Hewk

I had a question about the benefits of WF for mutilate vs combat swords. I've heard it said that combat swords get more from WF than mutilate does, is this really the case?

 

drumbum

The main difference is that sword specialization procs can proc Windfury, so yes combat swords does gain somewhat more from Windfury than Mutilate.

 

Derby

I was under the impression that as of patch 2.1.2(?), Windfury and Sword Specialization were changed so that neither could proc additional extra attacks from either ability, and the reason it was better for a sword-specced rogue was because an extra swing from a 2.6 or slower main hand was worth more damage than an extra swing from a 1.9 or faster mainhand.

 

• Vulajin

Windfury procs can proc sword spec. Sword spec procs cannot proc Windfury.

 

drumbum

Well, OK, I thought it was the opposite of what Vulajin just said (I thought sword specialization can proc Windfury but not the other way around -- but it's not incredibly important, because either way it's an advantage for sword specialization).

However, the weapon speed is definitely not a factor. Since Windfury is a percentage based proc, you will find that:

1) A Windfury attack with a slower weapon will do more damage, but
2) Windfury attacks with a faster weapon will occur more frequently.

As it happens, these are exactly proportionate effects, and assuming two weapons are compared side-by-side such that DPS of the weapons are equal but speed/damage range are different, the expected Windfury contribution will be exactly the same for both.

Now, there have been reports of the extra attack power bonus from Windfury applying to other attacks that occur within a short window of when the Windfury attack occurs. Assuming this is true, it actually suggests that a faster weapon (which will produce more Windfury procs per unit time) will, on average, buff more extra attacks. This would be an advantage to faster weapons, although slight. I'm pretty sure neither of the spreadsheets factors this behavior into their calculations, although I could be wrong.

 

aedorn

I was hoping to grab some verification from anyone that's actually done it. I was in the dps spreadsheet trying to figure out how to really boost DPS of mutilate for myself, and the best route seems to be going 4/5 T5, with the new badge leggings. The 4 piece proc seems to jump the damage by almost 100 dps once you hit the 4th piece, but only about an increase of 20 from the first 3 pieces making the other items superior until that 4th.

But this is all spreadsheet math, of course, and nothing is better than actually doing it. So has anyone tried changing from 4/5 T5 to other T5 equivalent items and seeing what the real difference is for that 4 piece proc? Obviously looking for something in my gear level. We're 3/4 TK and 5/6 SSC with Vashj going to die soon, and 1/5 Hyjal because he's easy. And I can't get shoulders from Hydross, because I'm the NR tank on my warrior for that one since we had nobody else available for it when we started =\

 

Lucke

This is quoted so people raiding as Mutilate do not miss it. Pretty much need BF for every other trash wave.

 

neg^

Daggers are also normalized to get less of a benefit from the extra attack power. It should even out, but I've found that in practise swords pull ahead in heavily stacked groups/fights. I posted a WWS some time ago from hyjal/early bt where i raided as mutilate. While it was about equal on most fights, it was a noticeable difference where we got tripple bloodlusts and chained haste pots.

 

Left

I agree with neg. It has been my experience raiding as Mutilate in early Hyjal/BT that in a situation with stacked DPS (high Heroism/Bloodlust uptime for example), my fellow rogues who are combat swords or fist/sword pull ahead a bit. This makes sense, since combat is more reliant on white damage and attacks/sec than Mutilate. Thus, haste for combat rogues scales all damage via the feedback from combat potency, while haste for Mutilate rogues is scaling only ~55-60% of their damage.

 

Ozzmar

Do you mind expanding on this? Swift Blade still comes out as higher DPS for me than The Mutilator, and the only logical conclusion I can come to is that it would have something to do with the offhand proccing [Hourglass of the Unraveller] more frequently. But I still have a hard time believing that outweighs the harder-hitting offhand for Mutilates.

Note: I have my spreadsheet set with WF on my main hand, Deadly Poison on my offhand.

 

Left

For most Mutilate rogues, when you are looking at offhand weapons with equal stats: The DPS increase from DP uptime almost offsets the DPS decrease from a lower damage range offhand. In your case, it appears that the DPS increase from DP uptime in fact makes the faster dagger slightly better, I'm guessing because of your relatively low hit %.

Try plugging both in without DP on your offhand. That should give you the baseline for how much DPS change you are getting purely from the speed difference as it contributes to Mutilate. Then, put DP back on and see how things change. Maybe that will help? (Just when you do this, make sure the sheet is still treating the boss as poisoned.)

