Hi

I was spoiled for a long time by the ezmode that is 2 pc t4 combat swords. 1s/5r, neither SnD or rupture ever dropping. After losing that, I am failing to understand the wisdom of 4s/5r and 5s/5r -- do these methods just assume that rupture will fall off 30-40% of the time? I've tested extensively on the Gordok Spirits to see how the uptime of the two was working, and found that by the time a 4 pt SnD was prepared, there were only about ~7 seconds left on a 5 pt rupture. I would estimate rupture being down 30-40% of the time as i said, as another was being built up. The spreadsheet shows 4.1s/5 for me, i've tried both 4s and 5s with little luck keeping rupture up. Is it common to be boggled when making this switch?


As a corollary to that, i'm used to starting mobs with garrote and the 1 pt straight into SnD which gets me into my cycle instantly. What do people start off fights with without 2pc t4? Is garrote into 1 pt SnD then 4 pt SnD then building 5 for rupture a common start?

Thanks

As a corollary to that, i'm used to starting mobs with garrote and the 1 pt straight into SnD which gets me into my cycle instantly. What do people start off fights with without 2pc t4? Is garrote into 1 pt SnD then 4 pt SnD then building 5 for rupture a common start?
ditto.

Garrote generally seems to be the preferred opener provided you can get to the mob's back in stealth in a reasonably short time. If it's going to take a long time just to get there, you're going to lose more DPS from the wait than you'll gain from using Garrote. Positioning yourself as close as possible to the spot where a boss will be tanked is usually a good idea. I think the last boss where I found it not worthwhile to try for Garrote was Supremus.

Depends on your tank I guess. Taking an extra second or three to get into position for a Garrote can give your tank 1-3k extra threat, which makes life a little easier.

A matter of preference. The Nerves of Steel talent also works on many abilities that would be unresistable otherwise.

I would argue that in practice those resists give you alot more DPS-time on the target. eg. Kaz'rogal.

Because Blizzard still loves to use fear mechanics to control the difficulty of fights and an extra 5% resistance to this equates to more DPS on those fights than 4% extra poison damage.

As for Garrote, I use it on most encounters myself. It gives the tank a little extra time to build threat and does solid damage compared to SS when there are no Sunders up on the target. I don't always use it on fights like Gruul or Void Reaver though; the room is so massive that I'd lose way too much DPS in-time stealthing all the way to the back of the bosses.

I do have a couple more questions of my own.

-From my understanding, a Rogue using Imp EA is going to be a rDPS increase over his personal loss from using Rupture -- is this correct?
-Because of that assumption, lately I've been thinking of asking one of our least-geared Rogues to spec for and keep up Imp EA on bosses to play around with it and see how our results turn out. I know I read of this being a strategy that a lot of guilds use on Brutallus; my guild is far from being in Sunwell, but is this a worthwhile strategy to use beforehand (think SSC, TK, early MH)?
-Besides the rDPS factor, how much, if any, would this interfere with Warrior threat generation from Devastate? I tried to read the Prot Warrior megathread to find an answer, but the math on that thread just kills me. It didn't sound like Imp EA would interfere with threat generation, but I thought I'd ask to make sure.

Yes, Imp EA is a rDPS increase, and a fairly significant one, assuming you have at least 2 physical DPS in the raid (the rogue and one other). The catch is that if you have a prot warrior tanking, you generally can't use it - it costs them quite a bit of threat, and I suspect it'd be almost impossible for them to hold aggro with EA up. I mean, talk to your tanks, and if they're okay with trying it feel free to do so and tell us how it goes; but I suspect you'll find that you're badly aggro limited, which negates the advantage of Imp EA.

Additionally, Imp EA isn't appropriate in all circumstances; it takes rather longer to stack up than Sunders do, so on a fight with lots of interruptions it's not worth it - it doesn't take too much Imp EA downtime before Sunders catch back up in rDPS contribution. So while it's good for largely sustained fights where you get it up initially 10 seconds into the fight and never drop it, it'd be a poor choice for, like, Al'ar or Solarian.

So, all in all: Imp EA does have it's uses, and there are fights where it's a great benefit in combination with druid (or paladin) tanks. But it's not something you can use all the time.

Edit to address Goldengiff's comment: keeping up Imp EA doesn't really cost a 2-glaive rogue any more damage than it does a rogue with lesser weapons; the only damage you're losing is Rupture, which only scales with AP; hence, it's entirely possible that a Infamy/Savagery rogue will lose less DPS than a 2-glaive rogue, depending on what their other gear looks like.

There are a few things to consider when opting for EA

Rupture only scales with AP, not all gear, so least geared, in the general sense, does not necessarily mean least ruputre damage lost, in the absolute sense.

Imp EA dropping is a huge DPS loss for every physical damage dealer in the raid, poor rupture uptime is a loss of, at most, 100% rupture damage for one rogue.

Picking up Imp EA requires droping points from poison talents only, the DPS lost from the rogue picking up the talents does not scale significantly with gear.

Running an EA rotation will, in almost all cases, be a 5s/5ea rotation meaning that more energy will be going to sinister strike than in a typical 4.xs/5r rotation. SS DPE scales very well with gear meaning there is a smaller loss in effecency for a well geared rogue than a poorly geared rogue.

Given the DPS losses from maintaining EA that scale with gear are small and mitigated by a change in cycle machanics that favors high gear levels priorities for Imp EA assignments should not be driven by gear but by skill level. The most skilled rogue, i.e. the rogue least likely to bungle the rotation, should be assigned with keeping it up.

I was able to convince our Prot Warriors to allow me to try using Imp EA on bosses which they were tanking after reading this article on Tankspot:
Warrior Expose Armour vs. Sunder Armour Revisited - TankSpot
I was using the 5s/5e rotation, which I found somewhat difficult to keep up on certain fights, especially Supremus (for whom I returned to using Rupture). None of the tanks had any complaints in terms of threat loss, and I did not notice a drop in their TPS as reported by Omen (I tried to keep on eye on to be sensitive to any problems). I'm including a WWS of that night, the first 3 Naj tries were with a Paladin tank, but everything beyond was tanked by a Prot Warrior.
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EDIT: I realize there are a lot of "didn't notice" and other subjective descriptors. If there is anything I can do to generate more reliable evidence, I'll do everything in my power to get it. I'll be adding another WWS of tonight's raid if that's deemed worthwhile.

One thing to keep in mind is that the majority of our damage is our white damage, particularly with SnD. So, yes, you will lose fairly significant damage due to the downtime of Rupture, but according to the spreadsheet its a net gain in dps, presumably from the increased white damage you'll receive from the better pants.

EDIT: I double checked, and I do believe the decreased rupture is accounted for. In Aldrana's spreadsheet it lists the set bonus value of 2pc T4 as 39.30~ dps. For me, I've noticed it takes nearly a full tier upgrade in each piece in order to increase my overall dps just from losing that set bonus.