The 4.0.1 Rogue FAQ - Page 11

damagedone · 10/12/10, 3:55 AM

Originally Posted by Aldriana

Its worth noting that even if unbuffed DPS is about the same - an assertion which I won't confirm or refute - its worth noting that our buffed DPS will be quite a bit lower as a significant number of powerful raid buffs have been nerfed or removed.

Actually, really glad someone pointed this out. There isn't a class/spec that benefits more from being fully raid buffed than Mutilate Rogues.

The reduction of both the SP debuff and haste are pretty big hits to our class/spec.

damagedone · 10/12/10, 4:20 AM

Originally Posted by Armanewb

Given the "worst case scenario" of Ruthlessness giving you 1CP and a 3CP Ambush on top of a HAT CP, which isn't even attainable in 4.0.1, you still have the 2 seconds of HAT's ICD to use a finisher. Let's say you use a GCD to enter stealth and that gives you a HAT CP right afterwards, putting you at 2CP after Ruthlessness. You Ambush for 3CP, immediately queueing a finisher after Ambush to use the 5 generated CPs before HAT gives you another one. Even in this idealized situation, assuming you have no wastage of time, you are able to utilize the Initiative + Ambush, Ruthlessness and HAT without wasting a single CP.

Of course this is moot since you cannot take Ruthlessness in 4.0.1, meaning there is even more leeway (another 2 seconds).

That's not much of a worst case scenario. Ambush + HAT + Initiative has the potential to put up 4 CPs in a single GCD. That's problematic. If you are at 0 or 1 CPs it's not an issue. If you are at 2 or 3 it becomes one.

It's not the end of the world. But in terms of practical application, Pre Med is a much more versatile choice in my opinion. The ability to pre-roll a Recup or SnD is priceless, giving you energy regen during your opening burst, and a DPS finisher while MoS is up.

I'd still have both in the build tho. Enveloping Shadows is a waste :p

Lithios · 10/12/10, 6:05 AM

My question is whether or not we will be using Heroic Heart Pierce, or Heroic Rib Spreader as a main hand come the 4.01 stat change? I read through the pages and did not see a clear answer on this. Thanks in advance.

Stuntspike · 10/12/10, 6:06 AM

Originally Posted by damagedone

That's not much of a worst case scenario. Ambush + HAT + Initiative has the potential to put up 4 CPs in a single GCD. That's problematic. If you are at 0 or 1 CPs it's not an issue. If you are at 2 or 3 it becomes one.

It's not the end of the world. But in terms of practical application, Pre Med is a much more versatile choice in my opinion. The ability to pre-roll a Recup or SnD is priceless, giving you energy regen during your opening burst, and a DPS finisher while MoS is up.

I'd still have both in the build tho. Enveloping Shadows is a waste :p

Why are you worrying about CP generation with HAT, Premed, and Initiative in the first place, the only feasible thing you might be lacking is energy, I would venture a guess that those point would be better spent like this.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Dropping points in precision for puncturing wounds or possible deadly momentum, providing your raids don't move slowly and less SnD means more Evis in the long run.

Really with a sub build you need to start from stealth, hence them giving you the talent to make moving that way a lot easier. and with the mechanic of shadow dance, the vanish cd dropping by 1m makes elusiveness a must also.

I honestly feel that there are no wasted points in this build.

Then again most of the math that i have worked out on this assumes the build isn't energy starved w/o recuperate. I'm thinking with enough crit on BS with it glyph-ed and relentless strikes you may not hurt for energy.

Another sub thought just hit me, MH-dagger OH-something slow then go MH deadly/ OH instant, deadly's 5 will go up faster from MH attacks and every one after 5 procs the other poison. I seem to recall reading somewhere that poison damage being normalized by weapon speed might be a possibility i.e. a 2.6 instant poison proc hitting harder than say a 1.8 I'm unsure on that last portion though. However it's looking like higher ilvl weapon wins out in the OH so if say u have 1 264 dagger and a 232 or something similar and have combat weps sitting there toss the slow one in the OH.

To keep energy flowing would be a something like during your shadowdance you would need a rotation of a 3cp ambush and 2x 1cp BS > Finisher. repeat during duration of shadowdance, low latency you could feasibly pull off 2 full rotations during the dance. As soon as i log in i will begin testing. Heartpierce - Item - World of Warcraft and Haste might play a large role in this.

Not to mention the instant teleport to the Bosses back, makes fights with add mechanics easier to handle or just to help maximize uptime on the boss.

