I usually do another Ambush. Ending on 4 CP means that HaT has just proc'd, so there's not much point in pooling for another proc as you'd lose 2 seconds of your SD. Doing a 4 CP Evis means you only have an 80% chance for the 25 energy returned by Relentless Strikes as well as only an 80% chance to refresh Rupture (not normally a concern under SD, but still). At most you lose 2 combo points (assuming an initiative proc), which I believe is better than losing 25 precious energy under SD - particularly if it's at the tail-end and using Evis results in you not getting another Ambush off before the end.

There was some relevant discussion early on in this thread in the context of SD vs Evis glyphs - in fact it was towards the bottom of the first page and early in the 2nd page.

If rupture falls off, under what criteria is it worth putting it back on? For example, how many seconds must this 2nd rupture last to be worth it? Should we (or perhaps must we) wait for the next vanish to apply this rupture under master of subtlety?

Long enough to outdamage an Eviscerate in DPE. Or an Eviscerate while Find weakness is up, in your case.

Which is how long? lol...

Hi folks.
I read this thread after subtlety captured my interest (thanks everyone), and today performed some testing/research re: glyph of hemorrhage. Since it seems that the community's understanding is a bit hazy on some gritty details about this option, I'm posting in order to share my results and inferences.
In the interest of full disclosure, I'll note up front that my numbers were gathered using a lower level character, and that I have no raid experience with my rogue. Obviously, that means nothing I'm about to say presumes to imply anything. I am sharing math and data only.

warning: long


TLDR: the 40% figure for the glyph DoT damage does not include the 30% bonus from the Hemorrhage debuff. The glyph DoT appears to benefit from Sanguinary Vein (double dipping when the proccing Hemo is boosted by SV). The 30% from Hemorrhage and the 16% from Sanguinary Vein appear to stack multiplicatively.
Based on these results, the glyph DoT damage directly in terms of the proccing Hemo damage is more like 60.32% when 0 ticks crit. Your crit chance can be used in combination with your average Hemorrhage damage (including crits) and the 60.32% figure to closely predict the DoT's real output for you personally.



Potentially relevant side note: the Hemo debuff and Sanguinary Vein (and Opportunity, but that's shown in the tooltip) stack multiplicatively for Rupture, as well. Assumedly, the same would hold true for bleeds from other classes.

They recently changed shadowmeld to allow you to use stealth attacks while under its effects similar to how it interacted with druid prowl abilities.

With this I think it should be noted that as a sub rogue you can reapply find weakness with shadowmeld->ambush.

I know this has to be a dps increase but I am curious how much of an increase it is. Shadowmeld is a 2 min cd so I imagine the dps increase of shadowmeld into ambush for find weakness is the same as vanishing into ambush for find weakness.

I suppose this should be noted for assassination as well because it would allow you to garrote (not sure if that'd be a dps increase.)

While I imagine all of this is a nice dps increase I'm also curious if it contends with the top dps races such as worgen 1% crit increase.

Shadowcraft will only provide you with raw numbers. What this means, is that if Shadowcraft tells you Expertise is worth less than Critical Strik rating, then that's how it is, mathematically.

You state that your Expertise value is 1.29 and that your Crit value is 1.49. Obviously, Crit is the way to go here. However, depending on your playstyle and/or the current fight, you might want to get more Expertise, simply to get a more stable rotation, which ensures your strikes always land when most needed.

Going against Shadowcraft recommendations is almost always a bad idea when it comes to clear-cut DPS, but as with the boots runspeed enchant, sacrificing a little DPS to gain some stability and assurance, might sometimes be the right choice. Ultimately, you yourself can only decide if 0.20 EP per rating is worth less or more than being able to reliably hit your target with special abilities and melee attacks.

I find this aspect of Shadowcraft a bit confusing as well when it comes to Sub spec. With both assassination and combat it will reforge to either the proper hit/expertise cap - or as close to it as it can get while being the optimal reforge.

