Re-stacking DP is a non-issue for a Mutilate build with 5/5 Imp Poisons and a non-1.8 offhand plus good hit%. Anecdotal evidence, but I ran Kz with the same DPSers I've been running it with since day 1 and using a 43/0/17 PvP build with 5/5 Vile, 5/5 Imp, and dual Deadly (no WF available) I was at roughly the same place I usually am with 17/44 PvE and WF. 4-piece Assassination is broken as hell, I can almost always get two Muti -> Envenoms off between S&D refreshes even without Imp S&D and on a good set of rolls (Remorseless + crit for 4-CP S&D, Relentless procs on all Envenoms) I can do 3 with only a minor clip. I use DFilter to watch my Deadly stack and it never hovers below 5 even right after an Envenom.

41/20 with 4-piece Assassination should do even better than 43/0/17.

If you'll pardon me for be snarky about it: you don't see those numbers with SnD either. Big numbers doesn't always mean better.

Restacking it is certainly fast. It's not instantaneous, though, so you can't discount it totally. It *does* cost you some damage.

Also, the "it's not mitigated by armor" argument is falacious, because it *is* modified by resistances, and most bosses have nonzero resists.

Maybe, but I was comparing two damage-dealing finishers, not a damage dealing finisher to a haste finisher. In most situations that I can think of, more damage > less damage. The question is whether or not the extra damage is lost in restacking DP. My anecdotal evidence shows that it isn't.

what is the new glancing % on bossfights? The spreadsheet still says 40% .

No, it doesn't. Your anecdotal evidence just shows that it's possible to generate shiny big numbers with Envenom. A big number does not automatically imply a win over not having to restack DP.

I have raided quite a bit with a mutilate talent build. My own anecdotal evidence is that when I switched from envenom to eviscerate, my DPS went up. The build I used included 4/5 vile poisons and 5/5 improved poisons.

The thing you're forgetting is that when you don't envenom, you don't need deadly on both hands. The extra DPS from instant poison on one weapon and having a full stack of deadly on the mob continuously adds up to more than the delta between envenom and eviscerate.

Sorry to go a bit off topic, but after spending almost one hour reading and searching these forums I'm even more confuzzled than before, and this thread seems to be the waste dump of rogue related questions anyway :P
Alright, so let's assume I'm a level 70 rogue fighting a level 73 boss npc. I neither spent any talent points nor am i wearing gear which increases my chance to hit.
What's my main hand and off hand miss rate?

I Dont think the chance to glance is being adjusted just the damage penalty of a glance is being reduced to 25%

25.5% chance to miss main vs offhand doesnt matter just that youre dualwielding.

Its by no means the waste dump. Its just unsorted. a few pages back you might have read that its currently assumed to cap out at 25.5%

On live, it IS Romeo's Poison Vial... was this changed in the patch?

Ah, but the thing you're forgetting is that if I'm rotating finishers between S'n'D, Rupture and Envenom, I should be able to use Cold Blood on a significant percentage of the Envenoms. With the better scaling Envenom gets from AP, that restores some of the differential.

Loss of instant poison DPS is a problem, yes. IMO to make Envenom viable as a raiding build, Master Poisoner should have a change of leaving 1/2 DP charges on the target after an Envenom.

I'd really like to see someone do some spreadsheet modelling of this. I don't have the skills to do so myself, unfortunately.

Is http://rogue.bleedo.net/envevis.xls what you're looking for?

What exactly are the inconsistencies you're seeing? Saying that you don't think they're accurate, but not backing that doesn't help to fix the problem... most likely we can correct the spreadsheet, or show you how it does actually work. :]

Glancing over his post history it appears that he believes the spreadsheet is wrong because it doesn't support his theories on envenom/combat mutilate.

Less guessing, more science.

No. The sheet you link only answers a very narrow question. As far as I can tell, it's only addressing Mutilate builds. I'd like to see something a bit more extensive, that models how DP stacks with (e.g.) a SS or Hemo build.

These builds allow you to use a really fast OH which will stack DP faster (and also allow you a cheap Shiv to rebuild the stack faster after an Envenom). Or would it be sufficient to put DP on the mainhand (after all, Hemo is very spammable and will build the stack fast), and use the fast OH for IP?

I also want to see the effect of Cold Blood on this. The net effect is to boost your crit rate considerably, since you'll be able to use it on a significant fraction of your Envenoms in any given fight (especially if you have Prep as well). However I can't calculate precisely how much it'll add.

