Nachash

It was raised by an earlier poster but never really discussed: under what circumstances would a PvP rogue with Imp. EA + Serrated Blades ever choose Executioner/Goose over Goose/Goose? Wouldn't the former be serious overkill on clothies (the primary target of armor reduction) assuming that armor mitigation doesn't go into the negative for PvP (this may be an unfounded assumption)? Furthermore, wouldn't the armor reduction be drastically less effective on Plate targets (on whom Imp. EA would be wasteful) than would the extra dodge+crit+haste+AP (extra rupture damage) from mongoose? The only classes I was considering executioner might be useful on would be buffed leather-wearers or mail. Not certain if this would really be enough to justify losing a goose or not. Any thoughts?

 

Mideci

My thoughts are that Executioner would be downright awful for your PVP weapon, yes. I can't imagine there's any negative armor bonus. And even if there were, I can't see how it'd eclipse the benefits of Mongoose.

 

KasumiRevy

I bolded the best targets for executioner+ Imp EA for you. During a executioner proc, with Imp EA and Serrated Blades (gear can even add this number farther), nearly all cloth will hit the 0 mark. As far as the posts i've been reading over armor never hits negative.

Resto Shamans and Druids make the best targets for this type of approach. To a lesser degree paladins and warriors.

I have always used expose armor on the targets that I have a steady stream of melee with *that are tough enough without expose to handle me* , (arms warriors would not be a good choice, due to melee kiting, within the energy recovery phase).

I consider Armor Penetration much like other stats, where you want a fair amount of it, to improve your hasted attacks.

Mongoose gives you extra dodge- for a rogue with serrated blades ( chances are you have ghostly strike and prep) and crit-Resilience eats away this stat in high measure, and pvp gear comes with it preloaded, the haste is marginal at best, which really only leaves the benefit of the AP-by far the saving grace of the enchant for pvp.

I will mention that if your using Imp EA on a target, you should be doing Slice and Dice , and bladeflurry if talented.

Anyway, maybe you see what I mean.

 

Nachash

Well, forgoing my own personal lack of ghostly strike/prep and Blade Fury as a Mut/Sub daggers rogue, I'll address the more general concern of whether or not bringing extremely well geared/buffed leather-wearers all the way to 0 (as opposed to leaving rogues at 200-400 (or very very rarely 400-600) and druids 100-200 (rarely slightly more)) and bringing hunters down to 2423 rather than 3263 (assuming 7000 armor) and shamans to 7423 rather than 8263 (assuming 12k armor) really outshines the mongoose buff. Assuming negative armor penetration is out, Executioner is going into 100% overkill on ALL clothies with the possible exception of well-geared shadow priests with inner fire up who might otherwise still retain 200-300 (theoretically up to 600-800 with mark+fire but I have yet to actually see this and I'm not even certain if they stack or not) armor. This is assuming a 5pnt. Imp. EA (3075)+ Serrated Blades (560)+ what little armor penetration is made available on Dory's embrace + Vindicator's band (102) for a total of 3737. Having examined a great number of the top arena teams in all of the battle-groups, it has become clear that executioner is also going to go 100% wasted on the vast majority of rogues and druids whose armor is typically in the 3200-3800 range. On those who are better geared/buffed, one will still waste anywhere from 7/8-1/3 of the executioner buff with only 100-400 (rarely 400-600) more armor to overcome. On mail and plate the buff will obviously come into full use but at this point I'm not certain it's anywhere near as effective as mongoose with the possible exception of hunters. This all assumes only S1 gear as well, so with the static armor pen from S3 gear, 100% overkill applies to essentially every cloth or leather-wearer regardless of gear/buffs. I don't see how executioner can hold its ground against mongoose given this level of wastefulness.

Please, someone enlighten me if you believe it's still worth it. I just don't see how it can be.

As a preemptive reply to anyone who would suggest putting up less than a 5 pnt. Imp. EA under these circumstances, I would offer the following caveat, which I find quite convincing, by Regory on Malygos (61. Re: ☼ Mongoose is the best MH enchant for PvP | 12/05/2007 02:51:11 AM EST WoW Forums -> ☼ Mongoose is the best MH enchant for PvP ☼)

 

Myyst109

Im currently using Ex/Mongoose and im usually top on dps. I just was wondering from everyones experence what is better for raid dps, Ex/mongoose or dual mongoose? Were currently in SSC if thats of any importance. My spec is 19/42/0 combat swords.

