So I was looking through this thread (interesting information) and I little no discussion on offhand speeds. Now one would assume that 1.4 speed would be optimal. However since keeping DP up is not a problem, and combat potency is not included, perhaps this is not the case? I went mutilate for S3 and I have S3 Shanker + Mutilator (1.8 speeds). I want to min/max because my guild has downed Illidan and its possible I might switch mains to my rogue.
So the question is how much of a damage difference is there between different speed offhands with a 41/20/0 spec?
I want to min/max because my guild has downed Illidan
Contradicting yourself? I find it odd how.. since progression is over, you NOW want to min/max... and then further choose Mutilate as your spec.
Originally Posted by Condition
So the question is how much of a damage difference is there between different speed offhands with a 41/20/0 spec?
There was a link to a post/thread on another board which had a detailed breakdown of various OH's. Basically a 1.4spd OH worked out to ~95% of the dmg of a 1.8 spd MH - for the Mutilates. With a faster OH you get a slightly cheaper Shiv (should you need it) and a much lower risk of having deadly poison drop off. Since you were talking about S3 I'm not sure if you were intending for PvE or PvP "min/max"ing.. but PvE I'd probably stick with 1.8 OH as you are unlikely to be the only person poisoning the boss - there should always be SOME poison on there from someone. For pvp, a 1.4 is generally thought of as an equal alternative - slightly pros and cons both ways.
Contradicting yourself? I find it odd how.. since progression is over, you NOW want to min/max... and then further choose Mutilate as your spec.
There was a link to a post/thread on another board which had a detailed breakdown of various OH's. Basically a 1.4spd OH worked out to ~95% of the dmg of a 1.8 spd MH - for the Mutilates. With a faster OH you get a slightly cheaper Shiv (should you need it) and a much lower risk of having deadly poison drop off. Since you were talking about S3 I'm not sure if you were intending for PvE or PvP "min/max"ing.. but PvE I'd probably stick with 1.8 OH as you are unlikely to be the only person poisoning the boss - there should always be SOME poison on there from someone. For pvp, a 1.4 is generally thought of as an equal alternative - slightly pros and cons both ways.
Well I figure the DPS of a mutilate spec with a 1.8 speed offhand would be better than the dps of a combat dagger spec with the same offhand since 1.4 speed offhand is way better for that situation. I was talking about PvE min/max.
If I start raiding I hope to pick up at least Blade of Savagery quickly so I can go combat swords. For now I am stuck with S3 Shanker/Mutilator though, with the option to pick up the Shiv.
As I said I "might" be switching mains, my rogue is currently in Kara/ZA gear and will be getting attuned soon just in case. If I'm switching from my fairly geared paladin to my undergeared rogue I want to make sure I'm not just a burden on my raid until I get geared.
Don't bother with the Shiv. It's not worth it for Mutilate, and you really don't want to go combat daggers. I run Mutilate PvE with 1.8 in both hands and it's great. I don't find any issues with poison application and don't feel tossing in a shiv (skill) every now and then hurts my DPS at all.
My plan is to use backstab on poison immune mobs. With a crit rating around 60% for backstab, I expect good things. The only other change I might consider would be swapping QR and 1 point of VP for Imp KS for 5-man/PVP viability. Now that I look at it though, I'm not sure if much would be gained over what is lost.
Anyway, we raid tomorrow so I'll be sure to post here with my results.
Update: For some reason my combat log didn't work so I have no results to post. However, we spent the night learning A'lar, and while we did kill her, the fight is just terrible for melee and therefore hard to draw any meaningful conclusions from. I will say though that throwing Backstab into the mix makes mutilate even more entertaining.
I approached this build with two rules in mind:
Use backstab when a mob isn't poisoned (even if it isn't poison immune)
Use backstab when I have 3CP and want to arrive at 5CP without any "waste"
Without raw data I can't come to any conclusions, but I will say this build feels good. I can usually count on a backstab crit which offers nice damage and 2CP to fill in the gaps left my mutilate. By the end of the night I really got the hang of my rotation, and I highly recommend others to try it and post here with the results!
