Upon patch 2.3 dropping, i respecced to 11/27/23. That being said, i was really looking forward to executioner, used to DW mongoose, but i figured id try this out. It has worked amazingly well for me, it seems as though it is providing more DPS than the mongoose did, but i dont have a WWS yet to back it up. Should have one tonight (tues), as it is raid night. The uptime is crazy on executioner, though. I tend to feel that for the hemo build executioner may shine a bit more because of serrated blades, but when i, eventually, go back to combat, it will probably be uite good as well.


Cant link my armory, right now, as the site is down for maintenance.. but im mainhanding a Talon of azshara, offhanding Latros (glad offhand when servers come up) and have most of the SSC gear, a 351 hit rating (with talbuk food) and 1795 unbuffed AP.. just for baseline.

Pure rubbish. If this were true, all Executioner uptime periods would be a multiple of 15 seconds. They're not, as can be seen by even a cursory look at any of the logs in this thread.

Indeed- except I'm more concerned with PvP.

With the armor pen on the S3 items/weapons, and with typical PvP armor values... what's best?

Bear in mind at least, that the dodge from Mongoose definitely has some value, especially for the 'warrior tanking' AR/Prep spec. Then again, with same spec, the 10% extra AP makes Mongoose even better...

I still kind of want Executioner to come out on top- would be a nice change and has a cool graphic... but yeah. Not convinced yet.

Here is some rough theorycrafting on the matter that might be useful for people to visualise. I have read up on this thread and decided to have a crack at trying to account for all factors that abound from two different enchanting solutions. It is important to understand that i may have errors on a number of points, so i'd appreciate a critique of my assumptions. From here on in, E = Executioner, M = Mongoose. This is strictly for rogues, Warriors obviously will get a lesser benefit from M/M and a greater benefit from E/M, so the choice is simple.



For the Executioner Benefit %:
The DR% formula at level 70 is DR% = A/(A+10157)
The Delta DR% is therefore DRD% = (A-840)/(A+9317)
- These were taken from Wowwiki with the levels subbed in.

By determining ratio of these two, i was able to plot a relationship of Armor vs Executioner Benefit. My entire analysis was based on being unitless, so that you can attain factors to give an indication on how much better or worse you will be in a scenario with a particular enchant.

With 300 Paperdoll DPS:

** Just so we're clear - the plateau on both graphs is because ~4000 armor is taken off from common debuffs. Since negative armor doesnt have an increased effect, Executioner gets capped here.

For the Mongoose section, I started by using the Paperdoll DPS value on an armory sheet, since it accounts for your AP and weapon DPS. My Assumtions are:

* Hit cap is reached
* Specced into Lethality
* At all times CoR, 5xSunder and FF are up
* The rogue has about 33% crit when buffed in a raid

A factor of 6% was applied to determine the relative increase in damage from the critical increase from an additional mongoose proc. (When comparing M/M to E/M) also, the increase in haste and extra 120AP was accounted for. This particular figure i wouldnt mind a bit of help on. I went with a probability lineup and worked out how much crit 120 more agi gives for a rogue, then compared the damage assuming a lot of hits took place in a proc, then worked out as a % how much more that was without the proc.

To account for the haste increase on a mongoose proc, i reviewed a number of WWS logs and i estimated that ~ 55% of a rogue's damage is affected by the haste effect of mongoose. So in reality, that 2% from the haste only affects 55% of the damage. As a reminder, I'm using percentages and eventually factors, so that the data can be applied over a much broader set of scenarios.

Let's go with most bosses having ~7700 armor. Many sources will quote this. The mob has to be debuffed for this to be true but these are the values from the top graph.

So in practice, you might create a hypothetical scenario where two identical rogues SS a mob. One had an E/M and one had an M/M arrangement.

At 325 Paperdoll DPS, if you had a M/M arrangement, and an SS hit for 500 - it would have hit for 570 had you had E/M.
At 175 Paperdoll DPS, if you had a M/M arrangement, and an SS hit for 500 - it would have hit for 455 had you had E/M.

As Paperdoll DPS increases, E/M increases
As Mob Armor Decreases, E/M increases

Again, please dont quote these as precise values, but this will hopefully clear up a bit of confusion and will help visualise the Two enchanting solutions.

Why does M/M increase with crit%? Surely if you have 1% crit, Mongoose gives a higher relative increase than if you have 35%?

In PvP, rogues will all have a very low crit% due to resilience on their targets. I would've thought this would favour Mongoose, not Executioner?

Neither the most popular pve hemo or the pvp hemo spec lethality. I guess its assumed for a combat swords build without serrated blades then?

First up; I am not a rogue. Plain and simple. But i was interested in seeing what kind of relationship E/M had against M/M. From what i know, a number of rogues in our guild were specced into Lethailty (230% crit damage on specials). If you dont have lethality, it will decrease the worth of M/M slightly, since the extra crit % from M/M will be less of a blow if your specials are hitting at 200% not 230%. I could run it again with 200% if you wish, but itll only spell a clearer victory for M/M.

