Also with 'best items' in slot you'll be over the hit cap with +10hit so they may be looking toward the future.

So I'm a little nervous about hacking around with the spreadsheet, but ...

Currently, with shard, weapon expertise, and [Shoulderpads of the Stranger] I am slightly over the expertise cap (23 expertise). I mostly use Aldriana's sheet, but since the shard isn't modeled yet (I know it's coming!) I can't easily compare the value of other shoulders. For instance ... if I ignore the expertise from my current shoulders, would I get a significant net benefit from going back to Netherblade shoulders + helm for 2pc T4 and replacing my current gloves with T5?

At the moment, it would appear that the only T5 I will ever wear is the gloves, and that not for quite some time. It is unlikely that I would get the helm (DKP) and the sheets tell me that S3 helm + T5 gloves is a very minor upgrade in dps due to loss of T4 2pc. Of course, the new badge chest and legs are amazing, and Stranger-pads are at least as good as T5 shoulders, so ... yeah. T5 seems almost entirely defunct.


Edit: Perhaps I misread somewhere ... I was under the impression that the expertise cap for removing dodges was 21 expertise (not expertise rating). The first post suggests that as a non-human 2/2 weapon expertise I really need 64, so I am still slightly under cap.

Don't confuse expertise rating with expertise itself. You need 26 expertise total (26*0.25 = 6.5), 10 of which comes from WepEx (for combat rogues). You get 3.94 expertise per expertise rating, thus in order to make up the 16 expertise which you still need to cap you need 64 (64/3.94 ~= 16.2) expertise rating.

Alright been lurking these forums for quite some time, read up as much as I could find on the subject, had a few questions left.

At the moment my guild has just killed brut but did it right on the enrage timer, was curious of ways to up my dps.

Im at a loss of what trinkets to be useing at the moment, ive read that WSC really shines at my current gear level as well that shard is argueable one of the best meele trinkets. I have WSC/Madness/Shard/Ashtounge curious which to pair with shard. I dont know how relatvent this is but without WSC/madness my hit is kinda low 270ish iirc. The vashj belt is not an option as well due to just recieving the t6 belt.

Ive been running 3 drums in my group with wf/bsfrenzy doing around 2400 dps(with WSC/ashtounge just got shard last night.), curious if i can up it anymore

Hmm shows you in pvp gear for me, but I'd suggest you to pick up Gladiator's Slicer, which is probably one of the larger upgrades (81dps->91). Then again there's the badge MH fist weapon.

Also why are you intent on keeping 2pcT4 it's value is greatly overestimated.

Especially with the new badge chest and pants that are both equal to T6 (better in some cases) I'd say it's definitely time to drop 2pcT4 for good. S3 helm and badge pants (the current haste ones) are already a very minor upgrade, so with the new pants there's really no reason to keep 2pc t4.

Since you already have Deep Shadow, new badge belt is a minor sidegrade that can be skipped.
The ring is quite good as well especially since combining it with ZA ring will last you until Illidan and Sunwell (unless you're lucky enough get your mittens on a [Hard Khorium Band].
The Crossbow is also quite minor upgrade depending on your current ranged, however it is as good as the sunwell trash thrown weapon.
At a very hefty 150badges price tag though.
But if you're swimming in badges, MH Fist, Chest, Pants, Ring are all good choices (in that order).

As for leaning towards hit. I wouldn't say that's much of a problem unless you're reaching the cap (363 or 343 if you're using 20 hit food.)
However do remember that the hit cap is not a magical number and my personal aim would be around the 300-307 mark, which allows me to use 20hit food on the boss and 20agi food on the trash.

The short answer is that Hit is slightly more damage on sustained fights, but factors like the hit cap and interrupted fights can skew the decision. I actually made a post on the case for agility in the Rogue Gear Sheet thread recently; I might suggest reading this post to understand some of the issues involved.

A few things I tend to do when dpsing on trash instead of on a boss.

- Get SnD up early, 1 or 2 combo points (depends on how long I expect the mob to live) and then pop it.

- Don't waste combo points, if you're sitting at 4-5 combo points and the mob is about to die pop an evis, better yet if you've got a full deadly poison stack pop an envenom. If you've only got 1-2 combo points and there are more mobs to kill pop SnD so that you have it up for the next mob.

