No, you never your energy to cap out, you keep hitting SS as soon as energy permits it. The important thing for Rogue DPS is to not let SnD fall off at all, if its going to end, renew SnD immediately.

I know the spreadsheet says 1036 dps, for me it says 1350+ DPS but I have never achieved it on any of the fights, because almost all fights have some meele downtime. The best place to measure your DPS in this regards would be Void Reaver as that is one fight you can continue to DPS without any downtime, Tidewalker is another one if you don't get graved. In Kara, I can't think of any sustained fight where you can DPS without interruptions.

You can look at gemming for Agi instead of AP, its better IMO.

Also, I think you are overeacting here, unless she has consistently outdpsed you with worse gear. Tidewalker is one fight, you are leading the raid so you are worrying about healers getting graved, whether the Murlock tanks have proper aggro or not, etc. In some way, Leading the raid will in some way affect your DPS. Apart from that, one fight, if RNG hates you that fight not much you can do. I have had fights with few WF procs, Sword Spec procs, Crit procs, etc which then affects my DPS. Then we move to the next fight and I end up doing most DPS on a meele unfriendly fights just because of awesome procs.

I think you have an incorrect understanding of what "SND cut" means (or at least, what most of us on this forum mean by it). Generally when we talk about an "SND cut" cycle, we mean simply that SND should be refreshed before consuming more energy with another instant attack. It does not mean that you should refresh SND the second you have enough energy to do so. You should let your energy pool before using SND, and in fact this is quite beneficial as you have said.

I have been trying to improve my character using the gear spreadsheet and shadowpanther as a guide for my upgrades. However I have dropped from 290hit to 229 hit and the spreadsheet still recommends me gemming agi > ap > hit. If I follow the next few logical upgrades my hit will plummet.

I realize hit is not a magical number, but is going under 200hit and gemming agi>ap>hit really such a good idea or am I being led-astray by rogue spreadsheets (sorry!)

Here is my armory in case I have not provided enough information. The World of Warcraft Armory
My guild is casual and my means of upgrade are limited beyond 10mans and Badges. I am an ex-highend raider (pre-tbc, different class), but getting the most from my character is still very important to me. I would appreciate any advice.

The one and only answer is contained in my user title.

Hit tends to scale really well with a lot of raid buffs - Windfury in particular. If you have customized the buff menu to not include WF (plausible for a 10-man guild).. well I can see why other stats would come out ahead. 2x AP > 1 Hit is a bit of a stretch though. Are you getting Battle Shout even?

When I put 10-man buffs into the spreadsheet I get agi/ap recommendations too. It's a matter of scaling, really. Hit scales really well with raid buffs, so for 25-man groups (especially with WF), hit becomes the most efficient dps stat. If you're never going to leave Kara/ZA, then follow the spreadsheet.

Actually, I remember using the spreadsheets a long time ago, with gear that was pre-Kara. 2 AP was greater than both, then as gear improved, Agility was best (as AP was still a significant boost), until you reach the point where Hit rating takes over.

It's certainly possible at low gear levels, but as your gear gets better, AP will scale much more poorly and will be quickly taken over by hit rating.

I know "QFT" is basically frowned on, but I was going to say something very similar.

Don't bother looking at what your hit rating is exactly. It doesn't matter. Plug your gear in the spreadsheet, and look at the AEP values. If anyone tells you you should be gemming for hit with 1900 AP and 200 hit rating (which is about my gear level), tell them to guarantee you an enhancement shaman and warrior with Solarian's Sapphrire in every group you're in first. I gem for agility on new gear even though it's very slightly worse than 2AP, just because it'll get better, and treat Hit rating as just another stat.

Hah, so, regarding my earlier question about being outdamaged: Ceilly actually has less AP than I do. However, when I was talking about this with her last night during Vashj (first kill whoo) she casually mentioned that she was flasked. I didn't bother for a farming run. I think I can stop kvetching now!

The least you can do is use the Elixir of Major Agility for farm content.

So I've been doing the 4s/5r rotation the spreadsheet suggested and I've ran into a few problems:

*I find myself having 15 seconds or so on SnD with rupture already up and 4 combo points. Most of the time what I do is get a 5th point up and SnD once again (having snd up is superior to rupture) but I'm not sure what I should do if I have 5 combo pts up and rupture already ticking with 10 or so seconds on SnD, would it be worth it to refresh it even though I have 10 seconds left on it?


