Thank you for clarifying that. I am also doing BG-s and would like to maximize my dps for that.
If I had to chose between a dagger and a sword OH, with similar stats and same speed, would sword be better? I have 2/5 CP, and intend to maximize that as I level.
On the other hand, if speed is more important, then definitely daggers wold qualify, I haven't seen any swords with 1.30 speed, but daggers, yes.
DPS gleamed from hit rating beyond SPECIAL ATTACK MAX
QUESTION 1: Ok, I have beyond 64 hit rating, am combat swords specced, 5/5 precision.
According to what Valujin says, you've maxed out your chance to hit ON SPECIAL ATTACKS if you have 64 HIT RATING and 5/5 opportunity.
He assigned a weighted value (2.28) for each point of your HIT RATING to figure out your DPS.
Does that assigned weight remain the same if your moving your HIT RATING beyond the SPECIAL ATTACK MAX (in other words you have 100% chance to hit with special attacks, so does adding more to your HIT RATING beyond that still contribue a weight of 2.28 toward your DPS? One would think that the weight of 2.28 would go down a bit)
QUESTION 2: If the answer is no, than do any of you math savants (compared to me hehe) have a new weight that you can assign toward your DPS for each point of HIT RATING that goes beyond the SPECIAL ATTACK cap of 64
Last edited by Deadlywizard234 : 12/16/07 at 10:02 PM.
As any remotely decently geared level 70 rogue easily achieves the yellow attack hit cap, discussing the value of hit below the yellow hit cap is generally pointless; hence, the numbers provided for hit here - and in just about every other rogue thread you might look at - are for hit above the yellow hit cap, but below the white hit cap (which is also discussed in the first post, if I recall correctly). Below the yellow hit cap, hit is worth somewhat more.
First off, I'll assume you mean 5/5 Precision, not opportunity. If you have opportunity as a sword rogue.. not only are you not spec'd Combat Swords, you are an idiot.
Hit cap is dependant on what you are attacking. Hit cap against equal level players (such as in PvP) is lower than against lvl 73's (bosses in PvE). The hit rating APEP you quoted there was based on a rogue already above hit cap on specials. Going below hit cap on specials would be completely absurd in PvE, and quite bad in PvP as well. I won't go into much more detail.. that should give you the general idea of whats going on though.
On the earlier questions about dagger offhand sword spec stuff.. (assume 5/5 sword spec)
Sword Spec works like this: Any time you attack with a sword, you have a 5% chance to get an extra main-hand attack. It does not matter if your MH is a sword or not. All that matters is the hand that swings. If you have 2 swords, each time either of them swings, you have a 5% chance to get an extra MH swing. If you have just an OH sword, each time it swings you have a chance to get an extra MH attack (with whatever non-sword you may be weilding).
Combat potency favours fast offhands - the faster you swing, the more often you get energy back. A rough estimate used is 0.1 speed = 10 DPS on the OH. This isn't always exactly correct, as a faster OH generates more energy which is turned into DPS by your MH.. so a fast OH will increase your overall DPS based on how good you MH is.
Both Combat potency and sword spec are % chance to proc effects, they are NOT ppm effects. This means that the faster you OH is (assuming sword w/ sword spec), the more extra MH attacks you'll get and the more energy you'll get.
If you have sword spec, it is MORE IMPORTANT TO HAVE AN OH SWORD than it is to have a MH sword. If you have combat potency, a faster weapon is crucial.. the speed is worth a lot more than the stats or dps on the weapon. That said, using a 1.3 spd Searing Sunblade over a 1.4 spd Messenger of Fate would be bad. Using a non-sword OH with sword spec is just dumb.. switch weapons or specs.
First off, I'll assume you mean 5/5 Precision, not opportunity. If you have opportunity as a sword rogue.. not only are you not spec'd Combat Swords, you are an idiot.
There's virtually nothing wrong with Opportunity as a sword rogue. Garrote is not dagger reliant, so it gives you a damaging opener, and Garrote increases the damage to that end.
