Assassination from the Mists - Page 6

ZelosRaine · 10/17/12, 7:01 PM

Originally Posted by phup

If you trust Simcraft's modeling of the mechanics and damage modifiers, then it doesn't matter if you use ambush or mute to open.

T14-Normal Geared Assassination Rogue 450 second fight with 20% variance, 15000 iterations

Ambush -> SnD -> Mutilate -> Rupture = 881184.4 dps
Mutilate -> SnD -> (dispatch if able) -> Mutilate -> Rupture = 87974.1 dps

That was the opening. It also used prep and vanish, and used ambush in the first set of sims and mutilate in the second after vanishes.

So that setup has ambush winning by a whopping 144.3 dps or 0.164% for a fight of that length.

In the 15000 sims that included ambush...

ambush - 20.3% crit 62.2k average dmg
mutilate - 20.9% crit 39k average dmg sum of mh and oh
deadly poison hit - 16.7k avg dmg
dispatch - 52.7k avg

If simcraft is, indeed correct (which it isn't always), I would have to say that Mutilate seems best as it does not have a positional requirement and will never give you a "must be behind target error" due to an awkward pull. That being said, 144.3 additional dps is still additional dps... I have seen raiders sacrifice their soul over less...

Docrev · 10/17/12, 9:59 PM

Honestly? 144DPS in a simulation model? I'd expect that to be within the margin of error at 15k iterations.

And just to check that, I went into Simulationcraft, loaded up the T14N gear set, and ran a 25k iteration run. Using the default priority list, the 95% CI for mean DPS is 86529.93 - 86582.26. So 144 DPS? If you had perfect reaction time, on a Patchwerk fight, and you could do a few tens of thousands of runs, you might notice a small difference. Given the fact that the range of DPS that Simcraft generated for the fight was 78k to 96k, though, you're not going to notice a difference in practice.

Choseh · 10/18/12, 7:52 AM

I made some 5 minute cycles against the raiddummy with different exp reforges. If anyone is interested, i have the logs here.

Druss · 10/18/12, 11:21 AM

I think that from a practical perspective we can slightly increase the benefit of exp v pure mastery because in a number of fights stacking on the tank and therefore being in front of bosses is happening. For example on Feng to get inside the barrier, also to stack for velocity and then in Spirit Kings to absorb split cleave damage - not to mention that those guys regularly spin and face you to do things like shadow bolt.

Unless something has changed my recollection is that exp does assist when fighting from the front so, given the choice between what appears to be a marginal increase in mathematical dps by moving exp below 7.5% in favour of mastery and not I reckon not - at least at this early stage where secondary stats are not scaling all that well.

Thoughts?

• Aldriana · 10/18/12, 12:38 PM

Maybe, but not by as much as has historically been the case. In Cata (and before), the value of Expertise was effectively doubled from the front, as each point negated both dodge and parry instead of just dodge. However, with the hit/expertise revamp in Mists, this is no longer true - when attacking from the front,

Originally Posted by Ghostcrawler

Expertise will negate dodge and spell miss, then parry.

That is: if you're running, say, 5% expertise, you will have a 2.5% dodge chance - but you'll still be subject to 7.5% parries from the front - hence, the doubling of value we saw before no longer occurs. There will be some change in value based on having a base "miss" chance that's 7.5% higher, but it won't be the dramatic increase from previous expansions. Hence, I don't see any particular reason to believe that attacking from the front is enough to bump it past mastery - it might, but I'd need to see the full numbers run to believe it.

Orises · 10/18/12, 4:48 PM

re: Opening with Garrote

Garrote ticks every three seconds vs Rupture ticking every two seconds. If you open with Garrote for VW, you are depriving yourself of potential damage and energy. Opening with either Ambush or Mut lets you drop into a 2 pt. Rupture immediately which will tick the same number of times and do as much damage. Of course, you've also gained the damage from the Ambush or Mut as well in addition to the rupture damage, putting this ahead by that measure, and also chance that you got more than 2cps via Seal Fate. If you used Mut, you also possibly proc Dispatch which you can use to put 1 more cp into your rupture or use after your rupture to get SnD going.

Rosvall · 10/18/12, 5:44 PM

Originally Posted by Orises

re: Opening with Garrote

Garrote ticks every three seconds vs Rupture ticking every two seconds. If you open with Garrote for VW, you are depriving yourself of potential damage and energy. Opening with either Ambush or Mut lets you drop into a 2 pt. Rupture immediately which will tick the same number of times and do as much damage. Of course, you've also gained the damage from the Ambush or Mut as well in addition to the rupture damage, putting this ahead by that measure, and also chance that you got more than 2cps via Seal Fate. If you used Mut, you also possibly proc Dispatch which you can use to put 1 more cp into your rupture or use after your rupture to get SnD going.

On the flipside, you can Garrote, SnD, 4-5pt rupture and 4-5pt envenom to refresh SnD, So it's basically: Is losing the 1 tick of bleed worth giving 4 extra sec of SnD?

There's some other things to keep in mind as well though.

nonmagical · 10/19/12, 3:49 AM

The point though Rosvall is the damage from Garrote is more or less negligible, and using the open you just proposed would mean getting 1, at most 2 energy ticks from Garrote. If you opened with Rupture prioritized, you'd only be trading 1 energy tick for more combo points and more damage up front. Of course, you lose SnD for a couple seconds, but that seems rather moot in the grand scheme of things. Mutilate x3 -> Rupture -> SnD (of course varies depending on Seal Fate and Dispatch procs, but Mutilate x3 would be the worse case scenario) gets SnD running in 5 global CDs. Best possible case (SF Mutilate -> SF Mutilate -> Rupture -> SnD) only 4 GCDs.

