Has anyone run the numbers on heavy sub if you itemize yourself differently? Without DW spec, Sword Spec or CP, you could get all the agility/AP gear and socket with only agi gems, placing far less emphasis on white DPS and maximizing the gains out of Deadliness/Sinister Calling. Its obvious to me that Shadowstep builds are not going to compare to combat or split spec with 'normal' rogue gear choices, but you might be able to make up some of that gap through different itemization.

Even with ridiculous itemization, I can't forsee increasing your special attack dps upwards of 40% to equal current white dps. Even if you hit harder you can't force energy to regen faster, thus your dps increase would be minimal (I think).

PvE = White damage

Plain and simple. To reiterrate what the above poster said, energy is our cap for yellow damage.

I'd like to just point out one thing about much of the Blasted Lands testing going on...
These mobs are so low level that with any decent amount of hit rating, you will not be missing dodging or parrying. I did some testing a while back, and it looked like with 350 skill, you wouldn't start to see dodges or parries until you fight level 61's.

What this means for build comparisons...
The advantage for Weapon Specialization vs. builds without it are completely unrealized as these Blasted Lands mobs aren't dodging anyway.

Crit rates and everything else is going to be heavily skewed.

Don't get me wrong, this is a very interesting topic, but I think you are going to have to find some way to test this vs. some level 73's to get real numbers.

Yeah, I know I'm going to try 2 different iterations (11/28/22 and 11/27/23, trading out 1 sword spec point for the last point in DD for the second build) once 2.3 is live. It'll be interesting to see what comes out on top.

The problem is that only specific mobs are "test-friendly". We're aware that these mobs are not a 100% correct benchmark. I believe this makes combat better than it is(more CP procs since 20% of your OH attacks will give energy).

Now I have a question, did anyone try a 0/40/21 build? I'm rereading the thread just in case I've forgot if someone did. I'm talking after the latest 125% weapon damage change. I don't think that Combat Potency can make up the loss of Relentless Strikes, Ruthlessness, Murder and Malice. In order to reach CP you only get a DPS boost from Vitality (lol) and AR which is minor(2 uses max in every boss). I would test it myself but I'm out of money on the PTR and I can't respec( /cry ).

If hemo works that same as the last time I looked at this then it cuts both ways. If you start including charges used by crits then you also have to count pet,tank auto attacks as well as the large number of offhand attacks from warriors/rogues and to a lesser extent shamans. Then you get a massively complex raid composition + raid behaviour problem so people usually just assume 360 damage and don't worry about it too much.

Borrowing formula from Rovall: (Offhand Speed / Slice & Dice) / (Base Hit + Hit Rating Bonus - Mob Chance to Dodge + Expertise Spec Rating Bonus).

Standard stuff: SnD is 30% more hits, rogue base hit is 76%, mob chance to dodge is 5.6%, and expertise spec gives 2.5% bonus. My stuff: offand speed is 1.5, hit rating bonus is 19.5%

Formula for my personal energy regen from combat potency is: (1.5/1.3)/(.76+.195-.056+.025) = 1.25

This means I get an offhand hit once every 1.25 seconds, and with CP I get 3 energy on average for every offhand hit: 3/1.25 = 2.4 energy per second from CP for me.

Frequency of SS is cost of SS divided by the base energy regen plus the CP regen, in my case: 40/(10+2.4) = 3.23. So, SS lands every 3.23 seconds for me on average.

Hemo costs 35 energy and does not get CP, so formula is simply 35/10 to determine seconds per proc: So, Hemo lands every 3.5 seconds.

Although SS costs 40 energy, in my gear with CP it actually has an adjusted cost of 32.3 energy, when you take the energy regen of combat potency into account.

So in a ten minute of spamming either SS or Hemo would result in my SS landing approximately 185 times and Hemo landing approximately 171 times with my gear in the 2.3 patch. As a side note, although SS may be more spammable in the long run because of CP, it doesn't seem as smooth because you are relying on intermittent procs of CP for energy regen. I think part of the reason Hemo seems more fluid to me is that energy regen is constant so I can get in a rhythm.

