FYI it looks like the newest version of Recount has been updated for 2.4 and is working accurately now. A guildie of mine just downloaded it yesterday and her meter matched my SW stats meter exactly on a full Mag downing last night.

Great news as no one in our guild could get the latest swstats to work last night.

Yeah, it hasn't been modeled by the Gear sheet yet, which is my preference, but hopefully soon.

I've been using it lately over my AToL and love it a lot, only thing that annoys me is the proc name, "Heroism", which totally beguiles my classtimer mod.. :\.

Read through pages 85-89 on the Rogue GEAR spreadsheet thread and you'll find a variety of posts all concerning this topic. Aldriana generously gives readers a solid preview of items in 2.4 and what they rate compared to the rest of items. It'd be a real shame to not read such an informative post, not to mention the others that will help assist in expanding your rogue knowledge.

Anyway, without trying to take away anything from Aldriana's work, the Shard is better than the WSC. I suspect in nearly every case. The proc is clocking at 40% uptime, the expertise benefit you can calculate yourself using the EP values shown in the Roguecraft thread. It's essentially awfully close to as good as the Dragonspine Trophy. It's not as good, but it's close to as good.

You're not going to want to blow through the expertise cap when using it, which means that other items that were heretofore "better" because they had expertise can now be swapped for similar iLvL items that use their stat budgets to pick up other stats. That's the great / terrible thing about trinkets. They don't really follow classical iLvl budgeting particularly well. So when you have the good ones, they provide a strong gear benefit.

My apologies, but a tooltip has recently confused me regarding the value of a raiding rogue's Weapon Expertise (and the SoC trinket). the tooltip is one of those hints shown on a wow loading screen - published by blizzard - reading something to the effect of "a mob cannot dodge, parry or block from behind" (block and parry i've been aware of, guess i didn't realize dodge was as well).

The Roguecraft 101 top-post regarding Weapon Expertise reads "Your base chance to be dodged by a raid boss with any attack is thought to be 6.5%. For each 3.94 expertise rating you equip, you gain 1 expertise, reducing your chance to be dodged by 0.25% (thus it takes exactly 15.77 expertise rating to reduce your chance to be dodged by 1%). Thus, we can calculate expertise caps for various combinations of talents and racial abilities: ... "

I have some confusion connecting why the 6.5% 'chance to be dodged' would matter (quoted above) if a rogue spends their vast majority DPS'ing from behind. Why would a raiding rogue value Weapon Expertise as much the tables and spreadsheets recommend if ~90% of their time in 25man content is standing behind a tanked mob? The SoC gives Weapon Expertise, great. Why would a rogue replace a Warp-Spring Coil with an SoC if 90% of my raiding time is spent in a position that removed block/parry/dodge from the table to begin with?

I'm hoping there's a simple explanation that I'm missing and just haven't found the right documentation quite yet.

Um a mob can dodge from behind. I think it's players that can't dodge.

ahh, thank you very much - then only block/parry is removed from the table when behind a mob. the last 6.5% of dodge is still relevant from behind a raid boss and SoC retains it's value.

Notes on this:

1) Original estimates were made with no actual data on proc rate. As it turns out, the proc rate is towards the high end of my estimated range, and, as such, it's better than I initially indicated.

2) The major thing limiting it is the Expertise cap. Rogues have no alternative DPS talent to take in place of Weapon Expertise, so all combat rogues have 10 Expertise to start with; additionally, Slayer's Boots are far and away the best boots in the game, which provides another 6 Expertise. Thus, all endgame rogues will be at 16 Expertise without Shard, and, as such, Shard will provide at most 10 Expertise benefit - or just under 40 rating, relative to the 44 on the trinket. Does this cripple the trinket? No. It just means that it's about 10 EP weaker than the strict ratings would have you believe. Still very good? Yes. Better than anything seen so far other than DST? Sure. But I'd be willing to bet that when and if Naaru Sliver comes along, it'll be better.

Now, in terms of pre-endgame rogues (who thus don't necessarily have Slayer's Boots) the situation improves *somewhat*... although even there, Belt of 100 Deaths gives 6 Expertise and is a strong option. Fundamentally: it's definitely a good trinket, and most rogues are going to want to get it... but there are other itemization choices that may limit ability to use it.

I saw that tooltip myself - reread it, it said "A player cannot dodge, parry or block .... behind." Not sure how it was worded exactly, but it certainly said player. Unless of course there are 2 nearly identical tooltips, of which one says players and one says mobs (like you quoted). In that case, the one about mobs would be wrong. I suspect however that you just misread the tooltip, resulting in this confusion.

