misada

Hey, with the sword/hemo build you mention, trying it out and for the most part my DPS stayed on par with combat/lethality with only a few exceptions. I was wondering if something like the setup in this Talent Cal would be worth it for raiding, or if the bonus in crit damage isn't worth the loss of the 10 expertise. Really have my pick of gear since i haven't yet committed to a spec, and i dont think that a few lethality points would change my build to drastically, but could use some advice from some well versed rogues out there on the worth of lethality over expertise and if i should move 1 point from lethality to dirty deeds just for the bonus damage to low hp targets.

Another quick question that's just been more of a debated thing among other rogues in my guild is the "deadly poison/instant poison" over "instant poison/instant poison" for raiding. Anyone care to weigh in on their preferences of poisons for most raids?

 

hedningen

As stated lots of times before the answers to your questions can be found in the thread.

However 10 Experties should outweight the bonus damage from 2p in Lethality and 10% damage increase for the last 35% of a mob should be better then 1p in Lethality.
Deadly poison on off hand is the way to go. Instant poison should only be used on MH if you don't have a shaman in your group giving you WF.

 

Malicat

Ok, I have obsessively read the forums. I have respecced to the combat/swords spec suggested here, the only change I made was I dropped the 3 gouge points into dodge, since I don't use gouge. I have regemmed all of my gear, and swapped a few enchants around (surefooted got dropped for cat's swiftness). I am still consistently 12 on the dam meter in SSC. I use a 2s/5r combo point rotation. My gear is perfectly acceptable for SSC content, I don't have the DST yet, but otherwise it's not bad. I've got the bladefist's breadth trink macroed to my SS so I don't miss popping that one on accident. I've got 1617 attack, 315 hit, and 25.4 crit unbuffed. I use the +20 hit food for food buffs, and the recommended poison/wf from shaman. I also try to pop a haste pot when I use BF to speed that up as well.

I honestly can not figure out why I am doing so poorly on the meters. The trink/ss is the only macro I am using in raid, are there any other tweaks or tricks that I'm missing out on to help out my dam? I would love to test out any recommendations anyone has.

The World of Warcraft Armory (If you want to check it out)

Thanks a ton in advance!

Cat

 

Kram

Your gear is fine, if you had some WWS to link then we could probably get a better idea of what the problem is. It's likely either a case of violating several of the 7 commandments or you just have really good guild dps. If you don't have any WWS to link how much dps do you generally put out on a fight like Tidewalker?

 

misada

Thank's a ton, I'll respec back out of the link'd build and go for the expertise/dirty deeds hemo spec. One other quick question if i may, given the lack of combat proficiency would it be safe to assume any offhand within reason would be ok? have my eye on a few that are 2.0ish which most combat spec rogues would pass over as it's not amazing MH, and for them not to good OH. I guess the question is, given the ratio given in the original post, what would your idea of the absolute slowest OH be? Like i know every 0.1 faster speed is give or take 5dps worth poison, but where would you draw the line as "rather have a lower dps faster wep"?

 

Ricard

I don't wait to time cooldowns on the chance that I get an inner demon, rather blowing them all in the beginning of the first demon phase. You could arguably wait with Blade Flurry, but then you run the risk of never using it at all. You shouldn't need cooldowns to get your demon down in time.

 

Ricard

Fast off hand attack speed is still good for sword spec procs and deadly poison procs. Unless your 2.0 sword is amazing (and none come to mind), I'd stick with fast OHs.

 

m1rado

Well, is this the overall damagemeter for the full run? Because trash does not matter, honestly. Clear your damagemeter before every boss, during looting, save the damagemeter under the boss's name.

Any class with AoE completely throws the DM off, warlocks, mages, even hunters to a small degree and rogues with BF, that's a whole lot of damage done to mobs that don't matter in the raid.

 

misada

K, thanks again, I'll do some more poking around as to what all i can find for my OH that's faster. Given that I'm only doing T4 instances at this point, really no fast sword OH come to mind unless i pray our tank isn't looking to upgrade his wep since there's a few tank sword that arnt COMPLETELY useless... guess for now my best bet would be just farm up the honor real fast to get gladiator's quickblade.

 

Casterbridge

Hey guys, this seemed to be a good place to ask this question. My guild currently has a shortage of Tank Warriors, we are trying to correct this, but for now we rarely get on into a raid.

We do occasionally get a fury warrior in there but again its not a sure thing.

That being said I've realised that we've been missing out on our dps by not having Sunders, so I want to start using EA.

I recently picked up the new fist spec so what I'm thinking of doing is droping the 2 points in Vitality and picking up Improved EA. Then I'd use the standard cycle I've been seeing of 5s5ea.

So my questions are this, does this sound like the best place to pick those 2 points up from to grab improved EA (used the spreadsheet and it seems to be)?

Also if we did have a dps warrior present would it still be better for me to use the improved EA over their sunder? (I know improved EA is more armor reduction just not sure which is better for overall dps, as I know my dps will drop by switching out EA for rupture).

