Perhaps it has been discussed ad nauseam at some point when I was not paying attention, but I was wondering if the rogue community had proposed any change to (for instance) Dagger Specialization in order to make combat daggers more viable, as I seem to be cursed to having 10,000 daggers in my inventory.
I took a look at the item values proposed on WoWwiki for crit rating and armor penetration, and 5% crit at 70 works out to 740 armor pen, then used Aldriana's spreadsheet to play around with high-end gear. I set it at a standard 15/41/5 combat daggers build, though I actually removed the 5 points from Dagger Spec as I wanted to see the crit changed to armor pen, and then lowered the boss armor value by 740. I found combat daggers to end-up very competitive with combat swords after this change, and I think this could definetly be a viable change.

I hope the above was legible, logical and reasonably complete; I suffer from an inability to express myself much of the time.

I've received two set piece T6 and the BoS recently, so my combat potencey regen has increased. The spreadsheet has shown my cycle needs to be "3s/5r." I find myself attempting to run this and ending up with rupture and s'n'd on the same timer after one rotation. Or in the other scenario, my s'n'd runs out and I have 4-5 combo points built up. I usually spend these on s'n'd.

I've read that the '3s/5r' rotation is nothing to keep to, and is just a suggestion/theory of an optimal DPS cycle. However, I am curious as to how to prevent this/recover from A). Not keeping rupture up, or B). Having the timers run equally.

Somehow, on the past two pages there have now been three separate questions all confused about not being able to maintain 100% Rupture uptime. Was there something unclear in the first post that leads people to believe that 100% Rupture uptime is necessary or even possible? I'd genuinely like to know, so that if there is something misleading, I can fix it.

To answer your question, you cannot keep 100% Rupture uptime and shouldn't be worrying about. Rupture will fall a lot, the point of the cycle is to maximize your Rupture uptime as much as possible within the limitation of keeping Slice up 100% of the time. The more important question, regardless of cycle, is whether you are allowing Slice and Dice to fall off. If you are, then no amount of Rupture uptime gain will save you.

With 3s5r, your expected rupture uptime is about 65%. It won't up be up all the time. It's not supposed to be up all the time. SnD should never drop, and you should be able to get fairly regular ruptures up too. That's all the cycle is trying to do.

While I'm probably just being pedantic on this point, it is possible in theory to lose a slight amount of SnD uptime in order to gain a large amount of Rupture time. In fact, the DPS spreadsheet might suggest a cycle for combat with SnD uptime just under 100% in order to increase the Rupture uptime by some significant amount. However, it is true that as combat one's goal should be to keep SnD up at all times. Worrying about Rupture uptime is really not productive; it's just the best way to use your combo points once you've managed to keep up SnD and contributes a rather marginal amount of DPS in comparison.

There do exists specs where dropping SnD makes sense. They are few and far between, and definitely do not include Combat Potency. As a rule of thumb, "never let SnD drop" is a pretty good one. In terms of the rest of the story... well, I'm working on an answer for that. But think of it this way: SnD typically gives 400+ DPS while it's up. Rupture is around 150 DPS while it's up. Each CP spent on SnD gives over 4 seconds uptime. Each CP spent on Rupture gives 2 seconds uptime. As such, it is extremely uncommon that worrying about rupture uptime matters at all, in comparison to the benefits of keeping SnD up.

A bit off topic and sorry for that but I would like some enlightenment, I am trying to convince our melee group leader that placing one of the rogues out of the melee group in order to put there a BM hunter is wrong and I am looking some solid facts to back it up. I did some research on the forums but I didn’t find anything really strong that could convince him.

Most people just say that warrior/enh shaman/rogue/rogue/feral is one of the best if not the best melee group but most of the times the second rogue in our raids gets dumped into a random group because the BM hunter gets all whiny how he loses DPS and how the melee group needs his Ferocious Inspiration buff.

I'm just looking a way to improve my dps, so here we go.

According to rogue spreadsheet I should go with 3,5s/5r cycle. But with that I cant keep rupture running all the time, altho I can keep SnD running. So my point is that should I try to find a cycle where I can keep both SnD and rupture running at same time? I'd guess it would be something like 1s/3r.

Look back a few posts (3033 for example).

It is no necessity to keep Rupture up all the time to maximize your DPS. It is only a way to spend 'unneeded' combopoints.
A 5 point rupture does more damage than a 3 point.
But I guess if the DPS sheet points you towards a 4s5r cycle, the DPS you get with this will be higher than with a 1s3r cycle, no matter if you keep rupture up for 100% or not. Slice and Dice up for 100% , that is what matters.

The margin between 1s3r and 4s5r can however be small (don't know exactly how much), and it can be better to get to a 1s3r cycle on fights where you cannot get 100% on target.( 1s3r is i.m.o far more easy to keep up than a 4s5r cycle.)

The DPS sheet should also be taken with a grain of salt as well : it calculates a theorethical maximum (I.e when you can maintain the cycles, and have 100% uptime, not dealing with adds, etc.)
As far as I know, there is no way to achieve this maximum. At least I never succeeded to get even near that maximum.
But it does give you a nice comparison of weapons/gear, and their capabilities, as well as a comparison between different cycles that are used, and can calculate an 'optimal' cycle. Whether this cycle can be maintained every time however, is an other discussion and depends on the fight you are doing.