SS is calculated by: (weapon damage + 98) x 1.16

In my case: 576 + 98 * 1.16 = 781.84

Hemo is calculated by: weapon damage x 1.25

In my case: 576 * 1.25 = 720

So on my average noncrit:

SS = 781.84
Hemo = 720

Which of course makes you want to weight the point at which Hemo would hit harder than SS:

(weapon damage + 98) * 1.16 = SS and weapon damage * 1.25 = Hemo, so a little algebra and... solve for x.

(x + 98) * 1.16 = x * 1.25

x = ~1256

So the magic number I've come up with is that your weapon damage would have to be 1256 for Hemo to actually hit harder than SS. Since my current average weapon damage is 576, I'd just need another 2886 AP and I my Hemo would hit as hard on average as my SS on non-crits!!! Yays!

So with my gear it sounds like Hemo gets the short end of the stick with noncrits as far as damage per energy, with Hemo being 35 energy and doing 720 damage, compared with SS being 32.3 energy and doing 782 damage.

720/35 = 20.6 damage per energy for Hemo from noncrits

782/32.3 = 24.2 damage per energy for SS from noncrits

Alas, Hemo gives a 36x10 debuff, which if all buffs are used means +360 damage

(720+360)/35 = an impressive 30.9 damage per energy from Hemo noncrits

Noncrit (including Hemo debuff):
SS = 24.2 DPE
Hemo = 30.9 DPE

What about crits?

(720*2)+360/35 = 51.4 damage per energy for Hemo crits

(782*1.3+782)/32.3 = 55.7 damage per energy for SS crits (I think this is right, unless lethality applies after the crit multiplier?)

Crit (including Hemo debuff):
SS = 55.7 DPE
Hemo = 51.4 DPE

So assuming 30% crit buffed, the following applies: 24.2*.7+55.7*.3 = SS DPE & 30.9*.7+51.4*.3 = Hemo DPE.

Overall DPE (including Hemo debuff):
SS = 33.7 DPE
Hemo = 37 DPE

Overall DPE (not including Hemo debuff):
SS = 33.7 DPE
Hemo = 26.8 DPE

The above DPE values are calculated with my gear, but it appears that for a very wide range of stats that if you include the Hemo debuff, Hemo is higher DPE on noncrits and SS is higher DPE on crits. Please correct me if formulas or math are wrong.

I tried playing around with a 30/0/31 build on the test server in the Blasted Lands. I was not real happy with it and wouldn't want to try it in a real environment. I'm not real familiar with Seal Fate builds but I was having a tough time maintaining any type of cycle. Not having Improved SnD really sucks. Plus, my crit rating isn't exactly stellar.

The World of Warcraft Armory

How does armor reduction from Serrated Blades play into the DPE calculations?

Look at Rogue's WWS for fights like Teron (straight DPS fights) and see how much energy is generated by both talents. You'll find the results are pretty comparable thus you have the following barrage of text explaining exactly why =P.

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The above WWS has me generating 850 from CP and 550 from Relentless Strikes. Now granted that is a sizable difference CP scales with hit (which will be harder to cap out on come 2.3) and haste effects. The reason I mention CP scaling so well is that this fight makes CP procs seem a lot better than on some other fights due to the fact you are constantly going all out and making use of all CD's entirely, especially for myself. I use a Warglaive offhand 1.4 speed, have around 280 hit, 2/5 T6, haste pots on every CD, Drums of Battle (haste) every CD, and 1 Heroism. So my setup is obviously very favorable for CP to proc very often. A similar rogue in my guild did 150 DPS less but also had a very different CP/Relentless Strikes energy gain. His CP was only 600 compared to my 850 yet his Relentless Strikes return was 500 narrowing the difference from 300 to 100. I can't tell you why he was so much lower on CP procs (he gets all my group buffs), but blaming it on my Warglaive over his Blade of Savagery doesn't seem accurate.

Now I realize that I am combat spec and CP actually increases the amount of finishers I use thus increasing the amount of RS procs I get, but Hemo being more efficient of a move I would still gain combo points at a pretty comparable rate making RS obviously extremely comparable to CP on a 1v1 talent level. To sum it all up, CP may > Relentless Strikes if they were on the same tier, but sacrificing all those talents (Malice, Ruthlessness, Murder) there is no way going deeper into Combat is worth it.