As per the first page of the Sub compendium though it states "Once the Yellow Hit cap has been reached (481 with 2/3 Precision), all substats should be reforged to Haste, or Expertise if Haste is already on the gear. Mastery as the weakest substat should be reforged first, followed by Hit and then Crit. "

Which would seem to indicate that you should prioritize Expertise over Crit but this isn't how it plays out when you reforge with Shadowcraft for Sub. Is it simply assuming you will reforge to the expertise cap first or is the cap not important (I thought it was for not missing Evis to keep rupture rolling).

The first post has not been thoroughly updated in awhile. If you look at the EP weights listed at the front there, they do, in fact show Expertise as being better (or it was believed to be better) at that point in time. Many changes have happened since then and I would trust Shadowcraft over a set of generalized EP weights on that page.

It should not go without saying that there are also quite a few Sub Rogues who cap their expertise despite Shadowcraft reforges putting it at maybe half that. Sometimes cycle stability is more important, for boss mechanics or for your sanity.

I was kinda wondering a small thing: as there isn't max-level statweight for raw Attack Power, i was wondering what was it's at compared to other secondary stats.

Stat weights are based on Attack Power. The EP value for Attack Power is 1.

Your statement is right applied to somebody who is still using the Fluid death trinket.

But currently most rogues have The Hungerer and Matrix restabilizer equiped, and this trick (as I remember) trigers the internal cooldown when the switch occures. So we can assume that this trick simply replace the trinket proc.

The mastery gain ignores rupture and evicerate, which represents roughly 15-20% of the DPS of a sub rogue.
Therefore the mastery from this trick drops from the range around 0.85 EP to the range of 0.7 EP (values based on my equipment on shadowcraft). So the trick worth 0.7*1700 = 1190 EP for its duration. Slice and dice max duration with the glyphe is 27 sec. By security you start your SnD macro 3 sec before the pull and your first hit lands 1 sec after the pull => your snd active time is 23 sec.

In the case of replacing the normal Hungerer :
Does 23 sec of 1190 EP overtake 15 sec of 1532 haste rating (@1.5 EP) ?

In this case (and in most cases) it doesn't !
The gap is even bigger if you think about switching the matrix restabilizer.

So only do this trick if you still use the Fluid death.

You will have seen that there is a rumoured legendary dagger coming for rogues in 4.3. I hope this is true and that it is a MH weapon as it will make Sub pretty fantastic given the advantages Sub spec has in terms of EP gains per additional point of MH dagger damage. It would totally make the hard work needed to play Sub worthwhile.

However, if there truly is a legendary dagger for rogues and they make it an OH weapon the reverse becomes true and Sub is the least of the specs in terms of benefit. This based on the following approximate MH OH values for well geared rogues of each spec:

Assass: MH 4.68 OH 1.48
Combat: MH 4.67 OH 1.49
Sub: MH 7 OH 1.22

Fingers crossed my subtle friends - Sub may be about to become a whole lot more relevant and desirable.......or further maginalised.

Although the large difference between those values means that it is possible what you suggest may be the case, it is important to keep in mind that EP values are normalized to each spec and, therefore, not comparable between specs (at least not 1:1). This post by Aldriana should help to explain why this is the case, which also happens to be the reason we can not accurately predict spec scaling based solely on EP values.

Additionally, 1.) the legendary's existence, despite being mentioned in a since removed source, is still speculative, and 2.) because we know nothing about it, things such as speed, stats, and proc will also likely affect each spec differently. As such, I don't believe it is overly productive to make assumptions on what spec will be crowned "King" just yet.

Just a thought, what if you were to go 1.9/2.6 with DP on the MH and IP on the OH? Does anyone have the EP value listing of Weapon Speed w/o poison basis? All I am finding is the EP weight of weapon DPS. It's just unlike mutilate we don't require a 2nd dagger, and unlike combat we have no Combat Potency.

