I second that question. How does Hemo fit into the rotation here? OP mentioned that Hemo is used when you're in front of the boss and there's no more mentioning of it. It does give 30% buff to bleed, no? Do we just squeeze it in when we have spare energy or is the usage of that energy better spent on an upcoming Backstab?

I did a few tries on target dummy, and could reproduce 5/2 with double hurricane proc (one after first eviscerate, one after next ambush) on my rogue. Which suggests it should be possible as long as you have attack speed buff for energy regen, with extra gear haste/haste procs lowering "minimum energy for shadow dance" threshold.

I haven't had enough time to model it. Rupture is typically around 5% of your damage, so the Hemo debuff is roughly a 1.5% damage increase. The question is whether the damage difference between a Backstab and Hemo is more than 1.5% of your damage in a minute, crit chance and energy costs considered.

Quick napkin math based on a parse or two of subtlety rogues puts it at "close".

Off a parse like this one, I put the cost of using a hemo instead of a backstab at 9425 damage. The gain from using a hemo on your rupture is 14580d/min. That's 86 dps gained (less than 0.5% of DPS).

The worse your crit is, since backstab benefits from it more than Hemo does, or the better your rupture uptime is, the more you'll favour the Hemo over not.

I suspect as a general rule we'll find that using Hemo 1/min is optimal for most Subtlety rogues, but not by enough that you need be terribly worried about it.

Edit: Before people ask, yes, this includes the backstab glyph (but not the Hemo glyph).

I would recommend the guide say "As a rule of thumb, sockets that do not provide a 20agi bonus per non-red gem can safely be ignored". The next best, 30 haste (Helm) is a Deft Ember Topaz (20+30 haste vs 20 agi), and all current Subtlety EP valuations put the agi ahead.

A couple interesting notes/tricks about raiding as Subtlety:

- Contrary to prior thought, Subtlety is actually well suited for Al'akir. Due to Recuperate, it is never necessary for a Subtlety Rogue to be in range of healers. This means you will never need to parry him, and can Backstab/Ambush/Shadow Dance in every phase. The reduction to the CoS cooldown is also very useful for the P2 debuff and lightning rods in phase 3, further negating the need to be in range of healers.

- While Al'akir is on the platform, you can also use Shadow Step freely. It will teleport you onto him, and you will slowly bounce backwards to the platform while still being able to DPS. This means you can maintain 100% uptime since you can Shadow Step tornadoes that do not have openings near the front.

- On Atramedes and Nefarian's air phases, you can combine Shadow Step with an Engineer's Flexweave Underlay - Spell - World of Warcraft to DPS them in the air. You can also have a Priest or Mage cast Levitate and Slowfall on you for the same effect.

- On Nefarian, you can Shadow Step to the adds on the pillars to completely avoid any time in the lava.

- Backstab is particularly devastating on Cho'gall P3 and Toxitron adds.

- As an Engineer, if your Nitro Boosts fail you can immediately Shadow Step to a mob to avoid losing any DPS.

- As an Engineer, Synapse Springs can be macro'd to your Shadow Dance so they are always aligned with each other.

A couple things I have not yet tested:

- Is it possible to Shadow Step while Magmaw's head is grounded? His hit box changes, but I do not know if Shadow Step will still drop you into the lava behind him. (I tested it, and you Shadow Step safely while his head is grounded.)

- Is it possible to Shadow Step on Ala'kir phase 3? I am going to assume it follows the same behavior as KS, placing you at the bottom of his hit box in the lightning clouds, which isn't a good thing. (Edit: I have been told that it does in fact follow this behavior, so Shadow Step should not be used in this phase.)

I don't think I saw Glyph of Rupture mentioned anywhere.

I would love to try sub out, but I'm worried about the potential complexity of the rotation. Now, I know you have been discussing the potential advantages of Glyph of Shadow Dance v. Glyph of Evisc, but shouldn't rupture be part of the discussion as well?

In my experience raiding as sub (which is admittedly limited) the primary headache was the rotation, and ensuring that I got a 5 cp rupture and 5 cp evisc off frequenlty enough. It seems like glyph of Rupture would help alleviate the razor thin margin on CP generation that sub has. Instead of 16 seconds to build 5 cps and ensure that rupture doesn't fall off you have 20 seconds.

