That is true of course, but only if you watch the whole fight as one linear progression.

If you look at T5 and T6 Raidcontent you notice that there are many encounters where you have to face enrage-timers. Especially in those fights 2/2 DD comes in handy when the encounter isn't "on farm" yet. More damage in the last third of the fight often means "more damage when nearing the enrage timer".

So while any kind of talent distribution might be 0,1% better or worse when the dps is calculated linear to the whole fight aand everything works perfect, some talents show their worth only when viewed in regard to the actual benefit you gain while raiding (not only pure numbers).

Thus said i will most certainly spec 2/2 DD & 2/2 EXP and 4/5 Swordspec, not just because the Spreadsheet tells me thats a 0.79dps improve over any other variant of the three talents, but also because I "feel" like I can work better with these two talents (DD & EXP) maxed out.

my guildmaster/class leader sucks anyway he cant even kill his ghosts on teron

If the math from post #857 holds up on "live" (where the DD vs SS 1pt swap often is less than 0.5%) then I think it will really come down to a personal feel thing. Many who are fighting high end content will like the boost they see as the "hard part" of the fight comes around. For sheer math guys who are in exceptional guilds and/or very confident with their play and progression, they may simply choose based on what repeated testing on live says edges out in maximum DPS between the two, even if the difference is negligable.

I have been spec'd 11/28/22 since June. Long before the concept had any traction, and back when I would get funny looks until the run was over and SWstats proved I wasn't crazy. Thus, I'm very comfortable with the style, and I will probably respec the 1pt just to get a month or so of trying out the new DD talent. If I feel the late DPS surge comes noticeably into play enough times over that period, I'll keep it. If it turns out to be little more than fluff (ie: roughly the same DPS, and not a big enough swing in output to finish off those 1-4% wipe fights) then I'll probably go back.

As of right now, I think the two are probably right on part with each other, and will be more of a play feel than anything, but you never know w/ Blizz once it goes live. 2pt of DD could all of a sudden be HUGE, or float off into the land of mystery nerfs and be totally useless. The next 10 days or so whould allow us to compile enough data to say for sure.

I'm definitely not a math geek (and mad props to those of you who are), so this may be a stupid question.

Has anyone tried plugging a spec like this into a spreadsheet?

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

The big discussion points of Combat vs. Hemo in order to max DPS seem to have been

- 5/5 Sword Spec vs 2/2 Dirty Deeds, etc.
- How hard Hemo will hit compared to Sinister Strike, and when they would theoretically meet each other in DPE, etc.

I'm only conceptualizing here, but it seems that everyone agrees that 3/3 Serrated Blades and 2/2 Dirty Deeds are notable DPS increases. Would simply grabbing 22 in Subt to max those talents complement a standard Combat Sinister Strike spec nicely, or would Hemo win out as the "spam" skill?

It seems to me that the only real downside (if it even is one) is that Sinister Strike can be spammed less often due to the slightly higher energy cost, which would mean less theoretical benefit from Relentless Strikes, potentially less Mongoose and WF procs, etc.

But, on the bright side, if Sinister Strike / DD could pump out similar DPS, that would be 2 less talent points we'd have to waste in Tier 1 of the Combat tree.

Any thoughts?

It's not remotely viable. Combat Potency is essentially what currently drives Sinister Strike- and Backstab-based builds. If you take it away and use Sinister Strike anyway, your cycles go to hell and you lose a ton of DPS. You also would not be able to pick up Aggression unless you ignored Weapon Expertise and one point of Sword Spec, also not a worthwhile trade. And of course, losing Surprise Attacks is huge.

Hemorrhage is the Subtlety tree, for a PvE build.

For reference, I entered your proposed build quickly into my spreadsheet and lost roughly 100 DPS, plus an additional loss of ~90 raid DPS from the Hemo debuff.

You don't need to be a math geek to figure out that it's not a good idea to drop a 200+ dps talent to gain a 15 dps talent. Hemo is the best talent point spent anywhere in our 3 trees.

