This is great and all, but it's kinda peripheral for a thread whose title is "Mutilate Raid DPS Discussion". The only real benefit for 110/120 energy in a raid setting is on an interrupted DPS fight, and even then it is truly marginal.

What I would like to see, ideally, would be for Vigor to be unlinked from Mutilate as a talent. That way, PvP rogues could still take it, but raiding rogues wouldn't have to. Or, better yet, change Vigor to "increases your energy regeneration rate by 10%", such that you get 22 energy per tick instead of 20. Now THAT would be useful - in raiding or PvP.

That'd be just too overpowered.. ^.^ Sweet dreams.

Well, not really. It might need to be tuned a bit, but Combat Potency in the Combat tree already increases your energy regen by significantly more than that. Assuming you are hit capped with a 1.5 speed offhand, combat potency essentially yields:

(1-Dodge)*(1/1.5)*1.3*0.2*15 = (0.94)*(1/1.5)*1.3*0.2*15 = 2.44 energy per second

or 4.88 energy per "tick" period. That's over double what you would get with the Vigor change I'm proposing.

Yes, but Combat Potency is a 5-pt talent.

Anyway, I'd personally dislike seeing a Combat Potency clone in the Assassination tree. I realize you were just brainstorming but I think that would just be going in the wrong direction.

Honestly I've always viewed the Combat tree as being combo point starved, and the Assassination tree as being energy starved. Combat Potency (and Adrenaline Rush to a lesser degree) provide the higher energy generation in Combat, and Seal Fate and Mutilate provide the high combo point generation in Assassination. I think this is a cool way to give each tree a different flavor, but as it currently stands having more energy seems to be better than having more combo points (which really just means using more finishers).

Why? Personally I think it boils down to the fact that finishers in TBC are simply not good enough. Slice and Dice and Expose Armor (in PVP) are great finishers, but the ones that do damage -- Eviscerate, Rupture, and Envenom -- need work. Hell, if we didn't have talents to reduce effective energy cost of finishers, we probably wouldn't even use damaging finishers at all in PVE because their DPE just isn't good enough when compared to talented Sinister Strike or Mutilate. This to me is a huge mistake Blizzard made with the expansion.

Anyway, this was a little bit of a tangent, but it certainly has relevance to this thread. Extra finishers just aren't all that appealing in this current version of the game, and that's what Mutilate excels at.

Hmm, yeah, that's a good point. Like I said, it could need to be tuned, but it's still not that overpowered as I put it. (IE, it still wouldn't generate more energy than Relentless Strikes does, and RS is an 11 point talent.) Halve it to 1 energy per tick, and it starts to line up better. Or, to be more in spirit of the tree, try something like "your finishing moves cost 5 less energy". I dunno... basically I'm looking for something useful in a 31 point talent, instead of the utter uselessness in PvE that it is now.

I have to agree there. Weapon damage ranges got roughly doubled, and all stats scaled way up. Finishers, though, didn't scale nearly as much. Rupture went up 20% in base damage. Evis? ~10%. When my sinister strikes can hit almost as hard as my Eviscerates, something is wrong... whatever happened to a finisher finishing? It's certainly an interesting issue.


To contribute something more productive, I've been thinking about re-examining the slow vs. fast offhand weapon issue for Mutilate again, especially as it related to poison uptime. I have a simulator from the Advanced Mechanics thread that will run the poison simulation fair accurately, and I think I could modify it to include 1 special per six seconds. Anyone have input on what T5/T6 level Mutilate rogues currently run in terms of hit? (I'm talking ones that have actually itemized for Mutilate, instead of just converting over from Combat gear to try it out.)

From my discussions with end-game Mutilate rogues, it seems the sweet spot for hit is around 240. I think it's hard to really pinpoint (esp. as accurately as combat) what the perfect hit would be due to somewhat inaccurate/incomplete Mutilate modeling, but I digress.

Read this:
Roguecraft 101

Use these:
Rogue Gear Spreadsheet
[Rogue] DPS Spreadsheet

They will answer every question you just asked, and more.

drumbum basically answered why i said it'd be OP.
Comparing it to combat potiency, a 5point talent that tbh requires you to be hit capped to work perfectly is not really a good idea.
If you look at it like this - it would regenerate energy even if you are unable to hit for X ammount of time, or if you have -chance to hit effect on you, meaning it would be sick compared to potiency.

Tho i like the idea of the -energy on finishers, sounds interesting, not sure if they could balance it well tho..

About the hit rating for muti - i'm myself aiming for 200/210+ hit (and using +20hit food all the time) and then going for crit.