Last edited by Professor Hurt : 01/24/08 at 11:13 AM.
Mutilate:
Total attacks: 560
Avg dmg per attack: 533496/560 = ~952
% crit: ~28%
Backstab:
Total attacks: 286
Avg dmg per attack: 354106/286 = ~1238
% crit: ~57%
Couple things to remember: I would guess that roughly 95% of my mutilates were done in the optimal (poisoned mob) case. Therefore this is a fairly good look at the best mutilate can offer me based on my gear/build/crit rating/etc. If I had used it in every case I used backstab, I have no doubt the avg dmg of mutilate would be lower.
Now I believe Recount does not combine the MH/OH attacks of mutilate (it counts them separately). If this is not true, please let me know, otherwise the below hypothesis will be wrong . Therefore I think we can combine some numbers for a more accurate comparison:
Mutilate:
Total mutilates executed: 560/2 = 260
Avg dmg per execution: 952 * 2 = 1904
Now if those numbers are accurate, there's no question using mutilate on a poisoned mob is better than backstab (don't think there ever was, but just for clarity...). However, how about unpoisoned?
Mutilate:
Total attacks: 560
Avg dmg per attack: 952
Estimated dmg per attack against unpoisoned: 952 * .66666 = ~634
Estimaged dmg per execution: 634 * 2 = 1268
So comparing 1268 to 1238, it seems that using mutilate even on unpoisoned mobs would be better - slightly higher damage and more CPs. However, does anyone know if crit damage it calculated before the 50% mutilate dmg amplifier (poisoned mob) is added? If that's the case, simply taking 952 * 2/3 isn't granular enough, and could easily skew my simple calculations in favor of Mutilate.
I'm not giving up on this theory yet though. I'll post more when I gather a better night of data. Thoughts?
Update: For some reason my combat log didn't work so I have no results to post. However, we spent the night learning A'lar, and while we did kill her, the fight is just terrible for melee and therefore hard to draw any meaningful conclusions from. I will say though that throwing Backstab into the mix makes mutilate even more entertaining.
I approached this build with two rules in mind:
Use backstab when a mob isn't poisoned (even if it isn't poison immune)
Use backstab when I have 3CP and want to arrive at 5CP without any "waste"
Without raw data I can't come to any conclusions, but I will say this build feels good. I can usually count on a backstab crit which offers nice damage and 2CP to fill in the gaps left my mutilate. By the end of the night I really got the hang of my rotation, and I highly recommend others to try it and post here with the results!
Edit: The grayed part is probably wrong. See the next few posts for clarification. Actually you should never use Backstab with a Mutilate build. It may not be obvious, but even an unpoisoned Mutilate hits harder, on average, than Imp Backstab. I'll try to crunch some numbers to prove this. It also will grant at least the same number of combo points, and possibly more. Backstab has no advantage over Mutilate, even unpoisoned!
As for the second rule, since Mutilate clearly does much more damage than Backstab, why do you care if you "waste" a combo point? You should use Mutilate since it will hit harder and yield the same number of combo points (at least) at the same energy cost. The extra combo point (even if it does get wasted) is just icing on the cake.
Edit: I see you already came to this conclusion. For some reason your last post wasn't showing up when I responded.
So comparing 1268 to 1238, it seems that using mutilate even on unpoisoned mobs would be better - slightly higher damage and more CPs. However, does anyone know if crit damage it calculated before the 50% mutilate dmg amplifier (poisoned mob) is added? If that's the case, simply taking 952 * 2/3 isn't granular enough, and could easily skew my simple calculations in favor of Mutilate.
I believe the two effects are multiplicative, so your estimation should be fairly good.
I'm trying to find a way to compare the damage from unpoisoned mutilate versus backstab, and my results are a little different than I expected. I'll post my findings to see if anyone sees if I did something wrong:
First I'm assuming a 41/20/0 spec which includes 5/5 Lethality, 3/3 Imp Backstab, 5/5 Dual Wield Specialization. Also I'm ignoring the chance to be dodged since this value won't change between the two attacks, and special attacks are on a two-roll system anyway.
