If you have 5k Arena points saved up, you might as well spend a fair portion of them right now. As you climb higher in the ratings you're going to get a lot of those points back, and you certainly never want to let your points cap out at 5k unless you just have to because there's nothing else to buy.
In regard to gear: You want, at the very least, two pieces of the Arena set. The gloves are absolutely necessary and you should not play without them, as the bonus to Deadly Throw is invaluable. The legs and chest are also great pieces you can get early with a ton of both stamina and resilience, so you wouldn't have to choose. As a general rule, most PvE gear pre-T6 content is probably not going to be desireable compared to the available PvP gear. Most of the new Guardian's gear is at least comparable, if not outright better than, the vast majority of T5 PvE gear in terms of PvP DPS, and that's not even counting the massive amounts of stamina and resilience that allows you to gem\enchant elsewhere for damage. Also, don't underestimate the value of a meta gem -- it's of similar importance in PvP as it is to us in PvE. RED's +3% crit damage translates to about 60res worth of an opponent's crit damage reduction cancelled out, and in a one-DPS team like you have any extra burst you can get is ftw.
People seeing your gear: They probably won't the first time. But if they ever see you again, they'll remember that one crit they had that rocked you (if they don't look you up on Armory after anyways). You don't have to inspect someone to tell they have low resilience and HP. Any moderately experienced player can tell when a target is squishier than they were expecting it to be (e.g. lawl how did I crit that Mage for 2k? His gear must be bad), and some players can tell your gear just from looking at your character. Hitting someone and realizing they're in almost all PvE gear is often an automatic focus-target switch for me in 2v2.
As for skipping Cheat Death, that's like speeding with a broken seat belt and no airbags. Just don't do it.
My point about it being a balancing act is that there isn't one specific way you need to go to be successful. I'm primarily a PvE Rogue myself, and as much as I wish there was a golden Aldrianna spreadsheet for PvP, it doesn't exist and isn't possible because there is no optimum. You need to balance relative to your situation, BG, and teammate. 300 resilience gives you a little over 7% crit reduction and close to 15% crit damage reduction. This will knock most opponent crit ratings to around a cool 25% or lower in some cases, and -15% crit damage means you can take some unlucky crits without being dropped immediately. As for how much DPS you can sacrifice to get to that point, or a proportion that you can trade defenses off for DPS, those are answers you'll probably have to figure out on your own.
Resilience: 39.4 RES = 1% resilience (reduce chance to be crit by 1%, damage from being crit by 2%, and DoT damage by 1%).
Why has Runspeed/24AP + Surefooted fallen out of favour?
It's still what I use and I still think it's pretty great?
Based on my math, [Relentless Earthstorm Diamond] and [Swift Skyfire Diamond] are essentially dead heat in terms of damage output -- the 3% crit damage works out to be ever so slightly better for sustained damage than the handful of stats you give up for it. However, this doesn't take into account the intangible benefit of snare/root resist from Surefooted, which cannot be picked up without [Swift Skyfire Diamond] (well, unless you think 8% runspeed isn't a necessity).
Thus, you could argue that [Swift Skyfire Diamond] wins in the utility department. However, if you are really serious about utility, you'd probably prefer 5% stun resist over 5% snare/root resist, since a rogue has several ways to break roots and snares, but cannot break a stun. If that is the case, then you might argue that [Potent Unstable Diamond] is the superior utility choice. That meta gem is a bit more of a pain in the ass to acquire, though.
However the main thing to recognize is that all of these setups are very, very close in the end. I think you can be very successful with any of these meta gems. So, just go with what you like. It's not unlike the AP versus agility gemming debate -- there's no clear victor, it just depends on what you prefer.
Requirements on mr potent are pretty damn handicapping, don't think it's much of an option really :/
That's not true. Gem for [Shifting Shadowsong Amethyst]x1 and [Delicate Crimson Spinel]x7 and you're good to go. Sure, you can't complete any socket bonuses requiring yellow gems, but only one of them on the arena set is a DPS increase anyway (4 crit on chest).
You definitely have to be careful with your gemming, but it can definitely work.
