Essentially yes.

SnD -> Rupture, Evis if energy will cap out before SnD runs out, letting find weakness run out when SnD will be your next finisher, as it doesn't benefit from FW and using it as late as possible, then trying to make sure all moves until the next SnD fall within find weakness, saving the finisher for as late as possible in the find weakness of the move before it, without energy capping

To answer my own question (pls correct me if I'm wrong):

Assuming 2000 AP and no other rupture buffs

5 point rupture without FW = 1000 + 24% * 2000 = 1480

3 point rupture with FW = 618 + 24% * 2000 = 1098 + (1098 * 10%) = 1207



So 3 point rupture with find weakness is 273 damage less than a 5 point without FW. In fact a 4 point rupture with FW is still 1405, still 75 dmg less than an unbuffed rupture (at 2000 Attack Power).
So if you've got FW ticking off and you're about to rupture, should you rupture with less than 5 CP and buff it with FW or let FW fade and just go for the full 5 CP finisher?
A 5 finisher would also give a 100% relentless, but the time you waste getting up there might be better spent building up the next finisher once you've ruptured with 3 CP. This is where I get lost. Is doing a lower dmg finisher worth it for the sake of not wasting time building it up? Is it more DPS efficient to go for a lower grade finisher and compensate the DPS loss with what you will be doing after you finish?

Heh, same here, long time lurker, first time poster.

Despite my similar low level gear and lack of TBC high end game experience, I have been very enthusiastic about mutilate since I first spec'd it back in Naxxramas days (before I xferred my rogue to my new druids server). Coming from combat daggers through MC/BWL etc, it was a breath of fresh air not to be stuck with the stodgy old cycle and it was a fairly rewarding spec on the DPS charts (totally anecdotal of course ; ).

The problem, as I see it, is that spec'ing mutilate adds a lot of talents than can vary wildly depending on the type of fight and any calculations or theorycraft are going to be completely irrelevant unless you model each specific type of fight. = \

That is, with such variables as poison immunity, in/out fights, fights with heavy amounts of splash damage to melee, fights requiring split targeting etc, can mutilate truly be evaluated objectively rather than subjectively? Short of turning out a WWS for each boss fight with 1 muti spec and 1 combat swords spec, I don't think there is a way to effectively theorycraft this.

Further, given the variable nature of fights and how some talents can be completely invalidated depending on the fight or raid composition (Imp EA, poison based talents including mutilate itself, fleet footed, Imp KS), does mutilate start too far behind combat swords for the fights where it can be used to full advantage to bring it up to par?

Sry for the lack of anything approaching solid theorycraft here, I just find it really hard to form a concept worth quantifying in regards to mutilate. I like it, I see myself performing well on the DPS charts but I'd hard pressed to explain exactly why...

Not at all. I don't see how I've given that impression but it wasn't my intention.

You have indeed. The main point I was trying to make is that the sheet sometimes recommend an SnD cut for Combat-based cycles and never at all for the Mutilate cycles. If, as you claim, the proc-based nature of Mutilate cycles is not a factor then what is it that makes the sheet capable of recommending a cut sometimes and incapable other times?

In short, what is it that makes Combat-based cycles immune to this phenomenon?

Anyway, you're right, it's a relatively minor issue and we should probably just leave it here before this starts to look like a personal argument. I just wanted to make sure that my main issues weren't being overlooked.


--edit--


Rupture gains the following AP% at each CP

1CP: 4%
2CP: 10%
3CP: 18%
4CP: 21%
5CP: 24%

so your 3r with FW would do 1.1 * (618 + (18% * 2000) ) = 1076

Rupture - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft (though I took the numbers from a post by Aldriana some time ago)

This is due to the fact that the SnD-Cut cycles are not modeled for Mutilate builds.
If you care to look at the cycle sheets you will find that the first 60 rows are used exclusive for combat cycles and the
other 180 rows are exclusive used for the mutilate cycles.

The anomaly of mutilate DPS with regards to changing talent points (most notably Imp.SnD) is due to an averaging of
the possible cycles.
If you look at the row s 213/214, 228/229 and 243/244 you will see that this computes an average of the cycles that lie within 10% of the top DPS cycle.
These averages are then propagated back to the Unbuffed/BuffedDPs sheets (via row 199)

What happens if you deselect Imp. Snd is that the other cycles fall outside the 10% margin; essential no averaging takes place an you see a higher DPS.

