agghh!! that makes so much more sense now, thankee!

I appologize for my stupidity =P

I've been doing a ton of PTR and beta testing and am somewhat unimpressed due to the nature of our rotation. Obviously we can't determine whether we might be top dog when it comes to single target DPS just yet, but I've noticed that our rotations seem a lot more difficult to maintain without gaining any benefits from having to do so.

One thing that really bothers me is the luck factor of mutilate builds, not to mention we end up either having to throw out extra envenoms while we wait for out rupture to finally expire so we can refresh it.

A possible buff for both combat, mutilate, and even more so for a potential sub PvE build would be to include a chance to refresh a 5 point rupture per combo point in relentless strikes. Seeing as how relentless is exactly the same as before, only we have to invest 5 points versus 1, this would more or less bring RS into being an awesome talent again. Every PvE raid build should take relentless, but this gives us even more of a reason to do so. The only problem with including this in a tier 1 talent is it would obviously be a bit overpowered for it's tier.

Although, you could possibly throw in a glyph for envenom, or even do it for eviscerate to include said buff. This would change our rotations up a bit and would give a pretty close to equal buff for both combat and mutilate raid builds. I don't know exactly how big of a buff it might give a possible sub build considering all the raw attack power and the improved rupture damage already within the tree.

With combat having improved energy regen to the point where a 4s/5r build might leave us with wasted CPs(unless we throw in small 2-4 point finisher depending on CP procs), and watching our timers more than the actual boss while using a mutilate build; we definitely need more breathing room to fix up our rotations a bit.

I just think envenom would fit a bit better seeing as how poison damage is such a large part of our DPS now, might as well try and get it into the combat rotation.

Thoughts?

My immediate thoughts were, "Yeah, that'd be great for PvE." But for PvP/Arena, you'd be facing some pretty severe balance issues. Not to mention that it would severely favour Assassination as it would allow you to invest all combo points into Envenom after the first 2 cycles whilst (passively) maintaining two enormous sources of DPS.

As much as I hate to drown in cross-class comparisons, entertaining the thought of such power in the hands of another class is horrific. ie. A Mage triggering Ignites whilst refreshing Icy Veins with every Fire Blast. Or a Hunter triggering Stings and refreshing Rapid Fire with each Arcane Shot. That sort of thing.

Personally, I don't see that rotations are no longer totally mindless is a negative. The class is more interesting to play, and there's more differentiation between good rogues and bad - which is, of course, good news for good rogues and bad news for bad rogues. And it's fairly typical of what they're doing with all classes - from what I've seen, they're trying to make all classes more dynamic in their playstyle. So it doesn't put us at any particular disadvantage, either. Hence, I think it's a pretty silly thing to be worried about, unless, of course, you happen to be a bad rogue - in which case, we don't care.

I can feel confident with a difficult rotation, deciding in split seconds which finisher, dot, action if it makes a big difference in dps/total damage.

At the current state of my experience in the beta no rotation gives a significant Damage boost compared to other classes.

The mutilate build seems to be the winner of the field at Lvl 70 because you can do some nice burst damage with ambush, mutilate, eviscerate which takes down all single quest mobs and do a nice average Damage in a group while assisting in CroudControl and opening chests.

At the current build I don't see any but really nice Friends playing Rogues in Raids.

I will test the premade 80 Rogue this evening on the level 80 Boss in Stormwind.

Ecxcuse me if this have been allready explained , i can't find a post for it.

I have some question regarding the initial Snd in the Mutilate/CttC build and 4n/4n/4r rotation. How many CP's do we have to spend on the very first SnD in this build??

Honestly, I prefer to Mutilate 2x -> SnD -> then start on the Rupture part of the cycle.

Is this really the best way to start off, though? Admittedly I haven't run the numbers, but I always thought the faster we got SnD up and running the better.

My usual entrance is essentially what Tinwhisker said above: Garrote -> SnD, Mut to 4+cp, Envenom (getting the full SnD duration now), and THEN lead in to the Rupture sequencing. Am I wrong to do it this way? Should I start the Rupture cycle earlier? (Admittedly, this is a habit left over from the way I played Combat, where the haste of SnD reigned supreme.)

At this point I am asking just to know what actually is numerically superior, since we open a LOT in a normal dungeon run, though against trash Rupture hardly ever ticks to full... and rotations matter less :P

Your better to open with mutilate, except if they have given a boost at garrote in wotlk. You should do something like Mut, SnD, 1-2 Mut, Rup, 1-2 Mut, Env. Mutilate was the best in BC and i expect it to be in WOTLK.


Sry, for my English

Mutilate or SS is typically considered the best opener because stealthing to a target wastes DPS time in most fights. Overkill might change this somewhat but, as a do not have a beta account, I'm unsure of what procs the effect. Does overkill proc no matter how stealth is broken? Presumably if you use an opener while stealth it works but what happens if you are knocked out of stealth by damage or if you manually break your own stealth?

