KS should definitely be delayed until the concentration bar is full, but I would like to know when y'all hero. We hero 15 seconds into the fight when everyone has full concentration, which causes massive energy capping (especially if the the haste 4 set procs). Do y'all use it somewhere else that you found to be more beneficial? At 15 seconds in, all dps in the raid are guaranteed to have full concentration bar, but is there somewhere else you found that it could be put to better use?

I toyed around with both and found using AR at the start allows bring its back up for basically every cleave phase. AR also falls right before/around the time we got full concentration, leading into hero with a BG KS. The AR would also stack completely with a pre-pot, whereas 15 seconds in would not get the full benefit.

I haven't had THAT many attempts on the boss yet, so would like to hear more about how the timings were working if you wait the 15 seconds, especially if you pop hero then. If you don't pop hero then, I would like to know when y'all do pop it. Since there is limited postings on the subject, I am basically just asking you to elaborate a little on how it all goes down.

You are correct in saying that it depends on tactics and we cant say for sure do xyz at 123 seconds. With that said, there are certain things to do over others.

Now on to your specific strat: does this allow for AR to be back up during cleave phases? That's really the main point of hitting it off the bat imo. Sure, you forgo one BG with AR up for maybe 5-10 seconds of that one BG, but, at least with hero, I get my AR back in time for the cleave phases most of the time. I prefer the AR during cleave. However, if you don't hero at the start at save it for a later time, then yes... the best time to drop AR would probably be during 100% concentration after a KS in BG. I just fear that this would limit your ability to use AR during the cleave phase, where I think it is more beneficial.

I think this is something to play around with based on the specific strat you use (especially regarding hero timing). I will try out using AR right after KS, just to see timings, but with out hero near the start, it will waste a lot of the energy gain. I will post back if I change viewpoints on it :-)

My AR is usually coming off CD for the 3rd to 4th leap in Cat phase. I was having problems with the duration running into the 2nd transition where everyone gets stunned for a few seconds. We Lust right when everyone is hitting full concentration as well, and I'm basically GCD-capped instead of waiting on energy for the next minute of the fight. I'm going to try using AR at the start when we get back to him on this reset, as having the extra energy for those 15 seconds "might" be more dps than basically just having the extra 20% attack speed with a full concentration bar. It would also allow it to come off CD much earlier during the cat phase, so we'll see.

Yes, energy capping is like a necessary evil on that fight. So much so that I'm wondering if speccing a point or so out of relentless strikes or maybe reforging some of my 2600+ haste into mastery (I'm at like 16.5% spell hit already as well) might be a more viable option.

Hotfixed on 7/26. Assuming that this isn't only referring to the burn phase...

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that the 200% haste buff drastically lowers the ep value of haste. There's also a 75% crit buff, but I have no idea what that would change ep wise for the other stats. I know that you only have those two buffs for a portion of the fight (if you're flying anyways), but since the haste buff starts stacking pretty early (though only 8% per stack) and since both the haste and crit buff should be up during the whole burn phase I figured it would be a pretty good idea to reforge around the best case scenario.

Does anyone have an idea of where the gimmick buffs place our stats ep wise? I'm thinking about just reforging my exp into the spell hit cap and then maybe... mastery? I wish there was a haste modifier slider on shadowcraft, since I'm not really sure if I should even be reforging to haste at all for this fight. I'm already gcd capped at like 6 stacks (or something ridiculously low like that), and doesn't that decrease the value of haste pretty significantly?

Would the increased haste increase the value of mastery significantly or does it not affect it at all? I know with more attacks you'll have more MG procs, but the actual proc rate doesn't get higher so I guess technically it's not scaling up with haste. The same logic would work with hit, right? There are more white attacks to be missed but the percent per white attack doesn't actually change, so the ep value stays the same? I'm obviously bad at theorycrafting so any help with figuring this out would be appreciated.

