It's not a bad rationale. Of course all rogues should ideally be behind the target but at times you really can't. Double Cave-in behind Gruul, Aran turning to face you during Flame Wreath, fighting adds when you have their aggro, etc. There are plenty of situations where dagger rogues are reduced to Shiving/Sinister Striking for pathetic damage (and get dodged more) while sword rogues can carry on with their normal SS spam and only get dodged more. It's pretty clear who suffers more.

Dodged more? Ever hear of parry? I notice a huge difference on boss mobs when I attack from the front. It is a rather large dps loss.

Not to mention some mobs you don't want to attack from the front because of this little thing called cleave.

I will admit I have an advantage on Gruul with swords, I've done it both ways and prefer swords due to cave-ins.

What's ýour point? Of course nobody should attack from the front if they can avoid it. It's dangerous, you lose dps, yadda yadda. But on some targets you can't avoid it 100% of the time and in those situations daggers lose more dps than swords.

Well, Those 3sec of aran casting your way, the caveins (You can avoid two) and overaggroing on adds aint nearly enought to break a spec "Because you neeed to be behind"

In my opinion they (together with total lack of pvp utility) are enough that in ideal situation where you can dps constantly from the behind, daggers should do more dps than swords.

The brand new copy option buttons are hovering on dropdown menu, in gear_buffs page, so i can't change my gear. Btw using open office.

I don't think this is the whole point. There should (Not always true) be some sort of balance between specs utilitywise. Swords far surpass daggers in solo/PvP utility (Combat only, ignoring mut/shadowstep) and is at least equivalent to daggers in raid viability.

I'm currently using Malch/Sunblade as combat daggers. Switching to Spiteblade/Latro's without changing any of my current gear gives me a slight increase in dps (5 or so) with DP/IP, and a pretty big increase (35) with WF/DP. Now is it right that the build which is only "useful" in a raid setting is actually less damage than a build that is great in all aspects?

I do agree that throwing positional requirements into the mix isn't really fair. However, considering the nature of the fights I've experienced so far (first two bosses in SSC), a sword build excels even further in a raid situation due to faster combo point generation and cycles that are much easier to maintain.

As a combat sword rogue I also try and get behnd the mob most of the time for obvious reasons (dodge, parry etc not to mention avoiding cleaves) but the statement above is prettty new to me. Where did you find that info? And if it indeed is common knowledge then please excuse my ignorance for not knowing about it. It's just that his is the first mention I see of it.

Off the top of my head, and on the EJ forums I can think of the Hydross + Shield block thread (Hydross + Shield Block) to give a bit of info on it? Also the prince tanking thread which you can look up has some stuff there as well.

Honestly I'm not sure exactly where in there you can find it, but a search on parry will give you some info.

Gist of it all is: NEVER attack from the front no matter what spec you are and for many bosses, it is what causes the "I just got hit 3 times in one time stamp, and it ate my shield block charges up" death statements form your MT.

Man I wish there was a spreadsheet like this, with Gear dropdown menus and everything, for Feral Druids. Back when I played Rogue I used to love Chalon's work, and the only spreadsheets I can find for druid are simple "paste stats and see your DPS number". Hardly comparable to this, where you can check the impact of every upgrade.

Thank you Ellos for your job.

I think the hit score calculated in Gear _ Buffs!H77 should be SUM(H10:H75)+Y34+Y36 (instead Y33+Y35).

When I look on wow-armory to my UD rogue caracs, agility is 395 (159 + 236). In the spreadsheet, the base agi value for UD is 156 (Races!C8). I think it should be 159.

thats how blizzard made us, 1 trick pony that made dps an art.

I've heard of it before.
http://www.wowwiki.com/Parry
http://www.wowwiki.com/Formulas:Parry
I'm not sure whether this mechanic applies to npcs as well though.

If you'd like to test it, just go do high king, prince, basically any mob without a frontal cleave or similar ability. Attack from the front, with a couple rogues and see how long it takes for your tank to die.

Apart from this, get a combat log from your MT and look at the swing timer after the boss parries his attacks.

Part of the problems people had with tanking Hydross in the 250% nature style pre 2.1 was sloppy work by melee getting in front causing parries. If Hydross would parry a couple of attacks, and the tank got 2 75% resists from those faster attacks it was basically instant death. It was even hard to heal if he had 2 50% resists in the same time stamp!

I guess I should have been running my combatlog tonight on Na'jentus when I killed the tank by spreading out too far to the side. I wasn't paying attention to my SCT and just heard him yelling at me after he died to 3 hits in the same time stamp (then a crushing before the CD was up) while I was cursing the healers for slacking!

Hmm, that would open a whole range of additional theorycrafts, probably best left to another thread.
* Should the tank use WF > extra attacks > extra parries, extra damage taken, more rage
* Should the tank use a fast, or a slow weapon > faster weapon allows more heroic strike spamming, but results in more parries, and more damage taken.

Interesting though.

About one year ago I tested the parry -> reset (or speedup) of the swing timer with my warrior (indeed I just wanted to test if *I* attack faster after a parry).

As you can see, the Plaguehound's normal attack speed is 2 seconds, whereas on a parry, he was hitting me only 1.6 later again. And the following was only 1.8 seconds later, but this one I suspect to be combatlog inconsistency, as all other attacks in that log were on a 2 second delay if not parried.

I'm sorry, but you're comparing +5.6% parry and +5.6% block to the dps of a dagger rogue using sinister strike? I also get behind mobs every chance I can to maximize DPS, but a dagger rogue does PITIFUL dps in cases where you CANNOT get behind a mob - there's also lost time on mobs that turn regularly or need to be moved a lot. And since you're assuming I'm a dagger rogue whining about it, I'm not. :P I've been swords since level 10. :P

I'll try to fix it soon. I've a idea how i'll make this.
But I haven't enough time at the moment, maybe tomorrow.

Cool thanks, and sorry about the "seemingly useless" comment, I was a bit annoyed whilst I posted, I'm sure there in for a reason I've yet to fathom

Speaking of daggers vs swords, can any hardcore dagger rogues give me some advice on how to maximize my DPS on trash?

I do great on bosses, but on trash lately I've just ended up swapping out my merciless shanker for my regular gladiator's right ripper even though I'm not specced for it, because I seem to do more damage with it even so

The problem seems to be that I can't build up enough combo points for any worthwhile finishing moves and keep SnD up at the same time on trash when I'm backstabbing.. getting behind mobs isn't an issue, as all the people on page 97 have been saying, just because your DPS gets nerfed in front of a mob and your (warrior) tank gets pwned

Shiv only works when you:
1. Have selected "Force Shiv"
2. You have Instant Poison on your Offhand.

Maybe what you've seen wasn't Shiv, but Sinister Strike or Backstab?

Trash DPS strategy for combat daggers...basically don't look at the meters, just stab things. Seriously though, I'll generally just go in for two Backstabs followed immediately by Slice and Dice. I refresh pretty much every time I hit three points. There's almost no point to trying other finishers, you're not going to have the time to accumulate combo points for them. Just try to keep Slice and Dice up as much as possible.