ryo

Ah that makes sense then, thanks for clearing it up!

 

Monistatus

So I'm currently using Belt of One Hundred Deaths, and Shard of Contempt, which effectively puts me over the expertise cap (as a human).

I'm not exalted with Ashtongue yet, so Lethality trinket isn't an option. Other trinket is WSC.

The AP proc on SoC is really awesome, and I'd like to keep it.

Can I safely forgo the 2 points in Weapon Expertise and throw them somewhere else? I'm thinking 5/5 VP would be a nice little boost to my DP stacks, and I'd still have another point to play with (I personally like the Stun/Fear resist, but that's just me).

Any human rogues with some experience on this?

 

Invictus

So in reading this thread, I see it frequently mentioned that you should never let SnD drop, but I am curious why. From all the work Aldriana and Vulajin have done I believe it is so, but I guess what I am looking for is what exactly happens in that potentially very small window of time that makes it worse than waiting for another combo point to increase the chance of a relentless strikes proc.

Is it that when the weapon speed slows down and then speeds up again you can somehow lose a swing? This is the only thing I can think of.

 

Valize

Hey Guys,

<-- First time poster, long time reader.

I just have a few conclusions that I would like confirmed by the established rogue community here on EJ. Many of the High-end rogues (including myself lewl) on our server had an in-prompt-to Theorycrafting session the other night. In it, we mostly discussed how to Gem our T6 Quality gear to squeeze the most out of it. I was a proprietor of the "Stay @ a decent amount of Hit (250-270 ~ ish), and stack the crap out of agility". Throughout the night, the evidence that was brought forth about stacking just Hit in our sockets was frankly undeniable. In my gear, spreadsheets showed a 51 dps increase just by regemming (I know spreadsheets should be taken with a grain of salt, however). Not only that, but we found that keeping 4 pc T6 (Helm, Gloves, Shoulders, Chest) and using the new Badge leggings was on par with 4 pc T6 (Gloves, Shoulders, Chest, Legs) and Cursed Vision of Sargeras. However IMO the leggings version is better, solely because we found out that with the Badge Leg set, that you could actually hit the mythical Hit cap.

CTProfiles.net: World of Warcraft Profiles � Valize � Main

Anyway, I am getting away from my point. I would just like to know if you guys agree (generally) that gemming your T6 gear with +10 Hit Rating gems will give bigger DPS gains than Staying around 250-270 hit and stacking Agility.

 

tymoney321

Hit is the best dps increase point for point. Agility is pretty close though. It is common knowledge that you should always gem for +10 hit. The exception is if you continue gemming in this manor in sunwell, you will pass the hit cap. Thus many raiders are gemming their new items with +10 agility. Either way, gemming for agi or hit will not make or break your dps, agility and hit are still relatively close.

 

• Aldriana

What happens when SnD drops? You lose damage, that's what. Say you let SnD drop for a second. Any attacks made in that interval will not be hasted, so on average a 1-second SnD drop will cost you a couple hundred damage. Now, can this be worth it? Theoretically, yes... but only if whatever you're doing instead generates more damage than that gap in SnD, and in practice it turns out that the SnD damage is usually better than other available options. It's not a fundamental truth of the universe - it's just a rule of thumb. Usually keeping SnD up is better than letting it drop.

I'd also note that your example of what you could do with a drop in SnD downtime is fallacious. Usually one is running a cycle - 3s5r, 4s5r, whatever - that is designed to keep 100% SnD uptime. So if your normal cycle is 4s5r, but you squeeze in an extra SS to get the Relentless Strikes proc... well, now you're doing 5s5r. And if 5s5r is better, why weren't you doing that in the first place? And if it's not, why are you starting now?

First off, I'd note that hitting the hit cap is not a good thing. In fact, if you're actually hitting it (as opposed to merely getting close to it), it's a bad thing. Personally, given two gear sets of otherwise comparable quality, I generally prefer the one with less hit.

Second: yes, gemming for hit tends to be the way to go - but only narrowly so, and only until you need to start thinking about the hit cap. Replacing a 10 agi gem with a 10 hit gem will usually be a DPS gain on the order of 1 DPS for sustained fights. Replacing all your gems with the most hit-heavy alternative I can see giving maybe 10 DPS. If you're seeing more than that in the spreadsheet, it is likely that there's a bug in the sheet.

Also, (and people will disagree with me on this, so take it with a grain of salt), I'm a believer in keeping hit a little lower - in particular, down around the hit cap for level 70-72 mobs, assuming it is possible to do so without losing too much DPS elsewhere, so I generally socket more agi and agi/hit gems than some people do... see this post for a more detailed discussion of my reasoning.