Let:
W = {average weapon damage} + AP/14*{weapon speed}
C = {crit chance}
Now let's calculate the average damage of each attack:
Backstab (w/ Improved Backstab):
B = (1.5*W + 255) * [2.3*(C+0.3) + 1*(0.7-C)]
Unpoisoned Mutilate:
M = (W + 101) * 1.75 * [2.3*C + 1*(1-C)]
I used 1.75 for simplicity. This is representing the mainhand and offhand combined, and since you have Dual Wield Specialization, the offhand hits for 75% of what the mainhand would. I'm also assuming you have the same weapon in each hand to simply the equation.
Now, we simply need to compare the values of B and M for different values of W and C. If we use Professor Hurt's gear as an example, we noticed his crit chance was about 28% raid buffed, and I imagine at least 2200 AP.
This seems to suggest that Imp Backstab is indeed better than unposioned Mutilate (from raw damage perspective). But this contradicts what Professor Hurt just concluded. Does anyone see where I went wrong?
This seems to suggest that Imp Backstab is indeed better than unposioned Mutilate (from raw damage perspective). But this contradicts what Professor Hurt just concluded. Does anyone see where I went wrong?
This is precisely what provoked me to test out this build in the first place, and my math approach was so simple, I could easily have missed something. It *feels* better to backstab without poison around, but it all comes down to the numbers. And I'm far from having any sort of concrete conclusion about this comparison, especially considering all of the factors involved in the A'lar raid. I'm going to stick with this approach for at least a couple weeks until I feel comfortable with the data I'm seeing (one way or the other).
Good point about not caring if CPs are lost. I think I over thought that scenario and convinced myself losing a CP would be a big deal. In the end, I'm gaining more CPs and doing more damage, so why wouldn't I mutilate? Duh.
I used 1.75 for simplicity. This is representing the mainhand and offhand combined, and since you have Dual Wield Specialization, the offhand hits for 75% of what the mainhand would. I'm also assuming you have the same weapon in each hand to simply the equation.
One additional note: the OH dagger I use is actually quite a bit worse than my MH, so I'd expect the real world disparity between my unpoisoned Mutilates compared to Backstabs to be even greater (in favor of Backstab).
Your math looks clean to me. Perhaps I did something wrong? I'll verify the numbers off Recount when I get home.
I'll post my findings to see if anyone sees if I did something wrong:
My understanding is that the offhand penalty does not reduce the Mutilates damage bonus and that in addition the increase from Dual Wield Specialization is applied after the damage bonus is added. I think that would look something like:
So this is yet another page that would claim Imp Backstab pulls ahead of mutilate in this case. Now if we look at combo points, I suggest we assume that the exact same amount are used to keep SnD up, therefore we can ignore that factor. Therefore using the numbers on the wowwiki page for AP/crit/etc, we have:
Mutilate CPs: 243
Backstab CPs: 155
All of these will be converted into Eviscerates due to the lack of bleed application. Assuming we use all 5 point eviscerates over the 100 attacks, that translates to:
However, this assumes a perfect usage of all combo points generated over 100 attacks, which we know will most definitely not be the case with either (this is where the "wasted" points come in). At this point I would hypothesize that either backstab would edge slightly ahead, or that using a combination of mutilate and backstab (to minimize CP point wasting) would be the optimal solution. The math to prove either is beyond me though. Any takers?
Last edited by Professor Hurt : 01/25/08 at 12:30 AM.