If possible could any make a recommendation for me on spec/rotation for 2.3? I am currently Kara/Gruul Geared with some BT quality gems. I am a casual raider who likes to do research to put out maximum DPS. I currently use a 19/42 spec with 2 piece t4 and a 1s/5r rotation. I am always looking to improve, and will be picking up S2 MH this week, and Master Assassin Wrist. I would really appreciate any analysis and recommendations to continue to improve my raid DPS through 2.3 launch.

P.S. WWS last raid had me at 780DPS downing Prince & Nightbane which was my personal best for sustained multiple bosses/trash.

This assumes nobody dies during the fight. How many boss fights have you been on where the last 20, 10, 5% takes FOREVER?

On the other hand, if we want to accurately model this effect we have to include the fact that sometimes YOU are the one who dies before the end, so in many fights your damage will be front loaded in the early part of the fight, and it should all average out.

Still, I like the idea that I get more effective when things get desperate.

Shortens the fight... You just answered yourself as to why this ability can be better. It does more DPS, regardless if you look cooler on the damage meter at the end of the fight (and you won't cause it's not a big enough difference) your dps for the last 35% will be higher which is pretty importent especially on progress. Speaking of progress, people die pretty often making the last 35% sometimes longer and harder, which is something I'd consider. Anyways, people can choose, there really is no major difference that will make or break you spec, but you can use the info provided by the people posting here and make a choice based on opinion. Im going with 2/2 DD and 4/5 SS, thats just me though =P

I am sorry, is my post a few up in the wrong thread? I have mainly been trying to keep up on this threat deciding between hemo vs combat, thats why I posted here.

I can't count the number of times we have reiterrated that we are still debating which is better 1 v 1, but for now we are just weighing them and most people seem to think Hemo will be better, if not at least more popular as a raid spec. You'd definitely want the majority of your raiding rogues with Hemo due to keeping the debuff up and still doing comparable, if not better, damage to Combat.

We can't really tell for sure yet until we test it out on some content though. There is a large supply of info and cross analysis to make up your own mind though, we are definitely still on topic if your sarcastically saying we are not =P

Can someone with a combat hemo build give a sample dps rotation? In addition to 3s/5r, it would be nice to know how any other skills are used. Do you have to prep/vanish/garrotte every time it's up to stay competitive on DPS in a raid?

You would not want, nor would you ever need prep. The only spec for prep would be PvP imo, where you can get 2 ARs in back to back, which btw is sick! With vanish already at 3.5 min, your threat problem (if you ever had any) is completely gone. One fight in particular where I never vanish in the beginning is Illidan. P1 really doesn't matter, but I can't vanish due to it being needed in P2. P1 lasts about 3 minutes, so with the new hemo build I can actually vanish in the phase and still have it up for the P2 where damage is most necessary. I will finally be able to go all out on bloodboil, /cheer!

As far as rotations go id go head and say using a 3/5 would be best rotating the abilities back and forth. TBH my rotation is pretty on the fly, true I never use less than a 3/5 combo point SnD or Rupture, but I can sometimes go with a 3 SnD 3rupture with a 5snd and another 3 rupture. Keeping the ashtongue trinket up is priority really, and controlling it would be alot easier with the more static energy you get from Hemo build. I've always been more of an on the fly rogue, so I guess im a pretty bad person to ask about cycles.

We have spreadsheets for that. Plug your gear in and find out.

Most of the builds being discussed (if you were to look at the many, many builds linked) do not have Prep. Why? Prep is really not much of a DPS boost at all, an extra Garrote is going to make very little difference. Yeah, you'll probably want to Vanish/Garrote when it's up, but you'd still do that with your typical Combat spec, just that Vanish now has a shorter cooldown (if you picked up Elusiveness).

The reason I ask is I tried the most recent 2.3 dps spreadsheet out, and just importing my gear from my old spreadsheet and changing from a 20/41/0 combat mace build to an 11/26/24 build, I saw a 9% dps increase. Even without the hemo debuff, I only lose .5%. All in all this seems very promising. I also noticed that the spreadsheet didn't seem to care whether or not I put points in opportunity or not, so I was wondering if vanishing mid fight for the express purpose of adding garrote damage was even factored into the formula.

I rarely need vanish for threat management, but I thought prep might be nice to get the double vanish to avoid the combat pulse and get lower repair bills on progression, not to mention just the general survivability bonus.

