Valustria

Well, how often are your attacks being dodged or parried? If your target is stunned, they aren't. If you're attacking from behind, as you want to be, they aren't. (Someone call me if I'm wrong, but if your target's casting, they aren't... correct?) So... really, the only time Expertise is useful is when you are attacking someone from the front who isn't stunned and they are dodging/parrying your attacks. This typically means other melee. So... how often do you find yourself facing off toe-to-toe with other melee and being dodged/parried?

Is it totally useless? No. Are there other stats I'd much rather have than Expertise? Yes. Crit, Hit, and Haste are all more valuable to me, personally.

"In emptiness there is good, but no evil. Wisdom exists, logic exists, the way exists, and the mind is empty."
~ Miyamoto Musashi, The Scroll of Emptiness, The Book of Five Rings

 

Ghost

I think expertise is pretty good. Having your Kidney Shot or Disarm or Gouge dodged/parried can be game changing.

 

Jehryn

Well its better than nothing but all the other stats are vastly more important. If you are faced with a gear decision with one piece having stam/ress and the other one expertise, I don't think anyone will pick expertise. Don't forget the budget cost is pretty high.

 

Ozzmar

Considering the budget cost of Expertise, as the last poster mentioned, it may be wise to just accept that it's a smart move to try to be behind your opponent for Dismantle, Kidney Shot, Gouge, etc.

 

Taiyoken

Expertise is very low in PvP. Like, a few points on your PvE gear is inevitable and fine, but stacking it or choosing a piece of gear for expertise is a big no. Many classes have like, 15+% dodge, and the amount of expertise you'll need to cover that is way too much. Even 15 expertise (~4%) isn't very useful, as people can still dodge lots. Against clothies, dodging is a non-factor.

Playing smart, you should be able to land a majority of your finishers on your target from the back, or after your teammate drops a stun/cc.

 

drumbum

Huh? Expertise is not expensive. It takes 32.79 expertise rating to achieve 1% reduction to parry and dodge, whereas hit rating for example is the same conversion -- 32.79 rating for 1% miss reduction -- but only affects miss, not both parry and dodge.

Now, I'm not saying it's worth gearing for or anything, but I'd definitely take expertise over haste at least. And don't pretend that you've never had your Dismantle dodged or parried even when you're "behind" a target (lag ftw).

 

Valustria

I dunno, Haste isn't all that bad for Shadowstep Hemo since you aren't hitting with both weapons as often as with Mutilate. It helps you get more poison applications and burn through Hemo charges faster on stunned targets who aren't going to be dodging/parrying. I guess it all depends on your build, just as in PvE. I'd be willing to agree that the Expertise is probably more valuable to Mutilate than Shadowstep Hemo.

"In emptiness there is good, but no evil. Wisdom exists, logic exists, the way exists, and the mind is empty."
~ Miyamoto Musashi, The Scroll of Emptiness, The Book of Five Rings

 

drumbum

Haste is pretty awful in PVP. It only increases your sustained damage, and I think we can agree that burst damage is really all that matters right now in the current state of PVP. The benefit of haste really is only felt after spending a lot of time on your target, but everyone dies in a few seconds anyway.

Slice and Dice is a bit different because it gives so much haste that you benefit from it much more quickly. But having a couple percentage points of haste on your gear is probably not going to do much for you.

 

Taiyoken

I play 27/0/44, and haste is the last thing I want. Your damage pretty much comes from whenever a target is stunned, or a cb shs evis. Yes, the current state of PvP is all burst, so you want to maximize stats that give you the most burst (crit/ap), after getting the hit cap. Expertise is not that valuable either, as shs -> kidney/evis/dismantle stops a lot of parries and dodges (yes, lag occurs sometimes).

 

Valustria

I'd rather have a couple percentage points of haste than a couple percentage points of dodge/parry mitigation that are useless against stunned targets. I'm not saying Haste is ideal -- I don't gem or enchant for it -- but I'd be lying if I said I don't like having some. Because people aren't dying as often in just a few seconds; more teams are playing with shields/bubbles of some sort, and more people are wearing resilience. For those times between spikes, when you are applying more poisons (and eating through more Hemo charges, if you are running Hemo), the faster attacks start to show their value. It might not be the sustained damage that gets the kill, but the sustained damage goes a long way in keeping healers pressured so that they don't have the mana or are behind the damage when the spike comes.

