The Art of Combat (Version 1)
 

Note: Pathal has turned maintenance of the Combat guide over to Kirtar88; you can find the new guide here.

- Aldriana

Last updated: Oct 22, 2012

The most recent changes are in blue.

Information that is probably out of date is in maroon.

 

Contents

1Specs and Glyphs 1.1Spec 1.2Glyphs 2Combat and Rotation 2.1Poisons 2.2Single-Target 3Stat Weights and Caps 4Gearing 4.1Best in Slot 4.2Set Bonuses 4.3Trinket EPs 4.4Gemming 4.5Enchants 5Macros 6Encounter Tips 6.1Tier 14 7Thread Change Log

[top]Specs and Glyphs

[top]Spec

T15 - Shadow Focus is ideal for DPS.
T30 - No direct DPS increase.
T45 - Leeching Poison may boost DPS if it triggers procs like it did for FotF.
T60 - Preparation is best, but only when there is minor, to no movement during a fight. Shadowstep typically wins out otherwise.
T75 - Prey on the Weak when targets are stunnable. Irrelevant tier otherwise.
T90 - Up for debate.

[top]Glyphs

Glyph of Adrenaline Rush is considered mandatory. It makes preventing energy capping immensely easier.

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[top]Combat and Rotation

[top]Poisons

Instant Poison is now baked in to Deadly Poison. Your utility poison depends on what you need to get done.

[top]Single-Target

Keep RvS up for every SS and Evisc/Rupture. Weaving Rupture is a DPS gain. Pooling before RvS can boost DPS. Storing CP's via Anticipation can increase DPS as well.

Refresh SnD with whatever CPs you have when <2s are left.

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[top]Stat Weights and Caps

These are sample stats weights according to Shadowcraft (commit 07a9119d9e042e4d3044f6a4c54ab7fba0cc73e9, Oct 20). The current script may require further optimizations which could sway data.

Stat	T14 EP
Agility	2.74
Yellow Hit Rating	2.40
Expertise Rating	2.23
Haste Rating	1.50
Mastery Rating	1.22
Crit Rating	1.02
White Hit Rating	1.00

[top]Gearing

OFFHAND ONLY: 1.8s daggers, and 2.6s axe/fist/sword/mace are exceptionally close in performance. However, 2.6s weapons appear to have a fraction of a % of an advantage. Try to keep a 1.8s dagger around for when you can't use Killing Spree optimally.

[top]Best in Slot

This may change in the future as we better understand any changes to EP weights.

Best in Slot Gear

Slot	Item
Helm	NYF
Neck	NYF
Shoulders	NYF
Back	NYF
Chest	NYF
Wrists	NYF
Gloves	NYF
Belt	NYF
Legs	NYF
Boots	NYF
Ring 1	NYF
Ring 2	NYF
Trinket 1	NYF
Trinket 2	NYF
MH	NYF
OH	NYF

[top]Set Bonuses

Not added.

[top]Trinket EPs

All EPs are calculated with t13 BiS values from Shadowcraft, as seen above.

Name	EP
[Bottle of Infinite Stars] (heroic) (->haste)	6,070.92
[Bottle of Infinite Stars] (heroic)	5,934.50
[Bottle of Infinite Stars] (->haste)	5,377.96
[Bottle of Infinite Stars]	5,257.11
[Terror in the Mists] (heroic)	5,076.65
[Relic of Xuen] (Darkmoon)	4,881.43
[Jade Bandit Figurine] (heroic)	4,859.45
[Bottle of Infinite Stars] (RF) (->haste)	4,763.54
[Bottle of Infinite Stars] (RF)	4,656.47
[Terror in the Mists] (normal)	4,498.61
[Jade Bandit Figurine] (normal)	4,304.59
[Hawkmaster's Talon] (rep)	4,304.59
[Terror in the Mists] (RF)	3,986.76
[Flashing Steel Talisman] (dungeon)	3,965.41
[Zen Alchemist Stone] (alchemy, 55s ICD?)	3,935.95
[Windswept Pages] (dungeon)	3,883.55
[Jade Bandit Figurine] (RF)	3,813.44
[Searing Words] (dungeon)	3,592.66
[Coren's Cold Chromium Coaster] (holiday) (->haste)	3,265.25
[Coren's Cold Chromium Coaster] (holiday)	3,091.68

[top]Gemming

Secondary stat gems are immensely stronger than they were in previous expansions.

[top]Enchants

Not added.

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[top]Macros

Not added.

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[top]Encounter Tips

[top]Tier 14

Not added.

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[top]Thread Change Log

[Sept 24, 2012] Initial Post.
[Sept 27, 2012] Trinket EPs.
[Oct 22, 2012] More Accurate EPs.

Here’s the >i450 trinket (plus the alchemy trinket) EP list at present, assuming no reforges, procs occur immediately whenever the ICD hits 0, and you have 100% uptime on your target for the duration of the proc. PvP trinkets not included; neither is the upcoming Brewfest trinket.

