Eya guys. Ive a issue with shoulders should i use.
I always used [Shoulderpads of the Stranger] since i gotta them over t5 of VR.

But now with [Shard of Contempt], racial bonus of sword spec (im human) and 2 talent points on weapon expertise im capped for expertise and dont need [Shoulderpads of the Stranger].

For replace them ive [Deathmantle Shoulderpads] and [Shoulderpads of the Silvermoon Retainer]. I use [Deathmantle Handguards] too.

Ive used sheet and score was very, very similar like 1 or 2dps. After i get expertise capped, why sheet shouldnt give a "decent result" telling me for drop Stranger's?! I think [Shoulderpads of the Silvermoon Retainer] are better and that im using atm. Btw our guild are killing Naj and im looking for [Mantle of Darkness] thats a better replace.

Let me know your opinion. Thx in advance.

EDIT: In addition, i have 2 gems 4agi/6sta on [Deathmantle Shoulderpads] cos some months ago i need blue gems for meta works. But now, i dont need them. So when i ask about what shoulders should i use, we need to think about if worth change the gems. If i dont change gems, [Shoulderpads of the Silvermoon Retainer] is better i guess. Dont forget about t5 bonus with gloves. I think first bonus of t5 is pretty useless most of times in raid ambients, cos i use 4s5r. Maybe good in bosses immune to bleed effects.

I believe Deathmantle comes out on top because of it's ilvl, but the items are indeed similiar. My roommate and I were debating these two items the other day ironically and we viewed hit/crit on a 1:1 ration, weighed up all the stats and the T5 came out on top, but barely. Please correct me if I'm wrong, still trying to learn from reading here =)

Also, despite prolonged and repeated efforts, some of us (regardless of gear level), simply have not been able to obtain a DST and/or Shard of Contempt. Personally I have been running Gruul since March of 2007, so 14+ months, and I have run Heroic Magister's Terrace 25-30 times, and have simply not been able to pick one up. When and if I am able to get either trinket I would use it, but currently my choices are Warpspring, Madness or Ashtongue, so I use Warpspring/Ashtongue for Brutallus.

Yes, you're completely wrong. If you had actually read the first post of this thread, specifically section 5 (Gear Selection), you would have noticed the handy stat tables. Looking at the tables would have showed you that hit rating is a full 50% better than crit rating at any given gear level.

Or, of course, you could have used either spreadsheet. I use the Gear Spreadsheet, and here are my results:

Shoulderpads of the Silvermoon Retainer: 1606.06
Deathmantle Shoulders: 1607.93 DPS
Mantle of Darkness: 1609.56

Thus, the Mantle of Darkness, at least for my gear (some t4, some ZA, some badge loot) is better by 1.5 DPS, or 5 EP. And that seems likely to hold true regardless.

I was wondering if putting points in improved Eviscerate is worth the points so that your Deadly poison can be left ticking a little bit longer before using Envenom, and if this will increase over-all DPS. For example; Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft or Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft vs. Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Because it looks like Eviscerate causes more instant damage making deadly poisons more useful ticking even after eviscerate, but not long enough to end without the instant Envenom damage.

Read the first post of this thread. Section 9 near the bottom. On Eviscerate and On Envenom sections.

I would suggest that, subconsciously trying to prove a point, your friend has been performing slightly worse with the DST in instead of the Shard, or whatever other combo is suggested to be better. It is often the case that if a person notices a pattern and they want to prove that it is universal, they'll unknowingly skew their own performance to make it so.

On the other hand, are you certain that the DST is better at your friend's gear level? I know that at mine, the Shard is better than the DST and Aldriana said something about this phenomenon repeating its self at extremely high gear levels.

Hello me again

Going back to latito's post.

You have a macro that uses your mouse wheel. Do u mind elaborating on that? Im very interested in maximizing my macros for pve. Because atm i think my macros are inferior. So if you could give me/us some marco advice that would be great thnx.

Also another question.

We have in the group 2xrogues, warrior, shaman, druid.

Now the warrior usually wants heroism at the end of the fight where he can execute spam. However me being more popular in the guild can make the shaman cast heroism whenever i say. So when is the best time? To begin with when warrior has 5 sunders and all cool-downs and procs up or save my AR and time my BF cool-down till the end of the fight for the warrior?

These things seem like a small dps gain to me, but my way of thinking is if i can gain that addition 1%'s, soon i will have a full 10% dps gain. So i really want to get all the little things out and right.