Start of the rotation would likely go premed 2cp, ambush 3cp, SnD / HAT 1cp, Hemo 1cp, BSx2 1cp HAT 1cp rupture > shadowdance then just maintain SnD/Hemo, Evis will handle rupture after the start. use vanish and shadow dance on cd

With how fast your into full rotation you might want to TotT the tank before you start

Bunta601 · 10/12/10, 10:00 AM

Sorry I have a quick question that I can't be 100% sure of the answer. In posts and the spreadsheet so far is the terminology RvS. I take this is Revealing Strike as we have RS as Relentless Strike. Can some just confirm this for me or if I'm wrong just inform me of what it relates to.
Many thanks for your help.

zhrgg · 10/12/10, 10:15 AM

Originally Posted by Stuntspike

Why are you worrying about CP generation with HAT, Premed, and Initiative in the first place, the only feasible thing you might be lacking is energy, I would venture a guess that those point would be better spent like this.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Dropping points in precision for puncturing wounds or possible deadly momentum, providing your raids don't move slowly and less SnD means more Evis in the long run.

Why would you drop hit%? It's probably the only other stat that's good for rogues outside of haste now, and boss DPS matters the most.

Stuntspike · 10/12/10, 10:18 AM

Originally Posted by zhrgg

Why would you drop hit%? It's probably the only other stat that's good for rogues outside of haste now, and boss DPS matters the most.

I'm saying at higher gear levels you would drop hit and pick up the crit or swap it to fit what your lacking in early levels coupled with reforging you have some room to play with. To be honest though aside from refreshing SnD the point here is to use the fewest possible gcd's on anything but a finisher, everything else is just icing on the cake.

Looking into it again i need to correct myself on the Shadow dance rotation it will have a HAT cp in it costing you less energy and one less GCD. The poisons working out that way is just a bonus and the spec for being 80 isn't that much less effective.

Aside from keeping up SnD all the attacks your using are considered yellow i believe which could also lead to a scenario where special cap is all that required, but i need numbers in this spec to know how much of a % white damage will equal out to, from there calculating an EP value shouldn't be hard or hopefully to different. might be nice to finally have something concrete for sub. I am fairly sure recuperate is a pvp tool, health, energy and damage reduction seems kinda silly to be meant to be on constantly, at least for this spec in PvE.

It would also make sense to assume for every GCD you save to get to 5cp, which you can control by weighing your current combo points vs. what you need. Fewest keystrokes to 5cp the lower the number the larger the value mastery has on this spec. if every 4 keystroke is a finisher that would be a pretty big deal making the value of eviscerate even higher.

ieatpaperbag · 10/12/10, 11:02 AM

Originally Posted by Stuntspike

I'm saying at higher gear levels you would drop hit and pick up the crit or swap it to fit what your lacking in early levels coupled with reforging you have some room to play with. To be honest though aside from refreshing SnD the point here is to use the fewest possible gcd's on anything but a finisher, everything else is just icing on the cake.

Looking into it again i need to correct myself on the Shadow dance rotation it will have a HAT cp in it costing you less energy and one less GCD. The poisons working out that way is just a bonus and the spec for being 80 isn't that much less effective.

Keep in mind that higher-level gear comes from higher-level bosses will require more hit rating to maintain poison hit cap. Also, unless I have misunderstood you, I am not certain you will have the energy for a an 8 second shadowdance (at least for the rotation I think you suggested). If you hit premed ambush, evis, ambush, bs, evis, ambush, bs, evis assuming you pick up HaT combo points for the 2 latter evis, that costs 220 energy (counting RS and the BS glyph). Assuming you go into shadowdance with 100 energy you need to regen 120 energy over the 8 second duration, 40 more then the base 80 you will get which would require 50% haste.

Originally Posted by Bunta601

Sorry I have a quick question that I can't be 100% sure of the answer. In posts and the spreadsheet so far is the terminology RvS. I take this is Revealing Strike as we have RS as Relentless Strike. Can some just confirm this for me or if I'm wrong just inform me of what it relates to.
Many thanks for your help.

You assumed correctly, RS is Relentless Strikes and RvS is Revealing Strike

Stuntspike · 10/12/10, 11:14 AM

I'm certain you would have to pool for the shadow dance, but given 8 seconds, 2-4 Hat procs are possible, probable at higher crit levels.

So the dance rota might actually go ambush (40e) HAT (0e) BS (40e)+5e HAT (0e) + energy from Heartpierce - Item - World of Warcraft 5p Evis grants +25e.

I need to test to be sure but it looks right. Infact if the dagger helps me get close to 80e with normal regen added then it is doable. not counting what regens itself u get 70e back from all sources so the heartpierce proc needs to start in the first round of the dance. or rather you time the dance at the soonest possible moment of the proc.

