I sprint out, kick one of the eyes that are close to the claw, then run back to the claw, and I usually arrive as soon as or a bit after the boss gets dragged on top of the claw. Do this if you guys are overwhelmed with raid damage in the dark phase, and you should lose a minimal amount of BF uptime.

Make sure your ranged also aren't touching the claw. Our raid has 3 melee with our offspec tank, so we have them go hit adds instead, but ranged at the very least shouldn't be going near the claw. It's not a matter of meter-padding - if your raid (or melee) are dpsing the claw down as priority it means less time that you're doing ~80% more dps, which will hurt raid dps overall. Any damage that might go onto the claw can go on other adds (which contribute much much more raidwide damage than the claw's ~3k autoattacks on your tank) or onto the boss himself while he's taking bonus damage. The enrage on this boss isn't brutallus difficult, but it's not something you can ignore.

And Slackerkgs is quite correct in that you should glue yourself to the boss even at the beginning of black-phase transitions, as the bonus dps will be well worth your time. I was previously moving to the claw at spawn, dpsing it until zon'ozz came over and then redirecting to the boss and bfing until it died. This week I stuck on the boss and did ~7k more dps than usual.

I actually kill one of the eye adds before switching to boss. The claw still dies in good time, but it seems to be a dps loss. The issue is the healing in that phase is harsh for our healers, so getting an eye down faster is worthwhile for us, as we definitely make enrage even with me not being on the boss for that time. I'm hoping to reassign a ranged to that eye post nerf :P


But, I came to this thread for a stupid reason. I've been screwing around at the target dummy, because shadowcraft says that I should continue using Nokaled instead of The Sleeper. I was looking at the procs, and... I'm not sure if they are increased by insight. In fact, I saw a shadowblast for 8643 during red, which I don't THINK should be possible (min should be 9950 if the 1.3x is applying). Normally the theorycrafters are up on this stuff (especially because this axe has been problematic), but I just wanted to make sure that this was (a) right and (b) known. If I'm late to the party, apologies.

Tested for about 25 minutes on a training dummy in yellow and red insight, never once saw a proc that exceeded the tooltip maximum damage. Neither was there a proc that, when reduced the 1.2 or 1.3 multiplier of insight, came in below the minimum tooltip proc. I was resetting my logs every insight change and doing most of the test in yellow, casting SS when it was about to expire and doing nothing otherwise. I don't have a log program, sadly, so this is hardly conclusive. But it seems pretty clear that no'kaled is entirely unaffected by insight. It is, however, affected by at least some other direct damage buffs - blue platform madness buff being the most notable.

It might make sense, then, that insight doesn't affect mechanics that aren't directly rogue related, which means neither would be vial of shadows. This is probably something that everyone's aware of, but it's interesting to me anyways.

They removed it in 4.3

Is Shadowcraft/AskMrRobot (and subsequently sites depending on the logic mentioned in this thread), and the BiS gear listed in this thread, factoring in Insight into Vial of Shadow's damage proc as well as the scaling of the proc itself with gear? (Simulationcraft seems to suggest the answer is that Vial of Shadows does increase in damage due to Insight.)

I ask because I ran 9 different simulations in Simulationcraft (latest version) as such (with optimal reforges for each set) @ 50,000 iterations with varying fight lengths of 350 to 500 seconds with Ultraxion as the model:

1.) LFR axe + stage 1 offhand + compass and wrath of unchaining trinkets
2.) Stage 1 dagger set + compass and wrath of unchaining trinkets
3.) Stage 1 dagger set + vial and wrath of unchaining trinkets
4.) 10N axe + stage 1 offhand + compass and wrath of unchaining trinkets
5.) 10N axe + stage 1 offhand + vial and wrath of unchaining trinkets
6.) Stage 2 dagger set + compass and wrath of unchaining trinkets
7.) Stage 2 dagger set + vial and wrath of unchaining trinkets
8.) 10N axe + stage 2 offhand + compass and wrath of unchaining trinkets
9.) 10N axe + stage 2 offhand + vial and wrath of unchaining trinkets

Here's how it came out in terms of dps:

9 > 7 > 5 > 8 > 6 > 4 > 3 > 2 > 1

I'm trying to determine if this is a bug in Shadowcraft, Simulationcraft, and/or if the results are valid.

This is reproducible by doing a somewhat long set of steps to test each combination.

a.) Import your profile into Shadowcraft.
b.) Select your weapon and trinket combinations in Shadowcraft.
c.) Optimize gems/reforging according to recommendations.
d.) Use EJ's rawr tool (not for optimzation) to import your character.
e.) Modify EJ's rawr character according to recommendations from Shadowcraft.
f.) Save character to rawr character xml file (with unique name).
g.) Use Simulationcraft to import your character's Rawr profile - Save the conditions in a text file and rename your character as a reminder of which combination you used (e.g. Angosia_stage2_axe_vial, Angosia_stage2_vial, Angosia_stage2_axe_compass).
h.) Repeat steps b-g until all combinations are reached.
i.) Cut and paste combinations as one large "simulation" into Simulationcraft to compare against.
j.) Select available raid buffs and debuffs.
k.) Select Ultraxion as the model and assign a fight value (I chose 'good' for character skill and 'low' for world latency).
l.) Select 50,000 iterations to reduce chance for error.
m.) Wait for simulations to finish.