PvE-wise, this means you actually have an opener in raids, and a low-aggro one at that, which is better then increased stealth since mobs shouldn't ever see you anyway.
PvP-wise, Garrote is the only opener you'll ever want to use against mages if you're not dagger specced, 2 seconds of Silence > 1 seconds of stun before the blink. And again, you get increased damage, which is even more important in PvP then it is in PvE.
There's virtually nothing wrong with Opportunity as a sword rogue. Garrote is not dagger reliant, so it gives you a damaging opener, and Garrote increases the damage to that end.
PvE-wise, this means you actually have an opener in raids, and a low-aggro one at that, which is better then increased stealth since mobs shouldn't ever see you anyway.
PvP-wise, Garrote is the only opener you'll ever want to use against mages if you're not dagger specced, 2 seconds of Silence > 1 seconds of stun before the blink. And again, you get increased damage, which is even more important in PvP then it is in PvE.
I would argue that virtually every talent in the standard 20/41/0 Combat Sword spec is better than Opportunity in terms of PvE. Your garrote is what.. 1500-1700 dmg? 20% more is an extra ~300 dmg. 5 minute fight.. thats 1 dps. Yes, ONE dps. Sure its more dps than say.. MoD gives you, but what exactly are you putting points into Sub tree for anyways with a non-dagger combat spec?
For raiding.. garrote or ss both work fine as openers, small advantages either way. In pvp, yes garrote is great for mages. Can't blind away before you get AT LEAST a shiv and a spam-ability off. Will an extra 300 dmg over 18 seconds win you a game? Not likely. Will MoD win you a game.. quite possibly.
And umm.. when was dps in PvP MORE important than dps in PvE?
And, in fact, using Garotte as an opener frequently makes you *lose* damage, because it takes longer to run into the boss if you're stealthed than if you're not, so the damage you gain from Garotte is less than the damage you lose from starting DPS later. So I would go one step further and say that yes, in fact, Opportunity is, in fact, useless for sword rogues.
When discussing the value of opportunity to sword rogues, one can safely rule out the merit of Opportunity for Ambush, Backstab, and Mutilate, as you can't use any of those as a sword rogue anyway. So in the context of Opportunity to Sword Rogues, Garotte really is the only consideration.
Obviously Opportunity is good for dagger rogues, but as the poster in question did specify "sword rogue" it lies beyond the scope of the response.
Please read the first post instead of coming into a thread with a question where the answer has already been *clearly* posted.
@ Aldriana: I tend to think it depends on exactly what you're fighting here. A lot of bosses you'll need to give your tank a little time for aggro, in the meanwhile you can safely run up to the boss in stealth and open with Garrote. Of course it's all dependent on your DPS vs your tank's TPS: all tanks are not created equal and therefore there may be more/less time before you can start attacking.
On the whole however I tend to think Opportunity is the slimmest of DPS gains (as someone posted above, *1* DPS if you're fighting bosses that only last 5 minutes and it's actually viable to Garrote); unless you're a die-hard min-max'er I'd say it's pretty easy to skip this in favor of MoD. My final thought is that as of 2.3.2 (with Hemo nerfed) it looks like Combat Swords will become the top raiding spec again, and there would be no reason to put talents into Sub.
In general I agree; I've certainly played with tanks who needed some ramp-up time to hold aggro. However, in those cases, optimizing damage is to some extent irrelevant; you can only do as much damage as the tank has aggro, no matter how highly optimized (or not) your build. And even in this situation, it's better to attack early with less damaging moves than it is to wait 15 seconds and then start nuking all-out, because the sooner you generate any aggro at all on the boss, the sooner you can start feinting - and feint, in an aggro-limited situation, is pure damage added. Thus, when dealing with an aggro limited tank, I generally open very early and just autoattack/feint for a little while before cutting loose with full DPS cycles.
And, of course, with a good tank and a well-coordinated guild, aggro shouldn't be an issue at all. If the tank gets a misdirect or two and starts bombing good aggro rotations, one can open full strength almost immediately without danger. I die more often to getting careless about vanishing and overaggroing 3 minutes into the fight than I do from pulling at the beginning.