PS, i did attempt to account for combat potency, so yes, i am going off a primarily combat spec. But if you must know - yes M/M gets slightly worse if you dont have Lethality

The paper doll DPS seems rather low in the examples. I am by no stretch of the imagination a well-geared rogue, yet my paper doll DPS already exceeds the top end example of 350 dps on my paper doll (when including my OH in paper doll DPS).

Therefore I just want to double check, is this taking both MH and OH paper doll DPS or just you’re MH?

Another reason for asking is that; for me, the armoury does not show your OH paper doll DPS

Just the MH.

And if US armory was up, i could link you our rogue with MH warglaive and a few pieces of T6, and from memory, unbuffed he had 256.3 Paperdoll. Pity US armory isnt up so i could have a look ..

If this is purely based on the MH weapon, and looking at the % increase per proc, then does it therefore make sense that E/M (in order of MH/OH enchants) is going to be greater than M/E?

This may sound again a obvious question, but I always like to double check before I spend a small fortune on enchanting weapons, and then discover I have enchanted them in the wrong order.

@Nimiety.

Thanks for the results.

The only thing which isn't clear on your graph is that, in PvE raid, if the mob/boss is debuff totally (which can count for 4k AR reduction) and if the mob/boss armor is 4k, the executioner enchant interest drops to nothing.


For the cc DPS, we gain nothing from debuffing an armor under 0. So, we an conclude that :

In PvE, Executioner + Mongoose is a good combination as far as the mob gets at least 4k of AR (which is the case anyway).Fully debuffed before an executioner proc, a mob/boss must have still 3k of armor. So, following your results, at 7k armor, executioner still give an 8% gain from executioner on the Paper Doll DPS.

And the more the target's armor reach the maximum possible debuff value, the more executioner will be great. But... Too much is worst than too good.


In PvP, Executioner is a good enchant as far as the target still have some armor. In your strategy is to 'open' your victim via an Improved Expose Armor (as a rogue) on a cloth-geared one, an executioner proc won't be worth the cost of the enchant.

In fact, cloth gear is around 3k5 of armor. Give the rogue few Ignore armor items and the Imroved Expose Armor talent and the Clothy will have 0 armor soon enough. Add a useless executioner proc above and you'll be sure to have loose money.

With the S3 stuff coming in (and the new heroïc badges since 2.3), we get a lot of ignore armor stuff that will lessen the Executioner interest (because target armor will be too low anyway).

That MH paper doll DPS seems rather low in comparison to my own. I still wield the mighty Vindicator's Brand and yet my paper doll DPS is 215.5 un-buffed on my MH. And with the increase in DPS from my gear to a true end game rogue, I would expect the DPS on the paper doll to be far greater than my own. Is it not more 356.3 than 256.3?

/edit

On further investigation I discovered that it is more realistic to be 256.3 than 356.3 as looking at other rogues BT level rogues there paper doll DPS is around 250 mark. Guess I was overestimating the gear gap in terms of paper doll dps from myself to a BT rogue.

The graph is rubbish. It says that Executioner is better than Mongoose when used on a zero-armor target. This is not the case, as Executioner has no benefit on a zero-armor target - Mongoose of course will give a considerable benefit. Something is clearly fundamentally wrong with your modelling, and there is no point discussing this until it is fixed..

Work in progress:



In both graphs 4000 Armor reduction is assumed to always be there. But when reading across, use data values of boss armor.

As I pointed earlier in the thread :
We know for sure that, passing below 0 of AR is useless. And that makes the executioner proc worthless.

So, in an heavenly situation, the real point to executioner is to put the target near 0 of AR (just above, or slightly below). That's the real tuning difficulty with this enchant.

Edit : Nimiety produces clearer graphs.

Basically thats what i wanted to show with the graphs.

As Per: [RAID] Boss armor values (A few posts down)

Serpentshrine Cavern:
Hydross the Unstable: 7700
The Lurker Below: 7700
Leotheras the Blind: 7700
Fathom-Lord Karathress 6200
Morogrim Tidewalker: 7700
Lady Vashj: 6200

Tempest Keep:
Void Reaver: 8800
High Astromancer Solarian: 6200
Al'ar: 7700
Kael'thas Sunstrider: 6200

Hyjal Summit:
Rage Winterchill: 6200
Anetheron: 6200
Kaz'rogal: 6200
Azgalor: 6200
Archimonde: 6200

Black Temple:
High Warlord Naj'entus: 7700
Supremus: 7700
Shade of Akama: 7700
Teron Gorefiend: 6200
Gurtogg Bloodboil: 7700
Reliquary of Souls:
- Essence of Suffering: 0
- Essence of Desire: 7700
- Essence of Anger: 7700
Mother Shahraz: 6200
Illidari Council:
- Gathios the Shatterer: 6200
Illidan Stormrage: 7700


Most bosses are between say ... 6200 and 7700. The graph tries to show that in this particular range with 4000 AR already present, E/M is more benefical. Any more or less and it's not.