I knew I shouldn't be doing this stuff unattended

This is yesterday's Teron.
Prot Warrior instead of our usual Fury (Ie no Sapphiron's/Improved Battleshout I think), Elixir of Major Agility.
Me, Vaim, Daiwo, Abradix, Cele in Melee group. Welt was chillaxing in Tank group.

I did fuck up my cycles a bit before the end and probably would've end in the 1750-1780mark otherwise (was hovering around 1815 before that though).

Another thing I did was use Drape+Zerak over my standard Dory's+Ancient Amani Bow. I just can't decide between -armor and other stats.

Edit: Now looking at the wws, I notice quite a lucky streak there. Then again with raid buffs and Major Agility I was running at 41.xx% crit without mongo/ashtongue procs. *shrug*

Was fun Mutilating :P

Any chance of WWS reports of any fights, preferably Teron/Rage/Anatheron/Kazrogal with lucky sleeps/D&D etc?

http://elitistjerks.com/596617-post119.html

Gonna raid tomorrow raid with 41/20 spec hopefully to get some benchmark values due it is quite hard to compare other peoples WWS to mine. I mostly stayed in same spot at meters with 43/0/18 than I've been with Combat Swords earlier.

Ekval,

I was checking your Armory, and had a question about your gemming. Roguecraft 101 is lacking in a good section about Mutilate gemming, and all the recent discussion about hit tables and crit and hit contributing equally to your white damage had made me question the value of the conventional x Agi / x Hit rating gems that are so highly valued for Combat and Hemo specs.

Are your gem choices from a previous Combat spec? If so, would you regem for Mutilate differently? And (if you had an inifinite cash flow), would you go for more crit and Agility-based gems while keeping your hit high enough to keep your Mutilates hitting?

Most of my PvE gear gemming is relics from Combat spec yes. If I would now gem for my spec (43/0/18), I'd go 20AP for red sockets, 10AP 5crit on yellow ones due Serrated Blades and the fact that I already have quite high crit chance in raid situations. With Combat variation probably 10agi red, 5agi 5hit on yellow or so. DPS Spreadsheet shows 1xAP as 0.55-0.60 for my gear/spec. I don't really need the crit or defensive stats from agility anymore due high crit rates so AP is better, and it benefits my really high Rupture uptime alot.

Its just really hard to change gems atm, we have huge queue on crimson spinels for starters and the fact that we only raid 2 days a week in BT/Hyjal combined, and therefore the gem drops are limited compared to wipefest runs before farm status.

When we ran low on red's we changed our raiding schedule to Wednesday+Monday and clearing Hyjal+upto Mother on Wednesday, allowing people to do trash farm runs (everything was rolled at the end of the trash farm) if they wanted.
Helped our collective purses a lot and gave me enough gems for pvp and pve gear.

Mother trash was farmable with 10+ (2 Tanks, 1 preferably paladin, 2-3 healers), although bringing 15-20 did make it go faster (Longest it took I think was aroun 1 hours when we had 9 people). Average runs were 25-35min depending on the amount of dps. Still, considering we did 5-10 runs a day (depending on the day)...

Good tip thanks.

My first post here, great stuff here, this thread in particular

Id like to follow the gemming question here and see if we cant get some more solid answers

Seems to be some conflict of gemming b/w the priority of Agil vs. AP. Nesh roughly considered the stats in comparison, but rated agil to be the best high lvl gem.

While evkal would consider AP more important. Granted he already has a high crit rate.....but wouldnt that be true of everyone with high end gear?

Im very new to this, so i wont even try to speculate. But I would REALLY appreciate some math thrown around as to the highest gain per stat. Also if these stats differ in importance at different tiers (IE kara / hyjal)

Spreadsheets probably help to check what gems are best for your gear. I mostly prefer AP due my unorthodox build (sub mutilate) but can agree agility gems for Combat variation (atleast buffed).

