If you're sustaining 5/5/3 without 2/3 ruthlessness, I'm impressed...

Assuming no 2/5 Netherblade, a 5 pt SnD lasts 30.45 seconds, and a 3 point SnD lasts 21.75 seconds. Thus the total SnD uptime is 52.2 seconds, in which time one needs to land 13 Backstabs (costing 780 energy) plus 10 extra energy (on average) for the 3-pt SnD. Hence, to sustain 5/5/3 with no SnD downtime, one would need to generate 790 energy every 52.2 seconds, or roughly 15.1 energy per second. Base regen is 10 energy per second (or 10.5 if you factor in AR, which you probably shouldn't given in the interest of measuring sustained cycles, but what the heck, I'll give it to you). So that means combat potency would need to replenish 4.6 energy per second, which requires 1.54 offhand hits per second. Due to the base 5% dodge rate, this means you need to launch 1.62 offhand attacks per second.

The fastest possible dagger OH is 1.3 speed; to launch 1.62 OH attacks per second with such a weapon would require attacking at 2.11 times the normal speed. SnD gives 1.3x, Blade Flurry (again, not really fair to include for sustained cycles, but whatever) gives 1.025x, and typical mongoose uptime for 2 weapons gives another (roughly) 1.02x. Hence, one would need to get 55.5% haste from haste rating - also known as 584 haste rating. Dragonspine and Thundering Skyfire together give maybe 200. So unless there's some way to pick up 384 haste rating from gear, 5/5/3 is *not* sustainable without Ruthlessness - at least, not without dropping SnD uptime. Hence, 2/3 Ruthlessness is required to allow 5/5/3 as a reasonable cycle.

As for why not 3/3 - well, 2/3 *is* enough for 5/5/3, and getting 3/3 would require taking points out of Imp Backstab (bad), Relentless Strikes (worse), or Lethality... but since there's no cycles opened up by 3/3, I'd rather have the extra point in Lethality.

Yeah, I'd like to allow more flexibility in talents - particularly in the marginal cases like Ruthlessness that not everyone is going to agree with (like, I don't think anyone is going to complain that I'm assuming Combat Swords rogues take Imp SnD, Imp SS, and Combat Potency... I mean, really...). However, for simplicity in the initial draft, I needed to force everyone to use the same cycles, and the easiest way to do that was to force everyone to use the same talents, regardless of gear. Ultimately, it could be set up to support any gear/talent combination that happens to be able to support the cycle in question, but it turns out to be a somewhat challenging feature to add.

Long story short: it's on the list, but, honestly, not very high on it right now. Particularly since the dagger cycles need to be changed at some point anyway.

I see your common sense and answer with this!

If I use the Spreadsheet unmodified in it's actual version (2.2.5a) as the optimum cycle it says 1s/5r snd cut. If I now change the mh to a dagger it's 5s/4r. I understand the latter to be used all the way through static fights but what about the former? Shall one really keep an 1s/5r cycle up or is this just to get started with and then to be switched to 5/5 or something?

To be more precise, what exactly stands "snd cut" for in comparision to the old declaration just as the cycle?

Thanks a lot but I'm still a little confused. So it is really recommended to use a 1s/5r rotation as a sword build?
As a sidenote I just noticed I posted in the wrong thread, sorry for that I!

Wow... he's combat daggers with no imp BS and no Opportunity o_O. He has imp SS though. I hope it's not his primary attack.

Serious question then: how many fights qualify as "long enough"?

You mention four - Magtheridon, Hydross, Leotheras and Karathress. Don't all four of these fights have adds and/or diffrerent phases that require you to move in and out of melee ramge and/or switch target?

It seems to me that any fight with multiple targets or multiple phases is better modelled as multiple short fights than as one long fight. Maybe not from the point of view of cooldowns and trinkets, but certainly for the ramp-up times of poisons and cycles.

Is there any likelihood of being able to generate a spreadsheet that can cope with 1min, 2min... etc fights? Or is it just not amenable to that kind of analysis?

Morogrim is the new DPS test fight I guess. It's 10 minutes (more if you're slow) where the rogues do not move, and his back is turned the entire fight. You get entombed in a water bubble for about 10 seconds a couple times during the fight though.