 

Invictus

I tend to be a micro manager when it comes to my energy regen, and alternate between a 4s5r and 5s5r depending on combat potency procs, AR, heroism, BF, etc. However, there are times when SnD is going to drop, but in 1 second I can get another CP and use it for an increased chance/guaranteed chance for a relentless strikes proc. It feels like the payoff is worth it, but again I didn't know what happens during that drop. If the answer is just that I lose the haste from SnD during the downtime that's what I needed.

EDIT: Another thought (not that you could ever time it), but with a downtime of 1 second it seems there is a good chance it wouldn't affect your MH white damage at all, if you were dropping it early enough on the swing timer that you could restore the hasted speed before the swing time was up.

 

Invictus

I like doing this as well as there are other buffs to take into account. We have a draenei warrior in our group on occasion, and we used to have a Moonkin with imp FF (still have the Moonkin, just not the imp FF). Those two buffs give you 4%, and another 1.27% from spicy hot talbuk. With my current HR at 269 (17.06 hit%) with just the draenei warr (and no food or moonkin) that puts me at 23.06% - just about perfect for trash. On boss fights I may swap in similarly rated AEP gear but with more hit and eat Talbuk instead of Mudfish. Although I'd prefer to have our Moonkin respec, which would still keep me under the hitcap for bosses.

 

Houseplant

As it stands right now it seems that I will not have a chance at getting a DST because my guild hasn't done Gruul's Lair in over a month and I don't we have any plans on going back there anytime soon.

I am currently working on getting the Shard of Contempt and should have it by next week, but my question is how much DPS do I actually lose from not having a DST and what should I do to compensate for not having one?

 

• Vulajin

You should get the next best trinket? You lose maybe 20 DPS, which sucks, and you'll pretty much never find a genuine replacement for the thing, but it's hardly killer. I'd estimate (completely without any hard evidence to back myself up) that 25-50% of raiding rogues beyond T4 don't have a Dragonspine Trophy.

 

koaschten

Just a note, how can that Moonkin hold his raidspot when not supporting as well as he can as a hybrid? Does he do that much more DPS to outvalue imp FF? I doubt that.

 

drumbum

That's not true. Even if the SND downtime occurred in-between swings, it would still increase the time gap between the two swings. The "swing timer" will dynamically slow down right when SND falls, and speed up again when SND is reapplied. Therefore, even the tiniest downtime of SND *will* translate into a DPS loss -- and as Aldriana already pointed out, most of the time, it's not worthwhile to let it drop given other alternatives.

 

◊ Shaker

Now I haven't personally tested this, but one of our more methodical people was talking about it the other night, and he said swing time was locked at the start of the swing, so technically, if you had SnD drop for .5s while both weapons had already swung, it wouldn't affect DPS at all.

I could be wrong about the swing speed thing, but it really doesn't matter because there's no realistic way to be able to alter the cycle while anticipating the swing timer for two independently swinging weapons with enough regularity to make it a DPS increase.

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

 

• Aldriana

I think Shaker is right. My understanding is that when you make a swing, it determines based on your current haste value when the next swing should happen, and anything that happens in between doesn't matter. Now, this in theory this can lead to all sorts of interesting optimizations about allowing brief drops of SnD and the like; in practice, weaving this between attacks when you're dual wielding (and one of your weapons is attacking more than once a second anyway) falls in the same category as trying to land Sinister Strikes during the Windfury buff - it's sort of a cool trick, and if you could pull it off reliably it might be an ever-so-slight DPS increase... but it's just totally impractical to actually do it in a raid.

 

drumbum

Hmm. Well, the reason I suspected that it worked this way is due to the findings of the boss parry mechanics. When a boss parries an attack, his swing timer is basically hasted at the point where it was, such that if the boss parries an attack immediately before his next swing, the difference would be small; while if he parried right after an attack, the next attack would come quite a bit sooner.

I figured this same mechanic would be in place for player swings as well, although I suppose this could be an entirely different mechanic entirely. However, this does show that the game is capable of more or less adjusting swing timers on the fly, so it seems logical they could implement it for players as well.

 

• Aldriana

Well, I do know that parry haste applies to player attacks as well. That said, parry haste has always struck me as sort of a one-off in terms of melee mechanics - it's not clear to me it exists, and it works unlike just about anything else. What I really meant is that changes in haste rating between swings tend not to recalculate the time of the next swing, but I haven't honestly tested that so I can't swear as to whether it's true.

 

Invictus

Yeah I was hoping this was the case (if I understood correctly). Not so much for planning on a direct DPS increase, but that the occasional short downtime of SnD wasn't more than losing the faster swing time during that interval. So to overly simplify it, say I had a 2.6 speed weapon. With just SnD, that puts me at 2.06. If I swing, and SnD falls off, there is no impact to MH damage until I arrive at +2.06 from last swing. By then, if I don't have it up again, I start increasing the time to next swing up to 2.6.