One more thing. I was looking for a mod that tells me when things like when battleshout falls off. I know natures enemy task bar is a good one but i want it to make a sound or give a big icon, so i can see it fall off and i dont have to look at it and lose concentration on rotation and fight. So if someone else isn't refreshing there buffs i can see it. Any idea's, i was thinking maybe pallie aura, but im not sure how i would set that up

Thanks again guys.

(i have written this late at night so i hope it all makes sense) i will edit it if i read it tomorrow and i cant understand it. :P GL

Depending on the length of the fight, you want to have heroism happen during execute range for the warrior's sake. If the fight is generally under ten minutes in length, say, it shouldn't matter to you -where- in the fight you get heroism, so long as you can time it with your Blade Flurry and, if possible, your AR (Blade Flurry has better synergy with heroism than AR does, but you will see some small benefit with AR due to increased chance for mongoose proc). It will matter to the warrior, though, who will get increased rage generation during Heroism that he can burn into executes. This doesn't by any means say that you should save your BF and AR for execute range. You should pop them as soon as you can. However, BF should come up again several times in the fight, and if you're nearing 20% when it comes up, you might want to save it. If it's still on cooldown when 20% comes up, you can ask for heroism to wait a few seconds. Just so long as the heroism buff gets near it's full duration before the boss dies.

So let me make a quick comment on this.

DPS, as we all know, has a fair amount of variance in it. Even wearing the exact same gear with the exact same buffs on the exact same fight, your DPS can easily be fairly significantly different. As an off-the-cuff estimate, lets say the standard deviation on a 6 minute fight is 50 DPS, which is probably on the right order of magnitude.

The differences that you're trying to detect between the trinkets in question is probably under 5 DPS in most cases. So in order to accurately determine which is better, you need to reduce the standard deviation of the difference between the two to under 2 DPS (such that 5 DPS falls outside the 95% confidence range). Doing so would require, based on our estimates, about 1250 attempts which each combination of gear. So to get a fair comparison in combat between 2 different trinkets, you need to do Brutallus in otherwise identical gear and spec, with the exact same raid group keeping up the exact same raid buffs. at least 2500 times... which I somehow doubt that your friend has done. If he has, kindly give him my sympathies.

Also note that this assumes that you play each trinket with identical skill. If the buff management of AToL makes you pay better attention to you energy management causing you to cap out less often and/or drop SnD less, you might very well do more damage with it. But that doesn't mean it's a better trinket - it just means that you're better at playing it.

Basically: there's a reason I don't put much stock in anecdotal evidence of any sort - it's just too inaccurate except on scales not achievable by any human. Even imperfect statistical models like the ones in the spreadsheets will more often give useful numbers than any number of WWS parses.

I have mouse wheel down bound to action bar 3, which is bound to my main attack or main heal.

I use it for that button so that I can spam it (via doing mouse down a lot) once the cooldown or casting bar is up.

With respect to the DST/Shard conversation, I would think Shard would be superior from a playability standpoint. With DST, the change in haste affects Combat Potency procs, which could cause you to have issues with your cycle for the duration of the effect (greater chance for energy to cap out, etc). DST might edge out Shard in a theoretical cycle, but in practice Shard may be easier to play (as AP doesn't affect your cycle itself, just cycle damage).

No, from the sound of things he really isn't. This is very much along the lines of "I do more DPS with Talon instead of BoI, because I think it looks cooler, so I try harder". This forum doesn't have a flying F@#$ about what your friend "thinks" or "feels". What we do care about is mathematical analysis of the different items, talents, skills, rotations, etc. For example, maybe his play style works better for one or the other, maybe he tried harder, hits his AR before they wipe instead of not, maybe he chain chugs Haste pots when using one, all of this can skew the results.

The put things in perspective, I have seen 200+ DPS variance over the course of a night of Brut runs, no gear changes, no play style changes, just sometimes CP Procs more and my Crit rate is higher, and sometimes they are both lower, normally they even out and I end up somewhere in the middle.

Feelings don't entitle you to an opinion, and neither does wiping on content. There are a huge number of incredibly incompetent players in high end guilds. The fact that he is wiping on Brutallus doesn't mean he has a clue what he is talking about.

The fact that someone can't account for potential variability does not make it an inferior combo. During a fight, even if you assume that you are getting a CP Proc every swing, you are only generating about 25 energy a second, at that rate you could do a finisher every 8 seconds, so that is another 25 energy or just over 3 per second. That means that you are getting less then 30 energy per second even in the best case (or as high as 39 under Heroism), the GCD is 1 second, if you hit SS on the global this should never be an issue.

Hey guys I was wondering when is the most ideal time to use Thistle tea. Right now im using it when I want to get another CP quickly to keep my SnD cycle up or get another CP to have 5 for the next Rupture (assuming it has 1 second left and im also spamming rupture when I have 5 CP's).

