gedo

I tested Killing Spree on PTR (on none-elite 70 mobs and BGs).

It does not stop auto attack anymore (as someone else posted). You still cannot use other specials for the duration.
If I'm not mistaken (with auto attacks in between I can be, but log sure look like so), it procs poisons and Combat Potency.
It still does not work with BF. I didn't see Swrod Spec nor Mongoose procs... Can anyone confirm?

~4k damage (from post above, and from my test with no buffs)/2min ~ 40dps @ 70 is around 2% dps boost?
~145 dps (from Aldriana's table) @ 80 is around 3%?

With auto attack fixed (and if CP procs is true... its not only free, it returns average 15 energy), I guess its decent for PVE. Its may not be too exciting for 51 point talent, but it is not too bad dps for single talent point.

Its also very nice burst in PVP/BG when you want to finish off someone (esp when you emptied energy). Kspree is pretty good for killing flag carrier in WSG and running away rest druid for example. Also works as a bit of defensive move too since you keep disappearing from their front side. It almost feel like old HARP with double AR... just replacing prep+2nd AR by Kspree (and ss/3.2sec thanks to Vitality, and more with CPotency, instead of old hemo/3.5sec).

Hemo being in SA, but not in Aggression & Blade Twisting doesn't feel like consistent. If they add hemo to Agg and/or BTwist, 0/49/22 becomes too good? SftS makes hemo/3.0sec while Vitality alone makes it hemo/2.8sec (+ CPotency)?

Did anyone tested if Unfair Advantage work with sword spec/poisons/BF/item & enchant procs?

I "tried" to test AR + Vitality to see if it adds or multiply... its hard to measure w/o some kind of add-on x_x

 

Darlal

In terms of pvp utility, check out [Rogue] PVP Stat Standards/advice where this is currently being discussed. As has been touched on there, the new changes to combat actually make it look like a really, really attractive PvP tree with high survivability, high on-demand burst, and a relatively bursty CP generator in the glyphed SS (which has seal of fate baked into it).

Overall, could the sub tree use some love? Yes.
Could our 51 point talents use another review? Yes.
Are there outmoded talents still gumming up our trees in places (I'm looking at you lightening reflexes, seal of fate, sleight of hand, imp ambush)? Yes.
Are rogues looking to be in a decent, although not particularly interesting, situation? Yes.

 

Ashere

- Hmm, that Lightning Reflexes moved down, with enough alternative and more important DPS talents available basically means that rogue dodge-tank builds will be pretty much impossible, while still allowing for the 15-30 second calamity tanking. Seems pretty much in line with what Blizzards' doing right now, but it did make Lightning Reflexes one of the least desirable talents indeed. Especially for raiding.

-Seal Fate will still be very important to Mutilate builds. Higher energy cost = slower CP generation. Seal Fate gives fair compensation for that

-Sleight of Hand could use some adjusting. Salvation reducing the effectiveness of SoH is a big bummer for example, while the amount of threat reduced is neglectable compared to the cooldown and the energy spent. You lose as much threat from the reduction as you do from not attacking properly when you use it, while this amount is gained back within 5 seconds after. The crit reduction makes this somewhat interesting for PvP perhaps, as addition to resillience, but not too much either.

-Imp Ambush seems in the right tree now, if you take Waylay, Slaughter from the Shadows and Shadowdance into account. But it's out of reach for other dagger builds. Ambush seems a fitting opener for Mutilate and Combat Dagger rogues, but it's just out of reach where it is now. I really don't expect anyone to spec 51/0/18+2 or 0/51/18+2 (or a variation thereof) to get Imp Ambush. A big opener is nice, but there are too many must-haves to keep performance of the time after that ambush up. I'm not a Blizz developer, but I'd personally swap it's location with Dirty Tricks, which offers too much utility for such a low tier talent. If every rogue was supposed to have access to that much utility, it could've been made baseline, but it hasn't, so there has to be some cost involved. At the same time, Imp Ambush at T2 could fill the DPS gap between Lethality + Ruthlessness vs Serrated Blades. It won't close the gap in raw DPS, but in terms of usefullness, and depending on strategy.

 

Kumar

Kalgan said on the Rogue forums that LR could use some changes.In the end they need to provide the same avoidance per point from LR that we get from Deflection.
I am thinking they can bring LR down to 3 points too and put in some raw meele damage increase (increase auto atack dmg).
Source:
WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> New Build..yay..

 

Taschen

So much hate on lightning reflexes, I'll likely be picking it up for a fun leveling spec with unfair advantage and ghostly strike, so I'm hoping that they have a bit more synergy with one another.

 

tetracycloide

I believe you have backstab and mutilate mixed up. Backstab offers 1 CP for 60 energy, mutilate offers 1 CP for 30 energy. Mutilate without seal fate only suffers from CP issues because it generates CP by 2's and there's a maximum of 5 on any given target.

My vanity is justified.