 

Amarysse

Sorry if this is not totally relevant to this thread since most of the talk is PvE related but it is about Executioner/Mongoose anyway.

We are running a Druid/Lock/Rogue Arena team. The Druid is of course Resto (8/11/42 or 34/0/27), the Warlock ideally will be SL/SL although for now he is UA and I will be either QR/Combat or some Subtlety build with QR/FF depending on how it goes with the combat one.

Im not going to go into specifics but I'm wondering what you all think about choosing Executioner over Mongoose for the Sub build since I will have both Improved EA and Serrated Blades as well as the new Arena gear. I myself dont have any sort of numbers to back any arguement up and my mind is going in both directions on this one so this is why I'm asking.

Any thoughts on this?

 

Nachash

Look two posts up for my thoughts (and numbers) on this subject. Still waiting for someone to disagree with my assessment.

 

Amarysse

Yes I seen it and appreciate the time you put into the post but since I dont do numbers myself I have taken your thoughts/info in but not really wanting to pass judgement on it quite yet.

As everything else in the game it depends on circumstances. Mines will be that I am mostly attacking cloth/leather rather than staying toe to toe with a warrior, instead ill just cripple him as we pass sort of thing. Hence why I posted myself, also unsure as to wether this should then be in the 3v3 thread or this!

 

gummy2

Most rogues are not mutilate spec atm so they do not have access to imp ea. Not only that, combo point generation on harp ( spec of choice for most arena rogues ) has horrid combo point generation so you can't always keep ea up on your target. In your situation where you are mutilate yes you have the energy and cp to keep up ea, most rogues do not and therefore the executioner proc is most likely not going to waste due to overkill.

Personally I feel that mutilate requires you stack more crit and would favor mongoose regardless of imp ea and executioner procs leading to overkill on cloth.

 

Nachash

The bottom line is if you have Imp. EA, Serrated Blades, and, in your case, S3 passive armor pen., Executioner is going to be 100% overkill (wasted) on all Cloth and Leather-wearers and less effective than a second mongoose on harder targets.

 

Nachash

Sounds about right (having never played HARP). Though I expect my comments are likely to become a whole lot more relevant come the patch.

 

Mideci

I think the above half dozen posts bury this issue. Mongoose is good whenever it procs. It's an AP bonus and crit bonus if nothing else. Executioner is useless when it's useless (targets which are already armorless from debuffs). Therefore it's a bad PVP enchant. People who are not grasping this simply want the new thing and are talking themselves out of common sense and theorycrafting. Let them have at it.

 

Nachash

Sounds about right. That was my worry; wanting executioner to be better for aesthetic reasons when in fact it isn't. Posting here forced me to take the time to really sit down and look at the numbers (and post them) and, as you noted, in doing so answered my own question.

 

Machinator

Well maybe Im weird but I tend to think of the "which is better?" questions as a simple formula. The relative worth of an enchant is its uptime * how much you rate what it gives. Since uptime is relatively a constant(not counting Potency/Savagery for now), especially since mongoose and executioner appear to same about the same proc rate, the only variable is the relative worth. Is 120 agi and 2% haste better than 840 armor pen to you? For PvE this is generally determined by stat weighting, AEP or SEP or whatever the other sheets use. For PvP only the player can determine its relative worth based on their class, play style, and targets and it wont be the same for everyone and there really isnt a whole lot that you can theorycraft on pvp with the number of variables.
Sorry if any of this isnt clear or just babble, Im a bit tired.


Since its looking (so far, things can change) that executioner and mongoose may be higher then 1 PPM, I will redo my initial calculations for a made up average DW warrior.

Lets say Mon/Ex are 1.25 PPM.
DW 2x 2.6 speed (~5.4% proc)
15 instants with MH, 5 with OH per min
10% misses

MH uptime = 1-(1-.054)^(15/1.68) = ~39.1% uptime
OH uptime = 1-(1-.054)^(15/2.33) = ~30.0% uptime
DW uptime = 1-(1-.054)^(15/.975) = ~57.4% uptime

For relative worth of the enchants:
Is 840 armor pen 57.4% of the time better than 840 armor pen 39.1% and 120 agi/2% haste 30% of the time. Or simply is 18.3% Executioner better than 30% Mongoose. I still get <.2% difference between them.

"Information is ammunition."

 

Mideci

And to be clear, Macinator, you are returning the conversation to heavily armored (6200-7700) raid bosses, where mongoose vs. executioner is a legitimate debate.

