◊ chalon

Yes, you definitely have to consider how long your buff may drop for the raid if you run Envenom. For Mutilate builds you can run a 96%+ uptime on DP if you're Envenoming without watching your Envenoms, but it's still a 4% drop of the buff. Another thing to consider is maybe only using a 4 Pt Envenom when you have a 5 stack up, which will then leave 1 DP stack.

However, if you have double buff coverage, then it's no big deal at all, and it may not even make sense for you to spec for that buff. It'll be on a case by case basis certainly, but it's definitely something to not forget about.

As for Rupture vs. Eviscerate, Eviscerate is better than it used to be, but Rupture still pretty handily beats it. Both untalented and especially if you look at 2/2 Blood Splatter (+Glyph +4 piece bonus +maybe Serrated Blades) vs. 3/3 Imp Evis. So you still want to try to run Rupture as much as possible.

I do not believe it's optimal to get Aggression with a raid Mutilate spec.

 

◊ gwystyl

There will be Sting up on the boss at all times, I would imagine, and this counts towards making the target "poisoned" for mutilate, does it not?

 

Ena.the.rogue

Another point that I don't think has been brought up yet is the value of Overkill. At first glance it looks like a dumb talent that belongs in subtlety, but since it's required for mutilate, I think it's worth taking a second look.

The main effect of having this talent is the need to be stealthed as often as possible. You'll always want to start the encounter stealthed, and will want to use vanish as often as it's available. Some energy pooling before those vanishes would probably be a good idea too, so that you can get as many abilities in under the cheaper energy cost window.

This lead me to thinking about ways to finagle more vanishes, the most obvious one being the elusiveness talent. (Is there a vanish glyph that anyone knows about?) And with the comments in the blue post today about using sap as a valid form of cc in raids (it's possible, really), I'm wondering if a few more points in subtlety might not be such a bad idea, something like this: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

It counts for Mutilate, but not for Master Poisoner or Savage Combat.

Dew. Be. Dew. Be. Dew.

 

Phidaux

Regarding:
Are your stat weights constant or have you already tweaked them post Vitality buff(15% more energy)

The reason i ask is with Vitality giving a constant 25 energy per 10 sec, would the value of Relentless Strikes go down and would the value of Imp Poisons go up?

By running a 5/51/5 + 10 build, combat spec's can now run a 3 finisher rotation most of the time, however if we ran a 18/51/0 +2 build we would get Imp Poision. Is 1 envenom or eviserate per rotation really more damage over the course of a fight then 20% more Poison dmg?

Thank you for your input

 

◊ chalon

The Vanish trick was talked about a bit a couple pages ago. It's something to think about but Aldriana brought up the point that it throws off your white attacks. Still though, situationally it may be worth it.

I can't imagine throwing 5 additional points in Subtlety to get Elusiveness will be better than 2% more hit and 3% more crit other than in very specific scenarios (possibly).

There is a Glyph of Vanish, which improves your movement speed by 30% when in Vanish (Minor Glyph IIRC).

Sap is a valid form of CC in 25-man raids, yes. I've used it in 25-mans both on Faerlina's adds and the dragonkin caster trash in Obsidian Sanctum.

 

Ariashley

So with the changes to the combat tree, I did some testing yesterday in a ZA group on the PTR specced combat swords again. Didn't have the chance to repeat with a 2nd copy of myself and an assassination build. It's clear that combat is a lot better than it was. I downloaded a new copy of Vulajins spreadsheet to see how the theoretical DPS at 70 plays out with assassination and combat. With only changing weapons and specs, I see a 28% theoretical DPS decrease from combat swords 5/51/5 to assassination daggers 51/5/5 and the sheet is showing Relentless Strikes to be more valuable than opportunity.

When I used the previous incarnation of this sheet assassination was significantly ahead of combat. So it looks to me like either 1) I've done something horribly wrong with the spreadsheet, which I'll have to check in an hour or so or 2) they over nerfed assassination. Has anyone else found that assassination is now behind combat?

 

◊ chalon

Are you sure you setup the cycles properly when you switched to daggers?

It will depend on your gear, but I believe in most cases Combat is +/- 5% of Assassination. Really just depends on what gear, weapons, etc you're using on which one ends up ahead, and what type of mob you're fighting (Murderable or not).