I'm primarily a PvE Rogue myself, and as much as I wish there was a golden Aldrianna spreadsheet for PvP, it doesn't exist and isn't possible because there is no optimum. You need to balance relative to your situation, BG, and teammate.
While I agree that PvP gear values change based on your team makeup, I do feel more can be done for modeling PvP. Consider the tools that are out there. Shadowpanther gives ballpark figures based on "famous rogues", but they haven't been updated in quite a while. Looking at the TR, we get another interesting picture. Almost every rogue is dressed in T5 rather than S2/Veteran's loot, the exceptions being the hands and sometimes the shoulders or belt. Plugging these choices back into shadowpanther and comparing them against the available equipment, there are some discrepancies. Ignoring the belt and shoulders (where some rogues disagree), the two spots that stand out are the boots and the rings.
Here are the items and their shadowpanther ratings:
Veteran's Leather Boots 124
Boots of Effortless Striking 109
Veteran's Band of Triumph 84
Band of the Ranger General 84
Ring of Lethality 81
So shadowpanther isn't a perfect model of what rogues are using in the tournament realms. Can it be improved? As an attempt, I took my own (crappy) PvP gear and plugged it into the DPS spreadsheet. Then I altered the sheet to model a target with 400 resilience. This gave me (perhaps) more accurate AEP ratings:
AP: 0.57, Hit: 0.56, Crit: 0.54, Agility: 1
Clearly, stamina and resilience, while important in PvP, are not rated as highly as they once were. Suppose we set the AEP value of stamina and resilience to 0.5? This gives the following "shadowpanther" ratings:
Veteran's Leather Boots 96
Boots of Effortless Striking 96
Ring of Lethality 73
Band of the Ranger General 71
Veteran's Band of Triumph 62
I'm not claiming that this is correct, it just helps bring what models we have closer into agreement.
What would be useful is a Aldrianna-like spreadsheet for PvP which attempted to calculate the damage per second in a PvP match. Suppose we only consider DPS (as opposed to survivability, or control, or anything like that) in a PvP match, and we furthermore constrain the model to situations where you are in combat.
An important missing piece of data is what percentage of your combat time you are actually hitting someone (as opposed to moving to target, waiting for your cyclone to finish, etc.). This, however, could be calculated empirically from data from your previous matches. In a PvE spreadsheet, you list which buffs you receive in a raid, for this spreadsheet you would provide data about your % time in combat. To make it easier you could even pick from a list of common group layouts (2's with a druid, or RMP), which would have estimates of other players combat uptimes.
Given a pattern of combat and a resilience measure for your opponent we could then more accurately estimate your damage per second in PvP. This would more accurately weigh stats like hit (which past 79 doesn't affect your special damage output, and is therefore much less valuable in PvP), or even the PvP worth of slice and dice. For example, if you consistently spent 2 seconds off target followed by 2 seconds on target, your yellow damage would be considerably higher than your white damage.
The tools we have for evaluating PvP gear (which mostly involve word of mouth, PvE experience, or "what other good players do") should be improved.
First off, I'd like to say that I just finished reading through all 70some pages of this thread and there's some d@mn good conversation here. I'm glad to have the opportunity to join this community. It's a refreshing breather of inteligence from the wow.com forums.
My question. I have the badge mutilate dagger offhand. It has 103.1 DPS, 30 stam, 24 hit, and 44ap. Now, when I equip my gladiator's shiv, which has 91.1 dps, 21 stam, 15 crit, 10 resil, 9 hit, and 28ap (i also have 20 agi enchanted on it), why does my damage range go up from 554-657 > 556-659.
Basically I'm confused as to why the damage range on my character info window drops when I equip a dagger with higher dps. Should that range even be a concern? Should I be equipping the pvp dagger over the pve mutilate one?
First off, I'd like to say that I just finished reading through all 70some pages of this thread and there's some d@mn good conversation here. I'm glad to have the opportunity to join this community. It's a refreshing breather of inteligence from the wow.com forums.