Speaking of openers though, and in general throughout the fight...

If you are nearly capped on energy with a Dispatch proc active, is it better to use the Dispatch despite causing you to cap out on energy and lose regen? Or is it better to Mutilate, potentially wasting a Dispatch proc (as in, going Dispatch -> Mutilate could give another Dispatch proc, whereas the reverse would overwrite the first Dispatch). This can happen often in openers where you open with Mutilate (in fact, it happens 100% of the time when Dispatch procs off your first mutilate). I never know if I should burn more energy via Mutilate or use the Dispatch. This can also happen when you are using Shadow Blades and start pooling energy because you are delaying your next Envenom (due to already having Envenom buff active).

Thoughts?

phup · 10/19/12, 3:11 PM

for what it's worth... T14 Normal geared simcraft with different opening methods 25k iterations

mut -> snd -> mut(no dispatch here even if it procced) -> rupture - 87060
mut -> rupture -> mut (no dispatch) -> snd - 86983
mut -> rupture -> dispatch or mut -> snd - 86952
mut -> snd -> dispatch or mut -> rupture - 86929
amb -> snd -> mut -> rupture - 86909
garrote -> snd -> mut(s) + dispatch -> rupture (5cp) - 86859
amb -> rupture -> mut -> snd - 86796
mut -> mut -> dispatch or mut if not at 5cp -> rupture (5 cp) -> mut or dispatch if at 0 combo points -> snd - 86134

on each setup there was about a 25 dps margin of error and about a 6k -7k dps range when you threw out the top and bottom 5% of the results

So the implication yet again on openers is it just doesn't matter. mutilate vs ambush vs garrote and prioritizing snd vs rupture, the choice is yours. the only one i wouldn't recommend is the last. Putting off SnD to build a 5cp rupture first seems to hurt more than it helps.

• Aldriana · 10/19/12, 6:16 PM

After some further refinements to ShadowCraft, including updating the stats for used to compute the EP values to more accurately reflect T14 Heroic BIS, I have revised EP values for the major stats:

Stat	Value
Agi	2.72
Yellow Hit	1.80
Mastery	1.15
Expertise	1.08
Haste	1.02
Crit	0.99
White Hit	0.64

Note that this assumes BIS for a NE Rogue running LW/JC. It also makes some assumptions about the existence of certain pieces of gear - the Wowhead/WoWDB datamined information is somewhat inconsistant. Finally, I assumed that Hydraulic Sockets can only be filled with the legendary gem - i.e., if one is double-wielding Spiritsever, only one will be gemmed. Depending on the validity of such assumptions the values might fluxuate by a few hundredths relative to each other, but this should be pretty close.

In terms of notable consequences of these weightings (and the nature of high-end gear):
1) Higher ilvl is almost always better. Quality of itemization makes at most about a half-tier of difference (i.e., [Legguards of Failing Purification] (503) is slightly barely better than [Legguards of the Thousandfold Blades] (509), and that's about the only place I've found where a lower ilvl item beats a higher-ilvl one).
2) Amongst items of the same ilvl, more sockets is better than less sockets, agi socket bonuses are better than rating socket bonuses, and having mastery is better than not having mastery. All other factors (i.e, other secondary stats and gem color) tend not to matter very much.
3) Pretty much all socket bonuses are worth getting. The worst case is a blue socket with a crit socket bonus, where you're trading 80 agi for 60 crit and 160 hit - which in practice means 60 crit and 160 haste on account of reforging. And as 80 * 2.72 = 217.6 while 160 * 1.02 + 60 * .99 = 222.6, even that is worth matching colors for.
4) 4/5 Tier is BIS. The legs are the best offset piece, even if you can't get the elite version. Helm and Chest are BIS on stats alone, independent of socket bonuses; Shoulder and Gloves are moderately inferior to the offset versions on their own, but not by enough to justify breaking the set.

As an aside: in said BIS gear, ShadowCraft shows 116382 DPS for Ambushing out of stealth, versus 116303 for Mutilate, for a difference of 79 DPS, or less than a tenth of a percent- confirming the general principal that it doesn't seem to actually matter very much.

orderofmaken · 10/25/12, 9:14 AM

I've been playing Assassination recently and using the Shadow Focus talent to snip in extra mutilates; but for some reason if I macro an ability to vanish, the game isn't fast enough to recognize you have the shadow focus buff before the ability goes through - thus costing you energy. Is there any way around that macro wise or... have to just perform it manually?

Simply · 10/25/12, 10:49 AM

You have to perform this task manually, after vanish you have a ~1 Second time window where the server wont recognize you as stealthed.

orderofmaken · 10/25/12, 10:56 AM

All right~ cheers for the assist.

kvidedotno · 10/25/12, 12:37 PM

any tips on how to best line up Flashing Steel Talisman - Item - World of Warcraft with Synapse Springs - Spell - World of Warcraft ?
So far, i have put my trinket on my ambush so that i pop that on start, then the synapse string will be used on my first envenom(ca.). After that, being unsure of how to best line these two up, I use trinket on my combobuilders and my synapse on the envenom.

Cottonpoof · 10/25/12, 7:41 PM

Where does strength end up in EP values? I recently acquired the Crystal of Insanity which gives 500 agility, 500 strength, and 500 stamina. I'm thinking it might be a good idea to use it on fights where survivability takes precedence, but only if the dps loss isn't going to be too large.