So you might end up with more DPS on that 1s3r cycle, depending on the fight.
WoW is not a game where you act like a robot (i.e. always do the same thing over and over again)
Sometimes you have to adapt to the situation.
My DPS for example is higher in SSC then it is in TK(difference sometimes around 200 dps), because in TK, a lot of mobs use abilities that are more dangeous for melee, and you have to be more careful as a melee, and it is more difficult to maintain cycles there.
If you take the DPS-sheet's word for true, the DPS in TK and and SSC should be exactly the same, which isn't the case of course.

You have two problems here. First, you need to somehow convince your raid leader of the blindingly obvious fact that an enhancement shaman is THE greatest gain to rogue dps in the game. Secondly, you're far better off taking that feral, BM hunter, and throwing them in their own group with a resto shaman and any other hunters you have in your raid. Play around with the spreadsheets, and try to emphasize to your raid leader just how much that other rogue is losing by not having a shaman. With the space freed up in your 'proper' melee group, I'd try to get a ret paladin or another rogue in there, depending on your level of progression or guild/raid composition.

In my experience, while it doesn't necessarily have a greater mathematical impact, you have greater success in these kinds of situations where you can give and take. Even if you present hard numbers as for why replacing the hunter with the rogue would be better, the human nature of things probably suggest that if you do that as well as comment that you could boost his and the other hunters DPS by giving up the feral druid do them, they'd probably be more likely to try it out.

Also, the BM Hunter may not realize it, but he is not getting any benefit from that warrior or shaman (unless the shaman twists). The only benefit he gets is from the feral, but he could get that benefit in another group just as easily. The boost that the BM hunter gives to the melee is minimal, at best, and is certainly not worth the DPS loss of moving a rogue out of the melee group.

In this case, the best option is to either (a) stick the BM hunter in another group with the feral (or another feral) where he can get GoA from a resto shaman, or (b) stick the BM hunter in a caster group, eg with mages/shadowpriests/warlocks, so that he can give his 3% DPS boost to them.

If I recall correctly, a 3rd rogue in the melee group provides more rDPS than a ret-pally, provided the ret-pally still comes on the raid but in a different group, ranged dps I believe.

If the ret pally doesn't get WF it's basically a wasted raid spot from a rdps standpoint.

Yes, there was some discussion of the rogue vs. ret pally issue a few pages back, with the conclusion that if you have both in the raid it's mostly a wash which is in what group. Putting the rogue in the melee group gives slightly better DPS than putting the paladin there, but it's like 30 DPS.

However, if you are straight up replacing a rogue with a ret pally, you gain a significant amount of rDPS (not to mention increased mana regen and healing from judgments of Wisdom and Light, plus more blessings).

The bulk of the work was done in another thread: http://elitistjerks.com/733943-post3860.html

At end game, the same could pretty much be said for a rogue. You might as well bring a warlock or a mage instead.

Tidewalker, Gorefiend, Anetheron if you don't get slept/don't get an infernal on you, Azgalor if you can stand in the Rain of Fire, and Brutallus all can give the theoretical maximum. But yes, in general, your DPS will be lower due to interruptions.

I tried a couple of searches on this topic and didn't find anything, so please excuse me if it's been answered before.

My guild is entering T5 content, with our first attempts on Hydross and Lurker ~12 hours ago. My question is about Hydross, and poison usage on weapons. I happened to be lucky enough to have Windfury for the fight (10+ melee DPS, and *1* shaman in the whole raid, quite a few went without), so I was using WF/IP. I know poisons make up a fairly small portion of our DPS, but I'd still like to maximize the best I can.

Is it safe to use Deadly Poison? Being a DoT that I can't "stop using," I was worried about possible aggro when he switches forms and drops aggro. From looking at recount, it seems like he's immune to Instant Poison in Nature form, so I'm guessing he would be immune to DP as well... but will he slough off the debuff when he ditches aggro, or is there still a chance he could take a tick and aggro me right as he's aggro-wiping?

If DP is a no-no, and WF is not available, then double IP seems the route to go... or is there something special you recommend for this fight? Our strat involved keeping him in nature form longer than frost, thus meaning poisons are getting less than 1/2 of their full effect. If there's something else that's marginally worse than poisons in most cases, it may be better overall for this fight.

Just as a note, we managed to down Hydross, so this info isn't going to make or break us, it's just knowledge for future runs.

You won't pull aggro from a poison tick if your tanks are doing their jobs at all, as the amount of threat should be insignificant. However you can use an Adamantite Sharpening Stone if you are having poison issues. They add +12 weapon damage and 14 crit on the weapon, and they cost very little.

Actually, after he switches phases he becomes immune to poisons so you wouldn't have to worry about the ticks after transition.

First off, I sincerely apologize if this has recently been brought up - I tried trolling through to check for other posts since 2.4, but my wife is pulling me away from my machine, and I'm afraid that I'm going to forget my question

I've got a rogue alt with no spectacular gear (70 blues and a handful of kara drops). I'm using the dagger off the Opera event and the S1 dagger for jumping between pvp specs and combat daggers, and the thought struck me about Shiv:

My badge production is not high, and I was thinking about getting one of the OH daggers from the 2.4 badge loot. Is it possible that Shiv spam with IP would increase my (very occasional) raid dps as my main method of generating CPs if the OH has significantly higher dps?

Just some food for thought...

No, it's not possible.

Keep in mind that the calculated Shiv DPE in the linked posts assume a sword, mace, or fist weapon offhand. Shiv when used with a dagger is much worse DPE because daggers are normalized at a faster speed. In the end though, Shiv just doesn't do good damage, and it shouldn't be used as your main attack.

have found personally since i often dont get WF due to sometime low melee numbers that i am quite often top or at least up in top 3