path411

I did a recent BT as mut and being the expose combat rogue I also picked up expose as mut. Since my optimal mut cycle was 3-4s/5r anyways 3-4s/5a was quite easy to keep up. I also found that as mut it seemed to be quicker to get an expose back up on fights where I had to swap off of the boss. (example. Illidian's demon phases)

 

Arakas

ImpXA isn't really significantly better for one talent tree than the other (Combat vs. Muti). Both have cycles that easily allow for the CP's to invest.

Saying that it's better---raidwise---to have the combat rogue do it defies logic a bit. Could you give me evidence that the raid benefits more from one than the other?

In my experiences, here are the realities:

Equalities:
The raid benefits exactly the same from a rogue with ImpXA (3075 ArPen).
Neither Combat nor Mutilate has talents which would improve the damage lost to sacrificing Rupture (unless you count the slight AP boost from agi for Vitality for Combat builds)

Innequalities:
Mutilate sacrifices roughly half of its rupture damage to get ImpXA (dependant upon Seal Fate procs).
Combat sacrifices all of its rupture damage to accomplish the same thing (deviating from the 5s/5xa cycle is only allowed with AR).
The burstiness of Seal Fate CP's allows more flexibility in choosing when to apply any finishers.
A 3-5s/5xa mutilate cycle is fully maintainable with almost 10 seconds of slop. 3-5s/5xa/*3-5r is optimal and maintainable, always prioritizing SnD and ImpXA.


In the grand scheme of things, I think you were absolutely accurate when you said "Whatever works for you." It's pretty much a wash who applies it. In the end, the raid wins by having a rogue step up to the plate and make sure that it's there.


I've never done Brut without going full ImpXA. However, I remember breaking 2300 DPS using the ImpXA rotation I described earlier combined with just the Shard/FoK combination (before I got Shiv of Exsanguination). If another rogue were to provide the extra armor pen and I spent the extra CP's on straight damage (Evis/Envenom), I might churn out another 50-100 DPS. I'll put in a request to one of the other rogues one of these days to go full damage and see what happens.

 

Left

Well... here's my take. I disagree that a 3 cycle finisher is truly "maintainable".

In my opinion, it is quite difficult (though not impossible) to run a 3 finisher EA cycle with Mutilate and not either have (a) downtime on SnD or (b) downtime on Expose Armor. In addition, Rupture efficiency drops off pretty severely at 3 or 4 CP, to the point where (excluding SnD considerations), it is better to get a 5 CP rupture outside of Find Weakness than a 4 CP rupture inside of Find Weakness. Thus, your options are...

2-4s/5xA/5r
General cycle time: 30 seconds
SnD time: ~22 seconds average
xA time: 30 seconds

3-5s/5xA/5r
General cycle time: 30-36 seconds
SnD time: ~26 seconds average
xA time: 30 seconds

4-5s/5xA/5r
General cycle time: 36 seconds
SnD time: ~30 seconds average
xA time: 30 seconds

Or, you can drop off your rupture efficiency significantly and go for lower point ruptures...

2-4s/5xA/3-5r
General cycle time: ~24 seconds
SnD time: ~22 seconds average
xA time: 30 seconds

In the first case, you will often run out of slice time before you finish your cycle, reducing your DPS. In the second and third cases, you not only will lose slice time but also risk dropping EA. In the fourth case, you are much closer to maintaining slice time, but you are sacrificing significant Rupture damage instead by using less than 5 CP ruptures. And SnD is still marginal. In all cases, there is a lot of variability which could lead to inconsistency either in your personal DPS or in the uptime of Expose Armor.

Which leads us to the obvious fifth option...

4-5s/5xA
General cycle time: ~24 seconds
SnD time: ~30 seconds
xA time: 30 seconds

This cycle uses as little energy on finishers as possible, has plenty of SnD time, and easily maintains EA. It is analogous to 5s/5xA for a combat rogue. It is also, in my opinion, the best and most consistent cycle for a Mutilate rogue to run if they are tasked with keeping up EA.

So, if the Mutilate rogue and Combat rogue are running nearly identical cycles, who is losing more personal damage by using EA over Rupture? The answer is: the Mutilate rogue, for two reasons. First, the Mutilate cycle is more compressed, which means they are losing more Ruptures per unit time than the Combat rogue. Second, Rupture under Mutilate will deal ~10% more damage due to Find Weakness. So, overall, the Mutilate rogue is losing slightly more finisher damage than the combat rogue, with also the added disadvantage that there is a slight, but real, possibility that he Mutilate rogue will have to Mutilate 3 times to achieve the CP for a 5 pt EA, causing EA to drop momentarily.