It makes sense that this is how it would work, as resetting the swing timer every time you gained/faded a haste buff...you'd lose a lot between mongoose and DST procs coming and going.

EDIT: Nevermind, I did misunderstand what you said

 

Capek

Your linked post was quite eye-opening to me and I intend to follow suit with my gemming/gearing.
It sounds like you're suggesting a 'sweet spot'. Perhaps the section from the OP should be changed to reflect this, at least when considering a weighted, not offensive, perspective.

 

• Aldriana

Well, the point is, "sweet spots" really only exist when you're talking about tuning final gear. When it comes to gemming, you have the flexibility between hit and agi and can tune where you land. What Vulajin's post is intended to discourage - and rightly so - is the notion that magic numbers of hit and expertise are somehow more important than what pieces of gear are actually good. It doesn't happen as much anymore, but there was a time when it was not uncommon to hear statements like "the absolute best amount of hit to have is 273, so I'm going wear otherwise inferior gear to get to that number" - which is bad. The point (and maybe this can be clarified in the official writeup, but nevertheless) is that the correct train of thought in itemization is as follows:

1) Select the best piece of gear that you have available to you for each slot.
2) Make sure that this doesn't have any obvious issues, and correct any that appear. For instance, if your best options are Vashj Belt, Slayer's Boots, and Shard of Contempt, you need to figure out which one has the best alternative, since using all 3 puts you in a bad place relative to the Expertise cap.
3) Socket with agi and hit to wind up in your favorite place of the itemization space. Pretty much any point of balance in agi and hit is fine, but if you're truly optimizing there are subtle things you can do to squeeze out a bit more advantage.

The key point in this is that relative to the first 2 points, the third one is a trivial optimization. Any combination of hit and agi is pretty much fine; hence, addressing details at that level will more likely confuse people than provide meaningful improvements. Hence, the current wording is designed to make the first 2 points clear - pick your best items, and don't go over the cap - as they're really the important two. And given that this is the Roguecraft 101 thread, I think that's the right approach. When we have the "Extremely subtle details of Rogue DPS" thread, we can start including optimizations like "figure out where you are relative to vitality and BoK breakpoints".

 

• Vulajin

Not in the sense that most people tend to suggest "sweet spots" for hit rating. Aldriana simply suggests that it makes a bit of sense to cap yourself at the hit cap for level 72 mobs, rather than the one for boss mobs. The reasoning is that at most gear levels, the value of 5 agility is reasonably close to the value of 5 hit rating anyway, but the agility will have value on all types of mobs, whereas hit rating beyond the level 72 hit cap only applies to the boss itself, not any trash nor any boss adds.

(edit: f,b)

 

◊ Shaker

Just what we need, racially sensitive topics.

I kid, I kid....

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

 

excelion

Hi everyone, long timer lurker first time poster in need of some assistance. I'm sorry to interrupt your discussion regarding weapon swings, but this shouldn't be much of a distraction. I'm in a quite casual guild that has just started out in 25man, we've downed Maulgar, Gruul, Magtheridon and gotten Void Reaver to 1%, we also do the 3rd timed chest in Zul'Aman.

Despite being far far more casual than most of you guys I really enjoy theorycrafting and utilizing the information and spreadsheets available to improve my raid performance. Even though I'm usually our best DPSer in most fights I'm not satisfied. We have quite a few hybrids (enh shamans, a ret paladin, a moonkin every now and then) and they're doing pretty much the same damage as I am. Because of this it feels like I'm not worth taking to raids since I don't contribute half as much as they do in the form of buffs and utility.

I have a good rotation going, use hit food and agility elixirs every try in addition to spamming drums of battle, but for me to feel satisfied I'd like to be ahead of the hybrids by a larger margin. Do rogues just scale slowly, is my gear too bad, is it daggers fault or might it be a learn2play-issue? Any suggestions you throw my way would be greatly appreciated.

 

Stoux

I am am the classic 20/41 Combat Sword build I have 2 tier 4 bonus and I am tring to figure out how to best use my AR.
So I am looking for some advice and what other use to maximise the extra energy.

I usally drop it right after a 5 point Rupture then build up a 5 point snd then drop a 5 point rupture then build up a 5 point Evis then start my normal 1 SnD 5 Rup. combo. It this stupid, wise, or not the best?

 

Valize

I hold a 2s/5r rotation, but what I do is after I refresh my SnD (lasts 15s) I have just enough time to do a 5cp Evis and another 5cp Rupture and am still able to keep SnD up. This is key for me, cause this way my Rupture uptime is as high as it can be.

 

Stoux

So by a 2s/5r you mean you don't have the 2tier4 bonus or you use the extra point to carry you through your SnD? Either way I am up to trying it sounds like better combo then what I have going on anyways.