• Latito

They don't. I believe the guy above you was thinking of a Combat Daggers build. Mutilate (41 points) and Blade Flurry (21 points) cannot both exist in the same lvl 70 talent build.

 

Professor Hurt

I did forget about Cold Blood which I guess could skew the results, but by that much? And despite my belief that I'm a salt-worthy rogue, I did use Cold Blood with Backstab. I never did if it was a poisonable target (always waited for poison+mutilate), but neither VR or any of the mechanical trash can be poisoned, so if CB was up and I was backstabbing any of those I used it. Only made sense given my build/circumstances.

 

Ozzmar

Fair enough, I guess I should have said "barring unusual circumstances..."

Void Reaver is bleed immune as well though, right? I would think CB Eviscerate would be a better choice for him, at least.

 

Achillion

My guild just got back to VR after a big setback in raiding progress and I'm still mutilate. We brought along too much melee dps and it got kinda messy so I'm guessing next time around we will have 2 or maybe 3 max.

Now because I am very stubborn about my spec and I've always stuck to mutilate, I was thinking about blowing some cash to respec combat swords during the next fight and then back to mutilate after, just so I can go along without making it look like I'm dragging my arse in the raid. If, however, using Imp. Backstab with a full assassination build, and Backstabbing instead of mutilating, makes up, even the slightest, for the lost dmg of mutilating a poison immune, I would definitely prefer that.

So, do we have any math or data that we can use to clearly quantify the difference? I've seen the last few posts and it seems you're still in the middle of figuring this thing out. Would be nice to have a "summary post" in the end though.

I really don't wanna go as combat daggers to a raid. I love mutilate too much.

EDIT: rephrased an ambiguous part of the post

 

Ozzmar

I could have a pretty piss-poor understanding of how the spreadsheet works, but couldn't someone (just for a ballpark figure) plug in their gear and 41/20 (with 3/3 Imp BS) into the spreadsheet, then see what kind of drop in DPS they see from removing that 1 point in Mutilate?

I'm assuming that the spreadsheet would use Backstab as the primary attack once Mutilate is removed, correct?

 

Left

It should, yes. And for me, in my current gear (using S2 daggers instead of my swords) but swapped to a Mutilate spec, the difference is about 80 DPS in favor of Mutilate. Interestingly, I'm seeing 50 more DPS calculated for the Mutilate attack itself than Backstab, even against something poison immune.

So despite all the napkinmath, the DPS spreadsheet is saying Mutilate is the best attack to use even if the target isn't poisonable.

 

Ozzmar

Yea, I saw a difference of 120 unbuffed DPS when I removed Mutilate. That seems a bit drastic, but even 80 is quite a kick in the pants.

I do commend Hurt for investigating this so fervently, but I think where Backstab is going to ultimately fail is the inability to abuse the hell out of Find Weakness and Relentless Strikes.

Backstab in and of itself might do more than a single Mutilate, but even on fights like Void Reaver where all you can do is SnD and hope for the best, those extra combo points can go towards an Eviscerate to more than compensate for the decreased damage of the combo-point builder itself.

 

Professor Hurt

Unfortunately it seems all the signs are pointing to Imp Backstab just not performing as well in application as in napkinmath. It's much closer than most would assume, and I still believe you can outdamage Mutilate (including the Eviscerates that come along with it) in certain scenarios, however I'm not sure they happen often enough to warrant the 3 skill points.

 

Left

Hmm, it's interesting; your math seems to be accurate, but the spreadsheets are known to be fairly good as well.

My initial theory was that the Relentless Strikes talent was causing more energy return with a Mutilate build, which in turn causes more Mutilates per unit time (therefore higher Mutilate DPS). However, I removed Ruthlessness, Relentless Strikes, Seal Fate, and even Find Weakness from the build and I was still coming up with Mutilate at a higher DPS that Backstab vs. poison immune targets. (For those poking around the spreadsheet - I am looking at the line that says "Mutilate DPS" or "Backstab DPS", not the total DPS output. I'm just trying to compare the DPS of the special attacks themselves.)

Taking enchants off my weapons doesn't change it either, so clearly there is something going on in the sheet that I don't know about. I'll have to poke around some more to try to figure it out.

 

Dontmindme

I will say the spreadsheet tends to be pretty good. How good it is for simulating Backstab with a Mutilate build? I'm not going to say, for example, that the spreadsheet might poorly model some of the high-end Mutilate talents when used for Combat. Without tracking down some of the logic, it's entirely possible some of the upper-end talents are only getting reflected with Mutilate builds and not necessarily with the use of Backstab. It's possible that in the past, some assumption was made that once you get higher in the Assassination tree, those talents are only modeled for Mutilate.

