You don't really ever want to use Killing Spree while it's not the head phase on Magmaw heroic, and even on the headphase, you'll have to pay attention whether it's a risk or not. Whenever you split yourself from the melee group, you risk wiping the raid by misplacing the fire, which really isn't worth the dps loss. As you always end up infront of the boss while you're fighting in the normal phase, and if you happen to get an add spawning ontop of you there, there's no way saving the 2 people that jump up to chain the head down, as they'll instantly die of ignition. And no, you can't cloak/bubble it and so on, you are 'stunned', as in your character being considered on the ground for a second before the animation actually lands you, so any fire pit in the middle will kill those jumping on the worm, and you definitely don't want that to happen. Just run with Adrealine Rush right away, and you'll have both Adrealine Rush and Killing Spree ready for almost every headphase, dependant on the raid dps. You usually fall behind on the last head phases. As long as you use AR right away when the fight starts, you'll have it up for the head phase, wait till it fades and you have about 5 seconds before the boss retreats and with deep insight is up, just use Killing Spree then if the positioning is alright.

Consider two things:

1) If you're pre-potting, the early KS gets your first KS in when you still have your Tol'vir buff, as well as any early trinket procs that will otherwise be on ICD ~25 seconds into the fight.

2) PVE isn't about burst, it's about high sustained. As mentioned above, KS before you pop AR lets your increased CP generation during AR work towards reducing your KS cooldown, potentially giving you an extra KSpree for the encounter.

I did do it your way before, but I always felt that it was really tight, and a lucky string of combat potency procs could easily energy cap me during KSpree, since you don't really have time to bleed off excess energy before Bandit's falls.

I've been consistently ranking on WoL, so I feel pretty confident that the way I'm doing it works well. I'm certainly open to improving that, but I did it your way for a while, and was never really happy with it.

Lately I've been testing refreshing SnD at 1-3 CP instead of as many as possible, simply because it doesn't lower the CD on R/KS like Evis/Rupture do. Since the energy returns from using higher CP finishers varies directly with how many CP you have upon using the finishing move, is there any way to calculate an optimal number of CP to refresh SnD at? Or should we always refresh it with as many as possible? (Obviously without letting it drop for more than .2sec/etc)

The increase in melee damage from SnD is so great that waiting any number of milliseconds after that first CP (2 if procced) wastes opportunities for increased damage right away. 1 CP--->SnD ASAP. Indeed, taking the SnD glyph enables the duration to last even longer, so SnD after just 1 CP is done with even greater impunity. If you're accumulating CP's for a finishing move, and SnD runs out, you still ----> Refresh SnD and forego the finshing move. It's that important. This is especially true if you're counting on Redirect for the next target.

Of course, if the target is a boss, and unquestioningly close to death, go ahead and use the finishing move.

Edit: Deleted line

Sorry, may I know which tool you guys use for reforging? I tried using Shadowcraft but it keeps returning me a value of 769 Expertise. Cant seem to hit the magical 781. Any help would be cool. Thanks!!

Sorry for the noobness, just swapped over to combat from multilate earlier today.

Shadowcraft is likely reforging for optimum dps, not expertise cap. While this puts a strong weight on expertise, it's possible that the "chunk based" nature of reforging doesn't cap your expertise, when reforged for highest dps.

To be more blunt, there is nothing all that special about the cap anyway. You don't need to be capped to obtain the maximum potential DPS for your set of gear. However it can be okay to ignore a tool like this a little bit and still cap Expertise just to make things easier for you if it's personally difficult to react to dodges.

The neck (of the Zephyr) is exactly the same as [Necklace of Strife] except that it has one less agility and stamina. The cloak (of the Zephyr) on the other hand, will likely be better than the listed [Cloak of Biting Chill] for both Combat and Assassination. I'll update both lists accordingly when I get the chance to play with reforging.

I know this stays a little from the intended topic, but I fear what combat will become in 4.2 and on if they keep it the same. Do not take this post the wrong way, i LOVE combat and have been raiding as it MS all of t11.
Going to quick break down a couple things, for a basis.
For a combat rogue, the PR is, agility>hit to yellow cap>expertise to 26>haste>hit to poison cap>mastery>hit to white cap>crit

Now, breaking down what each 2ndary stat does.
Hit, quite obvious, increases the chance for you to hit the target.
Expertise, decreases the chance for the target to dodge(and parry, but you shouldnt be in parry range on all but a few encounters) your attacks
haste, increases your melee attack speed AND energy regen
Mastery, increases your chance to proc main Gauche.
Main Gauche, your Main hand attacks have a__% chance to grant yo an attack that deals equalto 100% ofa main hand attack. Each point of mastery increases the chance by an additional 2%. Your special attacks are counted as main hand attacks, therefore able to proc main gauche aswell.

Hit and expertise both increase the amount of times your attacks land on an encounter, for both weapons. This increases the chance to proc main Gauche, and combat potency. Mastery directly effects the % chance to proc main gauche. Main Gauche CAN proc combat potency.

Yes, thats right. EVERY STAT but crit, increases your energy regen.
With AR up, i have a hard time not energy capping, and if i have to feint, i cap. This is the first tier of raiding, and energy capping is already ALMOST an issue. Although i love how combat plays right now, how fast the rotation is, and everything included (especially bandit's guile, and restless blades) this design will not be practical past t12, if bliz doesnt want rogues un-able to keep from energy capping.

I agree its a problem, but I think you exaggerate the scope somewhat. While its true that all stats increase your energy regen, its also true that most of them don't increase it by very much. Even haste takes a good 700+ rating to give you an extra 1 energy per second, and the other stats give much much less than that (I admit I haven't done detailed numbers lately, but my off-the-cuff estimate would be that it takes several thousand hit rating to give 1 energy per second. So yes, regen is going to creep up; its maybe 18 in the current tier and will be maybe 20 in BIS T12 - but its not like its going to double by the end of the expansion.

That said: Combat regen *is* too high, but that's mostly just that it was too high to start with. Fundamentally, vitality is just a poorly designed mastery for Combat. It would be nice if they could do something about this (as well as the general rogue problems of subpar DPS and miserable target-switching). We'll see if they do. But I don't know how much I'd worry about the scaling situation, as while the problem is bad and getting worse... its not getting *too* much worse.

There's still the cost of stacking up DP on a new target to get IP procs, which even for Combat is 20k damage per target swap. Its not as bad as it is for Mutilate (which also really wants to keep ruptures running for optimal DPS), but its still inferior to warriors and some of the other classes. I guess the way I'd put it is that Combat isn't *bad* at target swapping, but its not really *good* at it either - much like everything else about the spec. While its playable on many fights, the only ones Combat really excels on are the ones where you get to abuse Blade Flurry all fight long.