Thanks Vulajin, this is exactly the formalisation I was looking for.

There is clearly a tradeoff that balances out the uptime maximisation for the ATOL, I was very interested in this because the ATOL provides no passive benefits but also has no in-built limitations such as a PPM or hidden cd (making it more like a rogue talent than a standard stat-boosting trinket) - so the value of the trinket is very much a case of "what you do with it". I'll be trying out both the 5/5 as well as an alternating x/5+x/5 and see how it feels in practice with a little improvisation around the energy regen.

I'm sure this has been asked countless times before but there are quite a few pages in this thread.

I am currently using a 3s/5r rotation and every now and then my S&D would fall off and I would get it back up within 1-2 seconds.
What I started doing as I've become more comfortable with the healers in my guild is to use a thistle tea so that it won't fall off.

Now my question is will this suffice or would a rotation of 4s/5r be better?

P.S - How do I change the cycle on the spreadsheet so that I can see the changes between them.

Personally, I'd rather run a longer cycle with less chance of dropping Slice than have to use Thistle Tea to sustain it. In my experience, 3/5 requires a decent amount of consistent proc luck, even with energy queueing, in order to not have Slice drop periodically. I don't like relying that much on luck. 4/5 requires much less luck on procs, and therefore is much more amenable to periodic bad luck streaks*.

*Last week on Felmyst, after opening with my first 4s, I had a bad proc streak so bad that by the time I generated my next 4 CP, Slice was already running out, and I had to refresh it.

Thanks for the speedy reply, I will definitely try the 4s/5r and see how it goes.

3s/5r has been serving me well, putting out roughly 1400-1500 dps, it was never that often that S&D fell off but of course it's still a problem that it did.
I try to pool but sometimes paying attention to the fight gets in the way. *lol*

A bit of a sidetrack, but when I was was setting up one of my proc watcher mods, I had to look up the names of the procs from the various rogue equipments and enchants. Perhaps I was just having a Google challenged day, but it was much harder to track down than I thought it would be, mainly because none of the 4 major sites (thott, alla, wowdb, wowhead) had a link from the item page to the proc page (though some had the reverse link only).

Even though this information is static and not really analysis or theorycrafting related, it got me thinking that it might be useful to have stickied here in the 101 thread. So I offer up the list I found for due consideration here. Note that this was stolen entirely from a comment from user Xgen at curse: Rogue Power Bars | World of Warcraft Addons | Downloads

I never really use the other sites you listed, but Wowhead at least DOES link from the item to the proc, with perhaps a couple exceptions. (From your list, the only one it didn't have a link for was the Ashtongue trinket -- although in that specific case, someone has linked to the proc spell in the comments.) You can find it by clicking on the text in the "Equip:" line in the tooltip of the item.

This seems like the best place to post this.
I was pushing some numbers around today and noticed that my crit rate on the character tab was always 0.295 or 0.3 less than the sum of crit from agi, rating, and talents. Anybody know what's the deal with that?

That's because crit given from agility is not simply agility/40, but (agility-11.5)/40; and, conveniently, the difference between those two values is .2875% crit.

I hope you can give me an answer so a small question. I've seen several places Dire Maul mentioned as a place to test procs and such on large scale test; but have yet to find which mob to go hit. I've looked as much as possible, but have resorted to ask.

Thanks in advance.

Dire Maul North, behind King Gordok. There are a bunch of yellow marked ghost ogres that you can beat on without them turning around and attacking. There's a locked door on the way, but you should be able to lockpick it (or kill Mol'dar if your skill isn't high enough) or blow it up with some species of seaforium (you'll need to kill the 2 mobs near it). Aside from this, you can stealth all the way through (there are some wandering Kilrogg eyes, that you need to be careful around).

Specifically, this is the mob: Gordok Spirit

After lurking on EJ for a long time, I haven't seen this topic covered in depth anywhere yet, but I don't think it warrants a new thread, so I guess this is a logical place for it.

Anyway, I've been toying for the past month or so with some more extreme energy management (as a swords rogue); that is, instead of mindlessly spamming SS, I've been trying to keep my energy as high as possible without capping out (between 60-80) normally, so that when SoC procs (or whatever other proc effects I may get in the future), I'm able to get an extra SS in. Doing very very rough math in my head suggests a very small dps increase over normal SS spam doing this (but every little bit counts, right?), and I've seen on average a slightly higher number, but this could very well just be a random luck swing. Have there been any numbers kicked around to support this theory, or am I just putting in a bunch of extra effort for no gain?

Regarding expertise cap... Please excuse me, my memory gives false readings about seeing "dodge" on my screen..

I tried this today in DM North on the Gordok's Spirit and got 3 WWS from it.

Wow Web Stats 4s/5r energy management
Wow Web Stats 4s/5r SS spam
Wow Web Stats 5s/5r energy management

It seems that energy management is indeed a dps increase over mindless SS spam

You had 37% crit on SS Energy management, 25% on SS Spam.

1755 Combat Potency Procs vs 1545 on SS Spam.

The only way you can say Energy Management does better DPS is if the Cit percent is same, procs are similar and the time period for both tests is the same.

The test period is about the same, 12 seconds differ I think. The reason SS crit is higher is because I was waiting for mongoose to go up before SS'ing. But yes the combat potency is really random for me. All the tests were unbuffed with only trinket + weapon enchants. I might have misunderstood what you meant with the crit and potencies so sorry if I did :P. Both SS management test had 37-39% crit though so that should be a small dps gain over SS spam atleast

If I got a mongoose to proc I would wait until it was around 5 seconds left and check if I would a second proc(so 2 buffs were up) and if I did not get a second proc I would spam SS. If Shard of Contempt was off the internal CD I would wait a bit for the trinket to proc before SS'ing so I could see if I would get mongoose together with trinket.