That, in my opinion, is why it is very slightly better to have a combat rogue keep up EA than a Mutilate rogue.

 

Iliyan

Guess what, Bizz finally started to acknowledge the "behind but not behind" lag issues...


This was intended for Druids:
WoW Forums -> Cat form end-game scaling...

To sum up, "Attacks that require you to be behind a target will no longer be able to be parried, nor able to be dodged by a player."

Now, let us pray that this change affects backstab/ambush/mutilate/garrote

 

Iliyan

Ok, I need some help, seems to me that I am definitely doing something wrong...
Its a cycle issue... My usual cycle goes like this:

Start--> Mutilate 2x, 4-5 S&D, [Find Weakness] Mutilate 2x, 5-5 Rupture, [Find Weakness] Mutilate 1-2x( depending on Ruthlessness proc) pool energy, 4-5 S&D etc....

Now, am I doing something wrong here? Cause my dps is very rare to surpass 1300 dps on a lets say Anatheron fight, and according to the spreadsheet I should be doing over 1500 dps...( yes I know the spreadsheet doesn't show accurate dps, but it should at least be "close")

I had a few ideas to change my cycle:

Start--> Mutilate 2x, 4-5 S&D, [Find Weakness] Mutilate 2x, 5-5 Rupture, [Find Weakness] Mutilate 2x [Find Weakness drops], 5-5 Rupture, Mutilate 1x( Hope for a Ruthlessness proc), 3-4 S&D.

After that 3-4 S&D adjust the cycle to:

--> [Find Weakness] Mutilate 2x, 5-5 Rupture( possibly out of Find Weakness due to no energy pooling), [Find Weakness] Mutilate 2x, pool energy, 4-5 S&D.

After the 4-5 S&D return to the 1st cycle.

Would that work?
Oh, and the spreadsheet suggests [Brutal Gladiator's Leather Tunic] to be better then [Nether Shadow Tunic] for Mutilate... whats up with that?

 

Soulvex

If I'm reading your current cycle correctly it would seem to me that you're letting SnD drop for an extended period of time by doing two 5-5 Rupture cycles - your second rupture is also not under FW. When I raid as mutilate my cycle generally goes something like garrote then pool energy to just about full then I SnD. Then I can basically mutilate twice in a short amount of time under FW. I generally get one crit so I have just barely enough time to fit in the Rupture under the buff. After that I just go 4-5Snd/5-5Rupture while pooling energy before executing SnD. If I can't garrote then I just mutilate and pool energy to SnD. I hope I explained it right, it's probably a bit easier to see someone do it then have them tell you. I pulled 1450 DPS on Naj'entus a couple weeks ago so it's definitely possible to put up some big numbers. How is your raid group synergy?

Regarding the items, I'm just guessing the crit on the S4 chest is what's giving it the edge, but I don't really know.

 

Ismail

Lets take the chests stat by stat

Each has 36 base agility. No advantage.
Both have 3 sockets, fully socketed Nether Shadow gives 30 agi and Brutal gives 25 agi, 5 hit, and 4 crit. Advantage Brutal.
Nether Shadow has 35 hit to Brutal's 17 hit and 22 crit. For Mutilate 1% crit is worth more than 1.14% hit so advantage Brutal.
Nether Shadow has 86 ap vs Brutal's 58 ap and 84 armor pen. I think 84 armor pen is worth slightly more than 28 ap in a raid situations so once again Brutal has the better stats.

In my experience the quickest way to a multi C gap in DPS between the spreadsheet and preformance on a boss is not to not set up the buffs/debuffs correctly in the spreadsheet. Did you change boss type to demon? Do you have Curse of Recklessness, Faeire Fire, Blood Frenzy, ect in your Raid? Or are you spending significant amounts of time not dpsing either because of sleep or running out becuase of stupid melee?

 

Iliyan

No, my current cycle is "normal" Ill break it down for you

1st part: Mutilate 2x --> 4-5 S&D ( starting part) FW is up
2nd part: Mutilate 2x --> Rupture 5-5 FW is up again

--> Should I pool some more energy by waiting a few sec before starting rupture? It might increase my rupture downtime, but it doesn't really matter due to rupture lasting the full duration any way.