 

TheDoctor

I still find Assassination to be ahead of Combat but not by as large a margin as it was previously. Did you change the CP Builder on the sheet?

 

eyesolated

That'll tip the scales, i'll update my calculations tomorrow with that number.

Actually, i have that included in the last test series, where i put the net DPS loss of Envenom to 0 due to the extra IP proc. Though i don't see where you get the 1000 damage from (i.e. at what AP level), because if i remember my sheet correctly (i only have it at work), at 2000AP it was around 440 or so. Regardless, that calculation is in in the last test, but Vulajin's Update on Envenom's Base damage will probably end up being more than enough to offset any DP-Tick Losses.

Still, from my fairly short experiences on the PTR, it seems unlikely to build up a full 5-Stack of DP fast enough for a 2-Finisher Cycle using SnD/Envenom using a combat build without (seems to me sometimes it won't even build up in a 3-finisher cycle with rupture baked in) the poison talents, but i guess we'll see about that.

A fairly simple model would be to "guesstimate" the number of DPSers dealing physical damage in any given raid (ferals, rogues, hunters, enhancer shamans, ret pallies and arms/fury warriors basically), take Blizzard's intention to bring all classes in around 5% top DPS and calculate the raid DPS loss from there. Without doing any calculations, one melee DPS @ 2000DPS would lose 40 Damage per second of downtime. Even if you take 10 physcial DPSers with you, that would be around 400 Damage per second downtime. If Chalon's numbers about an achievable uptime of 96% are correct, that would mean that in a 10 Minute fight you'd have 24 seconds without the buff (assuming Envenoming is the only cause for your poisons dropping), which means you lost 9600 Damage, i.e. less than 5 seconds of a single DPSer at 2000 DPS, marginal to say the least.

 

◊ chalon

The DPS number in 25-man Naxx, provided everyone has decent gear is more like 3500-4500, not 2000 .

Also, the 96% DP uptime number is not from any calculations I've done, but rather from DPS parses of fights like Patchwerk on Beta, running a 4+n/4+r/(sometimes)4+n cycle.

 

• Aldriana

Those estimates were made after the last beta patch, so yes, they include the 25% version of Vitality.

Well, if you're attacking once per second, you make 6 extra attacks during the buff, each with an extra 15% chance to proc, for a total increase of .9 poison procs; with, say, 4000 AP (easily attainable at level 80, and in Naxx 25 gear you're often over 6000), an IP proc does 350 + .1 * 4000 = 750 damage base. When you factor in crit chance, any applicable poison talents, and the raidwide +13% magic damage buff, that starts looking awfully close to 1000 damage.

 

• Golijov

You might want to go back and double check - I was finding wicked pyrestones to provide ~1-2 more dps per gem than glinting pyrestone (in fact, even smooth lionseye was providing more dps than glinting pyrestone, iirc). Also (and I don't think the spreadsheet has ever modeled this properly), the JC-only AP gem (crimson sun) currently provides 32 attack power on live, despite the tooltip reading 24. So even pre-patch it has also been the best possible gem for a red socket for any build, but of course unique-equipped. Post patch it will actually be worthwhile to use the stone of blades (12 crit rating) gem, as it provides slightly more dps than a wicked pyrestone.

Another strange thing that arose is that delicate CS was being shown as better than bright CS, though by an extremely small margin. I say this is strange because just a couple pages back aldriana had found 2 attack power to be very slightly (around 1%) superior to 1 agility.

 

Ariashley

You're right. I thought it must be a silly oversight of some kind on my part. I'm getting that combat is about 2% behind assassination (assuming the boss is murderable AND someone else has a crit chance buff). Note that I'm gemmed mostly for hit rating right now, and have about 319 hit rating unbuffed and am in basically BT/Hyjal gear (4 pc T6, badge pants, sunwell neck). Also, my daggers are similar quality to my swords, so weapon quality should not be the reason for the difference. MH dagger might even be slightly better quality than my MH sword.