[Bottle of Infinite Stars] (heroic): 5942.65
[Bottle of Infinite Stars] (normal): 5264.32
[Terror in the Mists] (heroic): 5198.66
[Jade Bandit Figurine] (heroic): 5032.47
[Relic of Xuen] (Darkmoon): 4934.88
[Bottle of Infinite Stars] (RF): 4662.85
[Terror in the Mists] (normal): 4606.72
[Hawkmaster's Talon] (rep): 4457.84
[Jade Bandit Figurine] (normal): 4457.84
[Terror in the Mists] (RF): 4082.57
[Flashing Steel Talisman] (dungeon): 4067.29
[Windswept Pages] (dungeon): 4049.09
[Zen Alchemist Stone] (alchemy): 3951.56
[Jade Bandit Figurine] (RF): 3801.26
[Searing Words] (dungeon): 3669.88

These are all based on this crappy spreadsheet I threw together last night. Easy to crappily update as EP values are adjusted.

Stat and proc values are based on in-game tooltip notes. Relic of Xuen is the exception (thus the blue text); I couldn't access an in-game tooltip for it, so I'm going off the Wowhead numbers, which may not be accurate.

ICDs are based on tooltip notes in some cases, but usually it's from this Beta Classes thread in the official forums in which Ghostcrawler provided said info.

I've included all three incarnations of the Jade Bandit Figurine that appear in the database, but since it was reportedly a rare raid trash drop in the beta, it may well only have a single (i496) version in the actual game.

For the sake of completion,

Ghost Iron Dragonling - Item - World of Warcraft w/ hit/expertise/haste socketed: 3869.76

The proc, anecdotally, is ~3% of my damage. I can attempt to determine exactly how much damage it adds per proc, but I'd expect it to be roughly on par with the zen alchemist stone overall.

NB: Considering the Dragonling (and the Mists cogwheels) are all BoE and don't require engineering to equip, the numbers on it are probably a lot more relevant to the overall roguey population than the numbers on the alchemy trinket. Procs like these never scale with stats, right?

@Rfeann

I bought the Ghost Iron Dragonling trinket today and purchased with my engineer the cogwheels (they're BoE!) - there is a note on them that you need 5xx points in engi to be able to use them, but I had no problems sending them to my rogue and building them into the trinket. I also got the stats, it's not for engi's only.

Remember that you cant use expertise and hits EP when calculating gear value, since you're reforging excess hit/exp to haste.

That's assuming there's 1) excess hit/exp to reforge out of and 2) you're using the trinkets for that purpose, as opposed to reforging down to the caps with other gear that has hit/exp on it.

For the sheer sake of coming up with raw EP rankings for trinkets, it's best to treat them identically across the board -- which means assuming that no reforges will be made and that their stats are being optimally used. The new Shadowcraft engine, once it's available, will take care of the nuances of proper reforging; the trinket list I threw together was solely to help me get a very general sense for how trinkets shake out as I'm gearing up. As Jack Sparrow says, they're really more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules.

How gonna look EP for trinket from Brewfest BOSS ?Coren's Cold Chromium Coaster

Your first point is valid, or at least it could be early in this expansion. But reaching those caps is usually easy enough with reforging.

I strongly disagree with your second point. For me it makes no difference whatsoever if the expertise is comming from a trinket or from other gear. If haste is my nr 3 stat and stat 1 and 2 are stats with caps (hit/expertise) then they all get the EP value of stat 3. I'm not sure how shadowcraft handled this in Cataclysm, but thats how i set up my Pawn values for quick comparisions ingame.

If we compare the old trinkets Tia's grace to Left eye of Rajh we have the former with a superior effect and the latter with a better stat (Exp vs Mastery). Left eye of Rajh ranked higher in the trinket list, but if you could reach the expertise cap with either trinket then Tia's grace was a better trinket.

To assume that each trinkets stats will be optimally used is perhaps the simplest way of doing it, but not the best.

Will you be adding racial stats/values in the charts?

So according to these EPvalues we might actually start to gem all out Haste now?=p

According to these weights 2 haste seems a lot stronger than 1 agi, so does that mean I should gem agi/haste in red and pure haste in yellow sockets?
And would that make Blacksmithing the strongest profession for Combat?

• Stealth
• Shadowstep/Ambush
• Revealing Strike
• Sinister Strike
• Sinister Strike
• Slice and Dice
• Killing Spree
• AR/Trinket/SB


This should pretty much be the best :)

Would it not be better to take one sinister strike after the slice and dice? To drain you of energy and activate 10% damage from bandit's guile.

How does [Bottle of Infinite Stars] have such a high ep value with a 45 sec icd and the stat weights of 2.77 for agi and 1.1867 for mastery? For me it's coming out to 4406.23