So, I guess what I'm really saying is that the spreadsheet "should" model Backstab appropriately in those circumstances, but I do not know whether it "actually" does. Given differences in napkin math and the spreadsheet, especially for an off build (like using Backstab with a deep Assassination build), I'd try to check both the napkin math and the spreadsheet for possible errors or omissions.

 

drumbum

It sounds like the only thing it could be is the extra combo points from Mutilate. If we use Hurt's data:

We find the average number of combo points gained from a Backstab as being 1.54 and from Mutilate it would be about 2.52. This would effectively mean for every 5 special attacks, you get an additional 5 combo point Eviscerate.

This may or may not be the reason, but I can't think of any other advantage that Mutilate would hold over Backstab once those talents are dropped. (Granted, it could just be that the spreadsheet doesn't model it correctly.)

 

Azsh

You are comparing mutilate vs seal fate backstab in an attempt to determine which is better for fights where the mob is unable to be poisoned, correct? Which also assumes you have imp backstab to not make the entire proposition a colossal waste of time.

So, you are going to go to many fights where poison works fine with a somewhat gimped spec to fix a minority of fights where it doesn't. And no, I'm not talking imp KS, there are a number of other places to put filler points that would work out better in the long run than Imp BS when you are mutilate spec'd.

For example:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
(Disclaimer: this spec is an example, if you place your filler points in Imp SS or w/e I am not saying this is the bestest spec in the whole entire world ; )

Go imp evis, use IP or a enh shaman for your mainhand.

Comparing which talent hits hardest (non poisoned mutilate vs backstab) is pointless (again) because of the way they work with other aspects of your cycle.

However if someone wants to do the math, consider:

-Energy per CP based on mutilate or SF backstab.
-Finishers (SnD uptime and evis, rupture would typically not work and Expose Armour/KS wouldn't be used).
-Energy returns from relentless (more finishers with mutilate)
-Loss of procs (mutilate procs MH and OH as opposed to just MH for Backstab)
-Find weakness uptime, longer cycles would preclude 100% FW uptime with SF backstab. Alternately, you would be dumping 2-3 CP evis/SnD rather than 5 pointers to keep FW up. This would not effect Ruthlessness as it is a flat 60% chance per finish but would skew the value of eviscerate.
-Loss of evis damage since the 3 points you would typically put in imp evis would be in imp backstab, unless you are running some mutant spec where you have sacrificed poison talents for imp evis.

 

ekval

Little offtopic related to my older posts about 43/0/18 spec. I actually bought S3 Swords now and dropped Mutilate for good in PvE. It wasn't easy call because Fleet Footed and Quick Recovery are just awesome talents which are most of the time watched down, but Blade Flurry is just so much fun when you conjunction with AR on two targets.

Anyway, in my opinion only thing that really keeps 43/0/18 type spec down in PvE is the Ruthlessness. If there would be possibility to use 5/5 talent points on Ruthlessness and gain 100% chance for CP after finisher, it would fix alot things. I can already get really high crit rates in raid situations (50% >) which would allow me to run Finisher -> 1 Mutilate cycles all the time, if Ruthlessness would give me CP at 100% rate.

I played the spec for quite long time and it can be really competitive but same time you can get unlucky with Ruthlessness procs which gives you problems in long run when cycles start to drop and you start to miss getting Ruptures out under Find Weakness.

 

Professor Hurt

Read the last few pages of posts and we've considered/gone over everything you already mentioned, plus some.

The final result was that the two skills are roughly equal in avg damage, but Mutilate generates more CPs (the winner). And it definitely wasn't a waste of time. If I can provide information on a previously untested build to this community, I can sleep at night.

 

drumbum

Improved Eviscerate is not by any means a preferred raiding talent even with Mutilate. Chances are the points you would put into Improved Backstab would have been taken out of Improved Poisons. (At least that's the way I would have done it.) I wouldn't have ever put points in Improved Eviscerate to begin with. Of course this does bring up another point that since most poison immune mobs are also bleed immune, then perhaps Mutilate with Improved Eviscerate is even better DPS than the two choices we had considered.

Well it's pretty obvious that Mutilate offers a better cycle, because having more combo points is never worse than having fewer combo points. But it's not pointless to compare Backstab and Mutilate in a preliminary fashion because if we had found that unpoisoned Mutilate did more damage than Backstab, then there would be no reason to even continue discussion since Backstab would have no benefit whatsoever.

