Discussion for changes posted for 4.3 go here. Please don't wishlist or baselessly speculate and stick to what they've actually announced. Thanks.

Announced Changes:

Will the 4pc bonus make glyph of shadow dance better than both eviscerate and rupture? The 2pc bonus will give us more energy to spend during those precious few seconds as well.

The 2P sounds like it could be really suboptimal for combat. I already have problems with energy capping if I spend a GCD on something that doesn't cost energy (like Feint or Tricks), and I imagine it's going to be even worse with an additional tier of haste to contend with.

The 4pc looks nice for combat, though; so much of our damage is already packed into AR that an extra 15% on its duration seems like it could be really nice. It's odd that Assassination gets a 30% boost, Combat gets a 15% boost, and Subtlety gets a 25%/30% boost (depending on glyph). I wonder what the impetus for that was.

Lets deal with the 4pc first, as its easier.

Assassination: The Vendetta boost is 1.5x times stronger than the Glyph, which (for me) is worth 320 DPS; hence, the set bonus is worth around 480 DPS.
Combat: 60% of Glyph of AR, which, for the Combat rogue in my guild, is showing as 897 DPS; hence, the set bonus is worth around 540 DPS.
Subtlety: Identical to the Glyph; speccing myself Sub, I show it as worth around 330 DPS.

Since 1 EP provides a bit more than 1 DPS, we're probably talking something around 400 EP for Combat and Assassination, and more like 250-300 for Subtlety. This is pretty good - similar to the T12 4/5pc.

The 2pc reduces the energy cost of abilities by 20% while active; this effectively gives us 25% more energy to spend (1 / (1-.2) = 1.25). It has 20% uptime, so thus gives us about 5% more energy to spend (more, if you pool to optimize the buff - but lets ignore that for the moment). Hence, the set bonus is equivalent to roughly a 5% energy regen increase.

Glyph of Tricks - which is conveniently scored by ShadowCraft - is .5 energy per second; 5% will be between .7 and .9 energy per second, depending on spec. Working out some napkinmath, we find that the set bonus is worth something like 700 DPS - as in, really really good. Perhaps too good. Particularly since you can improve on that with good energy management.

I also feel the need to reiterate my dislike for Tricks-linked set bonuses. I won't repeat the whole argument - you can find it here if you're curious - but I do hope they replace the 2pc with something better before the patch is released.

It might be a silly question...but 4pc set bonus will boots vendetta 9 seconds, so how about using glyph of vendetta instead of glyph of backstab for assassination?
One of the users in korea WOW forum suggested. And i also became curious about this.







Sorry for my awful english.

I haven't done the math, but I suspect the 2pc bonus may make the extra 2sec be worth more than it is now. Currently, the extra 2 sec isn't as useful as it could be due to the lack of energy.

I remain skeptical about the value of the 2p bonus for Combat. At 2500 haste, which some people are already close to, Combat will be at roughly 15 energy per second from base regen alone. If Sinister Strike costs 31.2 (39 out of 2p buff), then the energy generation from CP procs could very well cause Combat to gain noticeable amounts of energy. If you assume a .75s OH swing timer then it would average out to a net drop in energy, but I none the less remain skeptical.

Mutilate could definitely be in the position to pool and spam Envenom/Mutilate(to 4+) for those 6 seconds and ignore clipping all together. Waiting for the Envenom buff would be "wasting saved energy", as one Mutilate and one Envenom would have a net cost of roughly 72 energy for significantly more damage than waiting for Envenom to end, I can see clipping potentially being reasonable. If it weren't then I don't see how any spec would need good energy management for the 2p proc as nothing really changes.

To not leave out Sub, Sub would get 3 Backstabs in, and 1 HAT proc would occur during that, then pool during the 5th HAT proc. I'm failing to see how Sub would treat their rotation any different with the 2p, as it would probably save them 31 energy every 30s, but that would be it. Maybe 39 energy.

All of this could use more than paper napkin math to determine how true it is, but I don't think 2p will have any real impact on how Sub or Combat is played, and it might only slightly impact Mutilate.

Regarding Vendetta, if the glyph is factored in after the tier bonus, then it would be 46.8s, rather than 45s of uptime per cast. I don't think that's anywhere near enough to make the Vendetta glyph a candidate for top 3 prime glyphs though.

EDIT: Multitasking makes Pathal bad at keeping numbers in his head. Numbers should be better now.

If it did, it would only increase from ~315 to ~410. Still way below Rupture, which will go higher itself as Aldriana said above.

Ah, good point; I was thinking Glyph of Vendetta was +6 seconds, but it is in fact +20%. Hence, Glyph of Vendetta increases in value by 30%, which I believe is significantly less than its deficit to the other Glyphs.

Its worth noting that sub-35%, Assassination is going to have some serious energy capping fun during Tricks as well; the cost of Backstab will drop to 48, which, following the 30 energy regen from Murderous Intent and ~3 from Glyph of Backstab, reduces the effective energy cost to roughly 15, which is barely more energy than is gained in 1 second.