"In emptiness there is good, but no evil. Wisdom exists, logic exists, the way exists, and the mind is empty."
~ Miyamoto Musashi, The Scroll of Emptiness, The Book of Five Rings

 

drumbum

Well, let's say you have about 3% haste. That means 3 extra swings per 100 taken. If you use a 2.6 MH and 1.5 OH (i.e., arena weapons) then you swing on average every 1/(1/2.6+1/1.5) = 0.951 seconds. 3% haste brings that down to 0.951/1.03 = 0.924 seconds. Hemo debuff lasts 15 seconds, which on average gives you 15/0.951 = 15.77 chances to consume a Hemo charge without haste or 15/0.924 = 16.24 chances with haste. So it works out to about 1 extra charge consumed (assuming you never miss) per 30 seconds, or 75 damage every 30 seconds (can crit but also is reduced by armor/resil -- maybe get 100 damage on average from it).

So yeah, Hemo charges are not a good reason for taking haste. :P

By the same math, you also get roughly 1 extra swing in every 30 seconds for poison application. If you use Wound Poison with 50% application rate, it's 1 extra proc per minute (again assuming no misses), dealing about 350 damage noncrit. So again, only a few DPS. It's maybe 50% better with Mutilate, so still not very good.

So, I'd continue to argue that haste is very bad in PVP, and that the extra poison and Hemo procs do not make haste much better in reality. Keep in mind that 3% haste is roughly equivalent in item value to 200 AP or removal of 6% frontal avoidance through expertise.

At the end of the day though discussing which stat is the worst is probably a pretty good waste of time. The main reason I would select expertise as better is because it is situationally extremely beneficial (changing a dodged Dismantle or Kidney Shot into a landed one is gamechanging), whereas I feel haste (in the quantities you could possibly equip it) is not going to affect the outcome of a match.

 

Valustria

Fair enough. It's a matter of risk vs. reward, and I can accept that you would rather risk gaining nothing from Expertise in a lot of fights for that one time it makes a game-changing difference. I risk nothing taking Haste, because it is always beneficial, albeit only very slightly.

For what it's worth, there are times I've accidentally left my [Thrusting Bands] equipped while doing arena, and upon realizing as much, it didn't exactly upset me. I mean, whatever... but it's fun to play devil's advocate and discuss this kind of stuff, just to get new ideas.

"In emptiness there is good, but no evil. Wisdom exists, logic exists, the way exists, and the mind is empty."
~ Miyamoto Musashi, The Scroll of Emptiness, The Book of Five Rings

 

Drakoo

Seems like 41/5/25 is the cookie cutter these days but at the same time there's not a single solid spec that beats the rest, there are a lot of options involved. A good thing considering the lack of options rogues had in the past seasons, also a source of debate on a lot of forums.

I would assume that the choices today are the following:

- Ruthlessness vs Blood Spatter.
I personally do a lot of Rupture in arenas, even on non-plate and non-rogue classes, so 30% more damage on that and garrote sounds really good to me. If you also wear two T7 pieces even better. As far as I'm concerned combo points are not really an issue with Mutilate and having only 60% chance to land gives Ruthlessness even less value. Bare in mind that you still get a point left-over as well from Blood Spatter.

- Fleet Footed vs Improved Kidney Shot vs Quick Recovery.
Things become a bit more interesting now, we have 3 decent choices but shining through from the rest seems to be Fleet Footed. It seems to be present in all serious builds and with the lack of mobility of this tree it's pretty understandable. A passive movement increase AND a snare reduction talent seems invaluable. Moving on to the other two, things seem to diverge here. I play with a priest so I wouldn't even think of not taking QR but what about people playing in double dps teams for 2v2 or heavy dps for other brackets. Well to be honest I would probably choose QR anyway, especially if for example you're playing with a warlock or you use a healing trinket. 9% damage might seem eye catching but you would expect any decent player to trinket KS right away and even if they can't you need almost a full bar of energy and a focused partner in order to take full advantage of it.

