Even at 2000 DPS, a 2% DPS gain is 40. This is roughly on par with what I get from Leader of the Pack right now at 1400 DPS. Still, I wouldn't mind taking the ret paladin over the feral druid in my ideal group, given that the feral druid doesn't benefit at all from WF, and the ret paladin does.

Regarding not having a second (or third) rogue in there, I understand that other rogues offer nothing to you, but unless you're running a raid with only one rogue, there are going to be other rogues around, and they need a group. I'm willing to venture that it's a far bigger loss of DPS to shove a second rogue into some suboptimal group just so that you can get all the DPS boosts you want.

I would argue against the inclusion of a BM hunter in this melee group. Although I love Ferocious Inspiration as much as anyone else, all the BM hunter is getting here is Battle Shout and Imp Sanc Aura. I was under the impression that BM hunters were preferred for caster groups with shadow priests anyway. If not, I stand corrected.

This is true if you only have one rogue in your raid, but with multiple rogues, the benefit the raid gains from giving them all (at minimum) an Enhancement Shaman and Warrior with Imp BS is going to be better than stacking one super-dps group and leaving the other rogues to slum it up in a leftover group.

In my guild, at least, we usually only raid with one Enhancement Shaman and 2-3 rogues. Usually we toss all three in one group with the Sham and one of the DPS Warrs; if we swapped one of the BM hunters in there, the other four get the bonus from FI, but it's not nearly enough to make up for the other rogue losing BS, UR, and possibly WF.

Salv is definitely very important. This week we somehow managed to pull Najentus without realizing salv was not buffed on most of the raid, and I was riding the tank pretty much the whole fight.

Typically I watch omen and don't start damage till I see the tank has 6-8K threat. I'll open with a 1 or 2 point SnD, then blow everything (haste pot/bf/ar/berserking). I typically have to vanish not long after AR wears off, but I rarely catch back up to the tank unless I'm having an absolutely amazing day.

Well, other than it basically making it do half as much damage as it currently does (on average)...

You're just stubbornly holding onto some notion that daggers really is better and it's just these weird "quirks" that are causing people to go swords when supposedly, everyone really wants to be daggers or something. Swords are numerically (at least at current T4+ raid target levels) superior, and the reasons for it are NOT due to itemization, nor due to encounter types, it's due to game mechanics - they may change in the future (as they have in the past), but CURRENTLY swords are stronger, not by a huge margin, but enough to matter to some people.

I don't think anyone cares about a single rogue's DPS except maybe the rogue, or his raid leader if it sucks - raidwide DPS is so far above personal dps that this statement is just ridiculous.

Well, I think his assertion was that the availability of good, fast OH swords via PvP are making swords stronger than they otherwise might be, which is true. However, you are correct in that this effect is not large enough to matter; even without the availability of PvP weapons, sworrds would be superior. For instance, according the Rogue Gear Spreadsheet: with my current gear and typical raid buffs, I would do as much damage with Talon of Azshara/Latro's as I would with Shard of Azzinoth/Messenger of Fate (the optimal daggers for combat daggers) - even against targets where Murder does not apply. And when one can match the damage output of the best daggers in the game with an early SSC drop and a blue from a non-heroic 5 man, that's a pretty good indicator that daggers are a bit weak right now.

Yes, that was exactly my point.

Also, I want to come clearly out and say that I don't believe that this disparity is "right" or imply that swords are inherently better and should remain that way - I honestly think that when you're talking about deep combat, they should be as close as possible, and I certainly wouldn't begrudge daggers a slight buff to make them closer.

That being said, I honestly can't remember a time when they were closer - I'm pretty sure that by mid-Naxx, your combat dagger builds were more than 5% better than a sword build with an equal gear level. But I'll admit that's just conjecture.

I still maintain that offhand sword spec needs to be changed to proc an extra offhand attack. Even if it does, sword spec still scales beyond any other spec once you have high levels of crit and hit. However, changing offhand sword spec will increase the competitiveness of other weapon specs. The primary downside of doing this would be that */sword hybrid specs would lose a lot of their competitiveness. However, without a change like this, sword spec will continue to be far too powerful for its own good, and the only fix would be to make the other specs equally overpowered.