If it is possible to activate overkill by simply unstealthing then the best opener is probably breaking stealth before moving in and then mutilate to open. If not the situation is more complex. This is all largely academic, however, since openers have very little overall effect on boss fights unless it's a fight that frequently gets interupted.

Mark me down as one who is looking forward to a more challenging playstyle in WotLK. I can see how mutilate will be more interactive, but if adding in an occasional envenom into a Combat SS won't actually increase dps, how will Combat be anymore interactive?

Sure there's the energy pooling involved with using the BT trinket but is that all?

This is a little misleading in my opinion. I agree with the first two, however, you need to be clear that the way you're not letting SnD drop is by getting in a 4+ Envenom before it drops.

I don't agree with the third: not only is it perfectly okay to let Rupture drop for a second or two, it is often necessary because a lot of the time attempts to refresh Rupture while it's still ticking will be met with "A more powerful ability is already active" warning. Of course you want to keep your Rup-time maxed, but it isn't like Slice and Dice in that it should never be allowed to drop.

There has been some discussion of using a 4+n/4+n/4+r cycle, and my thought is that this will be the best cycle. It's the least likely to drop SnD while maintaining significant Rupture damage.

There has also been some question about using the Rupture Glyph, based on the fact that it makes it difficult to reapply Rupture in a normal 4+n/4+r cycle. I wanted to add my own conclusion on the comparison of 4+n/4+r without glyph to 4+n/4+n/4+r with glyph.

In a cycle of 6 finishers, the rogue doing the first cycle will do: Env, Rup, Env, Rup, Env, Rup for a total of 3 Env and 3 Rup. The rogue doing the 2nd cycle will do Env, Env, gRup, Env, Env, gRup for a total of 4 Env and 2.5 Rup. (The glyphed Rupture lasts 25% longer than the unglyphed version.) As such the difference between the first rogue's cycle and the second rogue's cycle is 1/2 Rupture to 1 full Envenom.

A full Envenom for every six finishers will average out to be a decent increase in damage over half a Rupture in that same time.

Blizzard was pretty clear that they intentionally nerfed talents they deemed overpowered, or that were required for every spec. The change to Relentless Strikes, while not very pleasing to Rogues in general, was very purposeful. There is no chance that they are going to add any buffs to it. The only thing they might do, if enough Rogues complain enough, would be to pare it down to 3 pts to give combat dagger rogues a break.

It's just the same as Master of Subtlety. It's not a proc, it's a passive effect that depends on you being stealthed or having been stealthed within the last 6 seconds.

The old two finisher cycles had significant slack before the addtion of vitality and the rupture and SS glyphs. It is now possible to occasionally weave in eviscerates to combat cycles depending on what energy and CP procs occur during a cycle.

Yes, but hasn't Vulajin shown that doing this actually lowers dps?

You have to look at the time it take to do the cycle, i don't remember the number. But if rupture is 15 sec without Glyph and 20 sec with Glyph. Your first rogue will do is 6 finisher in a 45 sec window ( 3rup * 15 sec) and your second rogue will do is finisher in a 40 sec windows.

That is inaccurate. It will take the exact same amount of time to build 4+ combo pts for the six finishers. What finisher you use isn't going to reduce the amount of time/energy it takes to build up those combo pts.

The first cycle will have 16*3 = 48 seconds of Rup-time and the 2nd cycle will have 21*2 = 42 seconds of Rup-time, but the _total_ time of the two cycles is identical.

Edit:

In fact, you have helped to highlight one of the major points of my prior post, which is that it's okay to let Rupture drop. The second cycle has 6 fewer (it's really 8 because that 21st second can't tick) seconds of Rup-time and yet will do a greater amount of damage by taking advantage of the Rupture glyph to allow for an extra Envenom.

Would that be optimal though? Has anyone theorycrafted the best opening sequence?

Lets take two sequences and compare them. (ee stands for expected energy)

Method 1: 2xMut > snd > xMut > rupture:

mut > mut > snd > mut > mut > rupture [worst case 70%] - 265 energy (5% chance of being 290 energy) = 266.25 ee
mut > mut >snd > mut > rupture if ruthless procs and the third mut crits [best case 30%] - 205 (5% of 230) = 206.25 ee


Method 2: mut > snd > xMut > envenom > xMut > rupture:
mut > snd > mut > mut > envenom > mut > mut > rupture [worst case 4%] - 325[47.5%], 350[47.5%], 360[2.5%], 385[2.5%] = 339.25 ee
mut > snd > mut > mut > envenom > mut > rupture [avg case 43.5%] - 265[47.5%], 290[47.5%], 300[2.5%], 325[2.5%] = 279.25 ee
mut > snd > mut > envenom > mut > mut > rupture [avg case 43.5%] - 265[25%], 290[25%], 300[25%], 325[25%] = 295 ee
mut > snd > mut > envenom > mut > rupture [best case 9%] - 205[25%], 230[25%], 235[25%], 260[25%] = 232.5 ee



Method 1: 248 ee
Method 2: 284 ee

So it seems on average, it will cost 36 more energy to use method 2, and more often than not it would cost ~20 more energy.

