Vulajin i just wanted to clear something. You said you hadn't done the last 4 fights in BT? i am highly surprised at this? i thought for certain you had cleared the game.

i am not meaning this to be an insult so don't take it that way. i just have always thought of you as a complete in-game information source and i am surprised to hear that you haven't cleared the game.

i don't think it invalidates anything you have said as you have added a ton to these forums. just asking for my own intrigue.

There really aren't any threat issues. The beauty of the spec is you will be earning ~80% dodge with setup and 12% parry for riposte. You will literally be spamming finishers just as much as hemo. Makes me curious if 11/10/40 would be better threat generation though.

Going through your list besides the wrong threat issues, ShS lurkers Geyser, and after A'lars bombings to keep the threat pumping. You can survive a kael fireball, it's just going to hurt a whole lot. Optimal? Maybe not.

This leaves Vashj, MTing Fathom-Lord Karathress and Solarion. I'd say that is viable enough. While Shakers point is mostly valid, we haven't seen Kil'jeaden yet. :p And easing fights up for healers is always a good bonus. But yeah, sure. The gimmick factor is a large reason I want to see it happen.
I'd like to point out that the only non-rogue item you are taking in above t5 content is the trinket from bloodboil, and even that might be able to be subbed in with the new sunwell heroic trinket or similar. ~15 crimson spinels is kind of crazy especially because they are already so needed, but anything for a main tank. ^_^;

I was just going to keep further discussion to the linked thread, but if you want to keep going I'm all for responding to critiques.

You will find a great many people have yet to clear the game. My guild is 5/5 3/9, but we've worked on Teron and I've extensively researched RoS because that's our next raid target. If Archimonde didn't suck so much to re-kill, we'd certainly be looking at 5/5 5/9 by the end of this week. This is all horribly off-topic, of course, as is any discussion of rogue tanks, which is why I will not be responding any further on that point either.

I think this is another example of why the "but Nihilum does X" argument doesn't fly. Membership in a top raid guild is correlated with one's willingness to devote time to raiding (and, to some extent, luck) more so than any particular theorycrafting aptitude. So, just like there are lots of highly advanced rogues that don't have a clue what they're doing, there's some rather exceptionally knowledgeable rogues that aren't particularly advanced in terms of raiding... which is why you'll sometimes hear requests on these forums for information about later bosses and drops.

Assuming 2.4 goes through as is with the mentioned rogue changes, will the changes made to improved backstab (increasing mutilate critical strike chance by 15% when maxed out) make mutilate more worthwhile in raids?

There's a discussion going on about Mutilate here: [Rogue] Mutilate Raid DPS Discussion

Sorry to troll, but I was making a quick look at the Rogue finishers and combo point efficiency etc and it crossed my mind that the first point spent on each and every finisher is by far the most efficient in terms of damage/buff uptime per combo point. Take a look at Slice and Dice, it's 12 seconds (talented) for the first point, and only an addition 3 seconds for each point after that. Surely under these circumstances using 1 point finishers would yield a higher dps than the standard cycles? For instance, 1 point SnD, 1 point Rupture, 1 point Evisc while Rupture is ticking away and then possibly a new 1 point Rupture before refreshing SnD.

Naturally, combo points gained for free would have no effect on this because they're free and therefore don't impact the amount of energy being spent in total. Also, in regards to energy gained from 5 point finishers, since it's a 20% chance per cp you should theoretically get the same amount of energy back over the total duration of the fight by spamming 1 point finishers as you would by using fewer 5 point finishers.

In any case, I could be missing something horribly obvious, feel free to correct me with impunity if I am.

So, I think there's two main things that you're overlooking.

First, Relentless Strikes means larger finishers cost less energy; thus, there is some abstract advantage to doing larger ones.

Secondly: Finishers are only useful to the extent that they convert energy into damage with a higher efficiency than your combo point generator. As it turns out, while the damage per *combo point* is higher at low numbers of combo points, that's not very meaningful since the damage per *energy* is lower - in fact, the damage per energy of a 1 point Eviscerate is significantly lower than that of a Sinister Strike.

Fundamentally, Combo Points are only worth damage to the extent that they improve the efficiency of your damage-per-energy efficiency, so at the very least you want to save them up till they actually increase your DPE efficiency rather than lowering it. In practice, it has been shown - both in practice and via the spreadsheets - that compressing SnD tends to be worthwhile, but compressing the other finishers is not - which is why, for instance, the optimal Combat Swords cycle consists of doing the largest possible Rupture and the smallest possible SnD (for most rogues, anyway).

energy spent for the combo point.

1 sinister strike + 1 rupture = 40 energy + 25 energy ( -5 for the 20% chance of a refund from relentless) = 60 energy for a sinister strike, and a pathetic damage rupture

5 sinister strike + 1 rupture = 200 energy + 25 energy ( -25 for the 100% chance of a refund from relentless) = 200 energy for 5 sinister strikes, and a much stronger rupture.

Looking purely at sinister strike in these circumstances, in one circumstance, sinister strike is 60energy per CP of the finisher, and in the other it's 40, not only that, but in the second case, rupture does more damage.

This is over simplified, but i believe it shows pretty clearly the hole.

(edit: Should probably just let Aldriana explain everything in future.)