From what I can read of the parses of the damage output, the assumptions appear to be valid in the output. I'm wondering if this is for a couple of reasons (if legitimate): AP scaling as gear improves and/or energy capping with the Starcatcher Compass (and AR/Heroism).

Before I completed the scenarios, I thought perhaps the AP stacking proc of the dagger set was what might potentially give the vial an edge vs the axe as a main hand. However, the scenarios indicate the vial is generally a better choice than Starcatcher Compass (with even the axe).

In current ShadowCraft build, Vial damage does not scale with Bandit's Guile. I've suspected for some time now that there might be something wrong about it because in my logs, it does noticeably more damage that it is supposed to according to ShadowCraft.

I did not find any testing done here on the forum and did not have time to do it myself (and there was no reason to spend time on it there was a change announced for 4.3.2). But if it's true that it's damage in fact does get buffed by Insight, the trinket is obviously being undervalued by ShadowCraft.

There still needs to be some testing done to confirm this and also to find out whats the new damage formula, but unless Blizzard did something seriously wrong when tweaking the damage and ICD, I think it's safe to assume that the actual BiS trinket combo is Wrath + Vial like you are showing in your post.

I think the problem is a bit larger in scope than Shadowcraft - this thread's BiS list would need to be updated as would AskMrRobot and similar gear recommendation sites which depend on this thread.

I did log my raid last night as we cleared DS and, once I can get my GM to fix his world of logs account, I'll see if I can confirm the damage breakdown as suggested by Simulationcraft. Generally, what I saw in the damage breakdown in Skada was more or less consistent with what Simulationcraft suggested (with some variation because we had a few hiccups with people not paying attention during the 'benchmark' encounter).

I did notice the tooltip for vial no longer updates based on your attack power buffs (similar to the Rath'rak the Poisonous Mind dagger). However, my testing before and during the raid suggested that it was in fact properly scaling on AP as well as with Insight. I'll see if I can get my GM to fix his WorldofLogs account tonight for conclusive proof - but others should do so as well. Having multiple sources would be helpful for confirmation.

Edit to add: The proc's physical damage does appear to have a 200% multiplier like a normal melee critical strike does. There's a note in Simulationcraft's release notes a couple versions back that pure classes (rogue, warlock, mage, hunter) appear to get correct multipliers (e.g. 200%) on proc crits whereas other classes get 150%. The math on the 397 trinket should look like this:

(AP * 0.9) / 3 = normal hit
((AP * 0.9) / 3) * 2 = critical hit

I haven't tested to discern whether or not the meta affects this. Also, if you want to confirm insight affects it, your maximum normal or critical hits should look like this:

((AP * 0.9) / 3) * 1.3 = max normal hit with max insight
(((AP * 0.9) / 3) * 2) * 1.3 = max critical hit with max insight

If Meta affects it:

((((AP * 0.9) / 3) * 2) * 1.3) * 1.03) = max critical hit with max insight affected by metagem.

(And, if savage combat affects this, multiply any of the above formulas by 1.04)

Edit to add: It appears that this is how Simulationcraft is calculating the numbers as well (but using the old trinket proc value). Mathematically, this works out that it is expecting insight, savage combat, and a 200% damage on crit value to affect the trinket (not sure about the meta, however).

Latest edit: 02/14/2012. After doing some testing, it seems insight does affect this trinket's proc.

Testing on a dummy, I started with 19390 AP and no buffs. During the fight, I observed 3 different AP states (after trinket and dagger set had a chance to reach maximum procs). However, maximum AP was 25415 (with both landslides up and the trinket/dagger set at maximum).

Using the above math:

(((25415 * 0.9 {original trinket AP to damage coefficient}) / 3 {occurring 1/3rd less often) * 2 {crit damage multiplier}) * 1.3 {max insight}) = 19823.7.

This is slightly higher than max reported (by less than 100) as Skada reports maximum damage is 19.7k (without giving me a specific number).

I am uncertain whether or not the original value was actually higher but mitigated to a lower amount due to armor. However, this does at least confirm one truth: Insight does affect this trinket.

*If you only have the first stage of the legendary daggers, use [Electrowing Dagger] in your OH (There is no MH recommendation yet). - Quoted from OP.

I was just wondering if stage 2 daggers are better for combat.
On shadowcraft, it says i'll lose about 100 dps using the Heroic Electrowing Dagger, but in the game itself, electrowing dagger gives me 27 more dps.

If you're asking about using t2 daggers versus t2 mainhand and heroic electrowing, it should be obvious. 250 extra agility trumps a small amount of offhand weapon dps. Not to mention more itemization.

If you're asking about no'kaled and t2 offhand versus no'kaled and electrowing, the answer should also be obvious. Electrowing.

wouldnt that be the same since the dreamer has a red socket