light

For some weeks i'm raiding with a hemo build 11/27/23 and doing fine dps wise. Today i was playing around with the RogueDPS Sheet (RogueDPS_2_3_0_3.xls and RogueDPS_2_3_0_3b.xls) and changed my spec from 11/27/23 to 31/0/30 and i was astouned that the sheet is telling me that i gain DPS by specing to 31/0/30 - how could this be - without imp. S&D, precision, dual wield spec, sword spec, blade flurry, weapon exp ...

My gear consists of t4 and SSC/TK/MH drops using swords: Talon/Merciless and Abacus/Warp as trinkets

Is there a error in the sheet - i'm a bit confused ...

 

ekval

From my own testing, Syphon+Swiftsteel Bludgeon with Combat Maces beats Blade of Infamy+Merciless Quickblade combo in practice.

 

Ariashley

Read the comments in the sheet itself. Seal fate is not modeled properly. Live testing shows seal fate builds are not superior to either 11/27/23 or 19/42/0.

 

Calidar

Yes, there are issues with the way in which Seal Fate is handled that produce inaccurate results.

 

Left

If you had skimmed through the whole thread, you might have seen this post, this post, this post, this post, or this post. Plus a lot of earlier ones which I have not bothered to dredge up.

Bottom line: The spreadsheet does not model 31/0/30 correctly and the actual performance of this build will be significantly worse than the spreadsheet predicts.


EDIT: Crap, you all beat me to it. But I'll keep my post for the back-links to previous discussions of this isse, for reference.

 

Ariashley

I don't do poorly on trash at all 11/27/23. Blade flurry (when not near sheeps/pigs) still works the same as ever. Ya, the combat rogue out damages me on trash usually...but he did when I was combat too. The build does markedly worse than combat on Hydross, Void Reaver or anything that doesn't bleed. However, my overall DPS during the course of an entire raid is approximately the same before and after and I'm at approximately the same position. Also, on trash, I find that most hemo debuffs are still consumed, since I still have 3.5 seconds between hemos most of the time (other than first mob) and there is still focus fire and the debuffs are used in about 1-1.5 seconds.

How is AR undervalued? Only Blade Flurry should be timed at all for bloodlust/heroism. AR is straight up energy and is not undervalued.

My first raid hemo was horrible for timing. My DPS was hugely improved in my second raid as hemo. The cycle recommended by the spreadsheet for me has only a 90% SnD uptime....but it's still the highest DPS.

It's really personal preference. My testing shows they are currently roughly equivalent personal DPS (about 0.75% lower with the 11/27/23 build on average). With the 110% nerf, it really won't be, but on most fights, it will still be improved raid DPS. All this change really did is give rogues an alternative to the single good cookie cutter spec for raiding. After the next patch, probably most rogues will be returning to combat and the hunters, fury warriors, and enhancement shaman will complain about it...

I've been looking for how DD is even factored in an haven't found any cells that link to either M16 or L16 on the spreadsheet. What bit do you feel is overvaluing that talent?

 

Killars

Possibly might come close due to the new Mace spec and the fact Swiftsteel Blud is much better than Merc, but switch out Merc for Blade of Sav and get done. I seriously doubt even w/o the BoS you'd be doing more damage with maces, but someone can spreadsheet that if they want, not that curious =P

 

Ariashley

I found it...

It's possible that DDs is overvalued in situations where DPS switches to your target after adds etc are down... Perhaps we should think about a way to test how long the last 35% of a boss's health lasts compared to the overall. I don't think anything in a combat log identifies when Dirty Deeds kicks in. I have about 3 months of combat logs stored on my computer. Pretty sure I can find the point where 65% of the damage has been done to the mob and the time stamp to test the amount of time the bosses spend at 35%. I'll work on that on Sunday. I'll roll through it for all the bosses in SSC and maybe a few in the Eye for a 3 week period and see what I come up with.

Over three weeks, my guild has a lot of differences in raid composition.