- Only use rupture when you expect it to be able to run near to full duration, it's going to depend a bit on your gear level, armor pen, mob armor etc as to what amount of wasted time on rupture causes evis to surpass it. When considering envenom you'll want to look at how much damage you lose from your poison stack but if the mob dies before you get restacked to 5 you'll be losing less poison damage than you would against a boss.

- Double deadly poison, so this one depends a lot on how quickly the mob dies and whether you have windfury up, etc. As you mentioned in a lot of cases with deadly only on the offhand it won't reach a full stack before the mob dies, with doubly deadly you'll stack a lot faster. In the perfect situation you can get a full stack quickly followed by an envenom and then the mob dies before you lose any damage from missed poison ticks. Now obviously the effectiveness is going to vary a lot depending on what you're doing and how quickly the mob dies but there is the potential for double deadly to not end up wasting nearly as many poison procs as it would on a boss.

Really though you need to consider what you're fighting and how quickly it will die. Some trash will stay alive long enough that you might as well treat it like a boss (nothing coming to mind at the moment in TBC but think AQ40 trash). But for the shorter fights some of the things I've mentioned above can work out rather nicely.

I was bored last night so I made a little web calculator to do the gear math based off the data in this thread. If anyone wants to use it, it's at:
Rivkah's World of Warcraft Notes: Rogue Gear Calculator

What, no Mutilate?

The post says his calculator is based on the EP weights in this thread. Do you see any Mutilate EP weights here or, in fact, anywhere?

If someone has useful mutilate numbers I could easily add them to the list, but all I did for now is a quick and dirty implementation with the data already available. Mainly I just got tired of manually doing the math

Yes, he mixed up the order. And yes, the talent provides a static 10 Expertise, regardless of level.

Regarding [Claw of Molten Fury] and [Fist of Molten Fury], is the additional Fire effect affected by typical raid debuffs such as Scorch, Misery, and Curse of Elements? I saw Roefyll's WWS (Rofyll - Wow Web Stats), which explains a bit about the proc's performance in general, but not necessarily in a raid setting. Can anyone comment? Thanks.

Hello, I'm obviously one of the new guys around here. I've been using both spreadsheets to figure out gear and such, but I keep seeing people throw around WWS reports of simply astounding dps. Given, most of the time they are in 4/8 T6 armor, and all the fun stuff, but I'm starting to get paranoid that I'm simply missing something terribly, terribly obvious.

I've started to prescribe [Haste Potion]'s to most rogues in my guild, however, something about my dps seems to be lacking. I don't fall behind, persay, but I feel like I should be ahead more often then not.

I've been using a 2s/5r build with 5/5 T5 (soon to be replacing the leggings with some tasty badge gear), and sitting at around 280 hit (rather low for my tastes, but such is the curse of T5). Armory found here just mentally replace that riding crop with [Romulo's Poison Vial].

I've been pushing myself hard to get a [Shard of Contempt], and simply grinding out the rep to get that awesome trinket from the Ashtongue... however, when I do drop Romulo's, I'm going to be in a major hit hole, as it were.

Is there anything glaringly wrong with this setup? Is 2s/5r simply trumped by the 3s/5r I've seen floating around? (Proof of dps standing found here: 5 Mount Hyjal + 1 Black Temple

Thanks in advance.

No such thing as a "major hit hole" :P You don't have issues with snd dropping if you use 2s5r? I'm impressed. Use the minimum number of cp for snd that prevents it from dropping for you.

We have similar gear and I use 4s5r.

Well, it does drop, but it's maybe 1 swing of the offhand. I usually have it back up within .5sec-1sec if it ever does drop. Usually I stay ahead of that timer, though.

That was really the only thing that seemed like a possible reason in the WWS parse after giving it a quick lookover. You're positioned relatively evenly with the other rogues, and you're all relatively evenly geared. It looks like you drop SnD quite a lot, 8-10 times on relatively short Hyjal fights. That's one thing I would keep an eye on, and maybe try to lengthen your cycle to a 3s/5r and compare the results. If you're only dropping it ever so briefly usually, it probably won't make much of a difference.