So, an answer in a couple parts:

Depending on your guild's strategy and luck, Magtheridon, Tidewalker, and Hydross are all decently approximated by 10 min uninterrupted dps. Karathress is perhaps more accurately 4 fights each 2-3 min long, and Leotharas is just plain interrupted and spotty. Void Reaver has frequent interruptions but said interruptions are fairly short. And I haven't seen any of the other fights in the expansion yet - perhaps someone in a more advanced guild than I (koaschten, perhaps?) can comment on the nature of the later TK fights and/or Hyjal and Black Temple.

So, while there are certainly some fights that are highly interrupted, there are also quite a few that aren't. So a purely sustained model is somewhat reasonable for a nontrivial number of fights in the expansion. Hence, the sustained model does have some value.

Admittedly, however, it would be potentially worthwhile to deal with shorter and/or more interrupted fights than this spreadsheet is designed to handle. To be perfectly honest, this is exactly the complaint I raised against the initial Rogue DPS spreadsheet when I first saw it - consider, for instance, the following statement by me in my guild forums, last October:

Now, looking back: 1) I was overstating the case slightly and 2) I think this is less true now than it was then, but I'm certainly willing to concede that it's a valid gripe.

The problem is: computing anything else is a whole heck of a lot harder. My solution to the problem then was to totally neglect any notion of cycles and just straight parse fights to figure out how often I was using each attack, and a parameter in the spreadsheet that allowed me to tweak this value to customize gear to each fight. The problem is, many of the newer effects and abilities (notably, haste procs such as Mongoose/Dragonspine Trophy/Thundering Skyfire Diamond and energy procs like Combat Potency) just cannot be modeled through these approaches, because they fundamentally change the ratio of white to yellow attacks. Hence, the approach of counting attacks just doesn't work - one actually needs to look at the attack order and cycles. But to come up with general cycles - across a range of gear selection - for a fight only one or two minutes long, turns out to be extremely challenging. And even if you figure it out for 1 min fights, you'd need to figure it out again for 2 min fights, and for 3 min fights, and for fights separated by 15 seconds, or 1 min, or 5 min. And unless you do this all carefully and precisely, the answers you get aren't really going to be any better.

Finally: even assuming I did know how to write a tool more specific to short fights, and that such a thing would be more accurate for significant numbers of fights, I'm honestly not sure if it's worth the effort. This sheet is designed as a tool, not the ultimate answer to all questions rogue. It will, in general terms, allow you to compare gear, and help you towards optomizing your DPS while maintaining survivability - but I make no claims that it's accurate to more than a couple AP-equivalent anyway. For the general sorts of comparisons it's designed for (i.e. is it worth losing the WW 2/5 bonus to upgrade WW shoulders to Deathmantle) it's going to give answers that are just as helpful as the more focused tool. And for the more subtle questions (which is better, Veteran's Musket or Prince Bow) where the answer is only 2-3 EAP apart, I wouldn't trust any spreadsheet to always get the answer right.

So, stated briefly: while this sheet isn't a 100% accurate model of all possible cases, I believe it is sufficiently close to still be a useful tool - such that I don't think it warrants the (considerable) effort it would require to make a good interrupted-fight SS.

Version 0.5 is ready for your consumption.

We were unable to resolve all the issues with OO compatability, so as a quick fix I generated a second version of the sheet that works in OO (but not Excel). Hence, there are two download links:

Excel Version: http://www.savefile.com/files/772881
OpenOffice Version: http://www.savefile.com/files/772887

Changes:
*Sheet now supports mixing weapons of different types (i.e. Sword MH and Dagger OH, or vice versa)
*Socketing has been redone - this should resolve the issues with socketing in the previous verison.
*More accurate model of Windfury added
*Sword Spec adjusted to reflect the fact that Sword Spec hits are yellow attacks and cannot glance.
*Assorted bugs in calculation sheets corrected.
*"Optimal" and "Suggested Upgrade" columns should now give more accurate values.
*New items added.
*Thundering Skyfire Diamond updated to have a 40 sec internal cooldown; this is an approximate value until the behavior is totally modeled, but it more accurately reflects the power of the gem than did the old model.
*Issue with enchants of the same name has been corrected.
*Indicator of current hit rating and whether you are at the hit cap added to main page.
*And probably some other stuff too - I don't recall everything that's been changed over the last couple weeks.

Whenever I put in Shard-Bound Bracer, the entire sheet goes crazy and returns #N/A for all cells.