To expand upon this explanation: A rogue's damage is not GCD capped, but energy limited. This gives us a bit of leeway as to when we use our moves as it is our energy, and not our GCDs that determine how many moves we pull off in a fight. The idea behind the envenom buff is then to maximize the amount of time it is up, as it boosts our regular melee hit damage through more poison procs. You would then want to delay using mutilate envenom again (while the buff is active) as long as you are able to (pooling energy), since waiting would not affect the number of moves you do in the fight, and would prolong the buff time by allowing the first buff to roll as long as possible. The important thing in all this though, is to not let your energy cap, as this would reduce the number of abilities you can use in a fight. Envenom clipping is the act of clipping the envenom buff due to being unable to hold back any more due to potentially losing energy due to capping out.


Edit for typo.

I might be misunderstanding your question but it sounds like you just need to use #showtooltip on the first line and use the '?' icon

'#showtooltip' and '?' as an icon makes the macro show icon and tooltip of the first skill/item you have in your macro.
my macro is just '/swapactionbar 6 1', there's no skill or item to be shown even when i use '#showtooltip'.

I think my problem can be resolved with some scripting like "show mutilate icon, pressing one time changes icon to backstab, pressing another time changes it back to mutilate icon" but unfortunately i have no idea how to write such a script.

Macros aren't conditional, and that includes showtooltip.

Thank you for the explanations. I understand the importance of not letting the energy go to wasted and getting the most out of the envenom caused buff before doing another envenom, however, how does using mutilate while that buff is up effect it negatively?

He misspoke. He meant to say that you want to delay the use of envenom again while the buff is still up. It's optimal to ensure that the envenom buff is up when you mutilate because it can proc poisons from both hands. So only pool when you already have the 4+ cps.

I dont know if this has been brought up. It might be pure speculation and just blatantly horrible luck.

Has any other combat rogues noticed any significant issues with their offhand durability due to Main Gauche proc'ing excessive offhand attacks, I'm fairly well geared half 333 half 346 right now, with mastery being one of the weakest stats ive been trying to get exp capped for the time being because im over spell hit and have thus reforged as much mastery as i can to exp. That being said I still have 10.4 points of mastery which at 2points a piece is ~22.1% chance to proc an offhand on a mainhand attack added to the 16% base.

What i've been noticing over a weekend of heavy dungeon running probly 10+ hours a day, my OH (Buzzerblade) would be yellow at 5/65 where as my MH (theif's blade) would be at ~50/95. And for that matter all of the rest of my gear would be at or around 50% dura while my OH is <10%.

Anyone able to test / confirm / provide any insight into this would be greatly appreciated, maybe if it is found to be the case we could see if blizz could do something about it.

Two Questions about sub:

1. Aldriana, did you consider a more eviscerate focussed sub cycle with hemo as main cp builder and talent points 3 in ruthlessness, 3 in coup de grace and 2 in lethality + evi glyph, if yes how far was it behind?

2. How can we try to help you to get a more sophisticated model of sublety? Should we provide logs or do some mechanics testing?

I just wanted to chime in and say that I have absolutely observed this behaviour as well. MH Fist of Pained Senses (H), OH Buzzer Blade (H). It happens very often that my offhand goes red while my mainhand is at more than half dura. I am sporting 333 mastery rating.

1) I've looked at it briefly but haven't had time to model it in detail. My sense is that it winds up being inferior, but I don't have any good estimates as to by how much.

2) The biggest thing limiting improvement of the subtlety model is simply my free time. Between work, the holidays, and getting geared up + raiding, I've had very little time to worry about improving any of the class models - and, subtlety being apparently weaker than the other trees, I confess that its not my first priority for spending time on. Eventually there are some questions that will need to be answered, such as: how many crits per second does a typical raid generate? How variable is the cycle? How flexible is the cycle? What's the effect of latency on squeezing moves into a Shadow Dance? And so forth. But all in all, even to the extent that I do have time to work on modeling, it seems to me that working on what appears to be the weakest tree, played by the fewest people, should not be my first priority.

Thirded, MH is Cruel Barb, OH is Buzzer Blade, 88 mastery. Just need someone to chime in now with a different OH who is also seeing the increased durability loss.

I can confirm that I was getting the increased dura loss with both Throat Slasher and Quicksilver Blade, while mainhanding Calder's Coated Carrion Carver and Thief's Blade respectively.

Maybe I'm ignorant of how durability losses are incurred, but wouldn't it makes since that regardless of MG the offhand would lose durabilty quicker simple because it has a lower swing timer (ie faster weapon speed). Thus it hits more often and as a result loses more durability.

I play assassination and I have noticed while lvling that my offhand is often yellow before my mainhand and had always chalked it up to the difference in weapon speed. So I would assume this is exacerbated as a combat rogue due to MG, though I'm not sure why this is surpising/bothering so many. If its a real issue get a traveler's mammoth or make friends with an engineer with jeeves.

You are more than likely correct Schmoopy. Also keep in mind that the difference between MH and OH durability is going to be even greater than that of Assassination because Combat uses and even slower MH, and Mutilate somewhat evens the durability because it attacks with both weapons. So for all you Combat rogues out there, sorry to say chalk it up to "working as intended" and carry around some extra repair money and a pocket repairer.

So as combat, using rupture in your cycle increases dps by ~1%. This is with Mangle/Blood Frenzy right? So without the bleed buff should rupture be removed from rotation?
And what about switching SND glyph for Evis Glyph? You could also move one point from Ruthlessness to Coup de Grace, 7% increased dmg for evis might be worth it if your only using SnD and Evis as your finishers.

The spec and glyphs are the ones that have shown to be superior in ShadowCraft. Eviscerate Glyph and Coup De Grace are both clearly inferior to the posted setup(s).

Re: Mangle. Yes, it appears that you should drop rupture from your cycle if you don't have the bleed debuff.

Regarding Slice and Dice being the best third glyph, is that for tank and spank style bosses or in general? Would its value go down on target switching fights where the extra 6 seconds might go to waste regularly?

I'm not worried about repair gold, as that is a drop in the bucket... however the problem i have is having to go to get repaired so frequently. The dura wear was always very close to being even prior to the mastery. But now its brutal, like i mentioned its almost broken when the rest of my gear is at 50% or more. Not only is the mastery mediocre at best it is a penalty to weapon durability.

And as far as my misunderstanding of the numbers that I posted earlier i was at work and it was late, but ty for letting me know how that works.

Agility is extraordinarily valuable and weapon speed is not. It's even less valuable as a result of main gauche. Slower is still better, but not at such a significant cost. In fact it's probably not better unless there's no cost at all; e.g. two same-tier same-stat weapons of different speeds.

I was wondering what the EP value for attack power is. I have been unable to find it in the other threads on the rogue forum. This is specifically for sssassination however the combat value would also be of use.

(There is a previous post in this topic that indicates it as being 1AP = 1EP however I would like that confirmed)

Thankyou.

What about assassination? Should one drop rupture if the +30% bleed buff is missing? Or is the extra poison dmg/energy regen from rupture enough to keep it in the rotation?

Both the energy regen and the venomous wounds dmg are more important than the actual bleed damage. As such Rupture should be up regardless of bleed debuff.