This might have been addressed here, but I can't seem to find it: Is the Zen Alchemist Stone better than Windswept Pages? I tried some sims and the Windswept Pages seems to be marginally better, however I've also found several posts stating that the Alchemist Stone comes on top when comparing the two.

I'm getting the Darkmoon Fair trinket this Sunday and want to know which of the two trinkets mentioned above is worth keeping for the second slot (and also want to upgrade it).

Thank you guys in advance.

Alright, I have a confession to make. This is likely gonna result in my rogue card getting revoked, but: I still spec Shuriken Toss instead of Anticipation.

I can't help it. I JUST CAN'T. It's *fun*. I can use it on the run. It allows me the illusion of feeling I'm always active, even while I need to be out of melee range from the boss. The recent damage buff at >10 yards only makes it more alluring, and the plans Blizz has for it in 5.2 are unlikely to lessen its luster in my eyes.

It is my shame. It is my bliss. It is my irresistible sin.

Here is my question: Exactly how much of a DPS albatross is this around my neck? I realize this is an extremely fight-dependent question, so let's for the moment ignore the times in which ST allows me to continue DPSing and CP generating at range during times when I can't melee my primary target. Focusing specifically on full-uptime melee, how much damage am I sacrificing by speccing ST instead of Anticipation?

If any of you are masochists who are actually willing to take time to math this out, keep in mind that -- and here's my other shameful admission -- I actively incorporate ST into my rotation. If Mutilate takes me to 4 CP on my target, I Shuriken Toss my way to the fifth CP (often with the Envenom buff still active) before executing my next Envenom. This may be an even worse approach than simply Envenoming at 4 CP, but it "felt" good, so I did it. It's like being in Vegas.

Again, I realize this is not an optimal approach. And I realize that gear levels will affect the answer. But I'm curious *how* non-optimal it is, so I can judge to what extent it's still worth the sacrifice for what I've found to be a more enjoyable and engaging rotation. (And so I can potentially judge at what point a fight's mechanics could actually make this a maybe-kind-of-sort-of-perhaps interesting talent choice/rotation approach to consider potentially using in a theoretical sense-ish.)

I can't test with your gear since you're in some RP set, but just using shadowcraft as a quick answer in my gear, dropping anticipation is a 6500 dps loss. Assuming you also go out of melee range to shuriken toss you're losing at least 4-5 melee hits, and their respective poison procs. (Granted you instead get your 1 shuriken toss and poison proc).

So overall it's pretty significant and other than for the sake of enjoyment there is no reason to do it. There is not really a fight this tier where you spend a significant amount of time at range unless you just do not take shadowstep for some reason.

Without anticipation you *will* clip envenoms, a lot (Especially during shadow blades), which means essentially wasted energy, wasted combo points and wasted time (since you will have to regen that energy you wasted later on).

The 5.2 change may bring this more in line on fights where you really benefit from being able to melee at range, assuming you do not let rupture drop, or waste CP.

So moral of the story, not only are you gimping your resources, but you are also lessening the value of shadow blades significantly by not taking anticipation.

I was just running through and checking on this thread when I noticed that the above numbers are both incorrect.

600 Mastery rating grants 3.5% additional poison damage and, with a bit of testing, it appears that you gain 1% crit chance per 1260 Agility (1200 Agility on an item + 5% from leather bonus).

Mastery works exactly as it did in Cataclysm (albeit with larger numbers), but they now display the percentages accurate to two decimal places instead of rounding them off to even percentages.

The point I was trying to make is that the way assassination is played currently you cannot do a "normal" rotation without anticipation. I'm sure someone on here better with the math/script than me could sim it for you (or you could use simcraft and accomplish your rotation in probably 4-5 lines of additional code at most).

The melees you lose and the extra CP's from the mutilate vs ST, as well as extra poison procs from those melees, the shadow blades damage and probably a significant amount of envenom uptime are what you lose by using ST over anticipation. There isn't much more plot to it than that. That's a big loss, and I am not sure what you think you gain from the ST at the end other than a more interesting playstyle (until 5.2 when this debate may actually be grounded).

The short answer is that we don't have the modeling to answer this question in detail - at least, not in ShadowCraft. And frankly, I suspect that's unlikely to change - given the limited amount of time people have to spend on ShadowCraft improvements, modeling a clearly and obviously inferior spec is not likely to be high on people's priority list.

Hence, here is the answer I will give: You clearly lose some damage. It is probably on the order of the 6.5% estimate above; you will gain some damage by doing more efficient finishers, but you also lose some by spending energy on less efficient CPGs. It is probably less than that 6.5% estimate, but whether its 3% or 5% or 6.4%, I really couldn't say.

That said, I don't think it really matters that much. If you're in a competitive high-end guild, its too much - you're hurting your guild's progression. If you're in a highly casual, social guild, no one is going to care. If you're somewhere in between, you'll have to make that decision yourself, and no amount of quantifying the exact DPS drop is going to change that.

I am in a guild with a dead-in-the-water raid group, so that puts me squarely in that third group -- and, for me anyway, creates something of a contradiction:

-- I want to quantify the loss as specifically as I reasonably can from an academic/theoretical curiosity standpoint (and, potentially, to provide a future benchmark for assessing the threshold at which the DPS loss while within melee range would be offset by mechanics that force me to be at range for greater than XX seconds throughout the course of a fight);

-- But you and metzli are right in that the number, whatever it may be, doesn't actually matter at all from a progression standpoint. It's like debating whether to enchant your weapons with Elemental Force or Dancing Steel, the latter of which remains quite expensive on many servers. Going with the cheaper enchants costs you 3%-4% of your DPS, but if you're working through serious progression, there's no debate -- and if you're not, the debate is irrelevant.

Which is a bummer, because I was really hoping for a reason that would convince someone it's worthwhile to help me work this through. Thanks for the time and consideration, regardless.

...except for any of those that were already you went off target. And while off target, you're probably pooling energy/cp, to do more of them when you get back on target. So it depends on how short the bursts of time off target is. For example, I expect a situation where you're off target for 10sec every 30sec or so would be quite ideal for ST, but that's admittedly a contrived scenario.

Sure - but I don't think that changes the fundamental point very much. Even if you assume ST lets you do just as much damage from ranged as you do from melee (and it doesn't), you still need a couple of seconds per minute of time off target to offset a 5% deficit the rest of the time, and (with judicious use of movement cooldowns) that's usually more than you get from target switching alone. Its basically only going to come out ahead on fights where you have specific phases where you're stuck off the boss. Hence: Hagara Ice Phase? Sure. Atramedes? Great. And there's probably a couple of other examples that you can put together as well. But its definitely a fairly scant minority of fights.

here my question : before 35% , do i alway go for 5cp envenom or if i get to 4cp i envenom ? if i get to 4 cp do i do mutilate again or i envenom ? thank you for answer

Dispatch can trigger seal fate so you may end up wasting a CP. Just Envenom at 4cp then use the Dispatch after.