Aye, I was a little hasty - the upper end of the original graph seems OK. It's interesting tuning. One thing to bear in mind is that lower armor mobs are found in smaller instances where the mob won't be fully debuffed will every possible armor reduction. It looks to me as though the conclusion (assuming the rest of the model is right) is that E/M is better than M/M as long as the mob has 0-2000 armor left after debuffs. Furthermore, as your base DPS goes up, the relative benefit of E/M over M/M tends to increase.

However, I think I see a remaining problem with your analysis. For Mongoose, you've (correctly) accounted for the fact that only ~55% of your damage is affected by the haste component. Did you do the same for Executioner? A significant percentage of a rogue's damage is due to Rupture plus poisons, which are unaffected by armor. Executioner only affects ~85% of your total damage.

If you haven't already accounted for this, could you redo the figures multiplying the E benefit by 0.85? That will have a material effect on the conclusions.

I certainly can introduce that factor and it is a valid point i havent taken into account for so far. However, what dominates the rate of Executioner's uptake is it's ppm. From reading this thread it varies from 0.8 to 2.5+ in some cases according to some data. Not all may be reliable, but the 0.85 for executioner seems to be less dominant so far. When calculating the DR% factor from the 840 armor drop, i factored it up by 1.5 since a reasonable figure of 1.5ppm seemed to be a good rough estimate. It is there i would factor it down given the effectiveness of Executioner to increase only direct physical damage (specials + white + wf + ss) during the window of opportunity.

In short, once a concensus comes about the relationship between ppm and perhaps weapon speed, then ill create a number of graphs for each PPM rate with 0.85 factored onto executioner.

Why is E/M 'obviously' better than M/E?

Just an idea, but it might be that instant attack's use your MH, therefore if E > M you would want as many proc's of E as possible as it awards a greater increase per proc. Enchanting it on your OH would result in lower amount of proc's than on your MH. This would be even more important if you where sword speced.

/edit.

highlighted IF incase i was pulled on making a assumption before it was proven.

Two semi, and very early, conclusions:

1) Executioner benefit on a MH (for rogues) has a wide, sliding range of variability. IE: If in a raid, where armor values are assumed high, but debuffs are equally assumed to be high, Ex/M enchanting can be expected to be on-par-to-better than M/M. Yet, equally, in a 1v1 situation (essentially), where armor values are relatively low, but debuffs are relatively low save for the individual gear and abilities, Ex/M also shines. The curve on the graph holds true, it's just the labeling convention is something we need to work out better. It all comes down to final armor value "including all debuffs", which includes Expose Armor at times (pvp), and not having the Executioner debuff wasted on an already zero armor target.

The problem is, all of the stuff in between these two degrees. All of the trash, all of the solo content, all of the 5-mans, and in many 10-mans, and even a lot of the non top tier pvp (where you likely don't have on any other armor reduction gear to aid the proc). In these situations you end up in the 'grey areas'. These are further complicated by not being in T4 equivalent gear, or in full PvP gear that will have armor reduction boosts to place the target's final armor in the sweet spot.

So, essentially it comes down to how much those middle ground areas mean to you. If you are T4'ish equivalent (or better)and all about raid bosses, then the performance of the Ex/M enchant setup will at a minimum be on par, if not exceed, double Mongoose from all that we have compiled thus far. And if you are going to be a dedicated arena PvP'r with S3 gear and possibly some other armor reduction items, you "may" like the Ex/M combo as well (even though the short duration of the fight may work against you).

Yet, if you want a much more consistent performance across the board, in all situations (that is on average going to have a peak benefit lower than Ex/MH), dual Mongoose is better.

2) Blizzard knew very full well that variability existed, and what the sweet spots were. If you analyze all of the items that have armor penetration boosts, from any source, you find they are almost exclusively T4'ish equivalent raiding items, or S3 Arena gear. Unlike the days of the Phantom Blade from the L40's that was beautiful to use while no other armor reduction stacking was really prevalent, there are no standard green drops or blue sets you can stack armor pen with, and not even regular BG PvP gear. The best BoE armor penetration item I can readily think of is the Night Blade dagger, and those got nerfed (but could be extremely benefitial to a Mutilate-S3 Arena rogue).

So I would just say be very mindful about how you play, and what your predominant priorities are for the targets you will be facing the most with your Executioner enchanted weapon before you choose the Ex/M combination. You will shine in top level arena play, and you will definently see benefits on raid content, but if you just casually run BG's and are doing little more than the occasional heroic, you are almost certainly going to lower your overal day-to-day performance with Ex/M vs. using dual Mongoose.

Very nice summery of the information that has been presented up to now Maurice2u.

It puts it into rather more simple terms, to which the likes of myself appreciates.