Combat Guide for Cata [12/01/2011] - Page 54

SharQueDo · 12/02/11, 10:30 AM

Due IP being PPM based and WP a flat % proc chance, I tested both IP/DP and WP/DP combo's out with the stage 1 daggers on dummies to see if WP would surpass IP on the mainhand seeing we wield a 1.80 speed weapon now instead a 2.60 speed one.

Here are my results. Do note that it's just two small tests with my current gear (386 ilvl), although they both come pretty close to each other.

Just white swings, no yellows or trinkets for 195 white swings.

1+ SnD > 5 Evis > SS rotation, no cds but with trinkets for 3:03 minutes.

As you can see they're pretty close together. I wonder if WP could surpass IP one day on higher gear levels, but unfortunately I'm not very familiar with scaling of said poisons.

I also wonder if it would be worth exchanging a GCD for a Shiv if 5DP Duration <= 3 seconds to guarantee 5DP upkeep (and to maximize MH poison procs), instead of letting a stack of DP fall off and start from scratch, seeing it takes a good amount of time before combat has 5DP stacks up again.

CptColbert2 · 12/02/11, 12:22 PM

With the faster speeds of the two 397 daggers, would it effect the value of mastery for combat? As of now I'm wondering whether or not the tradeoff between more mastery procs as combat from the increased speed would make up for the lesser damage per MG proc.

Prioritizing mastery instead of spell hit (while keeping around 500 for stability) it keeps me within 50 dps of reforging away from mastery and towards spell hit as combat. However with that, keeping mastery around 1000-1200, is there a certain point that the reduced speed of mainhand attacks will increase or decrease the value of mastery?

I've ran a few tests but am not really sure how to calculate this.

• Aldriana · 12/02/11, 12:42 PM

Originally Posted by SharQueDo

Due IP being PPM based and WP a flat % proc chance, I tested both IP/DP and WP/DP combo's out with the stage 1 daggers on dummies to see if WP would surpass IP on the mainhand seeing we wield a 1.80 speed weapon now instead a 2.60 speed one.

Here are my results. Do note that it's just two small tests with my current gear (386 ilvl), although they both come pretty close to each other.

Just white swings, no yellows or trinkets for 195 white swings.

1+ SnD > 5 Evis > SS rotation, no cds but with trinkets for 3:03 minutes.

As you can see they're pretty close together. I wonder if WP could surpass IP one day on higher gear levels, but unfortunately I'm not very familiar with scaling of said poisons.

I also wonder if it would be worth exchanging a GCD for a Shiv if 5DP Duration <= 3 seconds to guarantee 5DP upkeep (and to maximize MH poison procs), instead of letting a stack of DP fall off and start from scratch, seeing it takes a good amount of time before combat has 5DP stacks up again.

So far as I know both IP and WP are PPM, hence the relative quality of the two options should be completely independent of MH weapon speed.

Radghr · 12/02/11, 1:16 PM

This does bring up a different point though: does it make sense to put Deadly Poison on MH and instant poison on OH for combat with the daggers?

IP has a 25.71% chance to procc on a 1.8 speed weapon and a 20% chance to procc on a 1.4 speed weapon.

Deadly poison has a 30% chance to procc.

So we gain 4.39% procc chance on MH attacks and lose 10% procc chance on offhand attacks. So if we perform more than 10/4.71=~2.13 as many mainhand proccing attacks than offhand proccing attacks switching would make sense.

However a quick look at my character through basic simming suggests that I only perform arround 1.58 times as many MH attacks as offhand attacks. While certain stats will change this number (especially having lower hit and higher mastery) its so far below the needed amount of additional attacks that barring ridiculous changes in statpriorities the traditional IP mainhand and DP offhand will remain best regardless of gear in 4.3.

SharQueDo · 12/02/11, 1:34 PM

Originally Posted by Aldriana

So far as I know both IP and WP are PPM, hence the relative quality of the two options should be completely independent of MH weapon speed.

Ah, I was under the impression that WP was still a flat % proc chance. Thanks for clearing that up.

Zimeron · 12/02/11, 3:41 PM

Originally Posted by SharQueDo

Ah, I was under the impression that WP was still a flat % proc chance. Thanks for clearing that up.

The in-game files show a 50% chance for Wound Poison and a 20% chance for Instant Poison, which match fairly close with the small sample size you provided. Have these been ruled out previously in-favor of the PPM mechanics? PPM mechanics generally don't have a proc chance listed or list a 100% chance from what I've seen.

Sarvius · 12/02/11, 3:58 PM

Those were the original procrates, and they were normalized a while back. The way it works now is that they have a 20% and 50% procrate for a 1.4 speed weapon, and they scale up linearly from there. Much the same way spellpower coefficients work. So wound poison has a 100% procrate on a 2.8 weapon, which is why it used to be a nice trick to put on a 2.8 and cast FoK to get deadly brew slowing all of the valks the moment they spawned on LK.