We can make a reasonable guess though With a cycle using S'n'D, Rupture and Envenom, you'll be hitting Envenom around once per minute or so. So you have 5 Envenoms in a 5-minute bossfight. With CB and Prep, you can make at least 3 of those be guaranteed crits. The other 2 finishers use your base crit rate, so you'll have a net effective crit rate of over 70%

I'll repeat that for emphasis. For the purpose of this comparison, you have an effective critrate of over 70%. Over longer fights, you'll still have >50% crit rate (1 guaranteed crit every 3 mins, another every 5th minute, and 1 crittable finisher per minute). On short fights of just a couple of minutes (trash etc.) you may well have close to a 100% crit rate on the relevant finishers. And Envenom scales much better with crits and AP than Evis does.

I can't model this properly in the sheet you gave, but I tried naively plugging in a 2.7 speed for MH and 1.4 speed for OH, with a 70% crit rate (enterting 1.7 in the "crit" field) and 24% armor reduction. It tells me that it's pretty much a wash, and depends on whether I have Misery, Blood Frenzy or it's a boss mob. For most combinations, Envenom is the better finisher unless I have 3/3 Imp. Evis. I have better places for those points - find weakness and imp. kidney shot, for example.

In my current group (and especially in 5-mans), I'm much more likely to have Misery than I am to have blood frenzy. Furthermore, our best tanks are Druids, so Mangle is a given. So I can't see any reason why Hemo/Envenom isn't a good build for me.

I think the point is that envenom is never useful without full poison talents, and full poison talents are rare in any spec other than Mutilate.

Fair point. Guess I shall just have to find out empirically whether I'm doing more DPS before or after a respec. It looks as though it could well be much of a muchness though.

Because its a Hemo build? I don't care if Envenom left your DP stacks on the boss and you never had to rebuild the stack, a full combat spec will beat a hemo build. The standard ~17/44 Fist/Sword or 15/41/5 Dagger build has been proven over and over to be far superior dps. Perhaps in your specific case Envenom MAY be better than Evis, however neither will compare to a combat build.

Damn you Mih!
I'd just changed the previous version to include a correct modeling of Relentless Earthstorm Diamond and was working on shiv cycles...

Actually, Excel crashed on me losing twenty minutes of the shiv work so no big deal. I'll dl this tomorrow and sort it out - I remember everything I'd done

Man - I just put in the best gearset I could find (to strengthen white damage as much as possible) and Latro's -> Glad's Quickblade came out to be a 5ish DPS increase at the very VERY topend. At my current gear, it's a .5~1dps upgrade.

Am I just missing something, or are we all going to be using Latro's forever?

I personally don't give a shit about 5 DPS, when it comes down to using a phat epic or a dungeon blue.

Aye, that's the prevailing wisdom. However, see the other thread out there on the "theory of PvE Hemo".

The spreadsheet is all weird anyway. For most builds, it recommends rupture as your main finisher other than S'n'D, and yet advises you to take specs that have 20% less rupture damage. Really not sure how that one works.

When I try use the spreadsheet, give myself the poison talents, Hemo and no points in Combat, it tells me to use a 5s/5r cycle when unbuffed, and 5r when buffed! Yes, you read right, it's advising me to use no finishers other than rupture. There is no way on Earth that is right.

Heck, Envenom doesn't even exist as an option in the cycles. It's not taking account of Seal Fate or Find Weakness, so its estimates of my CP income are too low, and its estimate of my DPS will be off by several percent.

Base line is: I simply don't trust that sheet to analyse anything other than minor variations on a cookie-cutter combat build.

Edit to add: It doesn't even ask whether you have cold blood - as I've shown above, that makes a very significant difference to what you choose to use as a finisher, assuming you're not completely retarded, and actually save it for finishers. S'n'D can't crit, and neither can Rupture. So where's the option to do 5s/5r/5s/5env, with a guaranteed crit on the Envenom almost every time? That sheet doesn't model Envenom at all, and it's also useless at modelling any deep Assassination build that isn't a Mutilate build.

The point is - I'm amassing Arena points, and currently the Gladiator's Armor is better than my current gear by a little bit - but we're working through Karazhan, and I'll easily be able to replace my armor pieces, whereas I won't be able to get a nice offhand sword..... so why isn't the Gladiator's Quickblade a nice offhand sword? Has blizzard screwed up again where a blue is beating out epics because of itemization gaps? Where's the upgrade to Latro's?