*I realize this is only one WWS, but I'm sure you can look around and find similar instances.

Exactly Killars. I am aware that CP will surpass RS with high Hit ratings, the problem is that Malice, Ruthlessness and Murder are really good talents to give up just for CP. That's why I asked, you never know without asking. So at the moment Hemo with CP is not viable but in WOTLK it is possible. But it's not the right thread to talk about "future builds". For now only trispec is viable and since SS scales better I see Hemo shining in middle difficulty raids(SSC etc). The fact that 11/28/22 doesn't need regem as a past Combat Rogue is really "user friendly" when we'll compare the builds in live.

The real "pain" when comparing Hemo builds is Serrated blades since it's not a static DPS increase but depends on the boss' armor.

And yeah SF isn't the solution. It's not bad but losing DW Spec and Weapon Expertise is brutal.

But bosses all have the same armour unless they're casters, VR excepted.

http://elitistjerks.com/496799-post8.html

So you can easily calculate the effect Serrated Blades will have on dps.

This is one of the reasons 'testing' the builds on Blasted Lands mobs is silly, because of the difference in effectiveness of SB on level 73 bosses vs level 57 mobs.

I have been playing around with 31/0/30 (I rate Vigor higher than Premedation in PvE becouse if the fight is interrupted or you somehow get full of energy bar) spec few past days on live servers. Spreadsheets say its on par with Combat PvE Swords so I went testing on Blasted Lands. It was quite a close compared to Combat Swords (50-100dps difference roughly in favor of Swords, not hemo debuff fully consumed ofc). Used 5s/5r cycle for 31/0/30 ([Rod of the Sun King]+[Swiftsteel Bludgeon]) spec and 4s/5r for 19/42 ([Blade of Infamy]+[Merciless Gladiator's Quickblade]). It was quite easy to keep up the SF/Hemo cycles on BL.

Tried the same spec on Illidan, cycles were pain to keep up. As raidbuffed (~32% crit) I constatly had SnD dropping from the cycle. With lucky crits or Coldblood I could recover the cycle but only once in a while. Probably half of the time my cycle didnt have SnD up.

With 300hr and Vashj belt, losing Precision and WEx is quite big loss and it seemt to mess up the cycles. Im gonna give the spec more testing tomorrow when I hopefully obtain Ashtongue trinket (which I think to help with keeping cycles up).

The hit rating isn't what Id focus your response on. The other rogue that had less procs actually had more hit I believe, I only have 273.

Now you said this line and I'm pretty sure its entirely just a misunderstanding. When you said SS scales better, you meant sword spec and not Hemo right? Hemo definitely scales better in case you meant Sinister Strike. The 125% damage scales amazingly higher with new weapon upgrades. Comparing a rogue's SS with Blade of Infamy to the same rogue's Hemo, you'd see small difference. If that same rogue had just switched his BoI with the MH Warglaive you'd see that difference on the top end be significantly different.

Serrated blades is pretty static as one of the posters said, but your in the right direction on one point. Serrated Blades gets better then more armor pen you have, as armor pen gets better the more you stack. So basically with armor pen you want to get as close to the cap without going over it.

Each boss has either 6200 or 7700 armor, that was posted a long time ago. Using raid debuffs, which should be up by default, you take these armors down to 2190 and 3690 via Sunder, CoR, and FF (-4010). So with some armor pen PvE gear, nothing crazy, you'd have 476 passive armor pen (shoulder/gloves/ring) leaving you with a static 1714 and 3214. Add MotB (-300) or WSC (-1000) proc to go along with Executioner (-840) and you'd be at either -126 and 1850 with WSC only or 574 and 2074 with MotB only. Obviously you wouldn't want to use WSC on a low armor boss after it was tested, but you can see how Serrated Blades can take you over the cap. Regardless, as I said the closer you get to the cap without going over makes armor pen increasingly amazing also making Serrated Blades and amazing talent that needs to be recognized as such.