EDIT: I just checked your gear/build in sheet (using your current armory gear), and it appears that you lose about ~10 DPS going to the fast offhand if all we are looking at is difference in Mutilate damage. However, you seem to make most of it back in increased poison uptime (and possibly proc uptime). I still have Swift Blade of Uncertainty inferior for you by a couple DPS, though. What full buff set are you using?

 

Karmon

Im an wondering how good/accurate the new cyclemodel for mutilate in the DPS sheet really is.
Here is the WWS parse of our Brutallus firstkill of yesterday.

Putting all my gear in to the DPS sheet, adjusting the buffs accordinly, the sheet predicts 1837 DPS.
In practice I performed about 100 DPS better.
Now for combat swords/dagger I never ever could perform better than the DPS sheet predicted.

For reference:
My group consisted of an Enh. Shaman, an Retri Pally an Offwarrior an other Rogue and me.
Consumable were: Warpburger, Flask of Relentless Assault.
Three Drummers in the group.
The Shaman wasnt twisting totems.
We had 2 heroisms during the fight.
The only hunter was beastmaster with improved huntersmark

The kill was merely an "accident" so I did not use Deamonslaying, or chain potting hastpotions.
Only when it looked like he could be down I used one hastepotion at the end of the fight.

The critrate in the WWS parse is about 1.5% higher than the sheet predicted.
Adding 35 critrating (1.5% crit) to the sheet accounts only for 21 DPS.

 

Left

I would bet this is the key difference. The spreadsheet assumes 1 Heroism per 10 minutes; you got two in just under 6 minutes. That's nearly 4 times the Heroism uptime that is normally assumed.

That said, the sheet models average DPS only, and your DPS for any given fight can vary up or down by a good bit.

 

Karmon

Any hint how to account for that in the sheet?

Im aware that it models average case only. But so it does for Combat builds.
But still it is rumored that noone actuall can outperform the modelde average case for combat build

 

Karmon

Nevermind. I found it.
I replaced the 40/600 in the haste cell for bloodlust with 80/364 added the 35 crit
and I end up with 1906 dps.
Adding in the DPS of the Ember of Azzinoth (about 32 DPS; for me it always is about 1% of my total dmg) I end up with the DPS of the WWS parse.

Good job

 

Ozzmar

Hmm, see that DP thing crossed my mind, but it seemed so far-fetched. But, it turns out you're right. I took DP off my offhand, and [The Mutilator] was about 7 DPS better.

I guess I had no idea my Hit Rating was low. 215 Hit Rating and Precision puts me at 18.63% additional chance to hit. With no Combat Potency to worry about, I figured I was quite safe sticking in the low 200s. Maybe I'll try adding more Hit Rating gear and see if that helps bring The Mutilator up to speed (get it?)...

As for buffs, I literally JUST joined a guild last week, so I just left the standard boss debuffs and self buffs as they were when I downloaded the spreadsheet. Once I raid more than once, I'll have a better idea of what buffs I'll typically get, what group composition will typically be, etc.

Thanks for the help Lefty!

EDIT: Grr, I plugged in all the Hit Rating gear I had (plus a couple I didn't) and had myself up over 23% chance to hit including Precision, and [Swift Blade of Uncertainty] was still better.

 

Left

Low hit rating isn't bad. I only have 243. You just have to realize that the level of hit rating you have will in fact affect the results you get from the sheet, especially in terms of what the optimal offhand weapon speed is and how you spec for Imp/Vile poisons.

Bottom line: it doesn't make much difference.

 

drumbum

Windfury is not normalized, so daggers and swords gain the same benefit from attack power.

Now, that said, I didn't say a Mutilate rogue would gain just as much damage from Windfury as a combat sword rogue. Several of the reasons why that isn't true have already been mentioned. What I said was that weapon speed and weapon type do NOT contribute to the difference in any way. That's the only point I was making. I've seen people (including the person I was responding to) make the claim that faster weapons don't gain as much from Windfury, but it's simply false.

 

Dorvan

Indeed, I forget which dagger came out as better for me, but I went with the fast one regardless because about 70% of the raiding I do on my rogue is in 10 mans, where I'm often the only one applying poison to the mob. Under those conditions, the DPS loss from a lost poison stack (meaning unpoisoned Mutilates or possible energy capping while waiting for a re-application) is a risk that outweigh any 1-2 DPS difference between the two weapons on the sheet. A similar argument might be made for trash under some circumstances, to the point where I'd say the difference between [The Mutilator] and [Swift Blade of Uncertainty] is really little more than personal preference.

edit - and I' agree with left, hit rating isn't something to worry about, most mutilate rogues I've seen tend to fall in the low to mid 200s

 

Ozzmar

Thanks for the input guys. I had always been leaning towards [Swift Blade of Uncertainty] because of the DP stack issue; I'm glad I'm not the only one. I also like that it has a lower Shiv cost for trash. I usually go Shiv -> Slice and Dice -> Mutilate. Like most of this, it doesn't make a huge difference, mostly just a quirk that I prefer.