Ah right, didn't look at the DPE of the damage finishers. Thanks.

Since 2.4 new badge loot released, we can see there are 2 new fist weapons. My question is base on the same armors, which combination will be higher DPS output?

Fist/Sword talent
[Vanir's Right Fist of Brutality]
[Akil'zon's Talonblade]

Fist/Fist talent
[Vanir's Right Fist of Brutality]
[Vanir's Left Fist of Savagery]

Anyone can help me? Thanks.

A couple weeks ago I switched to mutilate for fun. Suddenly we have Puncturing Wounds.

Aldriana:

"(Puncturing Wounds) helps, to be sure. And (mutilate) might even be close enough that we now need to devote some attention to modeling it. But I suspect on the whole it still runs behind Combat swords at equal itemization."

So if I spec mutilate on either of the spreadsheets I may not get accurate gear upgrade suggestions or reliable stat values?

15% more mutilate crit means: More combo points, more relentless strikes procs, more find weakness uptime, more Talisman of Lethality uptime, and significantly more crit damage, among other things I might be forgetting.

We can be almost certain that Puncturing Wounds will position mutilate differently among pve rogue raiding specs. Are we content to let it's new position remain a mystery?

Thanks Rerox. My software got problem on open the spreadsheets. Sure the claw stats are mouch better then sword. How about if the talent according to Vulajin suggestion (both fist/sword and fist talent) in the 1st message?

The information regarding executioner vs. mongoose in the first post is vague.

Could we get some specifics other than, "sometime around T6?"

For example:
I am "in T6" (gloves only) and I'm getting my S3 main hand on Tuesday and I want to know if I should put executioner or mongoose on it.

I do not have a WSC. My only armor pen would be my T6 gloves and my S3 MH (and OH a week later).

How much passive armor pen from my armor + weapons do I need to make executioner superior to mongoose?

Well, if you manage to spec Mutilate in the Rogue Gear sheet, I'll be seriously impressed as it's not even supported. The DPS sheet has an estimate that is... decent, I think. I haven't spent a whole lot of time looking at it, but there are definitely some subtleties missing.

From ballpark estimates done by various people, Puncturing Wounds will bring Mutilate closer to Combat Swords, but still decidedly behind at equivalent itemization.

It would be nice to come up with a more detailed model of it including all the subtleties; it's just a matter of someone taking the time to do so.

The first post is a bit outdated on the question of Mongoose vs Executioner. The value of Executioner was being overestimated due to a bug in the Rogue Gear sheet. The new answer for Mongoose vs Executioner is that Mongoose is better in almost all circumstances.

The DPS Spreadsheet should give a very good estimation (when it is updated to include the change). Although, there is a post in the DPS Spreadsheet thread that describes how to implement that change right now.

3/4 of the cycle sheets are devoted to Mutilate. This code was in existence before my involvement with the spreadsheet, but it really is rather brilliant work. As soon as the Seal Fate bug issue was resolved, the Mutilate damage estimates are looking good. It takes an average of a number of possible cycles (given that Mutilate and Seal Fate can have variable cycle lengths).

It's not perfectly accurate (if one wants to talk subtlety) but neither is either spreadsheet. Neither spreadsheet accounts for every possibility of cycles given various up or down times of haste effects (clearly a cycle will get more Combat Potency procs when DST is up than when its not), so clearly some "subtlety" is lost even in the Gear spreadsheet. I suggest that until someone actually spends the time to write one of these long talked about Mutilate combat simulators or implements a better estimation in a spreadsheet, the DPS spreadsheet is still the best available model for Mutilate.

Looking over the Mutilate code, its one of the finer pieces of code in the spreadsheet and gives a very decent estimation of one's DPS (and resulting equivalencies). As such, its a very low priority for any sort of overhaul. There are other issues that are scheduled for improvement; other minor bugs that have been discovered; other things that will continue to improve every version.

The short story: Make the change suggested in the DPS thread (or wait for next update - probably next weekend). See for yourself where your DPS comes out relative to other specs. I believe the results should be in the ballpark as it compares to other specs in actuality.

Thanks Raconzor. Your reply is very helpful!

Hi there. Been reading a bit on the expertise info here in order to apply it to a ret paladin and according to your the first page:


Isn't the base dodge chance of a level 73 mob 5.6% (not 6.5%)?

From WoWWiki:

Is the 6.5% the calculations are based on a typo or am I missing something?

It has been experimentally determined to be higher than 5.6%. Wowwiki is wrong.

I've heard tests saying both 6.25% and 6.5%; to me, 6.5% seems more plausible, but, regardless, it's definitely not 5.6%.

I see, thanks for the quick reply. Not the first time wowwiki lists something that is later proven wrong by this forum (the old weapon skill human racial giving ~3% hit), was thrown off by the discrepancy since WoWWiki is listing this thread as its source however.

Any chance of a link to the test results (my searchfu fails me in the 63 page thread)?

From 2.0 up until skill on gear was changed to expertise, and the corresponding racials were changed from skill to expertise, the human (and orc) racials did indeed give about 3% hit.

Yep, and for a very long time it was stated as 2% hit on WoWWiki and was later corrected by this forum Guess my brackets were a bit ambiguous.