But i don't want to start a discussion on feint... it has its uses, but well, today an auto-attack crit does more aggro than a feint removes and feint being a 10 second cooldown doesnt help that much about it, considering you can easily push a Mainhand to 1.7-1.4 and an Offhand to below 1.0.
Don't get me wrong: Feint isn't a particularly good skill, and as a general rule you want to avoid using it whenever possible. But, it isn't totally useless; if, for instance, in the first 30 sec of a fight, your tank only generates, say, 15000 aggro, you would normally be limited to doing 30000 damage in this time. If, on the other hand, you slip in 3 feints, you can do an extra 3000 (or so; I forget the exact aggro reduction of feint) damage during that 30 seconds. Is that a lot? No, not really. Over a 10 min fight, it's only 5 DPS. But it's something; I'd rather have that 3000 extra damage than not have it. Clearly it's even better if your tank puts out 30k aggro in that time so you can just nuke all out, but not all of us are so blessed with a good tank, and, as such, it's worth knowing how best to manage the situation.
The problem is, even though its a negative value, it gets modified by the Rogues inherent threat-reduction (29%) and Salvation (30%)/Tranquil Air (20%). So in todays standard raid situation if you got Salvation and Feint, you will drop 1050*(1-0.3)*(1-0.29)= 521.85 threat. As i said, its worth about a white attack
The problem is, even though its a negative value, it gets modified by the Rogues inherent threat-reduction (29%) and Salvation (30%)/Tranquil Air (20%). So in todays standard raid situation if you got Salvation and Feint, you will drop 1050*(1-0.3)*(1-0.29)= 521.85 threat. As i said, its worth about a white attack
But your white attack is modifed by the threatreduction as well
So in the end a single feint will remove the threat effect of 1050 damage.
No, totems definitely do have a unique 'back' even if there is no graphical reason for it. Kind of like finding C'thun's back. It doesn't make sense, but it's there.
Hmm, I'll try harder next time? (I didn't try too hard, because after circling the first totem a few times trying to mutilate it, I gave up and switched to SS. So I just assumed that they didn't have a back.)
In any case, without an easy visual cue to distinguish the totem's "back", you may waste too much time trying to get into position. If the totem involves a good bit of run time to get to it, the extra positioning may even cause energy to tick past 100 as well, in which case switching weapons and dropping SS is preferred anyway. To each his own, I guess, but I found it just too awkward to try to do (as evidenced by the fact that I was never successful and incorrectly concluded it wasn't possible).
To the best of my knowledge (and let me be VERY honest by saying that we are still VERY unsure about Executioner except in a broad "it's about as good as mongoose" sense), this is how I personally break it down.
That is - Executioner and Mongoose are both strong, and both strong on the mainhand, so it's more personal preference at this time. They're both (as far as we can tell) PPM procs, so mainhand will proc more, regardless of speed (due to instant attacks with the mainhand).
Please note that Ex/Ex is fairly weak due to the funky mechanics it has with overwriting/renewing itself instead of stacking. Unless this changes, my opinion is that Ex/Ex is very inferior to the other options.
It's my personal guess that as you move into more Armor Penetration gear (ZA and T6) that Executioner on the MH will start to outperform Mongoose. This is due to Armor Penetration improving all rogue stats, including itself, so as you get more ArmorPen, it's more powerful (up till you're putting a target's armor at 0). This makes the final graph for T6 rogues look like:
Again this is all "educated speculation" at this point, but (to my knowledge) it's the best we have. If you have concrete information about Executioner other than "Wow I feel like it's up a lot!" please post in the Executioner thread on these boards.
This is the same conclusion I came to, and I am still missing 2 pieces of armor penetration gear. Currently I have the T6 Gloves, Stormrage Signet Ring, Warp-Spring Coil, Madness of the Betrayer and a Blade of Infamy with Executioner on it (I also have one with Mongoose... we got a bunch of them). My plan is to use Executioner on low armor bosses and Mongoose on higher armor bosses. I also still plan to pick up the T6 shoulders (second in line now) and the ZA Ring, which should give me another ~250 passive -armor.