The diversion into PVP brings up an interesting point, however. If you use the same weapons for PVP -- where you don't want executioner -- you really should get mongoose. The difference in PVE is small enough it would appear that all but the min/max-iest won't be leaving much on the table. Of course, your mileage may vary and some of the longer parses may show something we haven't yet seen, so more data may yet changet this conclusion for PVE.

 

Arindelest

According to the Gear Spreadsheet (though I fully recognize the proc rates haven't been pinned down yet, Executioner and Mongoose appear to at least be fairly similar in that regard), although 7700 armor bosses are basically a wash, there is a significant advantage to using Executioner against the lower-armored bosses which are especially frequent in Hyjal/BT, on the order of ~30 AP for me although it can change with your gear of course. I wouldn't immediately conclude that you should enchant Mongoose MH just for the PvP benefit (as a PvEer), when there is a sizable amount of DPS to be gained from using Executioner especially in T6 content.

 

Machinator

The thing is the different scaling of executioner and mongoose is magnified more than with other gear. How much armor pen you have, does your guild use Recklessness often, do you have a lot of crit already? So its harder to come up with a general rule. I think that is a good thing really, people can take enchants based on preference rather than just default to one because all the others arent even worth considering. Just as speculation, I would expect to see more items in Sunwell with armor pen, which helps executioner a bit.

"Information is ammunition."

 

songster

More than that - I think we're going to see a move to build up armor pen as a PvE-centric stat, as a counter to resilience being a PvP-centric stat. Moving into Sunwell (and beyond, into WoTLK), expect to see mob armor scaling much higher than player armor, and armor pen on PvE gear to compensate that. Yes, it only works for physical DPS classes, but then again +spellhit over and above a few percent is also largely a PvE-specific stat.

That means that as itemisation moves forwards, PvE gear will be largely useless in PvP (due to lack of resilience), and PvP gear will be useless in PvE (due to lack of spellhit / armor pen)

 

Mideci

Arindelest, I feel like this detour is running the risk of a derail but I want to broken record a bit to be clear:

Because Executioner is fairly terrible in PVP and because Mongoose is on the order of "only" 30 AP worse against only some Hyjal/BT bosses and because a lot of people don't min/max obsessively across PVE and PVP, if you only have one weapon, you should not be getting Executioner on it -- assuming you PVP at all seriously.

My comments do not apply to people who never PVP, to people who don't care at all about PVP or to people who do min/max for PVE. For them perhaps Executioner's benefits in Hyjal/BT are worthwhile. Certainly, if I get a new weapon down the road, I'd consider Executioner for it since I have a Talon with Mongoose and an S2 sword with Mongoose already.

 

hannigaholic

If the Season 3 gear is anything to go by then armor penetration is already working its way into PvP gear.

 

Aereus

I find that Executioner also tends to proc a lot more often for me than Mongoose, and at higher gear scaling the benefits are at least on par with Mongoose IMHO.

 

Malan

You realize that your statement completely flies in the face of hundreds of hours of combat logs that have been produced that show Executioner and Mongoose at nearly the exact same proc rate?

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

hannigaholic

For what it's worth, this is just some personal data - it's only a screenshot because I didn't have the forsight to record my combat log but it shows me after 30 minutes bashing a Servent in Blasted Lands, having just Vanished to stop the fight. The Uptime Meter window is shown.

This is just to demonstrate likely real-world results, rather than an attempt to detarmine the base proc per minute. For reference I'm a Combat Swords rogue and was using a 5CP Slice and Dice / 5CP Kidney Shot rotation (to help stay alive) and dumping energy with extra Sinister Strikes wherever I had spare time on my Slice and Dice.



It shows that after 30 minutes, a single Executioner enchant on my mainhand (with mongoose on the offhand) was giving me a 53% uptime. The lowest that I noticed the uptime drop to was around 35% after a few minutes but it quickly picked up to 45% and didn't dip below that for at least the last 20 minutes.

Weapons used were Heartless and Merciless Gladiator's Quickblade.

 

• Aldriana

So, that's somewhat interesting data, but not really enough to say much by itself. So let me ask the next obvious question: what were the results for the analagous test of Mongoose?

 

hannigaholic

That test is indeed the next one to do - I've got a Gladiator's Slicer with Mongoose so the base weapon speeds are the same (though Heartless does add 1.27% Haste, which is admittedly a slight pain). I'll get on it tomorrow and post back.

I guess I could do it with the Mongoose MH/Executioner OH setup too, just for completeness.