Finally am I right in assuming that it is important for as to have either EA or Sunder going for overall raid DPS at our current level of progression (SSC and TK and little bit of headway into Hyjal)?

Thanks

 

• Aldriana

It's certainly possible to get one's demon down with no cooldowns - it's just that doing it with Blade Flurry is a better of way of doing it than having to damage it directly, simply because any damage you have to apply directly to your demon is damage you're not doing to Leotharas. So killing your demon with BF is effectively 10k extra damage on Leotharas that you'd otherwise not have. Meanwhile, a BF used directly on the boss adds perhaps 2000 damage. Thus, it's better to use BF once to kill a demon than it is to use it every time it's up throughout the fight. And in practice, you can use it a couple times for boss DPS and still usually have it up for demons. So I think reserving Blade Flurry to use in conjunction with demons is probably the way to go; however, other cooldowns can just be blown as time and aggro permits, as they should not be necessary for the demons.

I disagree.

It's true that some forms of trash are skewed to the advantage of certain classes... but it's also true that some bosses are, so that by itself isn't a reason to discredit trash DPS as a metric. It's certainly the case that you should keep in mind what you're fighting when you're comparing meters, and if there's a lot of AoE it's acceptable to be a little further down... but that's not the same thing as trash being unimportant.

It's also the case that trash is easier than bosses, in general; when you're first learning, you may wipe a couple times on trash, but you'll wipe a lot more on bosses, and so to some extent it's more important to play better on the bosses; however, once the bosses are learned and you're farming the instance... you spend a lot more time on trash than the bosses, so in terms of clearing the instance quickly and cleanly, the effect of bringing your A game on trash is not to be underestimated. And I'm not even talking Hyjal where the trash is actually hard - consider, like, Black Temple. Assuming each boss fight lasts 10 minutes on average (and most of them don't - Illidan is the only one that will be reliably longer than that for most guilds farming BT, and Akama + Teron are both significantly shorter), that's still only an hour and a half spent on trash on a clear that's probably 4 hours even if you're moving quickly... meaning that over half the time - and generally more like 2/3 if not 3/4 - is spent on trash. Thus, if you're looking for quick, clean, problem-free raids... trash is at least as important as bosses. And even before the instance is farmed - every minute you spend doing trash is a minute you're not learning new bosses.

Basically: while it is true that trash is a little less critical than bosses, and if you need to go afk for a few minutes trash is certainly the time to do it, it's also true that trash is not an excuse to slack off. It is important, it is something you want to do and do well, and maximizing your DPS on it does contribute to the raid. It might not be a fair metric between classes in all cases, but it's still worth doing your best on. In short: trash matters.

 

IceDrake

If you guys do NOT have a warrior tanking. It would be ok to get imp EA... Just know your dps will suffer from popping it so I would assign this task to your most poorly geared rogue.

If you do have a warrior tanking and you accidentally pop imp EA, he will want to stab you. I have a level 70 prot warrior alt and when you pop Expose Armor he cant Sunder or Devastate which gimps his threat by a lot. But hopefully you already know that.

Finally the amount of dmg increase will depend on how much physical DPS you have in your raid group. If your composite is mostly casters it might not be worth it. However if you are melee and hunter heavy it might be good.

At the end of the day you will be sacrificing your dps for the good of the guild. You have to ask yourself these questions when considering if it is worth it.

 

• Aldriana

1) If you're specced straight swords, it's better to drop 2 points of poison talents. If you're specced hybrid Mace/Sword or Fist/Sword, it's better to make another rogue, who *is* specced straight swords, drop 2 points of poison talents and take Imp EA. If you don't have any regular sword rogues... um, I guess dropping Vitality is as good as anything.

2) Yes, it's better to use Imp EA than Sunders... if you can. On bosses where damage is fairly sustained, Imp EA is a great choice. But it does take somewhat longer to apply, so on a fight with many interruptions (like, say, Felmyst), it might be better to use Sunders anyway.

3) Yes, you very much want to have either Sunders or Imp EA up on every boss, or all your physical DPS will be horribly gimped.

 

IceDrake

Ooops accidental double post

 

◊ Shaker

The way I did this was to always just use BF, if it was up, right before the demons were cast - that way if you get a demon, it gets hit by the BF, but you're also just using BF pretty regularly, which hedges your bets.

Consistency. It's only a virtue if you're not a screwup.

 

• Aldriana

Agreed... it's just been a while since I've done the fight, so I couldn't remember if the spacing between demon phases was such that it was up every time. I seem to recall having troubles with it not being cooled in time if I got demons twice in a row.

To clarify on this point: no, it's pretty much always worth it. When one runs the numbers one finds that it's actually a *personal* DPS gain to use 5s5a over a normal rupture cycle with a dps warrior sundering for many rogues, and even for the ones where it isn't the DPS loss is relatively small - the number of physical DPSers in the raid required to make it worthwhile is basically never more than 2. And given that a caster-heavy raid will still tend to have at least 4 or 5 physical DPS, all of whom get that level of benefit - as will the tank, which improves his aggro - one finds that it's pretty much always a net DPS gain.