- Deadened Nerves vs Focused Attacks vs Find Weakness
I'm a bit stumped here to be honest, Focused Attacks can be great if you get enough time on someone while Deadened Nerves can be good when playing with a healer and taking more damage in a match. Out of the three only Find Weakness seems to be more of a all-rounder, since most damage will come from abilities rather than white damage it seems like the better choice of the three. It also adds more burst to that cold blooded Eviscerate. So even though I play with a healer I went with full Find Weakness and 2/3 Focused simply because matches are too quick for Deadened Nerves to make a difference.

- Setup vs Initiative vs Camouflage
We've moved into sub and things continue to be interesting with another 3 choices. I've never liked not having Camouflage, I felt something was dragging me down not to mention the restealth timer. But that's not the case for everyone, there are plenty of rogues who don't use it and do great. It's more of a matter of playstyle I guess. Initiative, I think a lot of people still choose it because it was an absolute necessity when playing sub in the past seasons. I think that's not the case anymore, as with Ruthlessness having one more combo point is not that helpful with a spec that simply is overflowing with them. Setup on the other hand could make you generate combo points faster than a fellow rogue in an evasion fight for that all important KS which will give an important edge. It also has situational use against almost every other class in the game, like a kiting caster or taking on other fellow melee. For me though, Camo gives peace of mind and that can be more important than anything else in an arena.
To add to this, I've also seen specs involving Ghostly Strike or Improved Ambush, but they seem kinda rare.

What do you guys think, do you have similar options or different altogether, it's seems like arena specs are more flexible than ever these days.

 

Chaggi

I kind of agree, but at the same time don't. I look jealously to the DK's who at least 2 of their 3 trees are incredibly viable in PvP. And even the 3rd tree isn't awful. While I think they are the pinnacle of pure damage and survivability, the balance of the trees are just amazing.

With that being said, I'm not complaining too much about getting pidgenholed into a spec when there's a decent amount to shift around.

I personally run with a Holy Paladin in 2's, and will be running Lock/Holy Pally/Mutilate in 3's.

Since I'm more casual of a player, my gear is gonna lag behind so I took talents that I see.

Mostly, I have 2/2 Blood Splatter, and 1/3 Ruthlessness. I'm rocking, or will be rocking 2pc Valorous (Shoulders once I get badges, and Chest) with 3/3 in Serrated Blades, it lets me rip through plate nicely. Only thing I miss is chasing people after they've gotten a way from me and procing several Ruthlessness CP's to DT them with.

I personally found that I don't stick on people long enough to make too good use of Focused Attacks. Since I run with a healer, I went with 2/3 Deadened Nerves and 3/3 Find Weakness. There's times where I live just by a sliver of health and while it's not a huge difference, I feel like it's better than Focused.

And I'm using Camouflage rather than Setup or Initiative. I feel like, as great as it'd be to be able to Evasion up my CP, I can't stand moving like a turtle.

 

Hildegard

Even with Deadly Brew in its current unnerfed state I can use five different offhand weapons to have ideal combinations of poisons and enchants. The problem about this is that I have two times identical weapons which causes problems with macros.

At the moment I use:

- Sinister Revenge mainhand with Berserking and Wound Poison (offhand doesn't get switched)
- Anarchy (1) with Weapon Chain and Wound Poison
- Anarchy (2) with Weapon Chain and Mind numbing poison
- Webbed Death (1) with Berserking and Mind numbing poison
- Webbed Death (2) with Berserking and Anesthetic Poison
- potentially another Sinister Revenge (2) with Berserking and Wound poison

While switching two weapons only is very easy with a simple /equipslot macro thing get complicated one I have to identical weapons with different poisons. I cannot always predict which weapon will be used and switching them in and out moves them around the bag so that /Use ContainerItem produces not the same results and can easily lead to confusion. What I am looking for is a better method to use many offhand weapons in a single fight without having to move the weapons during the fight manually (means draging and dropping them from the bag to the character screen). I did some research but the addons I found had problems with identical weapons that use different poison.

Any suggestions ?

Hildegard Sprigglespruxx - Wissenschaftlerin am Institut für Pfuschkunde

http://forscherliga.wikia.com/wiki/Hildegard

 

Chaggi

Do you believe that it's worth the relative extra effort to switch up your psns when you're possibly going up against psn dispeling classes?

I personally am considering throwing a Weapon Chain and getting another Deadly Gladiator's Mutilator or Shiv and just having my 2x Berserking as normal enchants.

EDIT:

Anyone have any idea on taking down Hunter/Healer in a non double DPS make up?