For you imaginative viewing you can also look at these other ways of getting to the armor cap even on the high armor mobs. Here is a list of all the "raid viable" armor pen items I can find. You'll see I was modest in the above example, I kept most of the gear that decreased my hit and other stats out of my example.

Procs
Warp Spring Coil - 1000
Madness of the Betrayer - 300
Executioner - 840

Passive Gear
Stormrage Signet Ring - 126
Signet of Primal Wrath (ZA Ring) - 126
Choker of Serrated Blades - 175

Slayer's Handguards - 175
Slayer's Shoulderbads - 175
Shady Dealer's Pantaloons - 175
Bladeangel's Money Belt (ZA Belt) - 77
Shadowtooth Trollskin Cuirass (ZA Chest) - 210

Boundless Agony - 210
Dagger of Bad Mojo(ZA Dagger) - 140
Prowler's Strikeblade(ZA Dagger) - 140
Ancient Sin'dorei Longbow(ZA Bow) - 126

Ok sorry but it's late and I do silly mistakes. Even though Hemorrhage theoretically scales better(cause it doesn't use any static damage bonus, but a percentage), with the current gear available in every level it won't do more damage than SS. A fully talented SS will hit for more but also cost more. As I read there are 3-4 posts(not with exactly the same results but similar)with prove that SS has better DPE with Combat Potency. The lower DPE is also theoretical since CP doesn't proc manually. The true power of 11/2x/2x comes from the 100~ish DPS from the debuff, which isn't shown in a damage meter but still exists. Hemo also does more white damage due to Serrated Blades(Boss based).

Pre-BT loot doesn't include armor ignorance, except the new ZA loot of course, which means Serrated Blades doesn't show its true power.

About Hit Rating. The only reason you have more CP procs is luck I guess and the Shivs helped also. I don't see any other reason considering you have less hit rating : > Although I think hit rating is less useful on a trispec, sword specialization is still worth as much hit rating as possible. In the right balance of course. I'm not really interested in 11/21/29, so I'm trying to find if I'll need something special for 11/28/22. At the moment I believe that 11/28/22 is really combat gear friendly. Since in a 4 minute fight which favored combat(no misses/dodges and I don't think Serrated blades can cover such a difference)I had similar DPS. I may be wrong perhaps but that's my impression until now.

Hemo will hit harder and it will cost less. There is no doubt in my mind it doesn't have a higher DPE value, none. The fact that your gaining... what a 580 armor pen passive and the hemo debuff, this is no way SS will hit as hard with a good weapon, not with that armor pen scaling so well with end game gear and raid debuff. In the early PvE stages, maybe with less armor pen and a lower rated weapon (purhaps Spiteblade) the SS would out hit the Hemo, but thats not all id compare.

Being hemo also drastically increases the DPE of your ruptures by a lot. So not only are you getting the ability of Hemo which imo will not only cost 5 less energy but also hit harder, you will be gaining a much more powerful finisher for your 25 energy that you'd normally be spending even if you were combat. I realize SS can get Lethatlity (15% inc damage) aswell as Aggression (6%) and Surprise Attacks (10%) but I still think it will be outdone by Hemo. Even if it isn't out done by Hemo straight up, it will for sure be close and after the mob hits 35% it will be increased by 20% and destroy SS. So at best SS will hit harder, but still be less DPE pre 35% and finally get destroyed when the boss is under 35%.

So yea if you havn't already gotten my idea, after much debate and talking with some other guildies, I am fully throwing out there in my opinion that the Hemo build I posted on previous posts will be the new "cookie cutter" top PvE DPS build. In saying that I wouldn't doubt the nerf hammer coming soon, so don't be shocked when it does. If you look up at my armor pen post, I didn't even include the 560 you get from Serrated Blades! The ridiculous scaling of armor pen the lower it gets will make Serrated Blades thee best rogue talent there is, flat out. It will more than likely also make the WSC for certain rogues the new best trinket as well imo.