Even if Mongoose had 0% uptime on SS attacks in the SS spam test, and it had 200% uptime on SS attacks in the energy queuing test (i.e. both hands procced constantly), you wouldn't see that big of a difference in your crit chance. One Mongoose proc provides 120 agility, which gives 3% crit chance, so the maximum you could possibly expect is 6% difference. You observed a difference of 12%.

Now, the problem is that your sample size is incredibly small for providing any meaningful information. You'd need a much much larger number of SS attacks before you could draw any conclusions from it. Finding a statistically significant difference between such a small DPS gain is not something you can do in 10 minutes of DPS time. This is why we use spreadsheets to eliminate variance.

"Energy management," or as it is more commonly called, "energy queuing" or "energy pooling," isn't actually a new thing, though it isn't often talked about among the general rogue populace and hasn't been formalized anywhere (though that will change if I ever complete the damn TTT article). As has already been pointed out, the procedure is to allow your energy to stay at some non-zero quantity at all times, consuming it only as necessary to prevent your energy from ticking over 100.

There three main situations in which energy pooling is typically applicable, listed in increasing order of anal-retentiveness.

1) Pooling 25 energy in combination with consevative GCD usage.
2) Pooling your energy either until Slice and Dice is about to drop or you are about to tick over 100 before refreshing Slice and Dice.
3) Pooling your energy until a trinket/other proc occurs (including pooling before finishers while using Ashtongue Talisman).

Situation 1 is very common and is used by most rogues on any fight that involves interrupts. This most notably includes Reliquary of Souls phase 2, though it certainly occurs in other fights as well. Situation 2 is important for sustaining cycles like 3s/5r -- without a bit of pooled energy, even the slightest bit of poor proc luck will cause your Slice to drop, whereas a substantial energy pool will offset most such circumstances.

Situation 3 is the most involved way for a rogue to increase his DPS, since every proc has a different mechanism and cooldown (or no cooldown). It also depends on how many procs you think you should wait for before blowing your energy pool. However, if done correctly, you can actually obtain slightly better performance than the spreadsheet model.

I would venture that most PvE rogues use some form of energy pooling without necessarily having a name or standardized procedure for it. The best PvE rogues probably use it more liberally, but on most fights that aren't Brutallus there's also a limit to just how much attention you can pay to your energy bar while worrying about the actual ongoing fight.

Forgive me if this has been asked but a recent conversation came up between another Rogue guild member and myself.

Over at Shadowpanther's site on the PVE Weapons spreadsheet http://shadowpanther.net/weapons-pve.htm he has everything grouped together for the most part.
For my example he ranks: Merciless Gladiator's Right Ripper Merciless Gladiator's Right Ripper - Items - World of Warcraft higher than Gladiator's Slicer Gladiator's Slicer - Thottbot: World of Warcraft

Now here is the confusion I am hoping one of you more knowledgeable people can clear up for me. I am currently spec'ed for combat swords. Cookie cutter combat build. This is for raiding 100%. I switch to a Sub., build for my pvp'ing fun. If I am spec'ed with the talent of sword specialization because I am dual wielding two swords, and then switch to a higher ranked fist weapon in my main hand, what would I have to do to my talent spec.?

Would I the things in my Assassination tree so I could spec both in sword specialization and fist specialization?

Honestly I am thinking that I am just reading the spreadsheet wrong. My thought is if you are combat swords, you should have two swords. If you are combat fists, then you should have two fist weapons.

The second question that comes to mind based off of that spreadsheet, is would I be better off going Combat Fists using the Vanir's Right Fist of Brutality and Vanir's Left Fist of Savagery for raiding? My own answer/thought here is No. Combat swords is the best overall DPS dealer. Perhaps this is wrong or has changed?

The build you want to consider (consult your local spreadsheet to figure out what comes out ahead with your gear) is a combat fist/sword build, which is mentioned and listed in the very first post of this thread, dropping a few points out of poison talents to grab 2 weapon specializations.

Combat Hybrid Fist/Sword builds drop the poison talents from assassination and some nondamage filler in combat to get both sword and fist spec, and then use Fist MH Sword OH. This build is generally considered to be roughly comparable to straight Combat Swords assuming comparable weapon quality - that is, if you compare the damage done by this build with an Arena 3 MH Sword and an Arena 3 MH Fist, they will be pretty close - the damage gain by combining sword and fist spec is offset by the loss of poison talents, leaving them pretty close with swords usually a bit ahead.

The reason why this is interesting is that not everyone has equal access to swords and fists. If you get unlucky with drops on one or the other and aren't a serious PvPer, it's sort of a question of what you have access to. For instance, if you're not willing/able to get 1850 Arena Rating right now and don't have a MH Warglaive, Vanir's proves to be better than any MH Sword available to you. Thus, Hybrid Fist/Sword is a very sensible option for people who's best weapon option is a fist.

That said: if you're talking PvP weapons, and get a choice between swords and fists, I am of the opinion that it's generally better to pick swords, because a) I believe it's damage, while extremely comparable, is ever-so-slightly superior in practice, and b) It gives you the additional flexibility to pick up other talents that might be necessary, with Improved Expose Armor being the notable entry in that list.

For exact details of how the weapons compare in your exact situation, I would suggest checking out the spreadsheet.