Is there any basis on why 240 is the preferred amount? Even with tons of Crit, your white damage is 50%+ of you total dmg. I know its all about finding the the grey inflection points since we have such a...unique spec, but I would say 240 is the very LEAST you should have. Of course I'm talking PRE-MH and BT...

Really, this is best answered by looking at the spreadsheet and your available gear options. I'm no expert on end game rogue itemization, but I know that at least T5 is quite low on hit rating, which means that we can just go ahead and use it without having to bend over backwards looking for hit like combat rogues do. I don't think there's some magic number for hit rating, but whereas hit rating is closely tied to energy regen for combat rogues, it's "just another DPS stat" for Mutilate.

Personally I feel I'm on the high side at 274 in Kara/badge gear, but that's mainly because Romulo's Poison Vial is about the best trinket I have access to.

I think it comes down to the classic answer. Equip the gear with the best combination of stats that you have available and let the hit rating lie where it does. Hit rating is still a powerful stat in terms of allocation and its likely that some gear that has a fair bit of it will be the best item available even for a build where agility is rated equal or better.

The biggest decline in hit rating will probably come from the change in gemming by stacking agility instead of hit. There is no magic number. Using the best available gear should give the best DPS regardless of the vagaries of the specific stat allocation.

Sorry, forgot what the original point of the discussion was about. It might be difficult to come to a consensus given that T5 is noticeably hit rating lacking, while T4 and T6 seem to have it in abundance. 220 or 240 sound like decent middle numbers. Even without hit rating gems, you are still likely to get that much hit rating without trying too much especially since you'll probably still be using hit/agility to fill your yellow gem slots.

I read through a bit of this, but am I the only one that feels Mutilate has no place in raiding in it's current state? I mean perhaps next patch when they give mutilate more +crit% from the current Imp. Backstab talent it might be worth while.

I think it'd be worthwhile running the simulator for several values of hit rating (assuming it's not very difficult to do so). Certainly it would be useful to find out if there is some amount of hit rating you need before a faster offhand becomes better than a slower offhand. And you really can't know that unless you find the relationship between hit rating and poison uptime.

Hit rating isn't the only stat that improves your white damage. In fact, there really aren't any DPS stats that DON'T improve white damage. It's not like white damage is being neglected just because hit rating is lower.

That said, 240 has basically no significance at all. It was just one person's estimate of what a Mutilate geared rogue might possibly have. He didn't say it was preferrable to have that amount.

Your hit rating is just a function of what gear you have access to. I never understood this obsession of people suggesting to "keep your hit rating above XXX", because there's no math to support the random numbers people keep coming up with.

I only agree partially with this. It's also a function of the way someone gems, which can sway someone's stats pretty significantly. For example, none of us argue with the high hit rating "requirement" for a x/41/x build. That's not to say you should completely neglect your other stats, but you should always be trying to achieve a very high hit rating, with slight peaks and valleys along the way.

The current believe is that the same holds true for 41/20/x, but at some point, hit looses its value and agility takes over. This point is simply believed to be somewhere in the low 200s instead of 363. I would agree that it's much less proven than the target hit rating for combat, but we have to start somewhere, so why not with a value most end-game raiding mutilate rogues use? If we can prove via math/simulator that the target hit should be elsewhere, let's do it, but at least it gives us a best guestimate of where to start.

Speaking of the mathmatical validity of this magical 240 number, my assumption is that you want to keep your hit fairly high for two reasons: one, Dual Wield Specialization. Two: even with 41/20, white damage comprises roughly 50% or more of your output (due to various reasons including the high energy cost of Mutilate). One could argue that the *reason* it hits 50% is because of the high hit rating, but I would argue if you don't keep your hit rating that high, DWS starts to become a useless expenditure of points (giving more validity to 41/0/20). I swear somewhere on these boards, a few of the raiding rogues claimed that at that value of hit, the spreadsheet started to prefer agility over +hit, but I can't seem to find it anywhere. I also know that at my level of gear (tailored to combat), if I switch to a mutilate spec, it prefers agil gems over +hit, so somewhere from 0 - 363 hit rating it makes the switch, and I too felt it was somewhere in the low 200s. I'll check when I get home from work this afternoon.

This thread is not about whether or not you should take a mutilate rogue to raids. That's the guild's decision. If you have a problem with guilds bringing mutilate rogues on raids, I'd suggest a different thread to argue about it, rather than this thread which is discussing the dps of such a rogue in a raid.