 

• Aldriana

Let's be clear: I'm not saying that LR isn't useless right now from a PvE perspective (and most other perspectives as well). And I'd like to see it get buffed as much as anyone. My point is simply that there isn't room in the tree for any more DPS talents. So if they're going to make it a DPS talent, they're going to need to think seriously about removing or compressing some of the other talents, so it's unclear how much benefit we actually gain from a LR buff/change at this stage.

 

Darlal

I would have no problem if they turned LR into more of a PvP talent rather than a dps talent. At 5 points for 5% it's just not feasible to take it over a dps alternative, but if it provided a stronger pvp ability that would be great. For instance, that would be a terrific place to put rogue's stun length reduction talent. 5/5 lightening reflexes providing 5% dodge and a 30% reduction in stun length would really be (a) useful, (b) a good reason to go a bit more into combat for PvP, and (c) mirror talents that most other classes get.

 

TheDoctor

I would have to agree with Aldiana on the state of the dps talents in the combat tree at the moment. Consolidation without removing any of the current dps enhancements would provide some flexibility. Though at this point in the combat tree I could see LR receiving a buff/change that may not necessarily be dps focused.

One of the factors with which rogues contend in PvE is the amount of damage that is taken at melee range of most bosses. While many fights in SWP do not have quite the same disparity between ranged/melee damage intake, and I am not sure what the future of Wrath will bring into play on this front.

I would find it very interesting if some of the consolidation of dps talents occurred to allow for a few filler talents in the combat tree. Then having LR adjusted to improve raid damage mitigation in some way for the leather wearing middle of the fray rogue class. This would provide some variation in the selection of which filler talents are most beneficial for your own play style, raid environment, etc. As it stands LR doesn't provide nearly enough benefit to be selected over other potential filler talents, as has been pointed out earlier deflection is a better avoidance per point investment. Both of which aren't quality PvE filler selections.

 

jdpowers19

Lightning Reflexes 5/5 : Increases your chance to dodge by 5% and increases your armor contribution from items by 250%.

Both Dodge and Armor are tied in with agility, so to me, without overcrowding combat with straight dps talents, this would be a way to help mitigate cleaves/whirlwinds in PvE and I believe would be quite nice in PvP as well.

In my current PvP gear this would yield about 20% more physical mitgation.

 

◊ Shaker

You want wings and a pony with your ridiculously overpowered talent ideas? I mean, seriously, let's stay inside the realm of reason.

Consistency. It's only a virtue if you're not a screwup.

 

• Aldriana

I'm not going to hit anyone on it because we've all been doing it a bit, but: can we stop with the proposals for a new Lightning Reflexes? It's basically just wishlisting, which is rather specifically against the rules. It's fine to say "they should make it more PvP focused" or "the should make it into a DPS talent", but, once you start getting into details of whether it should add haste, or armor, or stun resistance, or whatever, it's really no longer productive. So please stop. Thanks.

 

sp00n

With the new build I repeated my tests on the 60 elite undead ogres in Dire Maul.

This is the outcome:

Build used:	5/51/5
Cycle used:	5s5r5e

Overall		4222169	dmg
		2198	sec
		1920.9	DPS
	#	Damage	%	DPS
Melee:	4038	2158484	51.12%	982.02
Sinister Strike:	851	1113147	26.36%	506.44
Rupture:	520	112461	2.66%	51.17
Deadly Poison VII:	713	338599	8.02%	154.05
Instant Poison VII:	509	229453	5.43%	104.39
Eviscerate:	67	162695	3.85%	74.02
Killing Spree:	170	107330	2.54%	48.83
Total:		4222169	100.00%	1920.9

Graph:





Comparision with live and previous build:

Per cent:

	Current Live	WotLK 8982	WotLK 9014
Melee:	61.6%	54.8%	51.1%
Sinister Strike:	26.5%	22.4%	26.4%
Rupture:	3.7%	3.2%	2.7%
Deadly Poison VII:	5.1%	8.8%	8.0%
Instant Poison VII:	2.6%	5.8%	5.4%
Eviscerate:	0.4%	2.2%	3.9%
Killing Spree:		2.8%	2.5%

DPS:

	Current Live	WotLK 8982	WotLK 9014
Melee:	930.1	941.5	982.0
Sinister Strike:	400.2	384.7	506.4
Rupture:	56.4	54.9	51.2
Deadly Poison VII:	77.5	151.4	154.1
Instant Poison VII:	39.5	99.2	104.4
Eviscerate:	6.4	37.1	74.0
Killing Spree:		48.7	48.8

Gained another 200 DPS compared to build 8982, cumulating to a boost of quite exactly 400 DPS over live.
Note that Prey on the Weak again most likely didn't kick in.

I was able to perform a 5s5r5e cycle most of the times with the new 25% increased energy Vitality talent. Sometimes, with luck in combat potency and Sinister Strike glyph, I was able to push 2 Eviscerates and 1 Rupture into one cycle. Might have been able to switch to 2 Ruptures and 1 Eviscerate instead, but didn't really pay attention to this, and equipping a Rupture glyph would make this harder, too.

