You should check the spreadsheet and plug your gear in for a easy answer. However, the answer is no, if you have sword specialization in your build, you always want a offhand sword. There are viable variations involving fist/sword mace/sword, but using a dagger is inferior. One of the major selling points of sword specialization is the fact that a fast offhand can proc a much more harder hitting mainhand.
My suggestion to you is to keep moving with what you have, and check the spreadsheet to verify this.

I figured as much. I'll just keep moving with this until Mother Sharaz drops the next offhand.

Thanks.

Keep the swords.

So, was poking at the sheet today, and I had a couple of thoughts that I wanted to solicit opinions/feedback about.

1) It was suggested that Might of the Scourge be added to the sheet, which is a reasonable shoulder-enchantment option even at this point. The issue is that, as it *is* the best available shoulder enchant, it will show up as a the recommended shoulder enchant for, basically, everyone. Thus, the Talents_equipment page recommendations would always show you as wanting to pick up a Sapphiron drop. How do people feel about this?

2) It occurred to me that Expertise might be slightly misvalued due to the realities of the mechanics. Since bosses that cast random secondary abilities can generate the occasional parry as well as dodges, the true value of Expertise might be a little higher; but since bosses can't dodge (or parry) while casting, it might prove to be lower as well. Both of these effects can be modeled, I just don't know how big of an effect each has. Does anyone have reasonable data about what the actual average dodge and parry rates look like relative to the theoretical?

1) I think it should recommend it as the best shoulder enchant if it is the best shoulder enchant. Maybe include a selection box like you currently do for BT, MH, Craftable, etc, to disable "Pre-BC" loot from appearing on the recommended list. However, for those truly min-maxing, I would think the sheet should give me the best choice from all the gear available to me.

2)I would think it all comes down to a wash. Isn't the basic premise of the DPS model that we're infinitely DPS'ing a boss mob from behind that wouldn't turn around at all? Basically we're wondering what our punching bag DPS would be. I don't think there's a lot of value in knowing specifically "what gearset gives me maximal DPS on Naj'entus or Illidan or whatever?" We don't need to customize the boss modeling to approximate a specific boss. In the same vein, we don't attempt to approximate the average amount of DPS lost during boss fights where the boss is mobile or restricts movement to it's back and dagger rogues can't backstab.

That's my 2c

This might have been mentioned already but I didn't read through all of it.

I haven't seen anything that will help you count for the benefits of haste and armor penetration. For example I know that armor pen allows for more damage the more you stack it. Same goes for haste. So I have been sacrificing hit for haste and armor pen and doing fairly well but am unsure when enough is enough. Is there a haste or armor pen cap? I know hit is 363 and I heard somewhere that haste is 140. Is there any way to get the spreadsheet to reflect these two attributes?

Oh, and wtf is Muramasa it was under MH Sword. I've never even heard of that and Wowhead hasn't either....

It's from this screenshot which, while not official in any way, does contain any number of items that turned out to be real with the exact stats stated; thus, my initial skepticism notwithstanding, it seems fairly likely that it will turn out to be a drop from the later parts of Sunwell, with M'uru being the obvious choice.

Ah nice! I'd love to see what that beast looks like! lol

Also, back to the haste and armor pen question. I have most of the ZA/badge gear and have been using that set instead of t4. This, as I had stated has be sacrificing my hit but gaining the aformentioned stats. Is there any way to have the spreadsheet keep that in mind? Cause having haste and armor pen is really only good if you stack it from what I hear. In the end I just want to know if I should just go back to hit gear or keep trying to stack the other two instead.

You should use what's best for each slot. ArPen does scale with itself, but not so strongly that you should use inferior items just to stack it. Whatever the sheet scores highly is likely to be good.

It also might be noted that Haste doesn't actually have positive scaling with itself - only ArPen does. But regardless, I wouldn't overthink the situation - it's generally pretty clear what the best available option is for a given slot, as the stats don't change in relative value as quickly as you might think due to the scaling of gear.

And I also noticed that a lot of peices the Vengeful Glad item was better than most of the other PvE gear. Is that REALLY the case? For example: I have Grimgrin, Netherblade, AND s3 head peice...and I never would have thought that the s3 would have been the best choice of the 3. I have actually been using Grimgrin...

What are your thoughts?