So this is yet another page that would claim Imp Backstab pulls ahead of mutilate in this case. Now if we look at combo points, I suggest we assume that the exact same amount are used to keep SnD up, therefore we can ignore that factor. Therefore using the numbers on the wowwiki page for AP/crit/etc, we have:
Mutilate CPs: 243
Backstab CPs: 155
All of these will be converted into Eviscerates due to the lack of bleed application. Assuming we use all 5 point eviscerates over the 100 attacks, that translates to:
However, this assumes a perfect usage of all combo points generated over 100 attacks, which we know will most definitely not be the case with either (this is where the "wasted" points come in). At this point I would hypothesize that either backstab would edge slightly ahead, or that using a combination of mutilate and backstab (to minimize CP point wasting) would be the optimal solution. The math to prove either is beyond me though. Any takers?
Where the theory breaks down is that the WoWwiki simulation compares the two specs in highly unrealistic circumstances.
-The two rogues would not have the same crit rate, dagger spec for a backstab build to remotely worthwhile would see to that. Artificially saying it's the same means you are assuming the mutilate rogue has better gear to start with.
-Find weakness (utilising all those extra CP's to keep it up as much as possible) would increase a large % of mutilate and evis damage by 10% depending on uptime.
-If you assume Seal Fate for mutilate, you need to assume combat potency for combat daggers/backstab.
-A traditional combat daggers spec (opportunity + dw + surprise attacks + aggression + combat potency) would do more dmg than assumed and would supply more energy for more CP's, skewing the number of eviscerates upwards.
-Evis dmg for a combat daggers build would probably be buffed by Imp Evis (it would certainly be buffed by Aggression)
The comparison, following all the rules as listed on the page, is between a combat daggers rogue with a gimped spec and inferior gear compared to a mutilate rogue missing one of the defining talents of the assassination tree. Ergo any result is essentially worthless, or you are comparing two people who seriously don't know what they are doing spec wise.
I'm not invested one way or another and I'd be happy if someone could point out if I'm missing something that makes the Wiki or above comparisons valid. I still firmly believe trying to quantify mutilate is inherently flawed because the spec is built on talents that go from exceptional in some situations (fleet footed for Voidreaver for example) to not so good (mutilate on Voidreaver = ).
Where the theory breaks down is that the WoWwiki simulation compares the two specs in highly unrealistic circumstances.
-The two rogues would not have the same crit rate, dagger spec for a backstab build to remotely worthwhile would see to that. Artificially saying it's the same means you are assuming the mutilate rogue has better gear to start with.
-Find weakness (utilising all those extra CP's to keep it up as much as possible) would increase a large % of mutilate and evis damage by 10% depending on uptime.
-If you assume Seal Fate for mutilate, you need to assume combat potency for combat daggers/backstab.
-A traditional combat daggers spec (opportunity + dw + surprise attacks + aggression + combat potency) would do more dmg than assumed and would supply more energy for more CP's, skewing the number of eviscerates upwards.
-Evis dmg for a combat daggers build would probably be buffed by Imp Evis (it would certainly be buffed by Aggression)
The comparison, following all the rules as listed on the page, is between a combat daggers rogue with a gimped spec and inferior gear compared to a mutilate rogue missing one of the defining talents of the assassination tree. Ergo any result is essentially worthless, or you are comparing two people who seriously don't know what they are doing spec wise.
I'm not invested one way or another and I'd be happy if someone could point out if I'm missing something that makes the Wiki or above comparisons valid. I still firmly believe trying to quantify mutilate is inherently flawed because the spec is built on talents that go from exceptional in some situations (fleet footed for Voidreaver for example) to not so good (mutilate on Voidreaver = ).
The purpose of that Wowwiki page isn't to compare different specs. It is to compare the damage between Mutilate and Backstab in a Mutilate build. I'm not really sure why the original poster of that entry thought this information was useful though, except if we were attacking an unpoisonable mob. But his calculations clearly assume the mob IS poisoned. I agree with you that the page in its current form is meaningless information, except to confirm that the 41-pt talent really is worth getting.
However, by simply dividing the average damage of Mutilate by 1.5 you can find out what it would have been against an unpoisoned mob, and the data becomes meaningful to determine which you should be using against a poison-immune mob if you are Mutilate spec.