One thing I did notice in terms of dps relative to the rest of the raid is the lack of Curse of Recklessness on the bosses. You're running a good chunk of physical dps, and quite a few warlocks as well. See about getting one of them to drop their damage curse and apply CoR instead. It should be a pretty solid overall dps gain with your raid setup.

We have switched our once Elemental Shaman to Enhancement. And that's a side question that I wished to pose, but I'm not sure where to exactly post it:

what is more valuable to a raid as a whole: Elemental or Enhancement shaman? I've been adamantly stating at the Enhancement grants benefits that far outway the caster equivilent, however, it does mean adding another melee to the raid. TBC has damn near no melee friendly fights, and an extreme amount of melee unfriendly fights.

I do try to cloak cripple when I can (sometimes sheepers are slow for the necro). The Resto shaman usually focuses on healing and not bombing the raid on Kaz, rather than anything else. I'm sure his conservative use of WF on that encounter played a huge part in it.

I'm still not hooked on the whole 'Runspeed is better' idea. I see the points, but I guess I just don't see it as valuable, as 90% of the time, I am just standing there, mashing away at buttons.

It might be nitpicking but most of the T6 fights are melee friendly and the ones that aren't get less retarded if you have runspeed :P

Stacking shaman is never really a bad thing either, we run between 2-5 and no one complains about more heroisms! Enhancement shaman who don't have to worry about raid healing will increase your melee dps by a non trivial amount.

Make sure your Enh shaman also knows how to Totem Twist.

"TBC has damn near no melee friendly fights, and an extreme amount of melee unfriendly fights."

It does?

I must be playing a different game than you. I consider the following melee friendly:

Hydross, Lurker, Tidewalker, Karathress, Vashj, Al'ar, Void Reaver, Solarian, Kael. (Now the trash getting there, ugh, but that's another story.)

Those 9 are all melee friendly because melee can do a ton of damage since most involve standing around whacking on a stationary target for extended periods of time. I'll note that on Kael I watched them kill 2 of the 4 advisers in phase 1 without me and I still topped the meters overall on pretty much every Kael kill.

In Hyjal, every boss is melee friendly except Azgalor, where melee can handle the Doomguards and, well, whack away at a stationary target. In BT, you start out with, Najentus (melee friendly), Supremeus (a joke and melee can still do well on the stationary phases), Akama/Teron/Bloodboil/Reliquary/Shahraz (all melee friendly). On some of these like Akama we have a specific role that's absolutely essential. On others like Teron we simply destroy the damage meters. I haven't done council yet, which all I know is that melee is essential, whether it's friendly to melee or not, for interrupting. And I haven't done Illlidan. But since I've contributed to virtually every boss fight, even if I contribute less on Illidan, I'll take my loot.

"I'm still not hooked on the whole 'Runspeed is better' idea. I see the points, but I guess I just don't see it as valuable, as 90% of the time, I am just standing there, mashing away at buttons."

OK, well you're entitled to that belief, but you are running a lot of the time. You are trading 6 agility for the ability to get somewhere faster. There's a caster pew pewing a healer on Hyjal trash, he needs to be gouged, kicked or KS-ed. You need to get there. You want to get there 8% faster in exchange for 6 agility? OK, you apparently don't. That's fine. There's Supremus, he's 80 yards away at the end of the kite phase. He's only stationary for a while and you can't dps him again once he's moving. You can be there 8% faster with run speed. Or not. Up to you. The fact about run speed is that it gives you dps in aggregate that not having it doesn't give you. You trade 6 agility for it. The reality is that you don't lose as much damage as you think.

While I agree overall with Mideci that TBC is just fine for melee, I would tend to disagree with some of the bosses on his list. In a general sense, physical dps tends to scale more with buffs than caster classes. That is to say, providing you are a reasonably competent player who stays on target and gears appropriately.. your dmg is largely governed by your party buffs and boss debuffs. It takes a LOT of gear to overcome Battle Shout, Unleashed Rage, WF, etc. So in practice, what you might see as melee unfriendly bosses are more just melee unfriendly raid groups. In fact, most bosses support a balanced raid. Generally speaking, stacking physical dps tends to increase the overall raid dps at the cost of more raid dmg. Some fights require a certain number of ranged people (casters dps, healers, hunters), some fights punish guilds for taking lots of melee (can't spread out for splash dmg).. but in general melee are just fine.