A1: You'll be perfectly competitive in kara with Mutilate. I ran most of my guild's kara runs as 41/20/0 and didn't notice my overall damage was any less x/41/x (and being the only rogue I always finished #1). As far as Gruul's goes, High King isn't a very melee friendly fight so any build is fine. I'd imagine Gruul himself may favor a strong combat build, but not by much, and with the 15% run speed bonus you may in fact make up any difference. Going into SSC/TK is where mutilate starts to sting a little due to the poison immune mobs.

A2: My suggestion would be to stick with the combat gems you already have until you start getting into the crit-heavy gear bonuses (SSC and beyond). Then if you're sure you want to stick with Mutilate, perhaps start tossing some agil gems on in favor of +hit. However, it's important to remember that over 50% of your dps is still white damage, so don't go overboard. I'd suggest looking at some of the end-game mutilate spec rogues here and try not to dip much below their hit (seems to hover around 220 - 250).

Unfortunately gemming isn't the exact science it sometimes appears to be. Following the basic rules is always recommended for peak performance (+hit for any combat build, for example), but when you reach certain thresholds it may be more productive to start adding to your +agil/crit/ap (such as ekval did). That's when it's best to either check with a spreadsheet, do some napkinmath, or just play around.

Having done the entire TBC PvE as mutilate (Attumen to Illidan) I'd say that mutilate is viable for all of it.
There's a whooping 2 bosses in SSC/TK where you are gimped. Considering the fact that rogues don't shine on Hydross and Void Reaver already it's not a big loss.
As for gemming, I've always preferred agility over anything else since it scales (unless I'm mistaken?) with both kings and UB. Thus if you raid with 3+ paladins and a Enh. Shaman it scales more.
On hit, I think that the "optimal" hit for Mutilate was 200+ according to Rogue DPS Spreadsheet (below 200 hit became better than agility for my gear at the time). Maintaining that isn't hard even with 4pc T5(Deep Shadows/Brigand's etc).
It's not a issue once you reach T6 though. For that matter I'm trying to drop hit at the moment, but Signet of Primal Wrath and Cloak of Fiends(Don't get me even started on Teron. Warglaives are more common for us than that infernal piece of cloth) never drop.

I completely agree mutilate is a viable build in the raid scene. You'll just run into scenarios where it won't be as good as combat more often than those where it's better. If you (and your raid leader) could care less about that, I highly recommend switching to/sticking with mutilate. On TK for example, with mutilate I would finish around #7 on the damage/dps charts but with combat I was #1 or 2. I haven't done hydross with mutilate yet, but I typically finish that fight in the top 3 due to our aoe tactic being blade flurry friendly.

In the end, play what you have the most fun with!

What do you mean, rogues don't shine on Void Reaver? I'm not sure I understand.

Well, there's a couple things going on with VR. First, he's immune to poison and bleeds, which hurts rogue DPS a bit. Second, he has higher armor than most things in SSC/TK, which further reduces rogue DPS. However, while these effects certainly hurt, a rogue can still do perfectly respectable DPS... depending on your guild's strategy. I suspect this is actually what he was referring to: some guilds have rogue run in and out to avoid the pounding, which significantly reduces one's DPS as one is spending 20-30% of the time out of melee range. For a guild doing this strategy, rogues do... relatively poorly. I've still topped the meter while doing this strat, but it's definitely a lot harder. I could see characterizing it as a bad fight for rogues if you use this strat. If, on the other hand, you're doing the "melee stays in and gets healed through pounding" strat, while it's still not a *great* fight due to the poison/bleed/armor issues, it's definitely not a bad fight.

I'll second this, definately a lot harder but doable. An affliction lock was able to keep pace.. generally it will just depend on how much moving your top casters have to do.


For the "melee stands in an shaman/priests heal you" strat - the negatives of VR (highest armor boss, no bleed, no poison) are generally smaller than the negatives casters face with near-constant movement. That boss definitely is swayed by how your guild does it.

As for Mutilate viability.. sure its not going to out-dps Combat Swords on average (at equal gear levels). Theres some fights which are worse for Mut than any other rogue build (poison immune) and you don't get Blade Flurry for aoe'ing.. but it isn't ever *far* behind and if you and your guild doesn't mind it won't prevent your guild from beating any boss. Its an issue of how far you min/max. Some people (myself included) have fun competing for TOP dps and such. Others prefer to enjoy the benefits Mutilate brings.