Based on Shalcker's post here,


Without T13 2pc bonus:

To be able to pull off that last Ambush without the 2pc bonus, we would have to wait till 100 energy and to time SD perfectly so that recup ticks right as we use our first Ambush. In practice, this is difficult to do perfectly, and thus the glyph could completely go to waste.

t	Ability	-E	Base	Recup	RS	+E	Net	Energy
x								100
0	Ambush	-40	12	12	0	24	-16	84
1	Evis	-35	12	0	25	37	2	86
2	Ambush	-40	12	0	0	12	-28	58
3	Ambush	-40	12	12	0	24	-16	42
4	Evis	-35	12	0	25	37	2	44
5	Ambush	-40	12	0	0	12	-28	16
6	wait	0	12	12	0	24	24	40
7	Ambush	-40	12	0	0	12	-28	22

With T13 2pc bonus:

With the T13 2pc bonus, we can start as low as 89 energy and still get in the same number of ambushes. The timing for recup is also no longer necessary, as we can perform the same number of ambushes even if recup just ticked right before we started SD.

t	Ability	-E	Base	Recup	RS	+E	Net	Energy
x								90
0	Ambush	-32	12	12	0	24	-8	82
1	Evis	-28	12	0	25	37	9	91
2	Ambush	-32	12	0	0	12	-20	71
3	Ambush	-32	12	12	0	24	-8	63
4	Evis	-28	12	0	25	37	9	72
5	Ambush	-32	12	0	0	12	-20	52
6	Ambush	-40	12	12	0	24	-16	36
7	Evis	-35	12	0	25	37	2	38
8	Wait	0	12	0	0	12	12	50
9	Ambush	-40	12	12	0	24	-16	34

With T13 2pc bonus, and with recup ticking right before we start SD:

t	Ability	-E	Base	Recup	RS	+E	Net	Energy
x								90
0	Ambush	-32	12	0	0	12	-20	70
1	Evis	-28	12	0	25	37	9	79
2	Ambush	-32	12	12	0	24	-8	71
3	Ambush	-32	12	0	0	12	-20	51
4	Evis	-28	12	0	25	37	9	60
5	Ambush	-32	12	12	0	24	-8	52
6	Ambush	-40	12	0	0	12	-28	24
7	Wait	0	12	0	0	12	12	36
8	Evis	-35	12	12	25	49	14	50
9	Ambush	-40	12	0	0	12	-28	22

So with the T13 2pc bonus, we can now safely make use of the extra seconds of SD from the 4pc, or the glyph, or both.

That will only occur when Snd and Shadowdance line up, which theoretically is every minute, but over the course of the fight they'll begin to differ, which will negate some of that value, as I can't see delaying either TotT or SD to be profitable at that point.

I brought this up in another thread, but delaying the initial tricks 2-3 seconds for Hungerer/Matrix to proc, after ensuring the 50% chance to proc haste, makes it worth it.

I was talking about whether it would be worth delaying SD to wait for tricks to come off cooldown. Not whether it is worth it to delay the first tricks for the trinket procs.

Edit:
Also, as Aldriana said, there is no point delaying tricks for matrix as matrix last 30s, so one tricks will always line up with it. It is worth it for hungerer though. But again, as Sub, you open with Ambush, which could pull agro if you don't tricks the tank first.

Longer Vendetta is kinda "mehh". Half the fights in Firelands you can't get stay on 1 target for the full duration every time use it even when it's only 30 seconds long.

Love it for sub tho.

Given the very little detail we actually know about any 4.3 content, it would be unwise to assume that the improvement to Vendetta will be as 'useless' as it is in current content.
The set bonus could still be useful, say, for Lord Rhyolith type encounters, where the extra seconds could mean getting some extra boosted attacks in despite the need to target switch constantly.

That won't truly be a problem though because Assassination can just start weaving in Mutilates during the backstab phase if energy capping is becoming an issue.

Well Murderous intent is only a dps increase in a situation where you don't cap your energy. When there is enough energy to weave in mutilates it's actually a dps increase to use mutilate due to the superior damage and cp generation.

Never said it was useless, but with Vendetta being such a long lasting debuff it's not always as useful as dance or AR. Yeah you still get some of the bonus on a fight like Ryolith, but the bonuses to AR and ShD are better because they stay with you even when you switch targets.

I'm not complaining, just pointing out that mutilate is gonna get screwed unless there's a lot of fights where we can stick on 1 target for 39 seconds at a time.

I'm not very good at maths but as a combat rogue ,could we wonder at a point where energy capping with both set bonuses is worth dropping one point in Relentless Strike event if the dps loss is massive on Simulationcraft ?

A short but easy fix would be to have Vendetta transferred via Redirect like it does for Bandit's Guile.

On the topic of Vendetta glyph vs BS glyph, Aldriana recently showed that the choice is still clear, despite the t13 set bonus.
However, if we are in a situation where we might have to switch to mutilate sub 35% to avoid wasting energy, would perhaps the difference between these two glyphs dimnish even further?

If we assume that energy capping is unavoidable using backstab with the glyph during tricks, that would lower the value of the BS glyph by 20%. At the same time, the set bonus increases the value of the Vendetta glyph by 30%.
Using the numbers from my own profile, that would put the BS glyph at 435 DPS and the Vendetta glyph at 409 DPS, thus making the glyphs close enough that the difference is not statistically significant.

From a Combat point of view, both the 2pc and 4pc bonus seem OK on their own but, if they're active together, isn't that going to cause us enormous energy capping issues? Either bonus on its own seems just about manageable without significant capping worries but the two combined just seems a little crazy.