 

ekval

I think it might be the good synergy with new Mace Spec + Relentless Earthstorm Diamond + Lethality. Add Ashtongue trinket top of that and you can easily get 45% crit chance in raids. Spreadsheet says Combat Maces are 10-20dps behind Combat Swords with weapons I described above, but in practice I've found it go other way around. I don't have Blade of Savagery yet so can't conclude that.

 

◊ Hanos

Yep, I am in the exact same boat. First Hemo was bugged so the raid wasn't getting the buff, now when they fix it they are going to nerf it... I already went back to combat after my weekly pvp respec for the weekend.

 

◊ Hanos

I have a hard time believing that maces beats swords when equal level ones are used. If Syphon + Swiftsteel beats Infamy + Savagery then something very wrong is happening, or you forgot to spec into Sword Spec.

 

Killars

So your saying that synergy is greater than the synergy of sword spec? Besides Lethality benefiting it and not benefiting SS I don't see a point here. Relent ED gives more crit damage on SS procs and Ashtongue gives higher crit chance aswell. If you wanna add something on the SS side you can even say with the extra attacks you might be capable of procing more enchant/trinket procs like Executioner/Mongoose and Madness of the Betrayer/DST.

I think it's a mental thing above all else.

 

Philosopher

This feels like a new thread, but since I'm not very verbose I haven't posted 10 times in the last several months so, eh, I'll stick my thoughts here.

There are five categories of buffs I can think of that could have a greater effect during the last 35% than the first 65% that would make it go faster, and the question for each is whether or not it reduces the effect dirty deeds has on your total damage done. I am going to look at damage done this way:
DamageTotal = Tt*(dps prior*0.65 + dps post*0.35)+ Td*dps post*propYellow*0.2

Where your total damage done is proportionally your dps for the first part of the fight plus your dps for the second part of the fight times the total time spent fighting the boss plus the additional damage from dirty deeds: the time spent under 35% of the boss' health times your dps for that part of the fight times the proportion of that damage that is yellow time 0.2.

1. Buffs that only affect other people. This includes dps warriors with recklessness, mages with trinkets or who suddenly get a mana tide totem, other rogues with dirty deeds and anything that is group-wide for a group other than yours. These reduce the time spent in the under 35% state and so reduce the value of dirty deeds without increasing your over-all damage done. However, you will still always kill the boss in less time than if they weren't being used and dirty deeds is still more damage than you would otherwise have. The magnitude of their effect will be determined in part by what percentage of the over-all damage you are doing.

2. Buffs to the group that only affect white damage. These increase your dps for the later stage but also decrease the proportion of that damage that is yellow, so that over-all the damage done by dirty deeds is reduced by the reduction in time spent under 35%. These may be partially mitigated by the additional procs produced by haste increases, for example, or the additional hits from Improved Fairy Fire.

3. Buffs to you that affect white damage, including haste pots. These decrease the time spent under 35%, and so in reducing the % of your damage that is yellow make dirty deeds less attractive, but are neutral in effect on your total damage done, since they increase the first term.

4. Buffs to you that affect yellow damage at least as much as white damage. This may include throwing preparation and grabbing a second AR, or being able to swap in a +ap thrown weapon when you stop taking raid-wide damage or vanishing to give the tank a threat lead and being able to cut loose. These will make dirty deeds more attractive, since more of your damage is coming from the post-35% dps.

5. Buffs to the group that affect yellow damage. This includes increased dps time, a full stack of sunders up, curse of recklessness reliably there, positioning, a higher threat ceiling or game mechanics (the last 35% of Solarian, say, will go very quickly because she stops disappearing and stands still).

This is the category that interests me most, because it is what is most often brought up and the effect they have isn't intuitively apparent. Basically, these buffs reduce the time spent in the latter 35% of the phase. But it also increases both the dps you are doing in that phase and the dps that dirty deeds affects and over-all I think it actually makes dirty deeds more valuable. I ran some numbers as an example.

We have two rogues, Jim and Joe. They are the only 2 dps, they each do 10 dps and they kill a boss with 10,000 health. We will say that 50% of their damage comes from yellow attacks, to make the numbers rounder. First they do this without dirty deeds:
They each do 5,000 damage and they kill the boss in 500, doing 10 dps.