One other thing:

Sometimes when I burn AR at the start of a fight (like TG for example) I find myself with a similar problem as above, I already have plenty of time on SnD and the time remaining on rupture is either more than enough or I can't over ride it due to procs at the time of application. What I'm wondering here is what I should do with the extra combo points, should I eviscerate, envenom or refresh my SnD timer regardless of how much time is left?

In general, with a 4s/5r cycle, you're going to have quite a bit of extra SND time by the time your cycle is finished. That's OK -- that's how it's supposed to work. Just refresh SND once you have the proper amount of combo points. Don't bother building up to 5 combo points, as this just separates your Ruptures more. This is what the spreadsheets mean when they recommend a "SND cut" cycle.

That said, a 5s/5r rotation is usually only a couple DPS different from 4s/5r, so if you do build to 5 combo points instead, it's not really hurting you. Although keep in mind that by using 5pt SND, you're actually increasing the extra time on SND you'll end up with at the end of the cycle. It's not a bad thing, though.

Most people seem to add in a 5pt Eviscerate into their cycle when they use AR. Something like 4s/5r/5e then return to your normal cycle since AR should be almost up by that point. As long as you don't let SND drop it should be fine.

What's the general feeling about a hemo build at the moment? Is the debuff worth it for raid DPS?

I have searched this thread but couldn't find very up-to-date information, though it is definitely possible I missed it.

Hi,

After reviewing one of my guild's WWS log, I was interested in calculating the Sword Spec damage.
From the WoW raw log, I extracted every event with "Sword Specialization" and copied events with the same timestamp to get the Sword Spec damage. I was quite surprised to see that most of the Sword Spec damage was reflecting my OH damage.
I was always convinced that I should have a MH attack proccing off the Sword Spec, and that this MH could miss, be dodged, glance, hit and critically hit. At least, that's my understanding of the Sword Spec.

I went to Dire Maul and started attacking those poor Gordok Spirits from behind.
For my tests, I removed every item that could proc, haste, etc and took two different weapons to easily differenciate the MH damage from the OH damage.
The log file (22 minutes) is here : log file

Damage is consistent with the weapons and the AP I had during those tests (1294), although I have no idea how much armor these spirits have.
1. MH (2.6 weapon speed, 2-4 damage) :
- normal hit : 178-180
- critical hit : 356-360
2. OH (2.3 weapon speed, 14-26 damage) :
- normal hit : 125-132
- critical hit : 250-264

This was my first and although the configuration is not the best I could get for the test, especially the weapons and the duration (and maybe other things), I'll understand if you throw that to my face. Nevertheless, am I wrong to assume that the Sword Spec is not working as intented or is it related to other factors such as lag or anything else ? Is there any way to be 100 % sure that the Sword Spec really procs MH attacks ?
Thanks.

The sword spec "proc" is at the same time as your swing. The resulting extra swing comes shortly after. Hence, you're seeing most of your sword spec procs COMING from your offhand.

Look at the timestamps on your mainhand swings - every time you get a proc it should be a shorter duration between the previous swing and your next mainhand swing.

To make it really obvious, use a super low dps offhand.

Well,
3 SnD 5r gives you as much rupture upptime/minute possible.
5 SnD 5r gives you less rupture, but since your SnD's are cheaper (Relentless strikes) you can fit in more Sinister Strikes/ minute.

The later is not commonly worth it, but when you get 4 t6 your instants do more damage, and at this point it will be worth it.

I think you're missing my point though. Have you actually looked at the difference in DPS between 3s/5r and 5s/5r at a normal gear level? Usually it's in the ballpark of just 5-10 DPS. That's nothing. And on top of that, 3s/5r has a higher chance of dropping SND due to unlucky lack of procs during a cycle. To me, the cycle is only worth it if you can keep SND active exactly 100% of the time. If it drops even say a combined two seconds over the course of a boss fight, I'm willing to bet that will equate to more than a 10 DPS loss over the course of the fight than if it hadn't. Since there's virtually no chance of SND dropping in a 5s/5r cycle, alternatively, you might actually do MORE damage using 5s/5r in a real raid situation.