Derfal · 10/12/10, 11:16 AM

I think you are underestimating the dps loss of RvS at 5cp.

Assuming that you don't proc any bonus CP's then you will have used 5 gcd's (I know about the energy constraints, and people have comented upon them before so for this example lets let them slide) so for 30 gcd's you'd get 6 finishers.
If you RvS at 5cp's then you'll use a 6th gcd, which equates to 5 finishers in the same time.
The 20% bonus makes this a bit of a wash as far as finisher damage is concerned, as you'll do 20% more finishers if you don't RvS at 5 cp's.

As soon as you gain 1 bonus cp the extra damage that you gain ( 20%) is negated if you RvS at 5cp's, as you would reduce the number of finishers performed by 25% (4cp builders v's 5).

At the extreme of 3 bonus cps in a cycle (though this is probably Cata teritory) then hitting RvS at 5cps would reduce the number of finishers by 50%.....

Stuntspike · 10/12/10, 11:32 AM

I do not see a need to do less than a 5cp finisher with the proposed spec, and im curious to see how many people can keep the rotation up or not miss a gcd. Please by all mean if you see a flaw tell me or possibly something i have not thought of, which is really the only reason i disclosed this to the community, seeing how far off everyone was to begin with.

rough draft sub SEP is what we need to work on, so aside from the obvious special hit cap and expertise cap, because if they miss/get dodged it's all off and u might be better of starting over.

specifically where hit over yellow stands with haste, AGI and crit because all of the energy regen is needed to accomplish this. which also leads to the eventual topic as to what trinkets will be good, we will be swinging a lot so on attack would be fine, an on use for maximum shadow dance damage output might be higher overall though because yet again it's something you can control.

Another thing to look at is the optimal recovery allowing for things like lag or sudden onset retardation, most of this is going to hinge on timing HAT cp's and knowing when you should use shadowdance to pull off all 8 hits.

Freitzehn · 10/12/10, 11:33 AM

Originally Posted by Derfal

I think you are underestimating the dps loss of RvS at 5cp.

Assuming that you don't proc any bonus CP's then you will have used 5 gcd's (I know about the energy constraints, and people have comented upon them before so for this example lets let them slide) so for 30 gcd's you'd get 6 finishers.
If you RvS at 5cp's then you'll use a 6th gcd, which equates to 5 finishers in the same time.
The 20% bonus makes this a bit of a wash as far as finisher damage is concerned, as you'll do 20% more finishers if you don't RvS at 5 cp's.

As soon as you gain 1 bonus cp the extra damage that you gain ( 20%) is negated if you RvS at 5cp's, as you would reduce the number of finishers performed by 25% (4cp builders v's 5).

At the extreme of 3 bonus cps in a cycle (though this is probably Cata teritory) then hitting RvS at 5cps would reduce the number of finishers by 50%.....

Who's still talking about RvS?

And it's very well known at this point that you only ever use RvS if you're at 4 combo points.

thebitterfig · 10/12/10, 12:17 PM

I can't think of a single reason why anyone would use Backstab during Shadow Dance. Backstab costs 40 energy for sub, and so does Ambush. However, Ambush both does more damage and provides more CP. It doesn't matter one iota how many CP are wasted, since even at worst case, the DPE is significantly higher and the CPE is exactly the same, thus no reason whatsoever to use Backstab. The slight energy saving from the glyph won't come close to matching the damage lost by using BS over Ambush.

Stuntspike · 10/12/10, 12:24 PM

Try having the energy you need to pull of 4 ambushes during shadow dance, you can't and its wastes anywhere from 1-3cp's which is a large deal overall. Also i am not suggesting that is what you need to do outside the shadow dance rotation, and again it is the number of finishing moves your looking at first, the rest is extra damage your bulk should be evis, backstab and really those 2 are just estimates until i log in.

I will have to sort through poison damage, rupture, evis, hemo, white hit. To test this properly I'm afraid to get an actual prediction of tracking the HAT cp's u will need to training dummy with 9 other people doing their jobs close by or an effective way to simulate the rotation, though i have no idea how to go about doing that.

darigan · 10/12/10, 12:40 PM

Concerning the Expertise cap an Idea:

When using the Sack and Setlegs you have 212 Expertise (12 over the cap). My Idea is reforging one item to haste, gaining 42 Haste and losing 42 Expertise (42.4, no idea if this turns into 42 or 43). After that you can gem one 20 Expertise and one 10 Expertise, 10 hit. The Question is, if 42 haste and 10 hit are worth more than 30 Agility.