[Slightly OT]
I guess another thing I'd defer to some experts on is this unique situation I'm in. I did Kara and Gruul's to death on my old server, and just recently got accepted into Mirage on this new server who is on their way to Illidan. Needless to say, there's quite a gear gap between me and the other rogues (mostly t4-t5+), so I won't be seeing the stat fluctuation from t4 to t5 slowly into t6 gear. As such, I won't have the benefit of closely monitoring my stats as I upgrade gear as I'll likely be skipping an entire tier set.

As I look at the t6 set, it looks fairly light on Hit Rating. Again, this seems to support going with a faster offhand if my Hit Rating is likely to stay similar if not drop some as I slowly get some t6 pieces.

Mostly just thinking out loud here hoping that a t6 Mutilator could shed some (possibly opinion-based) insight.
[/OT]

 

Kula

Wow Web Stats

Latest Brutallus.

Like everyone else, mutilate comes close! I still think swords has higher potential given equal gear. I'm hoping imp KS is usable on M'uru which would give me some extra utility.

Left, have you tried modeling a 5-5s/5-5iea rotation? Given our average rotation is 18-20s long, adding another 6s onto it to get a second mutilate into the SnD finish would make it so expose doesn't get clipped so much. I'm curious as to how it would play out against losing rupture and gaining a second mutilate with iea instead.

 

Petersen

So I was tinkering around with some of the "new" loot in the spreadsheet and I came upon an interesting 'discovery.' unbuffed with the following gear set the latest spreadsheet says Swifblade of Uncertainty is .11 DPS better than The Mutilator, change the shoulders to Shoulderpads of dancing blades (around a 2 DPS loss) and the Swiftblade is .15 DPS better than The Mutilator. However, once you apply raid buffs, the Mutilator does end up being around 2 DPS better. My main quandary is why The Mutilator isn't always the best, since other than speed, it is identical to the Swiftblade.


EDIT: Forgot the link to the gear set... I also forgot the enchants, so that should take me a few minutes to gem/enchant ti like in my spreadsheet.
http://www.warcrafter.net/sandbox/63187

¬The Original PalaTank, William Erik Petersen The Unbreakable
Tanking with a Paladin since before it was cool.

 

Dorvan

As covered a few times in this thread already, the advantage of harder hitting Mutilates with a slow offhand is made up for with a faster weapon by increased Deadly posion damage (DP has a flat proc chance, not PPM...so faster weapon = more procs = faster application and less chance for dropping) and to a less extent procs like [Hourglass of the Unraveller]. Roughly speaking, the poison effect tends to be greater at low gear levels while the harder-hitting Mutilate effect is larger at higher gear levels, but the differences we're talking about are generally no more than a couple of DPS.

 

Left

No, I didn't implement any EA cycles in the sheet prior to turning it back over to DMM, although it was on the to-do list. The quick and dirty way to do it would be to unhide the "buffed cycles" sheet, force it through some nefarious means to select the 5-5s/5-5r cycle, then set Rupture damage to zero up in the red block at the top. After that, set the Imp EA buff to "on" elsewhere in the sheet, and viola. It would be a bastardized way of hatcheting up the sheet, but it should give a useful result nonetheless. If I can, I'll take the time to check into it tomorrow or the next day.

 

nosille

I have also been intigued by the IEA possibilities. Lately I have been runing mostly 5 and 10 man content with bear and paly tanks. I have seen a noticeable drop in DPS from when I use to run with a warrior tank. Today I tried to simulate a IEA cycle in the DPS Spreadsheet. I set the DPS from my current 3s/5r cycle as a baseline. Then I switched the mob to unbleedable, turned on a 5pt IEA debuff, and manually set eviserate damage to zero on the buffed dps spreadsheet. This resulted in a recommended cycle of 3s/5e with a damage breakdown with zero finisher damage, but significantly more melee and mutilate damage.

The final conclusion was that for my gear level and typical buffs 3s/5iea cycle is better damage than a 3s/5r cycle. This does not include the extra rupures I could throw in when SF and relentless proc. I think an IEA cycle modeler could show some interesting results. The longer duration of EA would fit better with 3 finisher cycles than rupture does.