Plus it's noteworthy that empirical data disagrees with napkin math here, which is a little concerning. At the very least it would be worthwhile to find out what is going on to cause this, because it could possibly have other ramifications outside of this particular comparison.

However it has just occured to me that the skew in the data we saw may have just been due to the percentage of the attacks that were used while Find Weakness was up. Mutilate guarantees to be ready for a finisher after just 2 mutilates, whereas Backstab has a significant chance to require at least 3 or even 4 if very unlucky.

 

Professor Hurt

I was thinking the exact same thing after processing my last set of data. Our napkin math does not factor in any of the other skills that become involved during the mutilate and backstab usage, but my raid dmg data does. On top of that, the crit percentages do not favor Backstab by a full 30%, which one would assume all other things equal (it's more like 25%). That 5% in favor of mutilate can also make up a fair amount of ground.

 

Azsh

I've read it. The "waste of time" comment was in regards to using backstab sans imp backstab ie. if you don't have the bonus to crit it's a colossal waste of time to backstab rather than mutilate ; )

As noted further in the thread, FW uptime was not accounted for (despite being discussed) and the final results are based on a lot of assumptions that were pulled out of the air.

I'm crap at the math and I don't mean to shoot holes in your efforts to come up with an answer. I'm the devil's advocate but if you want to come up with the correct (or at least in the ballpark) answer we can't just discard factors.

And here's where it get's sticky. Investing 3-6 talent points for very situational fights. The assassination tree just seems filled with talents that are either great or crap depending on the fight. What point is there having 12 points in poison talents (if that's your poison *grin*) on a mob immune to poisons.

Worrying about whether mutilate or backstab hits harder in these situations is kinda like worrying which hammer to use to fix the hole while the boat is sinking.

The values put up are kinda close. From the calcs it's a given that mutilate is a stronger cycle, you will get more mutilates than backstabs, your FW uptime will be higher (buffing mutilate and finishers more).

Seems pretty clear that unpoisoned mutilate in terms of the entire spec is superior. Better off spending those 3 points elsewhere imo. Going back to the listed results:

Assuming all finishers are 5 points, you generate 25 energy per finish due to relentless.

Mutilate generates an additional 1215 energy.
Backstab generates an additional 775 energy.

Now, knowing that we require 6000 energy to do 100 muti's/backstabs and eviscerate = 35 energy per. Ignore the fact you start on 100 energy, or add 100 energy to the calcs and redo. Statistically inconsequential imo.

Mutilate = 6000 + {(243/5)*35} - 1215 = 6486 energy / 10 (energy per second) = 648.6 seconds
Backstab = 6000 + {(155/5)*35} - 775 = 6310 energy /10 = 631 seconds

At that point, divide total time to generate that much energy by how many finishers and you end up with an average length of a cycle.

Mutilate = 13.3 seconds
Backstab = 20.4 seconds

Total FW uptime for mutilate = (648.6/13.3)*10 = 487.7 seconds = ~75% uptime.
Total FW uptime for backstab = (631/20.4)*10 = 309 seconds = ~49% uptime.

However, looking at average cycle length, if you played this way with either attack, none of your eviscerates would ever go off with FW up and roughly half your backstabs wouldn't be effected by FW. At 75% it's a fairly safe assumption that almost all of your mutilates would be effected and the remaining ticks past 10 seconds are waiting for energy to eviscerate.

Problems with this....

1. It's not real world, we haven't put up SnD.
2. It's not a realistic cycle, with mutilate I typically use small numbers of CP's to refresh SnD to keep FW up 100% of the time, 1-2.
3. Cycle time for mutilate is extremely variable. It can be very short (1 from ruthless + 1 crit mutilate) to long (2 double non crits, no ruthless). However it's pretty clear that using backstab, the cycle would be oppressively long and the downtime on FW would severely decline the dmg. Using averages on mutilate is poor maths because it can be streaky.
4. The cycle lengths are different. We would have to give backstab another 17 odd seconds of DPS to compare values. Even so, I think it will land far and away behind mutilate in terms of total damage.

I think mathing this out (short of using some very fancy graphs with distributions etc) again, is pointless. If you have a simulator that you could plug the figures in to run through to get values for you, that would be evidence.

Anyhoo, hope this helps illustrate my point. I like that you've got a desire to find out but I don't think this can be done with simple sums.

 

Grunge

Uh, What kind of spec are you considering? Seeing how I use Eviscerate as my third finisher, I can't see myself NOT taking Improved Eviscerate for raiding.
Unless you're using druid tanks consistently and are a EA bitch?
Or are you talking about a Envenom based spec?