It sounds like while Backstab would technically do more damage than unpoisoned Mutilate, the extra combo points you gain from Mutilate would ultimately translate into additional Eviscerate or Rupture damage, which probably about evens it out.
However the empirical evidence is still not consistent with the napkin math, so there may be something else we're missing.
Don't bother with the Shiv. It's not worth it for Mutilate, and you really don't want to go combat daggers. I run Mutilate PvE with 1.8 in both hands and it's great. I don't find any issues with poison application and don't feel tossing in a shiv (skill) every now and then hurts my DPS at all.
This has been discussed a fair bit, and the offhand weapon speed really isn't much of an issue.
Assuming an AP of 1400, and a standard 41/20/0 build for PvE, your average non-crit mutilate damage goes from 1252 to 1293 (3.2%) by moving from the s1 Shiv to the s1 shanker in the OH.
With the introduction of the mutilator in S3 it becomes a a non-issue, but I'd personally suggest getting the shiv in all other cases because of the difference in cost which is 9k honor for s1, and 1305 arena points for s2 (I recognise there are many here who have no issue with the difference in cost, but assuming you can't get the 1850 rating required for the mutilator, you're probably not swimming in arena points either).
For PvE weapons it will simply come down to what happens to drop for you as the difference in stats and DPS on the weapons are likely to overshadow the dps lost or gained through speed.
Edit: Wanted to clarify that I realise the case being discussed in the quote in s3, so I don't disagree at all with what's being said there, but wanted to re-iterrate that the difference is not large by any means
My statement wasn't based on the damage output of the Shiv under Mutilate but rather that he already has the S3 shanker/mutilator, so in my opinion there is no reason he needs to spend arena points on a possibly sub-par mutilate weapon (possibly, not probably), unless of course he has points to burn and wants a fast offhand for the slim chance he'd spec combat daggers.
- The two rogues would not have the same crit rate, dagger spec for a backstab build to remotely worthwhile would see to that. Artificially saying it's the same means you are assuming the mutilate rogue has better gear to start with.
-Find weakness (utilising all those extra CP's to keep it up as much as possible) would increase a large % of mutilate and evis damage by 10% depending on uptime.
-If you assume Seal Fate for mutilate, you need to assume combat potency for combat daggers/backstab.
-A traditional combat daggers spec (opportunity + dw + surprise attacks + aggression + combat potency) would do more dmg than assumed and would supply more energy for more CP's, skewing the number of eviscerates upwards.
-Evis dmg for a combat daggers build would probably be buffed by Imp Evis (it would certainly be buffed by Aggression)
All of these are valid points for the comparison you're talking about, but we're not trying to compare those things. At the top of the wiki page, it states that the author is factoring the talents I'm interested in (although I should have redone the calculation without Opportunity... I missed that), aka those in my current build.
The point of all this work is to figure out whether Mutilate or a 41/20/x Imp Backstab is better against an unpoisoned mob. The raw data states Imp Backstab is better by a somewhat surprising margin, but that the gap may be closer due to other factors such as CP generation and activation of Find Weakness. However, I'm still holding out hope that Imp Backstab is better against unpoisoned mobs, which gives the Mutilate population yet another ability to weave in to their already chaotic and fun rotation.
Re: Find Weakness, both Mut and BS will gain 10% by it but it could be argued that it will be up more often if Mut is used due to the number of Evis coming out. That's a unknown quantity to me at this time though, but clearly a factor.
All of these are valid points for the comparison you're talking about, but we're not trying to compare those things. At the top of the wiki page, it states that the author is factoring the talents I'm interested in (although I should have redone the calculation without Opportunity... I missed that), aka those in my current build.
The point of all this work is to figure out whether Mutilate or a 41/20/x Imp Backstab is better against an unpoisoned mob. The raw data states Imp Backstab is better by a somewhat surprising margin, but that the gap may be closer due to other factors such as CP generation and activation of Find Weakness. However, I'm still holding out hope that Imp Backstab is better against unpoisoned mobs, which gives the Mutilate population yet another ability to weave in to their already chaotic and fun rotation.
