Not if you have to clip Envenom because you have too much energy pooled. Sorry, but this is completely inaccurate. You're trying to play under the worst-case scenario, which is admirable for when you're planning a dinner for thousands of people or when you're getting a new puppy, but not when you're trying to min/max your DPS.

Max DPS is about the best-case scenario. Plan around that.

Le sigh... you're still stuck on this ruthlessness proc followed by a mut crit, I specifically mentioned that I wanted to rule this out due to this being a minority occurrence. I would suggest that maximizing dps means to play optimally the majority of the time, and the majority of the time (at least at current gear levels) you will be required to mutilate twice to generate the combo points to envenom again. In this scenario clipping envenom because of being energy capped cannot occur. (I mean, the entire discussion is about not having enough energy to mutilate twice during the envenom buff and whether this matters, let alone having too many combo points and capping out!)

At any rate, I totally agree with you now that one should start his/her envenom right at 35 energy when the buff is down.

I thought this might be interesting to post. I just downloaded the most recent SimCraft for 4.0.6 (updated on the 18th) and ran through 10,000 simulations to get EP values. The following are my results. Note, I am hit capped and chose the "positive deltas only" scaling, so you can assume hit to be white hit. They are surprisingly similar to the results I get through ShadowCraft, which I will also post. It is still off a bit from ShadowCraft, but it seems to me that the results are a bit closer and we may need a further look into the benefits of SimCraft.

SimulationCraft:
DPS - 21,043
Agi - 2.84
Mastery - 1.39
Haste - 1.21
Crit - 0.98
Hit - 0.81
Exp - 0.75
Wdps - 3.66
WOHdps - 1.38

ShadowCraft:
DPS - 20,332
Agi - 2.59
Mastery - 1.17
Haste - 1.05
Exp - 0.95
Crit - 0.87
Hit - 0.67

I am finding myself wondering this same thing. With Mastery being rated higher am finding it hard to rationalize giving up so much of it for a lesser weighted stat, just feels counter-intuitive.

Would it not be best to actually just add calculations in for the % chance of VW, Ruthlessness, and Relentless Strikes procs? Only taking the instant (read 1-2sec window w/ rupture tick) you would have:

(0.60 * 10) + ((25) OR (0.80 * 25)) = Instant energy return. Add that to your base regeneration.

You do not get the actual values when you try to average your returns. You get statistical data with a sample size too small to be mathematically valid. It is going to be the times when the percentages are closer to 100 that your DPS is the highest, at which point you do not want to pool energy without the Envenom buff present.

I've been following this discussion closely, and while I 100% agree with Sculduggery's assessment, as is, I wanted to add another reason I do not to pool without the Envenom buff present: the chance of a dodged/missed/parried Envenom. Envenoming without pooling will still give you your Envenom buff, and you may be able to squeeze 2 Mutilates before the Envenom buff that resulted from the dodge/parry/miss falls off.

Now, you can't expect your Envenom to be dodged, but with Expertise EPs being what they are, you will not be able to avoid it either. The bottom line is that it will happen. I also find that when I pool to 60-80 energy and get dodged, I am forced to clip the Envenom buff or cap energy, if Rupture is still up. If Rupture is about to fall, that's even more reason to Envenom early, since I need to get that going again, ASAP.

In regards to CB and deadly scheme, about 2 weeks ago, I remember a few times where I would use CB, have deadly scheme proc a few seconds later, and when I envenomed my CB would go back to not being on cooldown. I can't say 100%, but I noticed a few times where I had used CB and had it mysteriously not be on cooldown a few seconds later.

This seemed very weird and because of the 25 energy from CB, something that would be beneficial to know for sure. However, I didn't get around to testing it until almost a week later.

I setup on a practice dummy, put up snd and got 5cp, then used cold blood and waited for deadly scheme to proc. Using shiv for cp(which cant crit so doesn't use CB) I kept snd up, and after 8-10 minutes, deadly scheme never procd... I know the proc % is only 1% so maybe I should have tried for longer, but within 30sec of envenoming and consuming CB, deadly scheme procd.

Unless I had some really bad luck, it seems they may have hotfixed deadly scheme so that it can't proc while CB is active, but if anyone else has tested this(within the last week) I'd be interested to hear our results.

The reports so far seem to support this, as CB is accidentally used just after a DS proc. Perhaps Blizzard will implement a conditional lockout for when a 'more powerful spell is active' to prevent this in the future. It is nice to know that DS will not overwrite CB, though.

I've been reading through this discussion and am curious as to the validity of this statement.

From how I understand it, wouldn't it be better to pool for that extra mutilate in the case that you are only pooling for less time than it would take for two white hits (one MH one OH). In a 1 second window of time you get a best case scenario of 1 main hand and 2 off hand swings (without heroism up), worst case being 0 main hand and 1 off hand.

So to determine how long you can pool your energy for 1 extra mutilate before it's a loss in dps ( this is assuming snd and rupture both have sufficient durations) would be the amount of time to land a main hand and off hand attack. To calculate that you would need to include the probability to miss those white attacks since we value white hit so lowly.

Thus the amount of time it would be optimal to pool energy shortens as your weapon swing timers shorten (ie during heroism).

P.S. I am not arguing the other points of this discussion, but just this one point as I understand it. If I am making incorrect assumptions I apologize.

Couple of things -- 1. our attack speed is quite a bit faster than you suggest. Your raid buffed MH speed is probably 1.05-1.1, depending on gear without any temporary buffs.

2. You are over simplifying the problem. In reality, the situation is quite complicated, and is more susceptible to simming than to back of the envelope analysis.

The question is NOT whether you have some unbuffed white hits while pooling, it is:

Is the weighted damage of extra mut poison damage greater than the weighted damage loss from the risk that pooling will cause you to energy cap (disastrous) or overwrite an existing Envenom buff (in which case, your analysis above applies?

(average buffed extra mutilates from pooling, per second * extra poison damage from envenom buffed mut) > average seconds of energy capping * dps loss from capping + Avg seconds of subsequent overwriting * dps loss per second of overwriting.

So basically, to math it out, you would need to put on one side of the equation the extra damage from an envenom buffed mutilate times the probability of that mut occurring (if you get 4 combo points from mut 1, or if pooling didn't push you over a threshold from which you get an extra mut, pooling did nothing;
On the other side, we would need the expected losses from pooling, such as energy capping from dodged envenoms, unexpectedly high proc rate on Venemous Vim, unexpected movement, etc. and;
expected losses from losing white swing poison damage by overwriting the envenom buff in the future, due to your delay, which can easily happen in the high energy return and/or high combo point return scenarios.

Again, this needs a sim, but the potential losses are enormous, and the potential gains quite small. So without good sim results, I'd say one would do well to envenom any time you have 4 CP and the envenom buff is not up (or you are high on energy).