That means with method 2, it will take 3.6 seconds longer to start rupture, but you will get an extra envenom in before then.

Conclusion:

So the question is, would an extra envenom (or evisc if dp isn't stacked high enough) be worth losing 3.5 seconds of rupture time? I'd imagine it would.

Fyi worst case is it would lose ~11 sec of rupture time, but that would be verrrry rare (0.1% chance)
Best case you'd lose 1 sec of rupture time.

Another method that I didn't calculate would be: Mut > snd > xMut > rupture, but I'm hungry now so I'll calculate that later, and that would likely result in snd downtime.


And yes, I was quite bored.

Thanks for addressing my question. I've looked at the extensive analysis, but I wasn't convinced that it was taking into account things like:

the possibility of diminishing returns on Improved Poisons
what our dodge/parry chance will be at t7 vs t8 vs t9
the change to health potions where you can only use one in the encounter

So, a couple of points here:

1) It's true, Combat isn't going to be as interactive as Mutilate. But there are still some new things to pay attention to; 3-finishers cycles take a little more awareness than 2-finisher cycles, you have another cooldown to manage, and with the SS glyph, you also have SF-style variable CP generation to watch. So while it's certainly less dynamic than Mutilate, it's definitely ahead of where it is now, and doesn't stack up that badly against the current Mutilate in terms of things to be doing.

2) I suspect that's to some extent intentional. Consider the following blue post:

If I had to guess, I would say that they're probably going to aim to have Mutilate a bit ahead of Combat assuming you play perfectly, but Combat will be easier to play; that way, the optimal spec for good rogues and mediocre rogues will be somewhat different. Whether or not they actually succeed in doing such a thing remains to be seen, but it wouldn't surprise me if it's a design goal.

If he has, he's mistaken. It's reasonably straightforward to show that between the SS Glyph, the SnD Glyph, the Rupture Glyph, and the high energy regen of a combat build, no cycle using only SnD and Rupture can be optimal. Now, at 70, before we get those glyphs, it may very well be the case than you're still doing just 2 finishers; but unless it turns out that Envenom and/or Eviscerate is better than Rupture, we will be doing 3-finisher cycles at 80 as combat rogues.

This is true, though I do think your original listing was a bit deceptive. Letting either SnD or HFB drop is really realy bad; the occasional Rupture gap is significantly less bad and somewhat inevitable. I'd phrase it in terms of:

1) Keep HFB and SnD up.
2) Maximize rupture uptime.
3) Envenom as much as you can without violating the first 2 rules.

I was mucking around on Beta last night, and spent some time trying to get rotation timing right with a 4+n/4+n/4+r cycle, and found it was MUCH easier to, instead of sticking to a "rotation", just play "whackamole" with NeedToKnow. What I'd do is simply build 4 or 5 CPs, wait for something to drop <5s, and then refresh it (I was watching HfB, SnD, Rupture, and my energy bar). If nothing needed to be refreshed, I just envenomed and rebuilt combo points (full disclosure: I had no rupture glyph, just SnD. I began counting from the time rupture dropped until the time rupture went back up and in ~75% of the time, I was able to reapply withing 3 seconds).

I bring this up because I began setting certain priority rules towards each ability that I'd follow to figure out which of my three timers I'd reset first, and I ended up coming up with the exact prioritization that I quoted above from Aldriana.

Ultimately, what I want to know is, does this sound like the future of mutilate, or will I ultimately have to work on getting a set rotation down to be competitive with other DPSers?

It sounds like the future of rogue DPS reguardless of spec. Mutilate is going to be weaving in additional finishers more than combat and subtelty is probably going to be weaving in addtional finishers more. With the new glyphs and talents any rogue, pretty much reguardless of spec, is going to find reacting to CP, energy, and debuff/buff timers by weaving in extra finishers superior to maintaining a fixed rotation and ignoring them.

I had a question about the Sinister Strike glyph in regards to cycles. I pay close attention to this thread so if I've missed any discussion on it then I apologize.

With the SF type proc on SS with the glyph I'm curious as to whether anyone has put much thought into optimal cycles. For instance, a SS at 4 CPs is inherently going to waste a CP about 8-15% of the time depending on your crit value. I'm wondering if this is just a very minimal/acceptable loss or if it's noticeable enough to push combat towards a mutilate type 4+/4+ cycle, especially as your crit value rises.