My question. I have the badge mutilate dagger offhand. It has 103.1 DPS, 30 stam, 24 hit, and 44ap. Now, when I equip my gladiator's shiv, which has 91.1 dps, 21 stam, 15 crit, 10 resil, 9 hit, and 28ap (i also have 20 agi enchanted on it), why does my damage range go up from 554-657 > 556-659.
Basically I'm confused as to why the damage range on my character info window drops when I equip a dagger with higher dps. Should that range even be a concern? Should I be equipping the pvp dagger over the pve mutilate one?
The damage range as reported on your character sheet is actually the damage you will deal with a mainhand white attack against a zero armor target. (If you mouse-over the value, it'll also show you the offhand damage range separately.) The only reason your mainhand damage range changes at all is because the two weapons contribute different amounts of attack power (including the attack power awarded from agility through the 20 agility enchant).
The damage range as reported on your character sheet is actually the damage you will deal with a mainhand white attack against a zero armor target. (If you mouse-over the value, it'll also show you the offhand damage range separately.) The only reason your mainhand damage range changes at all is because the two weapons contribute different amounts of attack power (including the attack power awarded from agility through the 20 agility enchant).
While I agree that PvP gear values change based on your team makeup, I do feel more can be done for modeling PvP. Consider the tools that are out there. Shadowpanther gives ballpark figures based on "famous rogues", but they haven't been updated in quite a while. Looking at the TR, we get another interesting picture. Almost every rogue is dressed in T5 rather than S2/Veteran's loot, the exceptions being the hands and sometimes the shoulders or belt. Plugging these choices back into shadowpanther and comparing them against the available equipment, there are some discrepancies. Ignoring the belt and shoulders (where some rogues disagree), the two spots that stand out are the boots and the rings.
Here are the items and their shadowpanther ratings:
Veteran's Leather Boots 124
Boots of Effortless Striking 109
Veteran's Band of Triumph 84
Band of the Ranger General 84
Ring of Lethality 81
So shadowpanther isn't a perfect model of what rogues are using in the tournament realms. Can it be improved? As an attempt, I took my own (crappy) PvP gear and plugged it into the DPS spreadsheet. Then I altered the sheet to model a target with 400 resilience. This gave me (perhaps) more accurate AEP ratings:
AP: 0.57, Hit: 0.56, Crit: 0.54, Agility: 1
Clearly, stamina and resilience, while important in PvP, are not rated as highly as they once were. Suppose we set the AEP value of stamina and resilience to 0.5? This gives the following "shadowpanther" ratings:
Veteran's Leather Boots 96
Boots of Effortless Striking 96
Ring of Lethality 73
Band of the Ranger General 71
Veteran's Band of Triumph 62
I'm not claiming that this is correct, it just helps bring what models we have closer into agreement.
I'm rather biased, as I've never trusted Shadowpanther at all. I'm not sure how accurate it is for modeling damage because I never used anything but Aldrianna's. Why downgrade to less than the best? Another thing to consider is that different Rogues aren't going to play exactly the same way. Some may be a little more defensive about remaining stealthed and hidden as much as possible, so burst DPS stats may be more important than defensive ones. Other Rogues may be perfectly comfortable playing out of stealth for a large portion of matches, so defensive stats may play a little more important role because they're a more available target.
Originally Posted by Halfdane
What would be useful is a Aldrianna-like spreadsheet for PvP which attempted to calculate the damage per second in a PvP match. Suppose we only consider DPS (as opposed to survivability, or control, or anything like that) in a PvP match, and we furthermore constrain the model to situations where you are in combat.
An important missing piece of data is what percentage of your combat time you are actually hitting someone (as opposed to moving to target, waiting for your cyclone to finish, etc.). This, however, could be calculated empirically from data from your previous matches. In a PvE spreadsheet, you list which buffs you receive in a raid, for this spreadsheet you would provide data about your % time in combat. To make it easier you could even pick from a list of common group layouts (2's with a druid, or RMP), which would have estimates of other players combat uptimes.
Can you really average in-time? How much would we really benefit if we can? In-time just seems so relative from opponent to opponent, comp to comp, and even different times within the same game against the same opponent. I think it's safe to say that DPS at different times in the match are more important than others (e.g. when a target is KS and EA'd). I'm not sure that there's enough consistency in the data to make a viable, useful modeling system.