Basically if your guild doesn't use Faerie Fire, CoR and Sunder then Mongoose is always better. If your guild fully debuffs the mob, then it depends on how much -armor you have from other gear. If you can get above the threshold, then Executioner surpasses Mongoose, if you can't it doesn't. My guess is we will see more -armor gear in Sunwell, which will make hitting that point significantly easier.
This is the same conclusion I came to, and I am still missing 2 pieces of armor penetration gear. Currently I have the T6 Gloves, Stormrage Signet Ring, Warp-Spring Coil, Madness of the Betrayer and a Blade of Infamy with Executioner on it (I also have one with Mongoose... we got a bunch of them). My plan is to use Executioner on low armor bosses and Mongoose on higher armor bosses. I also still plan to pick up the T6 shoulders (second in line now) and the ZA Ring, which should give me another ~250 passive -armor.
Basically if your guild doesn't use Faerie Fire, CoR and Sunder then Mongoose is always better. If your guild fully debuffs the mob, then it depends on how much -armor you have from other gear. If you can get above the threshold, then Executioner surpasses Mongoose, if you can't it doesn't. My guess is we will see more -armor gear in Sunwell, which will make hitting that point significantly easier.
I like that idea. Its simple logic and at least until we get hard numbers on procs, is a good guide to follow.
I've looked at getting my ToA with exec and then putting goose on my first BoI (If we could be so lucky to get 1512341234 like some ppl) but we'll see what happens. Hopefully by the time I get it, we have more definitive proof as to which is better, at least in some situations.
I like that idea. Its simple logic and at least until we get hard numbers on procs, is a good guide to follow.
I've looked at getting my ToA with exec and then putting goose on my first BoI (If we could be so lucky to get 1512341234 like some ppl) but we'll see what happens. Hopefully by the time I get it, we have more definitive proof as to which is better, at least in some situations.
Good post .
Yeah, I think my second BoI was #6 or #7 for the guild, on the other hand we have yet to get a sword from Archimonde (1 or 2-hander), needless to say our mages (and Arms Warrior) are a little bitter.
Ok, so I just went on the PTR to figure out how the new addition to Sinister Calling works. Using various low range weapons (1-3 Dirk and 1-3 Mace) at different attack power ratings and checking the synergy with Opportunity.
The result is the following:
[Weapon Damage] = [Base Weapon] + [Attack Power]/14*[Normalized Weapon Speed]
[Normalized Weapon Speed] = 1.7 for Daggers; 2.4 for Swords, Maces, Fists
New Hemo
(1.1+0.02*[ranks of Sinister Calling])*[Weapon Damage]
It truly does only add to the base damage multiplier...
Now, the discovery...
Backstab was not working according to expectations. The damage was not matching up correctly to theorycraft...
After playing with numbers on a spreadsheet trying to figure out what was getting multiplied where and hitting Level 1 mobs (with Serrated Blades making the Armor 0), I couldn't make it add up correctly.
Until, I considered...what if, the +255 already includes a multiplier...
The new correct formula for backstab:
(1.5+0.02*[ranks of Sinister Calling])*[Weapon Damage + 170]*(1+ 0.02*[ranks of Aggression]+[Surprise Attacks]+0.04*[ranks of Opportunity])
And, by the way, new Shadowstep does not award a Combo point.
I'll have a new version of the DPS Spreadsheet ready shortly.
Thought I'd share my discoveries first so Aldriana will have the correct formulas as well.
Ah, okay. So if I'm reading you right, Backstab with 5/5 Sinister Calling would have a base damage of 160% + 272, rather than the 160% + 255 one might normally expect? Good to know, and easy enough to change. I still don't think it's going to make a particularly large difference to overall viability of deep-sub dagger builds for raiding, though; you just have to give up too much important stuff for what you get in exchange.
12/16/07, 6:07 PM
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