To reiterate, armor value after raid debuffs is 2190 and 3690. With just 2/5 T6 and the Illidan Ring you'd have 476 passive armor pen leaving the boss with a static 1714 and 3214. Add some Serrated Blades and that bumps up to 1036 static pen and raid bosses are left with 1154 and 2654 armor. Add just an Executioner proc (-840) and your already damn near the armor base. I'll be using MOTB on the lower armor bosses bringing them to 14 armor if both procs are up (which won't be rare with the proc rate of both being high). Id also use WSC in combo with MotB for high armor mob's considering the way it scales it would prob make it one of the best, if not best, trinket in the game for a rogue (especially since the extra hit won't really hurt in 2.3). My point in all this is to say that the -560 you get from Serrated Blades scales really well with end game gear, and I don't want people to overlook just how amazing the talent is.

I think the Hemo changes are needed changes. The problem that I see is that Hemo/Combat builds are going to be too strong. Instead of nerfing anything, I think a better solution is to just move talents further down in the tree.

Personally I'd like to see either Hemo or Expertise move higher up in the tree.

The only problem is that its too hard on the PTR to get a decent test against level 73 mobs. Attacking level 51? Servants is not ideal but unfortunately it is our only option for long term testing.

Assumptions that can be made but are impacts relatively unknown:
1) Serrated Blades has a higher effect on Servants than on level 73 bosses. So in a real environment we should expect to see some dps loss here.
2) Expertise is irrelevant on Servants because they have such a low chance to dodge already. Against level 73 bosses, this will have a greater impact. However since you can currently get both Hemo and Expertise, its easy to say that the impact would be neglible as they both builds would have Expertise.
3) Dirty Deeds has a higher impact against Servants since they are constantly under 35% health. In a real situation, you would get less dps out of this than on live.

So basically when the patch goes live, I still think Combat Swords will out dps Combat/Hemo, but it will be close. Assuming combat swords does 1000 dps, I think Hemo would be close to 950 which is good. I still think the tree needs to be reworked, talents shifted up and down, and others combined, but in general its a good patch.

I just wish they would have been more open to boosting dagger dps because they are quickly being phased out.

Hemo w/o DD still doest higher DPS than combat swords. Check my WWS stats from few posts above.

I agree tho that Serrated Blades may lower overall DPS on boss fights. Still tho, current hemo build (by current I mean 2.2 patched) goes right behind combat swords (I can see around 20-30 DPS lost), and thats before DD and hemo 2.3 buff. I think hemo will be pve king in 2.3, but would need to see, by how large margin hemo debuff affects overall DPS, since my only worry is, if 2-3 rogues will be able to keep debuff uptime close to 100% (6/10 is consumed by only own hits).

Copied my rogue on PTR. Tried a couple of builds and dps'd on Servants in Blasted Lands. Results were:

Rupture and SnD were always up.

20/41/0
w/o poisons 930dps
w poisons 1005 dps (MH deadly/OH instant)

0/40/21
w poisons 970dps

11/28/22 w 1 DD
w/o poisons 1080dps

11/29/21 (no DD ofc and point in non dps talent):
w/o poisons 930 dps
w poisons 1030 dps

12/28/21 (1 lethality):
w poisons 1080 dps

All tests are done until I was epically bored of hitting the mob

Links to builds I used:

20/41/00
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

0/40/21
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

11/28/22
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

It would be interesting to see what the dps gain would be for a 20/41/0 attacking a target that has hemo debuff.

Conclusion: I bet 11/28/22 is getting a nerf because it's fabulous atm

After doing the tests some reflections spring's to mind:
I am attacking a level 54 mob which could mean serrated blades amour reduction plays a greater role in increasing the dps than if I was attacking a level 71 mob. Thought of this a little too late What 70+ mobs are melee dps testing friendly?

In the rogue dps sheet 2 DD > 2 Weap exp on 73 bosses.

Anyhow 11/28/22 seems cool and I will definitely spec it for at least a full Karazhan run just to see how it stacks against 20/41/0 I have used for a month now.

You sound like it would be a good thing to keep debuff uptime high, on the contrary we want the charges to get used up as fast as possible so they don't get wasted by refreshing.

Edit: This was in reply to Batory.

This correct?

All your other tests were done with poisons or both and this single test was done without?