I've found my biggest problem with energy and Combat is the Combat Potency procs from MG which I guess is more of a "problem" than anything else. I tend not to have too many issues with energy because of Blade Flurry's energy regen reduction since I generally only run Combat on Halfus and H Magmaw since it makes the fight so trivial but even with Blade Flurry running a very high amount of the time I sometimes find myself struggling to keep my energy down. I've also ran Combat on normal Council and Cho'gall to save time respeccing from Subtlety and of course while not running Blade Flurry it can be even more out of hand.

Although Vitality is a clear "problem" so to speak I find it a double edged sword if it were to be changed to some other random benefit such as maybe extra attack speed or whatever would make as a legitimate substitute because although we tend to find ourselves struggling not to cap we aren't always struggling not to cap (at least I haven't found it to be a problem using SS to 4-5 CP RvS at 4 SnD>Rup>Evis as my general rotation on single target). Sometimes we have no Combat Potency procs running in our favor so the extra base regen is useful or obviously while running Blade Flurry it's incredibly nice to have that baseline energy regen even through some of the energy spikes.

I haven't put a lot of thought into it personally but the one substitute for Vitality that I would find MAYBE OK would be attack speed over baseline energy regen. It would shift some more more damage onto white swings, poisons and mastery procs which would ideally give some more Combat Potency procs. Pure speculation but as I said I think it's a double edged sword so I think we'd find ourselves wanting that baseline energy more than enough to keep it the way it is.

Honestly, it sort of does. Wishlisting is the fastest way to send a discussion like this down the tubes, so lets try to keep it to a minimum. Its fine to discuss where we think the problems are, and tweaks to existing abilities that might solve them (i.e.:AR should only be +50% energy regen but only have half the cooldown), but please don't start making up new abilities from whole cloth.

That said: I don't entirely agree with the premise. Its true that AR is where the solution become untenable, but I think the baseline high regen is a problem in its own right, in that it robs us of a lot of our cycle flexibility. You cap out so quickly that there's very little you can do in terms of energy pooling to optimize your cycle - you mostly just have to hit stuff more or less as soon as it becomes available, as if you wait even 2 seconds you start to have concerns about capping. And personally, I think that makes the cycle a lot less interesting - rogues have never been distinguished by having sophisticated decisions about *what* buttons to push, but we partly made it up based on optimizations around *when* you pushed them. With that fading - particularly for combat, but also Mutilate sub-35% - I think it makes the class a lot less dynamic and interesting. So while I agree that rebalancing or replacing AR would be a partial solution and deal with the explicit capping problems, I think Combat would benefit by having less overall regen as well.

hey question, anyone done testing on the ptr. for dark moon card hurricane for combat for 4.2?

"Darkmoon Card: Hurricane damage done when triggered has been increased by 40%, however, it can no longer deal critical strikes and no longer receives any modifiers to its damage from the equipping player."

is it better or worse?

I absolutely agree that combat's energy regen is really the biggest problem with the spec's playstyle right now; it can vary so wildly that it makes it very difficult to attach a lot of stability to the rotation. For example, I can't use Tricks or Feint while AR or Prestor's are up without capping, but I can't unglyph Tricks without it punching me in the face during low-regen periods. I like that Combat has higher regen than Mutilate, since it does mean more decisions more quickly, but it can become overwhelming pretty quickly, and we're only at the start of the expansion right now; when we're all running around in ilvl 415 stuff, haste (and subsequently, regen) will be through the roof to the point that I suspect Combat is going to hit an effective haste cap in practical scanarios.

Options might be to smooth out the regen (all OH attacks return 3 energy) and/or adjust AR to something like Aldriana suggested. AR is something of a double whammy, too, since in addition to being an energy regen bonus, it's also an attack speed bonus; this obviously makes AR strongest when coupled with heroism, but it's also extremely likely that you're going to end up energy capping because of the interaction with Combat Potency. The regen range is just too high.

(Something like a consumes-extra-energy-for-extra-damage modifier on Eviscerate like Ferocious Bite/Execute would be interesting, but that is dangerously close to wishlisting :P)

The key point here is that 1 AP doesn't give 1 AP, because of Vitality and Blessing of Might. Hence, while you may gain 2.73 "real" AP, that's not worth 2.73 EP, as it doesn't take 2.73 AP on gear to get 2.73 "real" AP.

So, in short: it is accounting for the crit, which is the minority of the value of Agi, but not negligible; its just that Kings/Might/Vitality/Leather Specialization means that stats on gear don't map to character sheet stats quite the way you might expect.

I would like to discus finishers. I see that rupture is listed
Every time i broke down a rogues damage (in gear between 359 and 372) ruptures average damage, was very low per tick. I have done this for many a rogue (myself, and the other rogue in my guild, along with multiple rogues from the top 200 on various fights, with no damage buffs from the actual fight), and it always comes out the same, rupture is putting out WAY less damage than eviscerate. Myself personally, on a test dummy, my average rupture tick was 1.6k (rupture ticks 8 times per 5combo points, so thats 12.8k). For that same run my average evis was 22k.
I then did a 2nd run only using evis and my average was 19.8k, so a little bit of variation, but not much.