As I say: Imp EA is worth it, provided the fight is such that you can maintain near-100% uptime. If you starting letting it drop, or need time to restack it regularly, the benefit vanishes in a hurry. But if you can keep it up nearly all the time... it's very much worth it, regardless of raid composition.

 

◊ Shaker

The cycles are 1m45s apart, so technically you will miss one in 3 inner demons, were you to get demon'd every time.

You generally pop it 5s before demons pop when he starts casting Inisidous Whisper the first time, giving you 10s of BF on the demon (which should be roughly enough to kill it), then BF pops up about 10s into the next whisper, again giving you 10s to DPS demon and Leo with BF up (though you probably want to hit the demon for a few seconds before popping BF to make sure he dies). 3rd whisper you're on cooldown, and you're good to go for the 4th demon phase if there is one. There's still a 5/24 chance that you're chosen for demon on the one time you're on cooldown, but in general I think this was my best approach.

Consistency. It's only a virtue if you're not a screwup.

 

Casterbridge

Ah thank you, I thought as much.

As to the earlier question about spec, I use to the only rogue with sword sword, however I recentaly picked up the fist from badges and went the 16/45 route. I used your spread sheet and saw that I lost the least amount of dps dropping vitality (only a couple of points really) so I'm hoping my overall dps loss will be minimal, if at all, and the raid benefit will be that much higher.

I will keep in mind that point about a 100% uptime, I'm guessing some of the SSC fights would make this quite difficult.

 

Kumar

That sounds like a good idea, popping BF+Other Haste CDs 4-5s before Leo casts the Whispers.

One of the big problems I had on a few of the Inner Demons I got was that the Inner Demon would end up moving behind me and I would have to turn around and as a result any CDs I used are wasted and Leo is not getting DPSed though. Any idea why the Inner Demon ends up going behind me, or do I need to stand at the absolute edge of the hitbox to avoid that?

Also, coming back to my previous question, during the Human Phase, do you conserve CPs to immediately SnD when Demon Phase starts or do you use 3pt/4pt Ruptures (which I have been doing)?

Thanks

 

Rivkah

I considered doing that but I couldn't find an easy way to parse the Wowhead item data. If you know a good resource for that I can add it in. There's also the issue of not knowing what gems people would use for that, although I can apply some logic to it. Mainly I threw the calculator together for my personal use, but I don't mind improving it if I can find an easy way to do so.

 

◊ Shaker

Personally I didn't worry too much about human phase DPS, but given that you can only DPS safely for about 10 seconds, I would go in (100e), SS(60e, 0s), SnD(35e, 1s), SS(15e, 2s), SS(15e, 6s), SS(15e, 10ish seconds), and just drop the rupture for what I had at the time. If I got another Combo Point from the rupture, it was used on the way in for SND, which just gave a little bit more bleed damage during the whirlwind.

Also, you can still hit the demon while it's behind you as long as it's within range. If you're not hitting it with BF, you just need to shift a bit to one side or the other while it's not casting to wiggle it.

Consistency. It's only a virtue if you're not a screwup.

 

Ferrat

I know most people are saying that the Ashtounge tailsman doesn't compare to the Shard of contempt. But i really saw another rogue pull away from me when i started using the shard over the Ashtounge tailsman. And i think i know the reason but was wondering if someone that knew how to manipulte the sheet could help me out with it. I pop my cooldowns while the Tailsman is up. I pop my cool downs at the start of a 5 point rupture after saving up some energy), this means that i can usually get to a 4point SnD (or 5point SND with AR popped for the guarnteed proc of the Ashtounge) refresh and pop it earlier then i would normally to give me a 80% chance to keep the Tailsman up while BF and Haste pots are still in effect. I know this is what the other rogue in my guild does and it seems the spreadsheets do an average of uptime, which only makes sense for them to function that way. And i agree that the average on the shard might be better but i find it much easier to control procs on the Tailsman. I make sure that it is proc'd during my other cooldows which i am sure most people do. For me it seems to really help. Am I just doing something wrong with the shard? am I not paying enough attention to use cooldowns when it procs or is the tailsman just undervalued because of the averages in the Spreadsheet. And also if this has been covered before i am sorry. But I would really like to get this straightened away for our next attemps on Brutallus.

Oh and I know people like to armory people so my toons name is mistrtumnus and i know i need to change one gem.

Thanks in advance for the help

 

ryo

For some reason I was under the impression that when using a Fist/Sword build the offhand sword spec procs triggered a main hand attack. Checking WWS logs shows that it's always an offhand attack that follows the the "... gains one extra attack through sword specialisation" message, has this always been the case or is this a somewhat recent change?

 

• Feist-Mok

If this is true and undocumented it's a significant nerf to sword spec and */sword hybrid specs. Guess I can try to park my rogue in diremaul overnight for some testing if someone doesn'tt contradict this.

 

• Vulajin

It's not undocumented, it's just the peculiar way in which WoW's combat log reports sword spec swings. The "you gain 1 extra attack..." notification always appears in the log prior to the swing that causes the proc.