Starting at a T5 level:
Hydross: Some splash dmg, some strats support AoE dps, can't rupture or poison.. overall sub-par but still ok for Rogues.
Lurker: Supports a balanced raid
Morogrim: Stand and dps, good fight. Time your Blade Flurry for bonus dps.
FLK: Melee are better at dealing with totems, but get frozen on priest / flk. Not a huge thing either way.
Leo: Ok, he favours casters a bit for whirlwind, but 1/2 the fight you can just stand and dps, no rogue should ever have an issue with inner demon
Vashj: Rogues do well in all phases. Cloak, Imp Sprint, Vanish to get out of roots and static charge. Good single-target-nuke on the Naga. Capable (although not optimal for) of killing Elementals.

Al'ar: Not a great melee fight but neat for separating rogues who can move from those who can't.
VR: High armor, but you can stand and dps while ranged have to move around. Overall pretty even
Solarian: Nice fight, rogues can't really AoE much, but that is a trivial portion of the fight.
Kael: Sure we can't do ranged dps on some of the adds or AoE much on the weapons.. but Kael is quite squishy and lends himself nicely to 4k Sinister Strikes. Given that interrupts are reasonably important and melee can beat on kael quite well.. rogues are fine here

Rage: Low armor boss, no difference melee vs caster.
Anetheron: You need a minimum amount of ranged dps, after that melee is quite nice
Kaz'rogal: Sure he warstomps, but we don't have mana being burnt.
Azgalor: Varrying strategies, melee either deals with doomgaurds (warstomp) or wears FR and beats up on the boss. I suppose a slight edge to casters, although they get silenced.
Archimonde: I would argue this fight favours melee

Najentus: Too many melee might suck but you should have no problems with 6 on a first kill.
Supremus: You could take no ranged to this fight and STILL kill him well within the enrage. This fight favours people who are awake, nothing more.
Akama: Not a boss.
Teron: Low armor tank'n'spank with pushback for casters.
Gurtogg: Sorta requires at least 15 ranged (healer + caster dps + hunter).. but doable with less if you get a melee to run out once every 90 seconds. Rogues are great for Fel Rage, mages are probably the worst class. Can't see a downside to bringing rogues here..
RoS: Rogues are quite helpful for P1 and do excellent dps, the most reliable interrupt (at the lowest dps cost) for P2 and have a threat-wipe with multiple cooldowns for P3.
Mother: Pre-nerf you only brought casters for water, soulstones and heals. Having an ele shaman bloodlust the melee instead of mages at sub-20% was perfectly acceptable. Current version.. it still slightly favours melee I think, but fine with any makeup
Council: Too many melee makes it difficult but we do excellent dps. At least one melee-interrupt is pretty important, beyond that anyone can kill them.
Illidan: Strong dps for all but P2 of the fight. P2 is more just about lucky eye beams for how effective melee are.

Kalecgos: Rogues can cloak.
Brutallus: Rogues can wield warglaives, cloak and scale well with buffs.
Felmyst: Rogues can cloak.
Twins: Publication ban.. but uh, we can cloak. Overall not that amazing there though.

While I realize this is a fairly lengthy list and doesn't even go into a ton of detail.. suffice to say melee dps (rogues in particular) are fine on nearly all fights. We lack a lot of AoE for some fights (Hydross, Morogrim, Solarian, Hyjal trash, Felmyst) but that is never really a 'must-have' crutial part of a fight. Some fights punish stacking melee due to splash dmg or whirlwind stuff (Hydross, ~Lurker, Leo, ~Vashj, ~VR, Azgalor, Najentus, Council, Illidan P2, Kalecgos, Felmyst) and others just flat-out require X number of ranged.. overall the bulk of fights support a balanced raid. Stacking melee might be advantageous on some fights, stacking casters on others might be nice. Sure you can get away with taking 0 melee dps on basically ever fight in TBC, but your raid will be worse off. Similarily there are fights that you could do just fine with 0 caster dps.. but then how long would you have to wait for a piece of gear?