eyesolated

I had a question about professions popping into my mind. As we all know, leatherworkers have a best-in-slot wrist "enchant" tailored to melee dps. Reading about the blacksmithing "extra-sockets" deal, i was wondering if Blizzard's "only one trade is allowed to improve an item" applies to those sockets as well, i.e.

.) Is it possible to add a socket to a wrist-item AND enchant it or use leatherworker stuff on it?

If so, wouldn't leatherworking/blacksmithing be more or less the single best combination of professions for a rogue (and pretty much BS/whatever for anyone else)?

 

saedo

Yes. The "fur-lining" counts as a "permanent enchantment" while the socket counts as, well a socket.

 

• Aldriana

So, the answer to which professions are best is, as it is in most cases, "it depends". The first thing it depends upon is the future availability of epic profession-specific crafted items; the second is on how long it takes for epic gems to become readily available.

First off, I don't believe the source of epic gems is yet known; hence, the assumption for the immediate future is that we'll be socketing with blue gems (much like it took until BT before people could socket epic gems in BC). Thus, BS grants two extra sockets, hence two extra blue gems, or 64 AP (or 32 of one of the other stats, but as none are significantly more valuable than AP right now, we'll just call it 64 AP). It might also allow the crafting of epic weapons; so the short-term benefit is 64 AP plus whatever you get from crafted weapons; once epic gems become available, it's 80 AP plus crafted.

Leatherworking, on the other hand, is pretty simple to analyze - it's 76 AP plus whatever you get from crafted items, and (if they're still in the game) drums. I'd expect there to be more LW patterns of interest than there are for other professions, but it's hard to say for sure.

Insciption gives 64 AP; however, until you reach exalted with the relevant reputation - which may easily take a month or more - it's actually 74 AP + 5 crit rating, or around 83 EP all told.

And jewelcrafting allows you to socket 3 prismatic gems; relative to blue gems, this is an advantage of 82 EP, plus any socket bonuses it may allow you to pick up (which, given the number of blue sockets in our Naxx-level gear, is potentially another 20+ EP). Once we get access to epic gems, this will drop to 62 EP plus socket bonuses. And JC, as a profession, may also have crafted items of interest.

Hence, in terms of the ordering: in the early days of the expansion, Inscription and Jewelcrafting appear to be the strongest; once one gets the reputation for the epic shoulder enchants, it becomes Jewelcrafting and Leatherworking; and once epic gems become available, it becomes Leatherworking and Blacksmithing. Unless, of course, the existance of BoP crafted items changes this - which it probably will.

 

eyesolated

That's a pretty deep analysis on the matter, but my point was more that Blacksmithing seems to be the ONLY profession which can improve an item ON TOP of "insert other profession here" which makes it (in my opinion) overpowered not necessarily from a weighting perspective, but more from a design perspective. There's two "BS only" socket options in game, wrists and gloves (from what i read, correct me if this is untrue).

I was hesitant to drop skinning because of easily supplying myself with leather plus the crit buff it gives, but looking at it with these sockets in mind, a mere 25 crit rating increase can't stand up to 2 extra Sockets on top of enchanting these items.

 

Bonesong

I certainly hope they will. If only for the sake of being coherent with flametonge weapon and seal of righteousness, whose spell power/attack power contribution are normalized to the second.
Actually they should have done it before buffing combat, as the impact on combat and assassination trees balancing is non negligible.
Having :
* auto_poison_proc_damage = weapon_speed * (base_poison_damage + K*AP)
* specials_poison_proc_damage = normalized_weapon_speed * (base_poison_damage + K*AP)
would be an incentive to use slow weapons for both Mutilate and Sinister Strike, Focused Attacks vs poisons would maybe make Mutilate weapon speed choice a bit less clear cut. However Sinister Strike would benefit probably too much in its current form, reason why they should have implemented poison normalization earlier.
Still, i hope they'll go down the road of normalization.

 

tyromer

talking about professions and maximising dps:

Wouldn't Alchemy be a profession of Interest?

You get Mixology, which will give a plus of 50% effect and 100% duration.

A Flask of Endless Rage got 180Ap. So you win 90AP through Mixology.