Basically I'm not arguing that people shouldn't be using shorter cycles in the general case. However, it's important to realize that if you struggle even a tiny amount to keep SND active in the cycle you are running, then you're probably actually losing the small gain you are trying to get by shortening your cycle in the first place. Mainly I wanted to caution those individuals who think they are improving their damage output by trying to maintain a cycle that is borderline sustainable. In practice they may be doing the opposite.

Well, having TT's it's really 0 problem keeping up a 3/5 rotation. And dropping SnD for a total of 10 seconds on the only really dps fight there is now, bruttalus. So 6 min at 2k dps at 64% white damage.

1280dps of that fight is white.
984 without SnD.

10 sec of 360sec is 2.8%.

So 1280*0.972 + 984*0.028 = 1271,712.
So you loose about 8dps by letting SnD drop in the MOST "White damage" friendly fight in the whole game. (More than teron since he turns and thus can parry + higher armor = less rupture/poison damage).

It's really just how well you want to play your rogue. Are you okey with not doing your best because it's easier. Good for you. If you want to be the best you can, Go for it!

Well, first, I think you're underestimating the contribution of SnD; most rogues in my guild run at least 68% white on Brutallus, and more like 2400 DPS rather than 2000 (with our Warglaive rogue being even higher on both counts). Regardless, I thus make the numbers 1632 white DPS with SnD, and 1209 without; hence 2.8% SnD uptime loses a direct 12 DPS... plus about 10 energy from Combat Potency procs, which is a couple more DPS over the course of the fight. Thus, I'd say the DPS loss is more like 15 than 8.

Now, you might argue that 15 DPS is not that big a deal either... though it's already enough to cover the gap between the two cycles for most Tier 6 rogues (for me, the cycles are less than 5 DPS different in theory, so I'd rather run the safe cycle than give up 15 DPS to SnD drops). But, lets answer the real, correct question - what do you gain in exchange for your 10 seconds of lost SnD? I mean, even by your numbers (much less mine) each second of SnD downtime costs you almost 300 DPS while it's down, and each combo point spent on it gains you over 4 second of uptime. Thus, a combo point spend on SnD gains almost 1300 damage, whereas each spent on, say, Rupture (assuming 300 damage/tick Rupture) is only worth about 400 damage. Now, the reality of cycles means you can't actually trade them off on a 1 to 1 basis... but given the 3:1 ratio, I think it's fair to say that more often than not, it's better to keep SnD up than try to eke out a little extra Rupture uptime. But hey, if you're okay with not doing your best because it's harder, good for you.

True that aldriana, but he said "Normal gear values". I don't really know what he meant about that. And he's in PvP gear, so I assumed "Normal" is about t5/few part early BT.

You won't be doing more than 2000 dps on brutallus with that mate. And you could also argue that loosing 10 sec of SnD on a 6 min fight with tea puts you as a quite slacky rogue overall.

How ever, I do not argue with you with my gear level. 5/5 is more damage, safer, works better with AT trinket, I use it. Why wouldn't I?
This argument was about levels where 3/5 is actually preferable than 5/5.

To be clear, I'm not talking at all about my own gear. It's purely a hypothetical discussion.

Anyway, the sustainability of a 3s/5r rotation is based mostly on your hit rating, expertise, and haste -- or more directly, your average energy regen. Basically my post was mostly in response to the claim that a 5s/5r cycle "is not commonly worth it, but when you get 4 t6 your instants do more damage, and at this point it will be worth it." I was simply trying to point out that 3s/5r is not always superior to 5s/5r even at lower gear levels. I also wanted to demonstrate that the difference is a lot smaller than most make it out to be, so as to discourage people from taking an overly tight cycle thinking they are substantially increasing their damage output by not "wasting" SND time.

I underestimated how much SND downtime you'd need to cover a 10 DPS difference, but the point is still valid.

As someone who did exactly that out of sheer boredom(was using Dragonstrike from start of T5 until last keying Vashj kill), let me say this: Don't do it! Not if you are used to combat and gemmed/geared for it with lots of hit. The poison requirement will drive you nuts on trash, especially in MH, and the lower damage will really get on your nerves if you're already frustrated like this. Mutilate will be fun for a week, and from then until you switch you will be completely fed up with it. I grabbed badge fists because Anetheron is a prick, but even if I hadn't I might have switched back to my stupid mace by now.