I suppose the fact is that with perfect play, you shouldn't need it as it would provide no dps boost, but it seems like we're splitting hairs with the damage benefits of evisc glyph and shadow dance glyph anyhow.



One final question is whether it's really viable on heroic fights. Fights like maloriak heroic or halfus heroic, where you need some extremely high aoe numbers to finish the fight, isn't sub just a pure liablity with its lack of cleave and modest aoe damage?

I can see it being useful on a fight like Chim heroic, V&T heroic, maybe nef,

It's also worth mentioning that for encounters where Subtlety may not be optimal for your raid, it is relatively easy to switch to Combat without the need to reforge or regem gear since they have similar stat priorities. The only real issue is having a mainhand suitable for both specs.

What makes Subtlety even worth the time? I mean, if you're in a guild like mine that makes members get top-of-the-line enchants and 2 raid-ready professions, wouldn't being Subtlety go against everything the guild stands for? I mean, I was looking at these logs for 25 normal Chimaeron:

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis
World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

24k DPS vs. 19k DPS. 20% less DPS by going subtlety. Is that just a matter of there not being enough good players posting logs, or is that accurate?

Edit: Just for fun, here's combat:

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

That's a more reasonable tradeoff, 23k DPS vs. 24k. Probably would be higher, too, if geared combat rogues were actually able to use all their energy.

Every question you asked, be it hypothetical or rhetorical in any sense, is answered in the first lines of the OP.

http://elitistjerks.com/f78/t119013-...m/#post1878993

I probably should of addressed this earlier. The short answer is that no, Subtlety parses are not accurate. There are multiple reasons. The first and most obvious is that a very small percentile of players play Subtlety, meaning the sample size is practically nonexistant. Because we entered Cataclysm with the stigma that Subtlety was far behind the other specs, no self-respecting Rogue in a progression guild would be caught dead showing up as it. Even after the 4.0.6. Subtlety buffs, there was still the conclusion that it is not worth speccing because it's rotation is significantly more difficult - and so as it stands the best geared Rogues are not playing Subtlety, which greatly skews the results you see on World of Logs.

The second issue is that comparing one guild's 10man to another isn't very useful. The first problem is that your personal DPS is partially affected by your raid's DPS. For example, the faster you finish an encounter, the larger the percentage of time will be spent under the effects of Bloodlust - skewing your DPS results higher. This compounds the problem when players look at a site like State of DPS and flock to what is considered the highest DPS output. As more gear is gained in a guild, if only certain specs are played they will continue to inflate eachother's DPS as bosses are killed faster. The other issue is that 10man raid buffs and compositions can vary drastically, which can also skew results. Different guilds also have different strategies - some guilds may have ranged players take care of adds or have other classes do gong-kiting. In essence simply comparing parses between different players isn't a good way to measure output.

The only accurate way to gauge Subtlety's numbers is to compare the results of the same player, in the same gear, with a similar raid composition. I can offer some of my own parses as both Assassination and Subtlety:

Atramedes (Subtlety): 21660 DPS (World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis)
Atramedes (Assassination): 20583 DPS (World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis)

Chimaeron (Subtlety): 19439 DPS (World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis)
Chimaeron (Assassination): 19965 DPS (World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis)

Nefarian (Subtlety): 18265 DPS (World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis - it's listed as a "Try" but it was in fact our kill this week)
Nefarian (Assassination): 16982 DPS (World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis)

That's hardly a 20% damage decrease, wouldn't you agree? I suppose one might think "oh well he must just suck at Assassination!", but would it make sense that I suck at our easiest spec but excel at the most difficult? Those are just my numbers, so take them for what they are.

It's my opinion that Subtlety is highly competitive at the moment. I honestly fear that any DPS buffs to the spec could send it overboard considering the immense scaling of Sinister Calling in the upcoming raiding tiers. If that happens, we could see the Subtlety PVE spec dismantled for the rest of the expansion like it was in 3.2.2. Right now I think Subtlety is at a good place - there are advantages and disadvantages that make it very distinct from its counterparts, and each individual player has to consider their own situation and ability. It's much more interesting than choosing a spec simply because it is the highest DPS.