Curious if anyone has done the math on this. I tried to plug it into Shadow Craft but you cannot input slow weapons in the offhand, however you can swap the poisons and you get no dps loss with a 1.8/1.4

scenario 1 33258.4 normal poisons set up

scenario 2 33065.7 switched poison set up with 1.8/1.4

I don't know how you're not getting a dps loss, I'm getting a 192.7 dps loss. And since ip is a ppm mechanic and sub has no preference in the oh for any reason other than dp, you can expect scenario two to do exactly the same dps with a 1.8/2.6 set up as a 1.8/1.4 set up assuming equal stats. The stats on the 2.6 oh would have to be 192.7 dps better than the stats on the same ilvl 1.4 dagger (highly doubtful) to make it break even.

on the other hand, if it's between using a non heroic 1.4 oh and a heroic 2.6 oh it looks like this

scenario 3 33020.4 normal poisons, heroic 1.8/non heroic 1.4

scenario 4 33065.7 switched poison set up with heroic 1.8/heroic 1.4.

Assuming the stats of your heroic 2.6 oh are equal to or greater than the stats of the heroic 1.4 you're using to calculate this then it is roughly 45.3+ more dps to switch the poisons around and use the heroic 2.6 oh. If the stats are slightly worse on the 2.6 oh then you will probably have to do some ep math to figure it out exactly, but if the stats are significantly worse then you probably shouldn't bother doing the math at all.

Idk who to Msg, But i would like to Update this post for Omni, i have been playing a sub rogue in Firelands for awhile now and have quite a few things to add in terms of racials, rotations, and fight specifics...ect

As mentioned in the first post: Omni is no longer maintaining this; hence, we are looking for someone to take over maintenance of the subtlety compendium on an ongoing basis (as in, not just posting a couple updates and then ignoring it until 5.0; I'm talking about someone who will keep it updated as the theorycraft, gear, and encounters evolve. If you're interested in doing this, please PM me and we'll work something out; this probably involves you writing up a new OP (possibly borrowing from Omni's work - talk to him if you'd like to reuse any significant portion of his content) and posting it as a new thread, at which point I will lock this version and discussion can move to the new thread. However, before you set about doing so, please contact me so we don't wind up with multiple people trying to do this at once.

Edit: Thanks to those of you that volunteered, and thanks in particular to Pathal for getting the new OP set up.

My guild is about to start H Bale 10 man and I was wondering if it is advisable to switch from Assissnation to Sub for this fight along with proper reforging of course. I know Sub rogues but up some great numbers on him, but is the difference negligible or large enough to warrant going for it and learning the harder rotation.

The pvp proc trinket actually has a 55 second ICD. It has a very high proc chance. Therefore, the trinket averages to about 20/55*1218=442 agility. With a 3.8 Ep value for agility, the total EP value is 1683. Any fresh 85 may find this appealing, but it shouldn't last very long with fluid death already being better.
I'm actually curious about the on use agility trinket despite its relatively low EP value. Lets break it down, and assume that agility is worth 3.8. 2029*20/120 = 338 agility, or about 1285 EP value, which is of course terrible. However, it ignores two important factors. First of all, this trinket is guaranteed to be up for an entire shadow dance + the 10 seconds following with 70% armor pen. I'm not sure how much this shifts the EP value given that it will always be used during a burst phase. Secondly, an opener with a prepot + master of sub buff + tricks + on use pvp trinket gives a very powerful rolling rupture. Sure it probably only would matter for a few fights right now, but I'm guessing it would be very difficult to model the trinket's value given the circumstances above. Regardless, its value would have to double to be competitive with the current endgame trinkets. I doubt that's the case.

It's all going to come down to your gear. Check the spreadsheet and if Sub is higher, make sure you can manage the rotation optimally to actually see that dps increase. Though after the 2nd round of nerfs, even pulling 25-26k you should beat the enrage timer without any problems.

I'm wondering the value of Shadowmeld for sub. Can we assume that it is half the value of vanish because it has twice the cooldown? Although I'm pretty sure it doesn't beat out worgen it seems like an interesting choice for burn phases considering with prep u could open with a full 50 seconds of find weakness making it seem more appealing for burn phase bosses. Thanks in advance, any help is appreciated.

Edit: Actually I just found it doesn't activate Master of Sub, or Overkill.