I agree that some way of equalizing the specs is probably needed. The most likely options would seem to be:

1) OH Sword hits proc OH attacks
2) Internal cooldown on Sword Spec (as is true of Windfury Weapon for shamans)
3) Reinstatement of the previous sword spec mechanic, wherein Sword Spec procs reset the MH swing timer.

Any of these would do nicely in bringing the specs back towards balance; the fact that they would nerf hybrid xxx/sword specs is not really that big a deal; they would be replaced with nonhybrid specs. For instance, hybrid fist/sword spec would be replaced with fist/fist spec; instead of using Talon of the Phoenix/Quickblade, you'd use Talon of the Phoenix/Claw of the Phoenix.

The issue that I would be concerned about with such a change is that it would effectively be a blanket rogue nerf; as most raiding rogues are swords right now, this would work out to a 5% reduction in rogue DPS for the majority of raiders. Particularly since the recent rogue nerfs (to Haste Rating, Dragonspine Trophy, Weapon Skill, etc.) I fear that such a change would drop rogues dangerously low in DPS output, to the extent that our value in a raid would be called into question. As such, while I do feel that a weapon specialization rebalancing is needed, I think it also needs to be accompanied with balance tweaks in other areas to help rogues maintain they're value to 25-man raids.

I haven't been able to find any real in depth topic covering this, and maybe they're just Bible and I'm not looking in the right places. But where and how did we establish these values?

What I might be more specifically asking is, what was the testing method to arrive at these figures, how much are these numbers rounded, et cetera. Obviously as the spreadsheets imply, which stat is more valuable depends on where your character is already sitting. But if you were to make a spreadsheet that just broke down every piece of gear, and said Gear(A) is superior to Gear(B) in a vacuum, you have to start with these base numbers.

[edit] Yes I know of the shadow panther website, but even he has 3 different formulas for what exactly AEP is. I'm not claiming the numbers are wrong, I'd just like to look at the formula, especially with the hit cap changing, and see where the formula is. And also because I see a lot of rogues sitting well below the hit cap and doing just fine on DPS.

They were pulled from Aldriana's rogue gear spreadsheet, using as a base an "after-T4" gear set as best I could judge it. To my best satisfaction, the values given for that gear set agree with values given for arbitrary other gear sets a rogue might be found wearing.

If you see a rogue doing well on DPS with well below the hit cap, it is likely because he has gear that is so good even without hit that it doesn't matter. Such gear exists, in large quantities, at the Hyjal/BT gear level.

Is sword spec really over that overpowered though that it would be catastrophic to buff the other two to equality? (well maybe maces in pvp, ouch) It seems like rogues do pretty decent damage in raids these days but would adding more dps be absurdly overpowered?

Also, I mean that as a 'fo reals' question. I stopped raiding in Kara, and my own rogue is only 51 at the moment.

The difficulty with "buffing the others to match" is the *way* in which Swords are overpowered. The problem is not that swords are too strong in general; on the MH, sword spec is well-balanced against the other two specs; it's a bit weaker than fist at low gear levels, a bit strong at high gear levels, a little worse than mace for PvP, and a bit better than mace for PvE. The problem is that sword spec on the offhand is about 3 times as good as any of the other specs on the offhand. Thus, the naive solution of just bumping fist spec up to 1.5% crit per level doesn't work; all that would do is make fist/sword hybrid spec more powerful, and you still have the fundamental issue that everyone wants to offhand a sword. If it were just a case that "swords in general are too strong", it'd be easy to fix by buffing the others. Since the problem is that "OH Swords are too powerful", it's harder to fix without nerfing sword spec.

Not to belabor this point, but in Gruul I cannot imagine being without salvation. Even with the ground slam / shatter and some awfully solid tanks, I have to vanish during Gruul. With salvation up.

I can only imagine that the guild which doesn't need salvation on rogues has exceptionally good tanks generated exceptionally good threat or rogues not generating the dps they ought to be.

Another "must have salv" fight is Void Reaver.. And really the list of "must have salv" fights is pretty much the vast majority of them if not all of them.

"Mideci vanish now or you're gonna be tanking soon" is not uncommon. And again our tanks are pretty darned solid and I'm hardly the greatest rogue in WoW.

Do daggers scale better with crit or AP?
I read on the nilihum website that daggers should itemize for HIT>CRIT>AP. Why is that true? Or is that a false statement.