Also you got 4 hours Flasktime, which would be a full raid eveneing in my Guild. Nothing important for maxing dps, but nice to have

 

Mideci

Eyesolated, all due respect, I don't think you understand Aldriana's analysis. Sockets are not magic. All sockets give you are the ability to add attack power equivalents in a place other people can't add them. Aldriana fully accounts for the value of those sockets in his analysis. If the enchanter-only enchants allowed you to add 50 more AP to your gear than they do, the magic of those sockets would evaporate really fast. It's all about attack power equivalents, not "ZOMG SOCKETS". You could get the AP benefit in a single slot with an enchant replacement (e.g. the fur linings) or through the sockets or through, say, a unique JC only trinket that was special or through a benefit like mixology.

 

eyesolated

Yes, you're right, it's all about giving "values" to certain profession benefits. It's still worth noting imo though that those BS sockets are the only profession-driven enhancements to gear which allow another profession-enhancement on top of them.

My very own conclusion is that although Blizzard tried to improve upon the gathering professions, they're still not worth hanging on to on your main character, and everyone should either buy his needed mats and/or level a gathering alt. And yes, we'll have to wait a little longer to determine the optimal Profession-Setup for rogues, although it looks like (to me at least) as if LW will be a contender very high in that list.

 

Fearendil

Sorry if this is a little off topic.

From all the blue posts and beta testing, we can see that Blizzard changed a lot of things so that:

1- 10 people raids are designed so little groups of friends can have acces to Pve in a challenging manner
2- 25 people raids can have any kind of tanks / heals / dps as long as they are good players (which was partly the case in BC when badge items were increased except in SWP)

I'm confident that Blizzard gonna tune all dps classes quite well regarding to Pve (Pvp that's different) , gear checks as Brut shows that they can be as precise in their calculations as we can be theorycrafting their mechanics.

This doesn't change the fact that we are a heavy buff dependant dps class and this tells us we'll have about the same number of raid spots as before i.e. 1 in 10 man and 2 in 25 man.

After all the /whine and so on , we accepted that we could loose being the top class dps in this game , which is a little disturbing, but we're still good, so it's up to us to compete with locks /mages / Dk's and so on.

So in my opinion , we've been dps nerfed a little comparing to what we can do at the moment in a raid environnement. I'm not sure a redirect or a 2% raid buff with talent can make me happy with this.

What i like in the actual rogue way of life is that giving all i have all the evening i can beat the others dps classes. From all the reports i've seen it's not the case anymore...

Do i misunderstood all this or is it right?? (i assume for this a skilled player knowing his class/rotation/template of course)

 

Tinwhisker

As of 3.x, we are no more buff dependent that any other class. As for your 1 and 2 spots in raids numbers, there are 10 classes and those numbers sound about right. 1-2 in 10mans and 2-3 in 25mans; sometimes more, sometimes less depending on how your guild runs.

We are not currently the 'top DPS class', this is patently false. I also have no idea who will be in 3.x and WotLK. However, rogues are a class that needs very little babysitting when played well when compared to others which makes us very desirable.

Copying a template and 'knowing your rotation' is all well and good but actually being a good player and desirable in a raid position is a lot more than that.

Being able to put out competitive DPS, adapting to changing raid dynamics, staying alive, and using your talents to help others stay alive are a lot more important than putting out top numbers and face-planting on a regular basis. That's what makes a player desirable; class is much less important than that.

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

 

Amerilina

Mixology - Spell - World of Warcraft

I would say yes. a gain of 90ap from the profession does put it up at the top of professions and the fact it doubles the duration of flask and elixir effects is a nice non-DPS related bonus. I think it will really come down to what BOP items other professions get and just how good they really are.

I might have missed it but just out of curiosity has anyone tested the Tailoring back embroidery's?

Swordguard Embroidery - Spell - World of Warcraft

 

Andeh

Mixology is only a 33% effect benefit, not 50%.

See this post.

33% of 180 AP is only 60 AP, so slightly less than other profession stat bonuses. Although, you would save money & materials since the flasks last twice as long.