On this guy's heroic kill (our longest heroic pull so far was only 7.5 minutes, not exactly fair to use one of our logs) Alysra's Razor had a 47.8% up time, so for averaging it out would it be fair to assume that it's worth roughly a static 35.85% crit buff throughout the whole fight? I know there's a lot more to it (not doing full/a lot of dps during the tornado phase [where the buff is active and counting towards up time] and having to LoS at certain stack counts) but I'm not sure how else to go about it. Would you increase the 'effectiveness' of the crit/haste buffs by 50% during the duration of the burn phase (since this is the highest dps point of the fight it's what I want to reforge around, but it only happens twice and it's kinda short)? The haste buff looks like it'd be really annoying to average out since there are 25 different increments to work with.

Or should I just go with the simple solution of reforging based on the ep value list of normal conditions? The haste thing is really bothering me though.

Guilds that care about killing shit asap to get to their current progression boss will most likely not be sending up Combat rogues, as we simply cannot compete with other classes using the buff. Although, I do petition for the job every week

Hotfix from today. Worth dropping expertise for spell hit cap and Mastery now? Probably would depend on how fast you can drop the Initiates.

If your reforging for just this fight - Sure. But your DPS would be less then stellar on any other fight. And this would really only apply if your in the air full time, Initiates and everything can still dodge.

I agree that it really isn't worth the time to do any real math for the one or two combat rogues out there who get to be in the air team, so I'm going to post what I've figured on my own for the other few combat rogues that may find themselves flying. Maybe there's enough of us for a short discussion. Anyone can critique this if you want, I'm no where near perfect at this stuff. The biggest road block I've had doing this is not knowing how much of haste's total ep the energy generation portion is. 10%? 30%?

Right now I'm thinking of doing white hit > mastery > haste > crit > exp. The stuff below is assuming my ep values, not the listed standard bis ep values. I honestly haven't even looked at those since shadowcraft has had its bugs fixed. If you're doing this I'd recommend that you use your own ep values (or at least compare them and see if they're close to mine).

White hit ep is 1.07 for 60% of the fight, add in the ep of crit (1.02) for the other 40% of the fight (total ep of 2.09 for 40% of the fight) where you're crit capped without the white hit (and thus white hit is effectively both white hit and crit, correct?) and you get an averaged ep of 1.478. If there's a better (but still reasonable) way to do that please share; I know averages aren't perfect. Maybe I'm just really stupid, idk. So if the energy gain portion of haste is worth at least .032 ep (pretty sure it's safe to assume that's true?) then white hit>haste in the average case. This assumes that you're gcd locked for 100% of the fight, but in reality it's probably only like 70-80% of the fight... I don't have any kind of non anecdotal way of finding out though, but even if it was closer to 60% of the fight I'm still pretty sure white hit would be above haste (definitely gcd locked during the burn phase unless you're a horrible flier/runner during tornados).

Being gcd locked for about 70% of the fight (including during the burn phase) would only have to be an ep drop of .29 ep for mastery>haste (1.51 ep for haste, 1.22 for mastery), which I think is probably true with normal reforging. Reforged along the lines of the earlier mentioned priority leaves me at 945 unbuffed haste though, which is in practice probably going to require closer to 15 or so stacks of the buff (8% haste each stack) before I start energy capping, which drops the gcd locked time down by about 30 seconds (30 seconds each time you have to start restacking the buff, so between 60 and 90 seconds depending on your kill speed). This is the part I'm not sure about, but I think I would rather error on the side of mastery>haste because you're without a doubt gcd locked during the burn phase, even with only 945 haste.

That just leaves haste vs crit, where crit is only useful for 60% of the fight (which excludes the burn phase), and where haste is useful for the whole fight attack speed wise, but only about 30% of the fight (wooo still anecdotal) for the energy regen. I'm leaning towards haste>crit, mostly because of the burn phase part (attack speed part of haste gets buffed for that duration twice in the fight, crit is useless).

I could swear they face the target during the cast and thats where brushfire goes. -> noone in your back, you are save unless you are the target, then just circle strafe?

Yes they do. But it's fucking ridiculous to identify their casting direction.
Maybe I should just play in first person view.

I find the female's casting direction is harder to identify as they appear to cast at a sideways angle, making it difficult to see exactly which way they are turned.