In 2.3 maces may no longer be pvp oriented; be thankful all you rogues that already raid with maces (lawl). Blizzard decided that giving mace rogues +10 expertise was too good or not good enough, either way they made mace specialization give 5% increased critical strike damage. With a mace like syphon of nathrezim sinister strike will be insane and not to mention the extra off hand damage. They didnt remove the stun effect so maybe blizz is finally giving rogues a lil of that hot buff ass. Look foward to seeing some charts and whatnot on this.

I can only imagine a mace/sword hybrid with a RED meta gem.

The word you are looking for but overlooked is ideal and the group setup is my personal choice for reasons other than just DPS. My ideal for my personal DPS and survivability, not the optimum for the Raid.

The healing from Judgement of Light (?) in certain encounters, Hydross in either Phase, Lurker etc, is significant and frees healers up from having to constantly watch over melee. It does not replace it but it makes it easier on them.

Having the melee DPS in one group has other benefits.

2 Rogues, BM Hunter, Warrior, Enhancement Shaman in one group is more convenient in the Raid and means that more advantage is taken of the buffs available.

@Shaker with respect to Sword Spec up to 2.1. The bug only caused the damage caused by OH procs to reset the MH swing, this was not a reduction of DPS by half, it was a reduction of DPS from those OH procs by half, that was not major and not a reason to stay away from sword spec.

Also I am not sticking to the belief that Combat Daggers is better. I have not been saying that either. What I have been saying is that IF the only weapons we had available were from PvE then Daggers would not be at the disadvantage it is currently at.
Sword itemisation compared to Dagger itemisation until MH/BT in PvE stinks.
Fist is worse until SSC and Maces, well Mace Spec in a Raid is fine until the mobs are stunnable. I will resist a rant on that subject.

The word "overpowered" has been used together with Sword Spec. As other have said this is an exaggeration. I think Sword Spec, in terms of DPS, is where the other specs -should- be with the exception of Mace Spec. Must.. resist.. the... rant: Mace Spec has no place in Raids, stunned mobs are a pain for the tanks to have to deal with.

Having Sword Spec cause procs to cause an extra swing for the weapon that procced would balance things out.

I would -love- to see Opportunity changed to give Haste at 1/2/3/4/5% and have the dmg buff built into the skills that are currently buffed by it. Oh and dump Aggression, make Vitality more effective.

In terms of playability -every- other usual build is better than combat daggers. Well possibly not Shadowstep. It is the playability aspect which is why I am going Combat Swords. I must be too old to have grasped this earlier. Mind you I was seduced by Mutilate, Blizzard have dropped the ball on that Talent so no point crying over spilled milk.

Are you making the argument that Blizzard purposefully stunted sword itemization as a design decision to reign in sword spec?

I understand the concept of an "ideal" group, but your ideal group doesn't really have a purpose in discussion if it has nothing to do with reality. I would define "ideal" as the group I would put together in an actual raid, with the success of the raid in mind, if I had all the parts available to do it. Also, I don't understand why you would say "having the melee DPS in one group has other benefits" (on which I don't disagree) and then shove a BM hunter in the group. Finally, last nitpick, Judgment of Light is usable and affects you whether the ret paladin is in your group or not. However, as I said, I wouldn't mind trading the feral druid for the paladin at all.

Yes, and this is what Shaker is trying to tell you simply isn't correct. Itemization doesn't have the least bit to do with it. Go ahead and whip out your copy of Aldriana's gear spreadsheet, and do the following comparison: [Vindicator's Brand]+[Latro's Shifting Sword] vs. [Shard of Azzinoth]+[Messenger of Fate]. Make sure you plug in the appropriate respective talent builds. How much does the Hyjal/BT dagger combination come out on top of the pre-raiding swords? Therein lies your problem.

I venture that this would be an overall negative change, because it would essentially force every build to spec 5 points into Subtlety, instead of just combat dagger builds. It's that reliance on Subtlety that needs to be broken, so combat daggers can get the same 20/41 or variant that everyone else gets.

Would someone mind explaining to me why mace/sword hybrids will be slightly behind fist/sword in terms of dps since both mace and fist specializations give the same bonuses (5% crit) in 2.3?

Unless i am totally mistaken, Fist-Spec gives overall +5% crit to all attacks in contrary to the Mace-Spec giving you 5% increased damage to all your crits.

Silly me.. should've read the changes to mace spec carefully