PvE DPS / WotLK Discussion - Page 13

tetracycloide · 06/10/08, 11:58 AM

Originally Posted by lubricious

Unless I missed something somewhere, the concerns I and many other people have about rogue viability stem from the pending addition of yet another melee DPS class, which may have more utility and raid-role options than rogues (like every other melee class).

The only thing you're missing is that this has been continually pointed out, correctly I might add, since the beginning of this thread and yet there are still posters coming out of the woodworks trying to claim that rogues aren't viable in game right now.

Death Knights and their abilities, raid buffs, and party buffs are what rogues should be watching closely, not BM hunter DPS with thoridal.

Dontmindme · 06/10/08, 12:51 PM

Originally Posted by tetracycloide

The only thing you're missing is that this has been continually pointed out, correctly I might add, since the beginning of this thread and yet there are still posters coming out of the woodworks trying to claim that rogues aren't viable in game right now.

Death Knights and their abilities, raid buffs, and party buffs are what rogues should be watching closely, not BM hunter DPS with thoridal.

Repeating the same thing over and over again does not make it true. The fact is that rogues right now are sometimes removed from some bosses entirely in favor of ranged DPS including BM hunters. While rogues may be safe in melee friendly fights, that does not address the issue that in many fights, replacing a rogue with a BM Hunter (even without the Epic bow) might be a raidwide DPS increase.

There is still the problem that with standard raid configurations, there is room for only 2 rogues, and arguably only for rogue-friendly fights. You only squeeze a 3rd rogue in if you are missing one of the normal prerequisite classes for your melee group. Compare this with other DPS classes which normally get 3 spots and if other classes are missing might grow to 4 or 5 and you see that rogues are on the shorter end of the stick. When you consider that rogues might get dropped in half the fights, what do you really have left? 2 rogues worth their spot in half the fights equals 1 effective raid spot.

Looking into WotK, if things do not change favorably, one needs to look at all other DPS classes for competition, not just Death Knights. If BM hunters reach the point that they can out-DPS a rogue even in a non-optimum melee slot, the class is in jeopardy. I think it can be argued that Hunters with legendary bows might already be there and even without it might already be there on some fights.

The biggest problem with the current rogue class is as follows...
Rogues being melee and with low armor tend to require the most healing besides tanks. Compare this to other DPS competitive ranged classes who because of being ranged are less of a healing sink. This opens up the possibility of dropping a healer for extra ranged DPS by removing the rogues in some instances. Even under the best circumstances, it can't be argued that 2 rogues out-DPS 3 hunters under normal circumstances.

The solution is to either give melee DPS classes a nice DPS edge (something it appears Blizzard doesn't want to do) or give us some other usefulness in raids such as a group buffs or useful skills. Even something like a renewable Sap would be an asset, giving the class some raid-useful CC. Just allowing sap to work on targets that are flagged "in-combat" would help as Vanish could be used to get a 2nd sap in. Another solution might be something to reduce the amount of damage a rogue seems to take, either be talents that reduce AoE damage, or designing fights to be more even-handed in damage taken by different people in the raid. Right now, you have too many abilities that randomly target people in the raid and do damage to those around them. Because of the way melee is forced to clump, they tend to take the lion's share of such damage.

I think the fact this thread has continued this far shows that there *is* an issue with rogue raid viability. It is currently being drawn into question. Rogue-less world first kills; rogues getting replaced on some bosses; and that rogues tend to get 2 raid spots at most these days are clear indications that this is true. Add the fact that patch after patch competitive classes seem to be getting buffs that affect their primary raid spec (like hunters) while rogues haven't had a buff to its primary spec that I can recall (Mutilate and Hemo got boosts that brought those specs close), adds to the worry that Blizzard might not really see the issue. While some see the fact that new rogue talents not being released as a good sign, I see it as more likely a sign that Blizzard feels rogue retooling isn't all that necessary and have chosen to address other issues, more important in their mind, first.

tetracycloide · 06/10/08, 1:13 PM

Originally Posted by Dontmindme

I think the fact this thread has continued this far shows that there *is* an issue with rogue raid viability.