Re: Find Weakness, both Mut and BS will gain 10% by it but it could be argued that it will be up more often if Mut is used due to the number of Evis coming out. That's a unknown quantity to me at this time though, but clearly a factor.
I still don't think Mutilate vs. Imp backstab is a valid comparison though, because you don't take Imp Backstab in a 41/20/0 build. I can't see taking the talent just for the few fights with poison immune mobs, and if you're going to adjust your spec just for those fights you might as well just switch all the way over to Combat Daggers for the purpose. It seems to me that the practical comparison is Mutilate vs. non-Imp Backstab in terms of the decisions a 41/20/0 rogue is going to have to make.
Dorvan, did you look at the spec Hurt linked before? From a raid DPS perspective, it lacks nothing. He gave up 3 points in Improved Kidney Shot to take Improved Backstab instead.
If you only do PvE content, there's no reason this spec shouldn't work reasonably well for you.
I've wondered about Blizzard's decision to move Improved Backstab to Assassination, and having a Plan B for poison-immune mobs was all I could come up with. I was told I was dumb for even considering it, but I'm glad Hurt and the others have brought it to light with some math to back it up.
The way I see it, if what we're seeing is correct, this spec would create the situation that poison-immune mobs would only hinder our combo-point generation without totally gimping our damage.
I was mutilate spec from the release of TBC til just recently i respeced to try combat swords heheh...
As mutilate i gemed all my gear with 5crit/10ap gems or 10 crit gems but now that im trying combat swords i regemed for more hit I think next week ill spec back to mutilate and see if the gem change caused much of a dps change
guess ill use old wws as a reference tho looking at 1700 dps now seems really bad versus the 2100 i did last night on the same fight as swords lol =(
I've wondered about Blizzard's decision to move Improved Backstab to Assassination, and having a Plan B for poison-immune mobs was all I could come up with. I was told I was dumb for even considering it, but I'm glad Hurt and the others have brought it to light with some math to back it up.
The way I see it, if what we're seeing is correct, this spec would create the situation that poison-immune mobs would only hinder our combo-point generation without totally gimping our damage.
I think the reason for the move was to make Subtlety/Assassination (and particularly Shadowstep -- remember it used to be an almost "daggers-exclusive" talent?) more viable with daggers. If Imp SnD had remained in the Assassination tree, that would have gimped every Subtlety/Daggers build because of the necessity of putting points BOTH into Combat (for Imp Backstab) and Assassination (for all the top-tier goodies).
On Mutilate vs Backstab, even if the Mutilates and Backstabs themselves do about equal damage on an unpoisoned mob, you're generating just less than 1 Combo Point per attack more using Mutilate (1 for Backstab, 2 for Mut; chance to crit with Backstab somewhat higher than chance to crit with Mutilate). This in turn directly results in more finisher damage (which we've already talked about briefly) + more Find Weakness uptime, which will increase BOTH Mutilate damage and Finisher damage by a not insignificant amount. Finally you could take those 3 points in Improved Backstab and place them in any of the number of DPS-increasing talents in the Assassination tree.
On Mutilate vs Backstab, even if the Mutilates and Backstabs themselves do about equal damage on an unpoisoned mob, you're generating just less than 1 Combo Point per attack more using Mutilate (1 for Backstab, 2 for Mut; chance to crit with Backstab somewhat higher than chance to crit with Mutilate). This in turn directly results in more finisher damage (which we've already talked about briefly) + more Find Weakness uptime, which will increase BOTH Mutilate damage and Finisher damage by a not insignificant amount. Finally you could take those 3 points in Improved Backstab and place them in any of the number of DPS-increasing talents in the Assassination tree.
According to the math we're doing, they don't do "about equal damage". Imp Backstab does on the order of 200-300 more damage per use. That adds up quickly. Quick enough to counter the added CPs/finisher damage/Find Weakness uptime? That's what we'll try to figure out next.
01/18/08, 12:37 PM
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