Eviscerate even passed Rupture in damage now.

 

• Vulajin

Using the latest version of my spreadsheet, I've not found any three-finisher Combat cycle to surpass simply running 4s/5r or 5s/5r (using larger Slices to avoid cilpping Rupture). Ditto for Mutilate with 5n/5r or variants thereupon, with the caveat that I haven't yet implemented Xn/Yn/Zr.

 

saedo

Is envenom still not worth using over eviscerate?

 

◊ pewsey

With the new talent changes, it appears that even if you are human, Fist/Sword beats Sword/Sword where MH Sword is Talon and MH Fist is Vanirs.

Does this appear to be consistent with other findings?

Pewsey has heard about tact and discretion, but tends to regard them much as children view vegetables.
Nemesis: "Pewsey is single-handedly turning around every guy in the BB that didn't want to have kids."
Viator: Because I had a baby so I'm better than non-breeders.

 

Ikilu

It is envenom that was the far superior talent I thought. It definitely is in 51 pt mutilate builds. Are you specifically referring to combat builds? I suppose it's possible since aggression buffs it, and if you picked up Imp Evisc in T1 Assass along with the glyph, it might be viable but it seems that 3 finisher cycles lose versus 2 finisher cycles according to Vulajin's spreadsheet.

All my best comments during raids come from a book called, "How to be Witty at Parties"

 

Ghost

Testing on the target dummies I was able to pull off a 5s/5r/5e cycle using 5/51/5 and the SS glyph without too much trouble. If I got a string of no CP procs and no 2-point sinister strikes I would just shortchange a SnD and cut the Eviscerate out of the next cycle until my rotation recovered enough to put Eviscerate back in.

Going pure 5s/5r is going to mean significant overlap I think.

 

saedo

Yea sorry I meant with combat. since sp00n was testing dps on ogres with evis. If I remember right, envenom still has the higher AP coefficient. So the damage distribution on those ogres would prob go less deadly poison damage, more instant poison damage, and prob more envenom damage than evis. Just not sure it'd offset/surpass anything.

 

Pyriana

They also have an extra half second of global cooldown, which creates a larger chance to catch them with their pants down.

 

Zaniel

I also had this experience with the PTR. I was messing with rotations pretty much all afternoon, and 1s5r just didn't work because of how long Rupture lasted (this without a Rupture Glyph, too). So I tried 2s5r, and I had way more uptime for SnD so it felt like an enormous waste -- maybe I was just lucky on these attempts with SS procs. It really did feel like a 5s/5r/5n cycle was easiest to maintain, but I was left wondering what sort of DPS a shorter cycle might yield.

With a 2man party (me and an Enh shaman) I pushed out just over 2200 DPS on the level 70 dummy over a 10 minute period, without Heroism and only using AR once. The cycle testing was definitely wonky, though, as sometimes I had to downgrade to a 4s/5r with some dry spells on potency or SS procs. It was much more variable than I'd like, so much so that it again made me wonder if a shorter cycle might provide more consistency.

For the record, I used the SS and SnD glyphs, since we're now only allowed 2 at level 70, and as a combat build I felt the SS glyph was a much more important upgrade over Rupture. It turned out to be an enormous help (anecdotally) in maintaining harsher cycles.

I'm going to try and get Recount working later tonight and to go in without the shaman (so no haste from WF) to see what sorts of cycles I can maintain and with what resulting DPS. Hopefully some real, hard numbers will help out here.

 

hordac

Regarding fast daggers for mut and the plethora of slow heaving hitting daggers coming out shortly. Quick daggers in both hands should not be our best option for obvious reasons.

Change energy regen in the assass tree so that the offhand procs energy regen at the rate of 4-5 energy per off hand critical strike.

Add some sort of main-hand poison proc bonus so to even poison output with that of what the quicker offhand is doing.

The point is, we dont want all these fantastic looking slow heavy-hitting main hand daggers collecting dust. I am sure others have ideas and we can only hope Blizzard is paying attention to this very real issue.

 

Jagiya

If Focused Attacks were only triggered by the Offhand, I'd regard that as a bit of an issue. As Mutilate & Focused Attacks are both very crit dependent, and not quite as reliant on hit rating as Combat, you'd be trying to fulfill far too much of a stat criteria. With the amount of hit rating you'd need to invest to ensure that your Offhand attacks are always landing, your crit would suffer; decreasing the value of such a talent. Ultimately Combat would be the better option due to the power of hit scaling, and Combat Potency not requiring crits. Hope this makes sense.

Besides, carbon copies of the same talent / playstyles in two trees? That's one step away from rolling them into base abilities.

 

◊ chalon

How often you hit has nothing to do with how often you crit. It's one roll. If you have 20% chance to crit, regardless of whether you have a 5% miss rate or a 24% miss rate, 20% of your off hand attacks will be crits.

 

Jakani

I think he just means stacking hit at the expense of stacking agi/crit.