Originally Posted by Halfdane
Given a pattern of combat and a resilience measure for your opponent we could then more accurately estimate your damage per second in PvP. This would more accurately weigh stats like hit (which past 79 doesn't affect your special damage output, and is therefore much less valuable in PvP), or even the PvP worth of slice and dice. For example, if you consistently spent 2 seconds off target followed by 2 seconds on target, your yellow damage would be considerably higher than your white damage.
The tools we have for evaluating PvP gear (which mostly involve word of mouth, PvE experience, or "what other good players do") should be improved.
Even beyond combat in-time, resilience, and stamina, every player and class are going to have very different armor values as well. What's best for DPS against a Mage won't be the best against a Boomkin, Warrior, or Paladin. Also, it's very hard to calculate combat in-time, because different players will be better or worse at kiting\avoiding being attacked, and it'll even change for the same opponent from fight to fight (and really even within the same fight). Aldrianna's sheet worked so well because it was modeled in a vacuum, but that kind of environment is far from sufficient for calculating. I'm just not sure that there's enough of a pattern within the data to make a model more accurate than the more-or-less consensus benchmark (300res, 10k hp, as much dmg as possible).
I believe that most rogues (including neilyo and myself) plan on trying out the crit/agi meta + runspeed to boots this season.
With the obscene amount of crit you get by gemming full 10agi, it should help in those situations where you really need to finish off a target.
If things don't work out, it will be pretty easy just to replace a few gems and go back to the old runspeed meta + surefooted.
I believe that most rogues (including neilyo and myself) plan on trying out the crit/agi meta + runspeed to boots this season.
With the obscene amount of crit you get by gemming full 10agi, it should help in those situations where you really need to finish off a target.
If things don't work out, it will be pretty easy just to replace a few gems and go back to the old runspeed meta + surefooted.
Agility is same item value as AP but relativly it gives more raw stats than if you gemed for AP + crit gems.
Its up to you if you stack agility but seeing you can reach nearly 40% crit with S4 thats 55% crit on mutilate for me seems radicolous.
You won't have 40% base crit as Mutilate because you can't have both Sinister Calling and Mutilate specced at the same time. Unless of course you're wearing some obscene PvE gear that would drop you to 0 resilience, which is high unadvised for mutilate.
Depends what you face x day i must say. Each BG is different.
You might try with Lock/Priest/Druid/Rogue/Mage or even a Retri. All comes down what you face at your range and what you feel you are strong in. Finding a decent priest will be harder than any other class in my opinion but again each bg and server differs.
Have you instead considered using 2 Glinting Pyrestones & 2 Shifting Shadowsong Amethysts instead of all Delicate Spinels + Jagged Seaspray Emeralds? You get the same total amount of Agility and Stamina from the gems, and you get 10 Hit instead of 10 Crit, which is slightly better IMO. It helps with Deadly Throw misses and poison application vs. slightly higher crit rate.
I plan on just using 1 purple gem in my neck (from twin eredar), so that's an easy slot.
But with your suggestion, I was able to change up my setup a little bit.
The differences being:
With 1 Seaspray: 11175 / 360 / 2076 / 38.0 / 103 / 32.61
Your suggestion: 11175 / 360 / 2076 / 37.7 / 108 / 32.61
I'll try and setup a full honor gear profile later
Have you instead considered using 2 Glinting Pyrestones & 2 Shifting Shadowsong Amethysts instead of all Delicate Spinels + Jagged Seaspray Emeralds? You get the same total amount of Agility and Stamina from the gems, and you get 10 Hit instead of 10 Crit, which is slightly better IMO. It helps with Deadly Throw misses and poison application vs. slightly higher crit rate.
I definitely suggest 10 hit over 10 crit, too, although Deadly Throw has the same miss rate as any other special attack. It does still help with attacks against frost mages and when trying to blind a Subtlety rogue, in addition to the increased poison application and white damage.
06/26/08, 10:37 PM
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