With Bandits Guile, and rupture scaling with it; Is it worth applying rupture in the 0,10, and 20 phases? Bandits Guile lasts 15 seconds, rupture lasts 16. i mention how long bandits guile lasts because of the 30% phase. It is to my understanding that rupture is a dps loss without question, when used in the 30%(red) phase, because it will scale back down to 0% modifier when the 30% phase ends.

Now for the question. Is a 'low-rupture' dps cycle a dps increase over a rupture-less dps cycle?
Is applying rupture in the 0,10, and 20% phases, expecting you will hop up at least one phase before rupture expires, a dps increase over just using evis? As i said before, you would NEVER use rupture in the 30% phase, because atleast 1 tick, most likely more, would be reduced to hitting without a % modifier on them. Even at that, IF you could get the full 8 ticks at 30% damage, it would not equate to an eviscerate hit.

/discuss

A key point that you're omitting is that Rupture costs less energy than Eviscerate, so you need to add (roughly) a quarter of the damage done by a SS - and account for the fact that that quarter of a SS will generate a fraction of a combo point - when assessing the damage done by Rupture.

To answer a bit more broadly: when I worked out the calculations for ShadowCraft without paying attention to aligning ruptures to your Bandit's Guile level, low rupture proved to be a slight DPS increase. Not a large DPS increase, but an increase. Hence, the current theory is that its worth using. If you can come up with some more detailed numbers refuting this assertion, I'm sure people would be very interested to see it; but the research you've done so far is insufficient for me to doubt the standing theory.

Rupture is best evaluated as damage-per-energy rather than damage-per-button-press. Unless you're energy capping, a higher DPE ability should always be the optimal choice. To this end, I'll sometimes opt for an Eviscerate over a Rupture during Heroism or whatnot when I don't feel like I'm going to be able to burn off enough energy to keep from capping; RS returning 25 energy makes it very easy to cap after a rupture when you're hasted up. That's a situational call, though - Rupture is not nearly as critical as it is for Mutilate rogues, so if you need to drop it, drop it.

In my most recent Chimaeron kill, I had 112 Rupture ticks, averaging 2991 per tick, or 957 DPE (assuming that Rupture was never clipped). I also had 27 Eviscerates averaging 26446 per, or 755 DPE. This includes the T11 4-piece bonus, as well as the +30% bleed debuff on the boss.

So to follow up on Amsner's post as well as the most recent changes to the guide: is there ever a situation when Rupture use makes sense if a Bleed debuff is not present? It seems like Rupturing during low levels of BG (and especially right before an increase to a next level) might be useful. Furthermore, on my rogue (ilvl 357) Shadowcraft tells me it's a slight (88.9) DPS loss to drop Rupture even without the Bleed debuff. Is it just the case that at higher gear levels increased energy regen makes the higher DPE of Rupture less appealing? I played around a bit with Shadowcraft and even at essentially BiS it still simulates dropping Rupture to be a tiny DPS loss even without the Bleed debuff.

Is it just the case that the introduction of slight complexity via Rupture will likely cost more DPS than dropping it?

EDIT: Apparently Crevan's results disagree with mine - not sure what the reason for the discrepancy is.

2nd EDIT: Realized my Glyphs were not imported properly into Shadowcraft - feel free to delete this post.

Empirically, based on my previous numbers, Rupture without the +30% debuff would be 736 DPE versus Eviscerate's 755 DPE.

Theoretically, Shadowcraft puts Rupture without the bleed debuff as a 176 DPS loss over a non-rupture rotation.

I can't see a situation in which it would outperform straight Eviscerates. Clipping ruptures, multi-target with Blade Flurry, and damage amp phases which won't last the whole duration of the Rupture debuff are additionally all points in Eviscerate's favor in practical scenarios.

While rupture seems to have few incentives to include in a rotation there are a few factors the could warrant using it in place of evis in very specific situations. They're fringe enough that the difference could be outweighed by gearing or a simple streak of RNG, but once again promote awareness of the situation when using rupture.

Restless Blades could conceivably bring a vital cool down about sooner under baseline energy regeneration using rupture, perhaps when switching to an add and getting sprint and misdirect back up before switching back, or being able to align AR and KS at a more opportune time in the encounter. Glyph of Sinister Strike makes it impossible to directly time how much of a factor RB will have, but in general cool downs will come up sooner when using rupture.

Any time damage becomes more valuable at key points will also encourage delaying the payoff from combo points leading up to it. It could be a predictable debuff increasing the value of the dot already present or loading damage to better handle a mechanic such as Aegis of Flame. The value here should correspond directly to the magnitude of the mechanic, but I would be hard pressed to say they're significant in current content.