Then Jim gets dirty deeds, theoretically giving him a dps of 10.35 solo. With Jim, however:
The fight takes 493 seconds
Jim does 5083 dmg, giving him 10.33 dps
Joe does 4927 dmg, giving him 10 dps

Now suddenly when 35% hits there is a debuff placed on the mob that lets them each do an additional 10% damage.
When neither of them have dirty deeds:
The fight takes 498 seconds
Jim and Joe both do 5000 dmg, at 10.035 dps

Jim gets dirty deeds:
The fight takes 490.1 seconds
Joe does 4917.4 dmg, at 10.033 dps
Jim does 5082.6 dmg, at 10.37 dps

Which, in comparison to the 10.33 dps Jim was doing before is a 4% increase in damage done. Or slightly more than the 3.3% increase in damage Joe saw.

I'm not sure what proportion of the additional speed of the last 35% can be attributed to what catagory of buffs. However, I am relatively certain that at least some of the speed increase make dirty deeds more worth it, not less.

 

Mideci

Let's "step away from the math" for just a second and talk through some content as to why Dirty Deeds is so incredibly valuable that the model can't possibly state how good it is.

First of all, there are fights where what goes on at the beginning is borderline irrelevant and win or lose is entirely at the end. A couple of obvious ones in Tier 5 content: Leotheras, where the entirety of win/lose comes after 15% and Vashj where a gigantic portion of win/lose is after 50% and an ever increasing portion is a function of goo accumulation as the fight continues.

Second of all, those are fights where the mechanic actually changes at the end of the fight (ah, how good you would have been on Huhuran Dirty Deeds). Nearly every encounter you are likely to be worse off at the end than at the beginning. Mana will be lower, enrage will be bearing down on you, boss ability will be higher (Gruul Growths, e.g.), raid dps will be lower due to deaths, raid healing will be lower due to deaths, etc. Absolutely, positively anything you can realistically do to end the encounter in your favor faster is a win for the raid.

I'd argue that the models can't and don't even try to capture this. You'd gladly give up a little dps -- hell a lot of dps -- on Phase 1 Vashj to get her down in Phase 3 (nevermind that every Naga is Dirty Deeds-able). Unless Dirty Deeds was a bad talent, which no one is arguing, then basically, I find it undervalued and will be very unlikely to spec it only 1/2 if my hemo build survives the incoming nerfbat.

 

maxpowers

I'm inclined to agree with Mideci, and also as someone else has brought up, as the duration of any non-trivial fight increases some number of dps is likely to die. Thus DD is at the very least marginally better than a modeled version of it (unless of course you manage to die before the fight is over).

I'd like to add that at this point the difference between a pve hemo and pve combat build as far as damage output is what I would consider statistically insignificant.

 

Killars

Yea besides just saying I agree with him we've spoke on this topic awhile back which is why a good amount of the posters here have decided to drop 1/5 SS for the 2/2 DD. Check back some pages, I've written a good deal about it aswell as others. It doesn't just simply come down to math on this one, sorry.

 

Ariashley

I love dirty deeds, personally.

Currently the spreadsheet models that dirty deeds increases overall damage / dps for a boss fight by 7% (20% damage increase * 35% of the fight time). I have a slew of combat logs for SSC and the Eye where no rogues were specced into dirty deeds and then another set were 1 or 2 rogues are specced into it.

We almost never have people die (other than the warlock tank sometimes, who always is soulstoned or battle rezzed)on successful attempts at Loetheras anymore. We've only killed Vashj twice so far (this week and last week), and most of the deaths actually occurred after Vashj died (from the green goo), but ya, you have a point that that last 50% is the important bit. Either way, I have a ton of data with and without dirty deeds where we can establish, for different bosses, whether the boss spends 35% of their time alive at 35% or more health or whether the time spent at less than 35% is, on average, a lot more or less than that. We should be able to make a hypothesis on whether 35% * 20% reasonably estimates the DPS value of 2/2 Dirty Deeds or not. While these non-mathematical esoteric ideas of "value" that don't improve dps are interesting - they can't and shouldn't be modeled.