 

Cybelirrae

To add to what Andeh notes here, people tend to avoid Alchemy for grinding and pvp-related reasons as well. Your Blacksmithing, Inscription, Jewelcrafting, Leatherworking and Enchanting benefits all follow you into Arena's and grinding. While I've heard Alchemy will have small healing potions that are useable in arenas, I think most would prefer the extra AP benefits provided by the other crafting professions.

 

sp00n

According to the comments on wowhead, Mixology gives different increases for different flasks types.
Were these 33% confirmed to work for all types?

 

Conquistador

The WotLK profession thread

This contains the current benefits of each flask. Currently the Mixology benefit to the Flask of Endless Rage is +64 AP (2 extra hours non-withstanding).

 

◊ chalon

Yeah, we need someone to test it out to be certain. But I wouldn't be that surprised if it were only 33%, as that brings it more in line with the EP of the other bonuses.

Still though, the +2 hr duration alone makes alchemy very desirable, and the AP bonus on top of that is just another added bonus. FWIW, I really hope they do something about Endless Rage flasks because at the moment Fire Leaf is extremely frustrating to get. There are <10 nodes of Firethorn in the entire world, concentrated in one particular area of Borean Tundra. And these nodes aren't even guaranteed to give you Fire Leaf (and the 50% chance of it being Fire Leaf seems to be a lie). They are going to be very contested spawns I'd imagine.

I'd also disagree that the free mini-health potion won't be useful in Arenas, though that's not necessarily relevant to the discussion of best PvE professions.

I'm probably going to go LW and Alchemy.

EDIT: Ah, someone has already tested it, cool.

 

• Aldriana

So, as a followup on Cybe's question about trinkets (see posts 3096 and 3109):

There's been some testing in the roguecraft spreadsheet thread that lets us pin down proc rates a little better. While we still don't have exact numbers, we can clarify some of the estimates.

Mirror of Truth seems to have proc behavior similar to Tsunami Talisman, i.e. 10% proc rate with a 45 second cooldown. Given that both Combat and Mutilate builds average around 1 crit per second with raid buffs (and a bit more than that, in many cases), the average time between procs is thus around 55 seconds, yielding an expected uptime of 18% or so. Thus, average-case, the trinket gives 84 crit rating and 182 AP, give or take.

Bandit Insignia appears to be a 45 second cooldown with a 15% proc rate. Since a rogue of either spec attacks something over twice a second, this is one proc every 48 seconds. A proc hits for an average of 1880, but would presumably be subject to the 13% magic damage raid buff, and thus do 2124 damage on average in practice; 2124 damage per 48 seconds works out to about 44.3 DPS. Since the EP:DPS conversion appears to be about .627 DPS per AP, the proc is thus worth on the order of 71 EP; thus the overall value of the trinket is about 261 EP.

Hence, if we rank the trinkets with current EP weightings for Mutilate, we have:
MoT: 330
FotFF: 320
BI: 261
LS: 259
MoN: 252

If we instead use the Combat weightings, we have:
FotFF: 320
MoT: 306
BI: 261
LS: 235
MoN: 219

Hence, for either spec, MoT and FotFF appear to be the clear leaders in the trinket game.

You'll note that I omitted Grim Toll. This is because we don't have good proc rate information for it, so it's hard to assess it's value; if, however, we assume it's proc rate is similar to the other trinkets (which seems likely, given that the proc rate on wowhead is listed at 15%, same as for Bandit's Insignia), we can come up with an approximate value. Under that assumption, it would score about 235 for Mutilate and about 254 for Combat - that is, right in the middle of the lower tier of trinkets, and well behind MoT and FotFF.

Thus, the preliminary recommendation - which is subject to change as we get more information - would be to go for Mirror of Truth and Fury of the Five Flights for your initial trinkets. It's not that they're necessarily going to be DST-good and last till the end of WotLK... but they're definitely the early leaders in the trinket comparison.

Oh, and as a quick point of reference: DST would score about 157 with level 80 stat weights so it no longer particularly interesting. On the other hand, Sliver scores about 230, and AToL gets up to 250 for Mutilate builds, so if you have good trinkets from level 70 play, the lower tier of level 80 trinkets is not necessarily very interesting for you.