UPDATE: nm i just shifted the point out of prep to get 4/5 mace and the full WEX bonus, and the spreadsheet likes that more...

I think what people are trying to get at is that your points are better spend in Dirty Deads, Weapon Expertise or Swords Spec or even Deadliness then in Prep. Even with lightening reflexes you are going to lose auto-attack time with Vanish-Garrote, so I would guess it isn't a very bing DPS increase at all.

You are never, ever aggro capped? Hell, I fucked up last week and pulled aggro on Gurtogg and had to stop attacking on Teron after a string of crits and a bunch of dodges by the tank. Not to mentions things like Illidan, where you can now Vanish in each phase and never have to worry about aggo, the added utility is huge.

Every week on Gurtogg it is a challenge, and being able to shed more aggro means we can chain more Heroisms, pop more consumables etc, not to mention once Sunwell comes out and tanks have to go back to max mitigation, their TPS will probably drop.

I would take 3.5 min vanish over Setup anyday.

Setup is only 45% chance when talent is maxed. First you need to think when in boss fights you even dodge or resist something, then add on that the only 45% chance to get combo point out of it. After that you might want to add in that if Setup procs when you have 5CP already its waste DPS. Dont get me wrong, its quite nice if you are tanking warriors or rogues in PvP with Evasion+GS+Setup but for PvE it doesnt have much utility.

5 minute vanish is probably enough if you happen to have Preparation, problem occurs with 11/28/22 spec when you want to use Preparation talent point for Dirty Deeds. Without Preparation Elusiveness is superior for any rogue that does how to make dps. With 11/21/29 spec you could probably take Setup over Elusiveness because you have probably Preparation. I would even still prefer Elusiveness, I've tried Setup in raids and it doesnt really do anything.

Hmm I think we may be speaking different languages.

My guild is on Gruul still and our Tanks have no probs holding aggro. I really don't think I'll be "chain-critting Teron" any time soon, heh.

Given that my main focus is going to be Gruul's, ZA, and heroic instances after the patch, I think I might still be ok dropping Elusiveness for Setup in my particular scenario... but I'll play around with it.

K I'll sit down now and let the big boys continue to hash out the math on this one. In either case, I do think I'll be switching to an 11/27/23 build of some shape tomorrow; it does seem like a nice change of pace.

Hanos you may or may not have realized we are in BT/Hyjal where threat capping is actually possible, where the person we are responding to is in the Kara/Gruul area (possibly SSC) where threat capping isn't really apparent.

Bendyr, you will eventually get gear assuming you keep progressing and eventually have aggro issue's. As mentioned in many boards since BC came out, threat generation doesn't scale as well with itemization as Rogue/DPS gear does, so with gear you will see big differences in how much more threat your tank has over you. Having a 3.5 Vanish in end game raiding is definitely a major talent, and will prove to be extremely useful.

Edit: On a side note Bendyr, Combat spec might be better for your gear, but I'm no math whizz. All I know is the worse your gear the better SS is over Hemo, because Hemo scales mostly off weapon damage. Just a thought for you to play around with, and I might be wrong considering you do put up the debuff for your guild. Im just saying this on a 1v1 factor against Combat vs Hemo.

Yeah, I didn't bother to check his armory, the difference between a rogue in a BT Clearing guild and a Gruul guild is night and day in terms of threat.

I would agree with this, SS has the set modifer as well as the 2 talents that increase it by a percentage. The true beauty of Hemo is that it scales 100% with gear, while a certain portion of Sinister Strike does not. Not to mention the gear to really make Hemo shine (-armor) only drops in T6 and ZA, and I don't think you can get enough of it in ZA, whereas the gear from Kara is ideal for Combat (stacked with +hit)

Setup is crazy good on Mother, a fair soloing talent, and pretty good in PvP (with Cloak + Evasion for making sure it procs sometimes).

Bloodboil is a threat capped fight, so 3.5 vanish would be handy there, and maybe an extra blind in Arena will win you the game.

So either of the fillers are both decent, but nothing you must get.


While Prep is an outstanding PvP talent, its raiding usefulness is nearly nil. Might as well get it if you are doing Hemo Maces though.