 

Chaggi

* Hunger for Blood (Assassination): Now increases damage 5% per stack, (up from 3%.)
* Mind Numbing Poison now reduces cast time by 30%, down from 60%.
* Mutilate damage will now do 20% increased damage against poisoned targets, down from 50%.
* Slice and Dice: This ability now increases melee attack speed by 40%, up from 30%.

3.0.9

Putting it in tomorrow. I don't see why other "overpowered" classes aren't getting the same treatment. Joy.

 

laeg

What are the two best PVP rogue professions for a Human considering they have an extra trinket slot?

 

Osirisofdoom

I'm really surprised Mutliate got hit as hard as it did this early, with other class with insane burst remain relatively untouched in this upcoming patch.

I'm probably going to start playing Shadow Dance with daggers once I can get a good main hand (using Titansteel Shanker to 2200 ftw lol). I play resto druid \ rogue in 2v2 and it is already difficult for me to kill certain classes when it's healer \ X. Really thought they would tone down other classes too (read: hunter, ret, dk, warrior -whirlwind anyone?)

 

Chack

I tried dagger/shadowdance alot, mainly because i sometimes get bored of mutiprep. It was a fun spec before the ambush nerf and when barely anyone used resilience gear (14k ambushs with berserking was quite entertaining). But i would not recommend it anymore now. Backstab damage get's really crippled by resilience, even with the glyph and Sinister Revenge i do not get more then 5k crits on a exposed and stunned rogue. On a geared moonkin you will be looking at 2k backstab crits while the positional requirement makes it extremely hard to use when your stuns are all on diminishing returns. Also the spec needs alot of talent points because you need to get puncturing wounds+lethality+opportunity which is 10 talent points you do not need to get with a hemo/shadowdance build. Of course you can skip serrated blades and hemo for example, but you can't really get DW spec unless you skip most of the toys in sub.

I can see backstab/sub builds becoming good if they somehow rework resilience to not penalize specs that have a very high percentage of crit damage. But i do not think that this will ever happen.

I played arround with a hemo/sd spec, and even tho my weapons are a tier lower my damage output feels alot higher, mostly because now i don't have to get behind my target anymore (which just wasnt possible all the time) and dw spec helps alot with sustained damage. I'd still say that shadowdnce needs to be reworked. At the moment it's only good for geting cheap shot on a rogue in evasion without using my vanish cooldown. Then i can garotte after, but that's pretty much it. Not really overwhelming for a 2minute cooldown and 51 point talent. The talent would be alot better with a shorter cooldown and one charge, so you can only use a single ability.

 

Chaggi

Honestly, I don't mind the nerf. I just hate how they targeted us when we're already the most killable class after we burn CDs, and even then... yeah. If they put in 15%-20% nerf for everyone, I think a lot of problems would be solved. Granted, I'm an awful rogue with only 400 resil, but when a Warrior can kill me in 2 GCDs (2x Whirlwind and Bloodthirst takes half of my HP easy), it's just annoying.

And while Shadow Dance seems good now, I still think it's kinda shitty for where we are at.

 

Cos-

It's unfortunate they decided to adjust mutilate itself instead of actual pvp talents. Completely changing vigor, overkill, and the 4pc bonus could have adjusted burst without making damn sure slow daggers are terrible pve weapons. A rogue version of sniper training that increases mutilate damage by 10/20/30% when we stand still for 3/6/9 seconds at a time maybe...

In the end I don't think any of the other specs are strong enough (with what changes we've seen so far) to even stop being mut/prep. Maybe AR/Prep but we'll have to see. Arcane mages switching to frost means we won't even have to look for new partners. What a freaking strange "fix".

 

Chack

I can see this becoming the new mutiprep in 3.1

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft (I guess this is what everyone refers to as HARP)

I imagine it will feel alot like good old TBC, where you could interrupt with deadly throw. Just missing shadowstep.

 

Cos-

Don't forget LR is going to be 3/3 not 5/5.

 

Slickshoes

You are kind of missing some key talents in there. Do you really think rogues can even think about going into arenas with out HS? I would also think getting DD is clutch. There is no reason to put those three points in the assasination tree when you can get the same buff to eviscerate in the combat tree. That frees up more points for those crucial sub talents we are forced to take.