"Best gear available" is defined as what causes you to do the most DPS given your other current gear and spec. It isn't a set standard. That's why we have the spreadsheets, so we can figure things like this out. "Best in slot" is usually referenced for talking about Combat builds (primarily swords), but "best in slot" for Mutilate might be different.

It is certainly true that there are breakpoints where the value of hit rating vs. agility changes. Stacking from 0 hit rating, one is at +9% hit (the value of additional hit rating goes down significantly), another is at the hit cap (the value of additional hit rating is reduced to 0). For Mutilate, there may be other points of inflection, but they likely change a lot based on gearing and buffs.


On another note, I have refined my DP poison simulator to include instant attacks (such as Mutilate). I'll be posting about it on the Advanced Mechanics thread, but for this thread I can post the results:

I compared a 1.8 speed offhand to a 1.4 speed offhand for a Mutilate rogue, assuming

• 5% miss vs. bosses
• 5% dodge vs. bosses
• 5/5 Vile Poisons
• 0/5 or 2/5 Improved Poisons

Moving from a 1.8 speed to a 1.4 speed offhand increased the average deadly poison DPS by only about 5 DPS. (This is true for both 0/5 Imp. Poisons and 2/5 Imp. Poisons. Also, for those who care, 2 points in Imp. Poisons is worth about 4 deadly poison DPS for a Mutilate rogue of the above stats.) IE, there is no significant advantage for a Mutilate rogue who is running WF/Deadly to have a 1.4 speed offhand vs. a 1.8.

On the other hand, assuming a ~95 DPS weapon, the average hit of your offhand weapon will be 38*0.75 = 28.5 more damage for a 1.8 speed over a 1.4 speed weapon. (Assuming DW spec here.) Accounting for crits (assume 45% crit rate), dodges (assume 5% dodge rate), and 25% armor reduction, this is 28.5*1.5*(1 - 0.05)*(0.55 + 0.45*2.3)*0.75 ~= 48.3 more damage per Mutilate. 48.3 more damage roughly every 6 seconds is around 8 DPS. IE, there is not a big enough difference in DPS for a 1.8 speed over a 1.4 speed offhand to be a significant advantage. (And this number will change depending on your true crit rate and the boss's armor.)

Conclusion: It's basically a wash. Pick the offhand weapon that has the best stats and DPS; don't worry too much about the speed. If you have two weapons that are identical in all other respects except speed (such as arena weapons), use the slower weapon to eke out a couple more DPS. (The exception would be if you are running Deadly/Instant, in which case your best bet might be to put Deadly on your main hand, Instant on your offhand, and use a faster weapon. Then you might get marginally better DPS than with a slower one.)

(I'm sure that the napkin math could be more accurate than what I just did. But I think the point here is that the number differences are small enough that they aren't worth worrying about. IE, don't discount an offhand dagger because of it's speed; any speed will do for Mutilate.)

I remember reading this a few weeks back but now can't seem to find it. Someone mentioned that with the upcoming patch changes, there would be something like shadow oil that could be applied to our daggers that would be considered a poison for mutilate purposes, but isn't nature damage based. Perhaps this was only a proposed suggestion or a rumor, but I was wondering if anything regarding rogues getting a poison, or something existing already that can be applied to our weapons that isn't nature-based but would procc our poison talents was coming in 2.4? I'm just looking for clarification with my foggy memory.

I made a post about the wording of the poison change, which leaves room for non-nature based poison in the future. The shadow oil was given as an example as something that might fit as a non-nature poison but it is NOT classified as a poison. So it was pretty much all speculation on our part.

Totally agree, and sorry if I implied otherwise. What I meant to draw attention to is that, related to the hit discussion, +hit on mut gear seems far less valuable, and that there is likely a breaking point in the early 200s where agility becomes more valuable (but not as clearly as defined for a combat build).

Did you by chance run a few tests at varying levels of hit and crit? And if so, where the findings basically identical? For example (hit/crit%): 200/35, 300/25, 250/30. It would be interesting to see how the fast/slow offhand is affected by hit and crit. It would seem to me that hit would benefit the faster while crit the slower, but if they scale at different rates, perhaps one becomes more valuable as the other decreases...?

Another follow-up question on the poison simulation....did you look at varying distribution of points in Imp Poisons/Vile Poisons? With the addition of Puncturing Wounds, it seems the standard 41/20/0 will likely only have 5 points combined to spend on those two talents....it'd be interesting to see what combination is optimal with say a 1.5 speed weapon vs. a 1.8 speed weapon (my intuition is that the faster weapon would favor shifting more points from imp poisons to vile poisons, while you'd want more in Imp Poisons with a 1.8 speed).