near T5). The gloves are a big upgrade, for sure (~50 points alone), but the leggings are generally around 20, so you can just go back from T5 legs to T4 legs to "gain" 30 EAP if it recovers the bonus. This is a position that I'm also in at this time. :P I have S3 Helm/Chest, Shoulderpads of the Stranger, T5 legs, and all 5 T4 pieces - at this point the optimal setup for me is to use the T4 legs/gloves, till I get T5 gloves, and then at that point it's more optimal for me to use S3 helm/chest, SotStranger, and T5 Gloves/pants.

So, the point here is that while there are single items of T5 that beat single items in T4 pretty badly, you can get those upgrades and still keep 2/5 T4 for a while; you can be wearing up to 3 pieces of T5 and still maintain 2/5 T4. So, while it's true that replacing T4 gloves with T5 and breaking the bonus is an upgrade, it's also true that switching to T5 gloves and reverting some other slot to T4 to keep the bonus is a still larger upgrade. Now, not all people have all of T4, and even if you do there are certainly gear combinations you might have that would cause it to make sense to break the bonus sooner. However, as a general rule, if you have all of T4, you can generally find some 2-piece combo that's worth it until you make it up to 4/5 T5.

It's probably your gear improving. At lower levels of itemization T4 2/5 is worth more; as your gear scales, the advantage of compressing your cycle drops considerably. For instance, in my current gear, T4 2/5 is only worth 18 AP. If I had Warglaives, it would only be worth 11 AP. And if you work a little bit, you can come up with gear sets where T4 2/5 is totally useless.

Yeah, trinket and ring recommendations are on my list of things that in an ideal world would get fixed. Also on that list:

Stat Summary blocks
Friendlier UI to access the next-stat information
Socketed Weapon
Restructure recommendation system so it doesn't zero out the value of equipped items from ineligible zones
Replace buff yes/no dropdowns with checkboxes.
Model Shadowstep contribution to DPS (it's actually pretty hard and makes almost no difference whatsoever, but I'd still like to do it)

...and possibly a few others that I'm forgetting right now.

Unfortunately, I have neither time nor inclination to work through that list right now; bugfixes is about all I have time for, between work and... shall we say... other theorycraft related topics. I have had a few people talk to me about assisting with/taking over development of the sheet, but I haven't totally decided what I want to do about that; when/if such an arrangement takes place, some of these features might start to show up; until then, they are pretty unlikely.