 

gokpog

I'm just back from testing Killing Spree, since the tester wasn't sure about the procs (http://elitistjerks.com/917861-post2851.html).

It seems that the Killing Spree attacks can proc everything. I had a trinket proc, Mongoose, Combat Potency, Poisons, Blade Twisting and Sword Spec all in one attempt without autoattack running:

http://s5b.directupload.net/images/081009/l7ccqa9k.jpg

 

◊ chalon

A couple things I noticed which will affect the weighting of Bandit's Insignia's proc. The damage does seem to be increased by the 13% magic damage debuff. Additionally, the proc can crit, but it seems that it crits on your spell crit chance, not your melee crit chance, and likely with a crit multiplier of 2x. Finally, it does appear that it's subject to partial resistance. I'd suspect that fully raid buffed it would end up being a bit more than 2124 on average, but I'm not entirely certain about partial resistance mechanics.

 

• Aldriana

Hmm, a valid point. I would assume it actually crits at 1.5x like most spells; given that our spell crit rate tends to be down in the 10-15% range, I wouldn't see this increasing the value of the proc by more than 10% or so. Meanwhile, partial resistances (and presumably full resistance, based on spell hit) also may apply; my guess would be that these reduce the damage output by a couple of percent. In the net, it probably is a damage increase, but I'd be surprised if it changes the value by more than 5-10%, which doesn't significantly affect the ordering of the trinkets - it's still better than the other low-category trinkets, but still a ways behind FotFF and Mirror.

 

◊ chalon

Actually, 1.5x would make sense. I forgot to include the 13% damage increase when figuring out the theoretical max, and thus the outlier for the 1.5x case that I saw was in fact not an outlier.

And yes, I've seen the proc be fully resisted.

 

Nillex

So looking at what my mutilate spec will at 70, I've been wondering how useful ruthlessness is. Is it worth keeping for the ability to perform a 4 point finisher after only one mutilate? It seems possible that 2 points in fleet-footed, and the other in either vigor or quick recovery would offer more dps in high mobility fights.

 

Schiznak

This question was bugging me also, even for the lvl 80 mutilate build. The points in RS dont seem to give much DPS on the spreadsheet, and i remember it was proven a while ago that on the majority of BC fights, 8% runspeed was superior to 6 agi, when comparing boot enchants. So perhaps 2/2 fleet footed and 1/2 quick recovery could be superior to 3/3 RS

 

◊ chalon

The spreadsheet undervalues Ruthlessness at the moment because the modeled cycle is Xn/Xr. In reality if you have 3/3 Ruthlessness and the Rupture glyph you are more likely running Xn/Xn/Xr, and sometimes even Xn/Xn/Xn/Xr, depending on crit/Ruthlessness luck, where X is 4+. If you are running solely Xn/Xr and set the Minimums to 5, then yes Ruthlessness is essentially worthless, because you are going to have to perform two Mutilates anyways, and there's a high probability at least one of them will have one of the hands crit.

As for Fleet Footed, the value of it at 80 is somewhat mitigated if you assume that you will be running with an Unholy DK. Which given how good Unholy Aura is for the raid as a whole, I'd imagine most guilds will end up wanting to run with one. But of course if you aren't running with one there is some value to the talent.

I personally do plan on taking Ruthlessness in both scenarios. It gives you a lot more flexibility in your cycles which is a good thing.

 

Arindelest

I have a couple of points to raise regarding Combat builds and Poisons in 3.0.2.

First of all, it looks like Deadly Poison is going to be superior to Instant Poison by a pretty large margin. Secondly, at all attainable SW gear levels IP MH / DP OH is superior to the reverse by a slight margin (at least according to Vulajin's spreadsheet); although, since IP scales better than DP, it's likely we'll see the reverse be true as we get better gear at 80. I remember that a while back Aldriana did some math on Shivving to save a DP stack, and it turned out to be pretty much a wash. The crux of my question is, is Shivving to save a DP stack now "worth it" (superior to not doing so by a not-insignificant amount), given poisons are a larger part of our damage -- I assume it would be? And if so, how much will that advantage a setup where DP is on the off-hand? How much are we actually gaining given that hit rating now affects spell hit as well, and DP is less likely to be resisted and fall off?