3rd part: Mutilate 1-2x --> pool energy -->4-5 S&D return to part 1

Also, in the 3rd part I pool energy until my S&D is about to drop, or I am near to capping it out, like 80+/110



@Ismail thanks for the breakdown, I just found it weird. My current raiding gear includes 4 PvP items, Brutal gloves, Brutal Chest, Guardian Ring, and Guardian's Dragonhide Bracers

 

Greymist1

You're probably optimizing for the wrong thing by pooling before starting your first slice & dice.

Here's some crude estimates to illustrate why:

Ignoring starting conditions, any rogue who keeps S&D up continuously while running decent cycles will usually generate between 60 and 70% of their total damage output from autoattack, with the remainder coming from special attacks, finishers, poisons, and other miscellany.

Now, let's assume you're capable of doing about 1500 dps steady state (that is, an infinite length fight with no startup). Further assume 60% of it is autoattack (since mutilate derives a higher percentage of its damage from specials than deep combat builds). 1500 * 0.6 = 900 dps from white damage.

How much autoattack would you be doing without S&D active? Assuming no 2-piece T6 bonus, the answer is 900 / 1.3 = 692 dps. So a 1500 dps mut rogue loses about 208 dps whenever S&D isn't up.

Now let's look at your startup sequence in light of that fact. Garrote costs 50 energy, so the time to regain it back is 5 seconds. You won't wait that long, so assume you start S&D at the 4 second mark. If you were going to S&D right away out of the garotte, you'd be starting it at the 1 second mark instead (1 GCD after garrote). Therefore you are losing 3 seconds of S&D, or about 620 damage.

If you did S&D right away, you'd still get 1 mutilate under FW, so you have to make up for that 620 lost autoattack damage with the FW bonus damage on your 2nd mutilate and your rupture. That would require 1 mutilate and 1 rupture to give you a total of 6200 damage before the FW bonus (since 6200 * 0.1 = 620). Call it a hunch, but I'm guessing you're not blasting mobs with 4k-5k mutilates.

 

Iliyan

Greymist1 don't get me wrong, but have you ever played mutilate? 4k mutilates are kinda not that big of a deal...

However, I would never start with a Garrote... I'd rather do a CB Mutilate to make sure I'm off to a good start(5CP S&D).

 

typ0ninja

If you don't have to run, garrote should be your best opener. I would also not suggest burning a CB mut before you probably even have poisons up.

I also agree that you should get s/d up asap, the loss in white swings is significant.

 

Greymist1

They would be a very big deal for someone who is doing ~1500 DPS total, which is what my analysis was based on.

(And yes, I've played mutilate.)

 

Iliyan

What I meant to say is, I do 4k mutilates in 25man raid content, so I assume it is not that big a deal to anyone else, possibly better then me.

Also, I figured out my problem... Pretty stupid, I went to ZA yesterday, and closely monitored my own dps output, and it was caped at about 1.2k. Then I inputted all my buffs, group setup and debuffs available, and came to a close number on the spreadsheet... Which would suggest I need to get a better group composition on raids to really push my DPS.

I never thought group buffs provided such a HUGE benefit, I thought it would be along 200ish, yet the benefit is over 300 dps in the correct setups.
Thanks for your valuable input everyone.

 

KasumiRevy

I have been thinking about this for some time would like some input:

Slice is running, Find Weakness is about to fade, as is rupture.

In this situation, do you:

A. Pool Energy, let the rupture come down after find weakness fades.

B. Rupture before Find Weakness fades, giving you less mutilates for the Find Weakness.

I have been doing A. Not entirely sure, which is the better option.

 

Ozzmar

Well it kinda depends what your next move is after this Rupture. It's highly possible that you could proc Ruthlessness and get another 3 points from a single Mutilate. While it's not taboo to Mutilate as 4 points, a 4-point Slice and Dice would still keep it running and give you time to pool energy while your Rupture is ticking.

 

Left

It depends. If you are running a 1x Mutilate, SnD, 2x Mutilate, Rupture, then option (B) is better. If you are running 2x Mutilate, SnD, 2x Mutilate, Rupture, then option (A) may be better. Consider, though, that if you have 5 combo points then you are guaranteed 25 energy return on a finisher. That means 125 energy gained in 10 seconds - enough for 2 Mutilates. This means that your worst case 2x Mutilate profile should be this:

0 sec -> Rupture, 0 Energy
0 sec -> Relentless Strikes, +25 Energy = 25 Energy
1 sec -> +20 Energy = 45 Energy
3 sec -> +20 Energy = 65 Energy
3 sec -> Mutilate, -60 Energy = 5 Energy
5 sec -> +20 Energy = 25 Energy
7 sec -> +20 Energy = 45 Energy
9 sec -> +20 Energy = 65 Energy
9 sec -> Mutilate, -60 Energy = 5 Energy
10 sec -> FW Fades

Energy gains are on odd seconds basically to show a profile where the energy is gained sometime in between 0 and 2 seconds. The idea is to show that if you have good reactions, you can get 2x Mutilate in under Find Weakness even if you start from a 5-pt finisher which drops you to 0 energy.