No one else has found this to be the case, that the two are very comparable now? I still need to a do a test with assassination after this most recent build. We were all pretty sloppy in the test run through ZA yesterday (1 tank, 1 real healer, 1 silly druid healer in blues, 3 DPS - 2 in weird cobbled together leftovers from T5 and 6 content - most of that not enchanted, killed the bear boss and eagle boss) and was getting around 1650-1750 DPS in combat compared to the theoretical of 1850 with only the couple of buffs from my group. It was sloppy since I was spending a lot of time waiting to see if the tank was going to die and using the standard blizzard UI when I don't normally. So it seems like the spreadsheet is giving reasonable results compared with actual.

 

Achillion

I apologise for any repetition in the thread. I have been searching and reading pages for about 30 minutes now in an attempt to find the information I need and to avoid asking the same questions. My question/suggestion is about any testing and/or theory concerning Mutilate builds after 3.0.2 patch, before expansion. I've seen mention of builds with 51 points in assassination and for some reason, at level 70 I feel that keeping the points spent in the tree down at 41 lets you pick a substantial number of more useful talents.

This is what I have in mind: 42/12/7

So basically it breaks down to losing:
- Cut to the Chase
- Hunger for Blood
- Master Poisoner/Vile Poisons/Imp Poisons/Turn the Tables (naturally depending on where the three talents are spent for)

and gaining:
- Precision
- 2% critical strike chance from Close Quarter Combat (this could also be spent in Improves Slice and Dice)
- Opportunity

The reason for this is the cost of Hunger for Blood vs the cost of a Mutilate, which is the main energy drainer of a raiding cycle. If we take it as damage per energy, is HfB a big enough boost to be worth building a cycle around it? Additionally, is Cut to the Chase worth the 5 talent points versus a talent like Precision?

 

Ena.the.rogue

As has been noted, at level 80, the dps of a well geared individual is likely to be considerably more than 2000.

Also, to say it's marginal is to miss the point. The question is whether or not the difference is less than or greater than the loss of dps from using eviscerate over envenom.

Did the previous calculations comparing evis dmg to envenom dmg take into account the eviscerate glyph? That extra 10% crit is quite relevant, assuming there's no similar glyph for envenom.

Hunger for Blood lasts 30 seconds. There is no reason to refresh it more often than that, so the overall cost of HfB during a raid should be insignificant compared to Mutilate. You can even refresh it when you have to run away from a boss for whatever reason. It's a straight 9% boost to your damage, which is pretty significant, imo.

Cut to the Chase should allow you to use all of your combo points on damaging finishers. If you normally would have refreshed SnD once every 30 seconds, then during a 10 min fight that's 20 extra damaging finishers. Is that more dps than 5 pts in Precision? Probably. Precision increases your white damage by 5% and increases your overall damage by some nebulous amount by increasing the frequency of on hit procs by about 5%. Damaging finishers usually comprises about 10-15% of overall damage, so you can basically double that.

Also, I don't think giving up Master Poisoner is a good idea, given that it affects every dps in your raid, not just you. For all practical purposes Master Poisoner is strictly better than CQC.

I don't think that's particularly relevant. Firstly, you're going to be vanishing anyway for threat reasons. Secondly, can't you just make a macro that casts Vanish and turns your auto attack back on at the same time?

Dew. Be. Dew. Be. Dew.

 

• Aldriana

You may be vanishing for threat reasons, and if you are, then yes, Onslaught will give you a boost. On the other hand even at current I basically never need to vanish for aggro reasons on any boss other than Gurtogg, and, from what I hear, aggro will be even less of an issue in the expansion. So I don't think the argument "you're going to be vanishing anyway" is particularly valid. We may, on occasion, but it's certainly irregular enough that it can't be factored in as a major benefit of Onslaught.

Second, whether you're macroing or not, it's still interrupting your swing timer. I haven't done any conclusive studies of how vanishing and immediately reentering combat affects your swing timer, but I'd be willing to bet that it can't be done without losing at least a little swing time. Which is not to say that you can't still vanish for a damage gain with Onslaught - it's just that the benefits aren't as large as you might expect if you're not factoring in the autoattack issue.

 

Achillion

Well it looks like I've been caught slacking my homework. First of all, I just realised now that Master Poisoner affects the whole raid and not just your own attacks, which definitely makes it a "must" for raiding.

Secondly, I've been spending some time in the Blasted Land trying out a cycle on the "undying" mobs since I posted my last message and you're right, HfB is long enough to be able to refresh it without significantly affecting the cycle.