• Aldriana · 12/02/11, 4:02 PM

As of 3.0, Wound Poison and Instant Poison were 50% and 20% proc rates, respectively. However, this resulted in rogues using almost exclusively 1.4 speed weapons to maximize poison procs; hence, they converted them to PPM in such a way that they still proc at those rates for a 1.4 speed weapon - i.e., your Wound Poison proc rate for a 1.8 speed weapon is given by 1.8 / 1.4 * 50% ~= 64.3%.

It is theoretically possible that this has changed since then, though I have not yet heard any indication that that is the case. If you would like to do some testing (as in, a couple thousand swings to get reasonable error bars on your proc rates) to verify the behavior by all means do so; but personally, I'd be surprised to find that it has changed.

Landerolin · 12/03/11, 7:00 AM

Very minor note,

"*Since [Enchant Weapon - Landslide] is currently quite expensive; a reasonable alternative is to use double [Enchant Weapon - Hurricane]. Since haste is a relatively strong stat for Combat compared to Assassination, [Enchant Weapon - Avalanche] is not competitive for Combat the way it is for Assassination."

Should probably be removed now as Landslide is no longer prohibitively expensive.

MaskedEmrys · 12/03/11, 6:58 PM

Now that shadowcraft seems to be working, I've been running various gearsets through and seeing what's what. I've noticed that shadowcraft shows a very slight DPS increase when you change Killing Spree to be used on cooldown. By very slight, my exact numbers were: 56.8 dps increase at full t13 heroic BIS with Heroic No'kaled and Electrowing Dagger; 43.5 dps increase with full heroic BIS and Sleeper/Dreamer; 40.8 DPS with my rogue's current gear (T1 daggers, 378 gear with 2 raid finder pieces and some 359 in the mix); and oddly enough 40.8 DPS once more with a full 359/372 set.

Previously, shadowcraft would show me a slight DPS increase in using it only during Deep Insight, as the guide suggests. Has anyone done any testing on this?

Furtim · 12/03/11, 11:55 PM

I seem to recall them finding a bug in the calculation of finishers lowering the cooldown of KSpree at some point, but never implementing it's fix, and my guess is now that fix has now been put in place.

Xoui · 12/04/11, 10:39 AM

Hi,

i would like to know how u guys use ur troll racial. 4.3 makes the racial regenerate energy, so i ask myself if it is more important to use it for energy (without other cds, which makes us energy cap anyway) or to use with ingi gloves/bloodlust for extra burst?

Hamzsolja · 12/04/11, 8:13 PM

Has anyone tested Vial of Shadows as combat, I'm hearing not only does it scale with AP it also scales with damage increases like Vendetta, Bandit's Guile, etc...

If the values on page 1 are indeed correct i might just use H Shadows over H Compass so i have a better chance of not energy capping while having cd's up like lust and AR. Having 2 Haste trinkets + 4 Piece in Firelands alone would GCD cap me that at time's id have to hold onto AR at the start of fights.

Edit: Someone just informed me Compass proc is terrible that at times it wasn't procing up to 2 minutes later.

Frequent · 12/05/11, 2:02 AM

Hey guys,

I'm hearing a lot of people reporting that, as Combat, the T1 dagger combo is doing less damage than with an equal level 2.6 main hand wep and the offhand dagger. And by a substantial margin, too.

Any thoughts as to why that is?

I'm starting to think that it has to do with Instant Poison damage. As well all know, with normalized Instant Poison damage, a slower hitting weapon is going to deal more damage than a faster one (to compensate for the fact that it's hitting less often). Since the the T1 dagger is a 1.8 speed, we can agree that each individual application of Instant Poison is going to be less damaging in comparison to a 2.6 wep, right? Because of this, would that cause the Instant Poison proc from a 5-stack of Deadly Poison to be less damaging with the 1.8 dagger than it would be on a 2.6 wep? I can see this being a really bad thing, since a good chunk of Instant Poison, as Combat, comes not from the Proc of Instant Poison directly from main hand swings, but rather from the proc from Deadly Poison.

Sarvius · 12/05/11, 2:41 AM

Instant poison's damage isn't based on swing speed or weapon type. Its procrate is. So we do the same damage with each individual application, but there are fewer of them - because each SS now has a lower chance of proccing IP than if we used a slow weapon. Main gauche has a static chance to proc and a faster weapon means lesser damage. However, there are also more main gauche procs which means more combat potency procs, so to some degree it all starts to even out. It looks like it doesn't even out perfectly, though, particularly because it takes combat so long to get 50 stacks of the tier 1 buff.