This effectively means that unless you have lag issues, you should be able to always use option (B) and get ALL your abilities in under FW.

 

KasumiRevy

My next move after the rupture is Mutilate.

I already have slice running and it's not near a fade. Rupture is coming off. I never 4 point rupture, I always 5 point it. If that means another mutilate, so be it.

I don't run cycles, while it may account usually for 10-15 dps difference, I can't adhere to them, I keep slice up, and 5 point ruptures, and do my best to keep Find Weakness.

Ah i see, I was playing with lag issues but no more. SO that would seem B, would work, do I have to be watching the ticks as I rupture in ^ case?. This seems pretty close to the wire.

 

KasumiRevy

running with a 2x mutilate rotation, made getting the rupture in the last second difficult, and very close. Sometimes I could get it in, with 2 mutilates after, other times, I couldn't get it in, or the 2nd mutilate before find weakness fades.

So it's really B if energy and time align in your favor, or A if it does not.

 

Azsh

I'm liking this as a build for WotLK

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

 

Iliyan

Thing is, with wotlk builds, that Rogue talent trees have not been fine worked yet. This statement alone kills any discussion on talents in the future.

However, my opinion is that HfB will not be used in *true* pve Mutilate builds. More likely it will fall in the category of special progression raids where magic effects and bleeds are abundant, or for a pve/pvp hybrid.

For full pve mutilate I'd select this:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

You get Weapon Expertise, which as a talent in wotlk will be MUCH more powerful then now, simply due to the fact that the expertise rating required to get 1 point of expertise will rise VASTLY, thus making the talent more powerful.
Also, I am unsure how does 2/2 Weapon Expertise relate to Opportunity, which would be "better dps"...

 

hannigaholic

It will depend a lot on what percentage of your dps comes from Mutilate. Obviously Opportunity becomes more powerful when Mutilate makes up a higher percentage of your dps. Since we're not sure what will happen when Blizzard polishes the rogue talents, it's difficult to compare the two.

That said, at the moment, using the DPS spreadhseet and simply adding Weapon Expertise and Opportunity to the sample Mutilate build, using the sample T6 gear (substituting in two Blades of Serration for the swords) shows 5/5 Opportunity adding over three times as much dps as 2/2 Weapon Expertise. Also 2/5 Opportunity adds 28% more dps than 2/2 Weapon Expertise, so even point-for-point, Opportunity is currently more powerful for Mutilate builds.

 

drumbum

This statement makes no sense. The relative worth of Weapon Expertise will remain essentially static from 70 to 80, because all other stats scale at the same rate. Yes, the amount of expertise rating that the talent adds at level 80 will increase to about double what it gives at level 70, but at the same time, the gear available at level 80 will have about double the stat allocation as "equivalent" gear at level 70. Thus everything cancels out. There's a reason the talent awards expertise and not expertise rating.

There really aren't any rogue talents that improve or weaken relative to other talents from 70 to 80 that I can see. (And this was by design.)

Edit: One exception I can see is that Serrated Blades will only jump from 560 to 640 armor penetration from level 70 to level 80. This would be a significant reduction in the talent's power with armor values scaling much faster than this. This same problem existed from level 60 to level 70, though, and was corrected by increasing the potency of Serrated Blades from 5 armor penetration per level to 8 per level. Maybe they will rework the talent or make a similar change.

 

Oscarvil

With armour penetration on gear changing to a percentage rather than an absolute number we might find that Serrated Blades gets the same treatment when our talents are worked over.

 

• Aldriana

Possibly, though it would surprise me a bit; they haven't changed any of our other talents over to rating (i.e., Malice is still 1% crit, not however much crit rating).

 

• Maestroquark

Well, most combat ratings exist to prevent items from scaling when you gain levels, and that's not what you want from talents - they should scale with levels.

Armor pen rating wouldn't be to prevent scaling when you gain levels - rising armor already accomplishes that. It would be to prevent the feedback effect of each armor pen being more valuable than the last due to armor having diminishing returns. I still don't see Blizzard changing Serrated Blades to a rating, nor any other skill/talent. Skills/talents are limited and much more easily controllable than items.

What are you waiting for, a certain shade of green?