Fans glory to the Gladiators,
Gods glory to the Heroes.

 

Professor Hurt

It isn't accounted for in the straight math portion, but IS in my collected data, hence one of the likely reasons for the disparity between the two. The collected data considers all of this (because it is in fact real life usage data) and roughly results in a tie between the two from a pure damage standpoint. The only other element to consider then is what the CPs are used for (their effect via Find Weakness, etc, is already accounted for), which would be evis against a mob like VR, which in turn results in more damage than you could get from using backstab. At least that's what my data tells me.

 

Azsh

I'm not sure what we are arguing (err, disagreeing politely? =) over. I put up that math mess to prove math wasn't the answer. It's results do not agree with real world data.

A RNG simulator is probably the purest way to determine which is superior. Real world data at least gives you a ballpark conclusion (since each fight is unique and will effect your dps in different ways producing variations).

So if the two are roughly tied, save 3 talent points from imp BS and use mutilate.

 

Professor Hurt

I didn't think we were disagreeing on anything I just made a statement to summarize what I thought the findings meant also, which is in line with your latest post. And yes, at this point it doesn't seem putting 3 points in Imp BS buys the rogue anything unfortunately (Truth be told I had my hopes set high...).

 

Left

Getting away from the BS vs. Mutilate discussion for non-poisoned mobs, I'd like to revisit the concept of having a rogue use Expose Armor. IE, is it really worth it.

As I see it, you will most likely have at least one prot warrior in the raid, although I suppose it is conceivable that you won't have any. If you have at least one but s/he is not main tanking the encounter, then the tradeoff for Sunder Armor vs. Exposed Armor is as follows:

Sunder Armor: -2600 Armor
(Imp.) Exposed Armor: -3075 Armor

IE, Imp. EA offers a 475 ArP advantage over sunders. If there is no prot warrior to keep up sunder, it's a 3075 ArP advantage over other finishers.

Let's assume a situation where you have melee consisting of 2 rogues, a feral druid, a DPS warrior, and an enhancement shaman. Further, let's assume a non-warrior tank (in our guild, for example, we have a druid who MTs many bosses). We know from experience and WWS that taking a Mutilate rogue will result in a 5-10% personal DPS loss over whether that rogue was combat swords. If we are proposing to have the rogue keep up EA, I would put the loss at the lower end of that (10%). However, having a Mutilate rogue keep up EA shouldn't be difficult, since they have combo points coming out their ears.

Would the -475 armor make up in raid DPS what the rogue lost in personal DPS? What about -3075 armor?

It's sort of hard to answer this question, but my feeling is "yes" in both cases. For me in my current gear, the DPS spreadsheet shows that an additional 475 ArP would mean 2.83% more DPS (for me as a combat spec). If the number is similar for other melee (shamans, DPS warriors), then all those gains by other classes could well make up for what the Mutilate rogue is losing by using that finisher himself. In the second case it's a no-brainer, in my opinion. 3000 ArP is worth 10-15% more DPS, which is huge for every physical DPS class out there.

I suppose the other question is, could a combat rogue keep it up? The answer is I guess yes, but it would (a) require the combat rogue to spec into Imp EA, which is harder to do, and (b) would involve the combat rogue dropping Rupture as a finisher altogether. This in and of itself would be a 4-5% personal DPS loss for the combat rogue, but much less for a Mutilate rogue (maybe 1-2%?).

So, worth it to take a mutilate rogue for EA?

 

Ozzmar

Numbers don't lie, nor does common sense. If an Improved EA does more than 5 Sunders, I see little reason not to use it (especially in later zones where many melee would already have some personal ArP that would only enhance the benefit).

The only problem I see is if your Protection warrior is your backup tank or Hurtful Strike soaker and needs to be 2nd on the threat list (Gruul, Patchwerk, etc).

 

Eyegore

Hunters should be included for consideration in the benefits of EA vs sunder, yes?

 

drumbum

I'd probably select this talent build: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I could see dropping Murder in favor of Improved Eviscerate if you aren't fighting bosses that are affected by Murder; or dropping points from Improved Poisons if you are fighting bosses that are bleed immune (thus moving Eviscerate up to 2nd priority finisher). Otherwise I don't think Improved Eviscerate is better than the other talents because, as you said, it's only 3rd on the priority list. However I'd have to see a WWS parse to find out exactly what portion of your overall damage Eviscerate accounts for against a bleedable, murderable boss. I'm guessing it's not much at all.

What would you give up from my build to put points into Improved Eviscerate?

P.S. Please fix your Armory link!