If there's a post earlier on or a direct link that I missed, feel free to post the link/post range and I'll go check it out (5mins before a final so haven't had time to look, but wanted to ask before I forget).

Thanks a ton for the help!
-Fury

When the Random Number Generator hates you and popping it will keep Slice and Dice from going down.

Alternately, whenever you have a nearly empty energy bar to absorb the full 60 energy and don't need a healthstone cooldown.

Tea doesn't really synergize with anything, so, so long as it doesn't cause your energy to cap out, you can use it whenever.

- Sorry when someone already asked this question -

There is someting weird...this guide recommend a slow off-hand but if I look at "Maxdps.com" and calculate all things again and again, I always get the result that a slow offhand deals more DPS than a fast one. So I ask me if i'm to stupid to handle this calculator or is it true that a slow offhand deal more damage per second `?

Yeah dude...i've read it....because of this paragraph and the results from maxdps i've got the question.

for combat-sword - calculate for your own at maxdps.com and you'll see that a slow OH deal more dps than a fast one...thats the reason why i'm confused

It's wrong.

From my experience, Maxdps seems to be wrong about a lot of things. I see all sorts of bogus conclusions from people who cite Maxdps as a source. I recommend that you avoid that site and instead use one of the excellent spreadsheets available on these forums.

The information in the first post is the summary of the best known information on these forums. Thus, the only answer you're going to get here is that fast OHs are better, because, as far as we can tell, it's true. The authors of maxdps.com apparently feel otherwise, and/or have a mistake in their program. Who's right? Well, obvious I think that we are, but if they have some compelling reason to fell otherwise I would welcome an author of that site to stop by and explain why the entire theorycraft community is wrong.

Maxdps's rogue DPS model is woefully inadequate, hence why it gives inaccurate information. Rogues are advised to stay away from that site.

Sorry, what I should have stated is that the differences in DPS are small enough that it could certainly be that a playstyle difference will be more relevant between the two than the trinkets themselves. In either case (playstyle or procs) the differences aren't that large but may be tangible nonetheless.

For example, you are saying to hit SS on the global. This is a playstyle choice: "spamming" SS helps to keep you from ever capping energy. However, I used a slightly different playstyle when I was CSwords. I tried to SS when I was at 60 or so energy, rather than 40. I would also queue energy up a bit in front of SnD refreshes. This allowed me to build some extra energy cushion in case of a bad string of CP procs, helping to avoid SnD drops. However, I occasionally ran into an issue where I would start at 60 energy, get an energy tick, 2 back-to-back CP procs, and get a Relentless proc (for a total of 75 energy) all within a small window, either capping me out or putting me very close.

Is one style better? It really depends on whether it is worse to allow SnD to drop a lot or to allow energy to cap occasionally, and that will be further influenced by reaction time, lag, and other factors. In the idealized model, neither happens, so the model can't help in that case.

In the case pertinent to DST vs. Shard, a "spamming" model will have no wasted energy, but also may involve clipping SnD earlier on some cycles. If SnD gets clipped early on a cycle where a DST proc went through, but then on the next cycle there is no DST proc and fewer than average CP procs, SnD could drop. Do I know for sure? No. I'm postulating, however, that if a rogue finds it hard to get cycle consistency with DST (which may or may not be the case in this case), then for them Shard might be better, simply because they do better DPS with it.

So, in summary, there is the ideal world, which we follow most of the time, but there is also the real world, which we have to think about when it comes right down to actually playing the class to the best of our ability. In the real world case, small differences in theoretical DPS may well be trumped, in individual cases, by considerations of playability. We should not use those considerations to make a general case, but we should allow for them when they do occur.

I don't see a lot of need to queue before every Sinister Strike, but yes, you do want to queue before the SnD refresh. However, I find that running 5s5r there's enough cushion that letting energy regen to 60 is sufficient to avoid ever dropping SnD, and doing so is pretty safe from Combat Potency flurries, so you can sort of get the best of both worlds.

It also might be noted that DST being up or down doesn't fundamentally change the probability of such a flurry happening. Either way, you need back-to-back procs on OH attacks that happen to like inside the global cooldown, and the probability of this happening isn't significantly boosted by the 20% haste from DST. So I don't consider this to be a major weakness of DST.

Regardless: it is true that the value of DST does drop relative to it's competitors, so there do exist fights where it's preferable to use other options instead of it. Based on the gear estimates I've made it's more common for WSC to pass it than it is for Shard to do so, but both can happen based on the exact nature of your gear and buffs.