...and increasing from X to X+1 also increase the DPS contribution of, um, just about every other stat there is; hence, measured in equivalence points, the value of haste actually decreases the more you stack it.

Preliminary information about the Shard of Contempt;

*NOTE* - This is not isolated testing. This is me parsing the new 2.4 combat logs with an analysis tool that I'm working on. This information may be completely wrong. I'm happy to provide any and all logs to people to do their own analysis.

Shard of Contempt dropped on my first Heroic MgT run (makes up for my DST luck I suppose) and I just equipped it for a following Normal MgT run. I'm running my normal gear (mongoosex2, band of devastation, tuskbreaker, 49 passive HR).

What I can say is;

0. Why on earth did they call this buff "Heroism" - gaaah.

1. The time on the buff is indeed 20 seconds.
2. The shortest time from APPLY to APPLY is under 60 seconds
3. The shortest time from REMOVE to APPLY is under 45 seconds

I'm writing some more code now to get some exact numbers - this was just from me eyeballing the extracted AURA (45053) applies and removes.

Edit: (My codemonkey hacking produces)

MAXDURATION (longest APPLY to REMOVE) = 19860
Min APPLY distance (start to start) = 44922
Min downtime (buff finishes to new one starting) = 25375

Well, if you haven't seen it, there's a new set of Fists dropping off of Hyjal trash,(The Fists of Fury - Item Sets - World of Warcraft - Wowhead doesn't seem to have the individual stats yet) which, while the look like shaman pieces, are itemized in a pretty roguecentric manner, with a 1.5 offhand. I got lucky with rolls and picked up the fullset tonite, and figured I'd spend a little while beating on a blasted lands mob to get a procrate estimate.


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That's a combat log of about 1500 attacks, weapon speeds of 2.7/1.5 with 25 passive haste. Looks like the proc can crit (chance seems to be very low though), and can also be fully resisted.

If there's anything else you'd like me to do with these, please do tell.

With Sunwell, the new instance in 2.4, there will be MANY new upgrades for rogues. So far I've only seen a few BT pieces that are still worth keeping. I have also noticed that the 2 new pieces from leatherworking, chest and gloves, are going to be the best in the game...which I personally think is BS but that's besides the point. Since I haven't seen all of the new gear added into a spreadsheet yet I would greatly appreciate it if somebody could post what they believe to be is the best piece of gear for each slot. I already spent hours looking at the new pieces and have an almost 90% positive feeling that what I have is correct but I would like to see what others think so that it can be discussed to ensure that it is actually correct.

I believe all the known gear from Sunwell is present in the 0.9.5 beta that Aldriana posted a few pages back. Check it out if you want to test them out. However, most of the "best in slot" pieces are quite obvious based solely on AEP.

Also, [Gloves of Immortal Dusk] (the new LW gloves) is BOE, so no need to complain. LW only gets one exclusive piece, as does Jewelcrafting.

I think you answered your own question.. you see a net gain in DPS by regemming. If you want to spend the epic gems to do it, have at.

While the spreadsheet is very good, I wouldn't spend mats / gems / etc relying on it being accurate for a .1% difference in estimated DPS. That's also well under the expected margin for error in any fight in the game- getting to the mob a split second earlier, or being a hair luckier with crits or timing your cooldowns will be far more important than regemming, in this case.

Thats because 5 hit -5 agi gets buffed from Kings, if you not having Kings 10 hit is better. Aldrianas spreadsheet also says 10 agi is even more dps with Kings then 5 agi - 5 hit. However with my gear the different was max 2 buffed dps. So it doesnt really matter what you gem.

Something I saw that wasn't in here yet was the new badge gear getting released when people finish the Sunwell events. Is there an ETA when the next update will be so I can start calculating which piece of badge gear to get first?

The beta version has em: http://elitistjerks.com/663535-post2275.html

I just saw these as well. In particular, there was discussion a while back about Fist/Sword spec given the new badge fists. I've heard that there's a blue post saying that unlocking the badge vendor is supposed to take a month or so (though my server is ahead of that schedule). Anyway, given that the badge vendor won't open up for a while and, at first glance, these look to be right around the same level are these worth taking and how do they compare to the badge fist?

EDIT: Assuming I did it correctly (replaced the stats of Rage with Fist of Molten Fury, these are a fair bit behind the badge vendor fists. I'd appreciate some confirmation though