If someone in BT/Hyjal (since my guild is in SSC/the EyE) wants to do the same to see if there is a significant difference on those fights, that would be helpful.

 

Philosopher

I recognize that, and where value lies is clearly a more subjective matter, but I was specifically responding to people claiming that it was being over-valued by the spreadsheet based on numbers, which I didn't believe the numbers actually supported.

 

◊ Shaker

The only issue with the "depends on the fight" analysis is that while you guys bring up some good fights for "different mechanics at varying health levels" - you're not thinking it through.

It could just be our strategy on Leotheras, but I do VERY little damage on his human form, before OR after 15%. So DD is vastly overvalued on the Leotheras fight, at least for our strategy, which has me doing a vast majority of my damage on him during the demon phase (of which only part of is below 35%).

Vashj is all about phase 2, NOT phase 3. If a group has the coordination and dps to do phase 2, they have the dps for phase 3. That being said, it doesn't particularly affect DD's contribution, since during her shield phase you have mobs that all can get below 35% and give you some reasonable returns (most notably being able to pop BF with a naga sub 35% with another being tanked next to it and getting the benefit spread - not sure if that works, but it'd be cute).


I'm not trying to refute the point, just clarify some of the thinking. I will say that I do personally believe that DD is a worthwhile talent, and that it may help during the stressfull first kills. I personally don't think first kills are vastly important, the more important thing is the pace at which you put a kill on farm (i.e. when have you progressed through the fight). I agree that DD will help with these fights, because every wipe avoided is more forward progress, and if you can squeak a kill out where you wouldn't have before, the extra loot will help you progress past the fight quicker.

All in all, I think the rough 35% * 20% estimation is reasonably correct. Mages have had molten fury for a lot longer than rogues have had DD - did anyone stop to check how the mages model it? Also, everyone says the last 35% won't last as long due to Execute and Molten Fury, but both of those abilities are sub 20% abilities, not sub 35% ones, meaning that any detraction from DPS by those two effects is nearly HALVED, making something that wasn't very significant before even less significant afterwards.

 

ekval

Is there any good way to test these against each other? Is typical Blasted Lands servant test enough to measure which spec gives actually more damage? Same gear, same spec except Mace vs Sword specialization, using same cycle without any cooldowns is the best way to go or? I'm not really trying to prove anything, would just do this for myself to clear the air and able to decide between which spec and weapons to use.

I was also refering to BoI/MQB combo because I don't have access to BoS yet. And sorry for kinda offtopic (would be probably better in 101 thread).

Edit: after testing in Blasted Lands, the spreadsheet seems to be quite accurate. Combat Maces (Syphon+Swiftsteel) are ~15-30 dps behind Combat Swords (BoI+MQB), so I'll take my words back. Difference ain't big thought, I might stay Maces for better PvP viability.

 

Mideci

Shaker, I don't intend to engage in a pissing contest about Leotheras except to say that while dps early on in demon form matters, the reality is that getting to 15% is trivial even the first or second time you see him. Killing him is entirely about the last 15%.

And while Vashj is certainly hardest to learn in Phase 2, there tends to be attrition in Phase 3, nevermind the repeated "naga below 35%" section of Phase 2. Somehow, I suspect we all are familiar with more 1% wipes than we care to remember. The chance to do >>any<< extra damage at the end of the fight, even at the expense of less dps early on, is a tradeoff I'll make fairly often.

Perhaps the benefit is psychic, I dunno. But given that there are always 25 people up at the start of a fight and often not 25 people up at the end of one, I can't help but feel that kill or not kill is actually possibly in the hands of Dirty Deeds in those fights where there is marked change in the "later" phase that really requires you to get things done quickly.

You can barely hit Leotheras as a rogue below 15%. I get that. But don't you want every hit to count for more?

Anyway, it's a great talent. Take it if you wish, don't if you don't. The other reasonable choices at the same tier are also excellent talents (like sword spec).