I think a good statement that boils it all down is:

It's probably the 2nd best trinket for rogues at this time, UNLESS you're a human rogue AND have other expertise gear, OR are non-human with more than 1 other expertise item (Vashj Belt AND Shoulderpads of the Stranger, for example). In those cases if you have WSC or ATL, those get close. The next trinket down on my list is Bezerker's Call, and I think SoC is better than that in almost every realistic case.

I had this exact conversation with one of my guild's rogues yesterday - to him, I recommended SoC on higher armor bosses (where WSC's proc wasn't as strong), and WSC on lower armor bosses. If you have a lot of armor pen gear, WSC is likely to nudge up just a little though.

Currently, the general assumption is that Expertise increases your Sinister Strike DPS. But does it really?
From what I know, SS uses a one roll system. Now let's look at the effect of 4 Expertise. Out of 100 hits, there will be one less dodge and one more hit (not crit). Since a dodged SS will cost only roughly 1/3 of the regular energy costs (?), you're getting a non critical Sinister Strike and one third of a Combo Point for 27 Energy.
If you had not equipped this extra piece of Expertise gear, your Sinister Strike would have been dodged. Now you're going to spend 27 Energy on another SS. For simplicities sake, I am going to assume that this SS cannot be dodged. With a crit rate of 40% and 5/5 in Lethality, this new SS will deal roughly 152% of the damage of a non critical SS. Multiplied by 27/40 (since you only had 27 energy to spend), you'll end up with 102.6%. Thus looking solely at the damage component, you'd prefer a dodged Sinister Strike over a hit.
The fraction of a Combo Point we lost might make up for this slight difference, but is it powerful enough to account for the 0.3 EP difference between 1 Hit and 1 Expertise? Especially since most T6 rogues raid with a 5s5r cycle anyway.

Trishnakovic: I believe that the current theory is Yellow Attacks like Sinister Strike use a 2-roll system, different from the 1-roll system that white attacks use, so expertise provides a benefit to damage as well as providing more combo points (and therefore a tighter cycle) over time.


On a side note, I was doing some quick EP calculations for someone in another thread, using the weights on the first post of this thread, and I noticed something that seemed a little odd. In the description for the EP values it says that each assumes you have Blessing of Kings, however for every single one of them, Strength is given the exact same EP value as Attack Power (namely 1.00). Since we assume that 1 AP = 1 EP, if we have BoK shouldn't Strength be 1.1 EP?

I'm in exactly the same position - hence my desire to get numbers to Aldriana for the spreadsheet update.

I have BoOD, SoC, WSC, AtoI. I also have BoDS.

My current guess based on bodging the spreadsheet is that AtoI + SoC + BadgeBelt > AtoI + WSC + BoOD ~= AtoI + SoC + BoDS

But in all cases the numbers are pretty small (like 3-5 dps changes at ~1600dps in my gear).

For reference, I stuck with BoOD + AtoI + WSC and just awaiting the SS to confirm my suspicions.

Special attacks do not use a one-roll system; they use a two-roll system. The first roll determines whether the attack is successful (i.e. dodge, miss, parry, block). The second roll determines if the attack will be a hit or a crit. Therefore, there is no phenomenon where decreasing dodge chance would negatively affect your damage output.

Also, you are refunded 80% energy cost for non-finisher special attacks that fail to land, not 66%.

I'm trying to figure out if T6 2 peace bonus gives me 5% of the 30% on my SnD or adds 5%.

So 31.5% or 35% anyone know for sure and tested this?

It's pretty easy to see, since it adjusts the tooltip for SnD to say 35% instead of 30%.

That might be an irrelevant question however I have been trying to understand how thats possible so please help me.

I was checking wws reports on brutallus and I have seen a human rogue with 2.7 k and Khazal, a horde rogue with 2.5kdps on brutallus while the maximum dps I have seen so far was 2.3k.

Had perfect melee raid with enhancement shaman, arms warrior, feral druid and survival hunter. Perfect drum rotation, used elixir of demonslaying, haste potions hit food etc. I was only missing curse of recklessness.

Their gear are slightly better than mine ( cloak, bracers, gloves and belt ) but I dont really think that would cause a 200-400 dps difference.

So how is that possible

Sorry for double posting.

It could have to do with the debuffs on the mob. Do you have a hunter with imp Mark? Survival Hunter? Are you using CoR? Do you have a rogue using Imp Expose armor?

Those things coupled with the gear gap could account for it, I'd think.

I am guessing that you were not only missing CoR, but also Imp Expose Armor. Those two debuffs combined can easily make a 200 DPS difference, especially when combined with other buffs such as Haste Potions and Drums.
You'll also note that the rogue you linked had a rather high crit rate of 44% combined with an above usual amount of Windfury procs.
Anyway, have your Hunter get that owl pet with Demo Shout and then make your Warlocks use CoR. This change should easily grant you another 125 DPS.