The fact that this thread has continued this far shows that there are a lot of rogues that feel like they want to be more useful in raids, not that there is an actual issue with rogue raid viability.

If a large number of people believing something actually proved it was true then the earth would still be flat. Arguments ad populum don't prove anything other than group think and mass hysteria.

swelt · 06/10/08, 1:23 PM

Originally Posted by Dontmindme

The biggest problem with the current rogue class is as follows...
Rogues being melee and with low armor tend to require the most healing besides tanks. Compare this to other DPS competitive ranged classes who because of being ranged are less of a healing sink. This opens up the possibility of dropping a healer for extra ranged DPS by removing the rogues in some instances. Even under the best circumstances, it can't be argued that 2 rogues out-DPS 3 hunters under normal circumstances.

I do not think this is the biggest problem. A warrior in berzerker stance takes 10% more damage than a rogue. The counter measures of warriors/ret pallies and enhancement shaman have to splash damage are nowhere near the potential of Cloak of Shadows. Since the removal of sweeping strikes and 360 degree cleaves, the physical splash damage taken in PvE is almost a non-factor, thus armor almost irrelevant.

No, I think the weakness of rogues is that we are perceived (true or otherwise) to be dependent on group buffers to give adequate performance, and that those group buffers are in turn dependent on windfury. This is why in turn the coming of another melee class that will want to be in that sacred melee group has us worried. So either we need to break that windfury hegemony, or we need to be contributing something into the synergy mix ourselves.

• Curved · 06/10/08, 1:30 PM

Rogues being melee and with low armor tend to require the most healing besides tanks.

All it takes is 5 minutes to glance at wws parses to see that this is completely false. All things being equal, the class right under your tanks as far as healing needed would most likely be warlocks, and rogue's are usually on the lower end of the damage taken spectrum.

kargathia · 06/10/08, 1:33 PM

Originally Posted by Dontmindme

Right now, you have too many abilities that randomly target people in the raid and do damage to those around them. Because of the way melee is forced to clump, they tend to take the lion's share of such damage.

Isn't this already adressed for a rather great deal with Void Reaver, where the arcane orbs bother melee classes less, but instead they get pounding, a lower hitting aoe, but occuring more often?

Left · 06/10/08, 1:40 PM

Originally Posted by swelt

No, I think the weakness of rogues is that we are perceived (true or otherwise) to be dependent on group buffers to give adequate performance, and that those group buffers are in turn dependent on windfury. This is why in turn the coming of another melee class that will want to be in that sacred melee group has us worried. So either we need to break that windfury hegemony, or we need to be contributing something into the synergy mix ourselves.

I agree that the primary issue is the strength of Windfury. Personally, I think it is sort of ridiculous that a buff given by another class can (a) make the rogue signature weapon (daggers) take a back seat to all other rogue weapons, and (b) trivialize rogue signature weapon imbues (poisons) by virtue of how little damage they do in comparison. One way to fix WF would be to make poisons comparable to WF in terms of a buff. It wouldn't even be that hard; all you would have to do is make poisons scale with attack power.

At the moment, poisons suffer from the same problem as Hemo: they are static, and therefore contribute less and less as rogues gear up. If Instant Poison dealt 100 plus 20% of AP in damage, it would scale quite nicely. It's not OP in PvP, as (a) using IP in PvP implies sacrificing a utility poison, and (b) you don't have enough AP in PvP to really scale it up. In PvE, though, IP suddenly becomes a viable MH weapon imbue again, since you have a good chance to deal 600+ poison damage each hit. Make it worth off of melee crit chance, and it becomes even more viable. Same thing with DP - if it scaled with gear it would be more useful.

It would also fix the issue with there being 12 talents in the Assassination tree related to poisons when, taken all together, cause at most a 2% DPS shift for a typical raiding rogue. Pretty stupid, if you ask me. Poisons have deserved an overhaul for a long time, and a decent overhaul of poisons would also bring rogue DPS in off-groups up a good bit.