On the matter of Cut to the Chase however, is it worth eviscerating (or envenoming depending on what will be considered better) with fewer than 5 combo points if it will keep your SnD from dropping, or is a less than max eviscerate considered sub-optimal?

 

Ghost

Is there reason to believe that vanish actually interrupts swing timers instead of reseting them to zero and giving immediate hits with both weapons like at the opening of a new combat? Maybe you actually gain white damage by using a vanish->attack macro. Is there any way to even test this?

 

• Aldriana

Simplest way would be to take off your OH and wield only a nice slow MH, then autoattack a target dummy (or equivalent) and log what happens when you vanish. It should be pretty easy to tell if you can still get the usual 2.6 (or whatever) spacing on attacks, or if it's more or less than that. Even without macroing or other cleverness it should be possible to distinguish between the various options.

 

◊ Shaker

1. Go buy a [Fishing Pole]
2. Go find a training dummy (or a mob on live if you don't have access to the beta)
3. Take any haste gear off.
4. Create a macro:
5. Start swinging at the training dummy (or monster, though make sure it won't move if you vanish)
6. Wait for a swing, then hit vanish and then immediately afterwards hit the macro to cancel vanish.
7. Do you swing immediately or wait 2+ seconds?

Repeat at different periods of time during the initial swing for results.



I chose a fishing pole because it's a 3.0 swing speed weapon that we can weild, is easy to find, and I live for the day I log into the beta and find a bunch of people swinging fishing poles at the training dummies.

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

 

Tinwhisker

If you let SnD drop you're going to spend a heap of extra energy to refresh it through CttC (an extra mutilate + SnD = 85 energy) and lose that up-time in the process.

You're a lot of DPS, you know that? You wanna' earn 14 achievement points the hard way?

 

◊ pewsey

A very brief question about testing strategies. I've got access to Beta and Ptr through the Beta client. I have my rogue on both, both fresh copies at lvl70.

Is there any known differences between the 2 servers that would skew testing between mutilate/combat.

Reason is. I'd rather not wait the 3 days to copy my rogue over to PTR again, and I'm short badges to buy the MH dagger and the MH Fist to try all 3 specs.

I'd suspect that PTR and Beta have identical builds of the combat/talents, but I would be interested to see if somebody knows the actual answer.

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.

 

◊ chalon

Definitely. The penalty for not doing a 5pt finisher is much, much smaller than the penalty for dropping SnD.

It'd be pretty easy to test on a test dummy with /combatlog I'd imagine. Get a single 2.8s fist weapon, equip it on your MH, unequip all other gear. Start up the attacks without any haste effects, and just sit there and auto attack. When you see your auto attack land, immediately hit your (vanish + auto attack) macro and see what happens. Repeat this test multiple times, check your combat log, and you should be able to arrive at a pretty accurate conclusion.

EDIT: Looks like I got beat

Wanted to add a reply to this though:
I believe right now they have the same builds. But it does seem like the PTR servers sometimes lag behind by one build in relation to the Beta servers, though not always.

 

Ghost

Thanks for the advice on how to test this. I just did so with a fishing pole and it appears that vanishing neither resets nor interrupts the swing timer. The combat log was showing a hit landing every three seconds (3.0 attack speed of the fishing pole) regardless of whether I vanished immediately after the previous hit or waited ~2 seconds before vanishing. If this is accurate, then as long as you are very quick to get auto-attack back up, it shouldn't hurt your white damage to vanish during an encounter.

 

• Aldriana

So, that's an interesting results, and good to know, though I'd still hesitate to say that Vanish can be done with no DPS loss; I suspect between latency and whatnot you will not be consistently able to vanish and restart autoattack in less than a quarter second, and in a raid situation with WF, SnD, Haste Rating, etc. it's even odds that you'll have an autoattack within the next quarter second if you vanish at an arbitrary time; hence, unless you're specifically timing your attacks against the swing timer (which is hard, but not impossible) you stand a reasonable chance of clipping a tenth of a second on your autoattack timer. Which, let's be clear, is not a huge damage loss - it's probably only 100 damage or so, perhaps not even that much. But it it worth keeping in mind that vanishing, while low cost, isn't totally zero-cost, either.