• gwystyl · 06/10/08, 3:34 PM

Originally Posted by tetracycloide

The fact that this thread has continued this far shows that there are a lot of rogues that feel like they want to be more useful in raids, not that there is an actual issue with rogue raid viability.

If a large number of people believing something actually proved it was true then the earth would still be flat. Arguments ad populum don't prove anything other than group think and mass hysteria.

So I guess the non-legendary using hunters that dominate the Brutallus WWS scoreboard vs the legendary equipped rogues attacking a target that the legendaries were specifically designed to do exceptional damage on lacks any merit at all for the basis of an argument that maybe, just maybe, you might be wrong in your belief that rogues have no reason at all to be troubled.

FYI, the irony in your example is that most of the educated world believed the world to be round well before Columbus set out to circumnavigate the globe. The Greeks determined the world was round with one (who's name eludes me) that even correctly calculated the Earth's circumference in 400 BC.

Luuca · 06/10/08, 4:07 PM

Originally Posted by Left

I agree that the primary issue is the strength of Windfury. Personally, I think it is sort of ridiculous that a buff given by another class can (a) make the rogue signature weapon (daggers) take a back seat to all other rogue weapons, and (b) trivialize rogue signature weapon imbues (poisons) by virtue of how little damage they do in comparison. One way to fix WF would be to make poisons comparable to WF in terms of a buff. It wouldn't even be that hard; all you would have to do is make poisons scale with attack power.

At the moment, poisons suffer from the same problem as Hemo: they are static, and therefore contribute less and less as rogues gear up. If Instant Poison dealt 100 plus 20% of AP in damage, it would scale quite nicely. It's not OP in PvP, as (a) using IP in PvP implies sacrificing a utility poison, and (b) you don't have enough AP in PvP to really scale it up. In PvE, though, IP suddenly becomes a viable MH weapon imbue again, since you have a good chance to deal 600+ poison damage each hit. Make it worth off of melee crit chance, and it becomes even more viable. Same thing with DP - if it scaled with gear it would be more useful.

It would also fix the issue with there being 12 talents in the Assassination tree related to poisons when, taken all together, cause at most a 2% DPS shift for a typical raiding rogue. Pretty stupid, if you ask me. Poisons have deserved an overhaul for a long time, and a decent overhaul of poisons would also bring rogue DPS in off-groups up a good bit.

I would have to agree with Left. The scaling of poisons with the AP of the rogue seems, to me, to be the easiest possible solution to our dependence upon

Wait a minute... the world is round? When did that happen?

• Vulajin · 06/10/08, 4:09 PM

Originally Posted by Left

Personally, I think it is sort of ridiculous that a buff given by another class can (a) make the rogue signature weapon (daggers) take a back seat to all other rogue weapons, and (b) trivialize rogue signature weapon imbues (poisons) by virtue of how little damage they do in comparison.

B is true, but I don't understand where people get the idea of A. Windfury Totem contributes the same damage regardless of weapon type, assuming the same stats. It is not normalized, it has no cooldown, and it does not proc on instant attacks or sword spec swings. (edit) Well, this isn't 100% accurate. There is a very slight difference in the extent to which Windfury attacks benefit from your MH weapon specialization, but this effect does not stem from Windfury itself, and it's hardly accurate to say that it "makes the rogue signature weapon take a back seat." It is the weapon specs themselves, combined with several other factors, that do that.

• gwystyl · 06/10/08, 4:18 PM

Windfury is the keystone that keeps the entire bridge up. You really want to think carefully before choosing to remove / replace *that* particular stone. Warriors depend on it while supplying a potent raid-wide buff as well as a potent group buff. A ret, if your raid group employs them in more than a situational sense, depends on this as well while providing multiple, potent raid-wide buffs as well as a potent group buff.

Hannigahalic spelled it out quite well. It may just take a per-rogue multiplicative stacking group buff, which is pretty unoriginal / unimaginative but there aren't many other compelling ideas that would produce the desired result in pve without imbalancing pvp. It's on par with the idea of removing glancing blows for rogues.

• Aldriana · 06/10/08, 5:52 PM

I don't want to move too far into the realms of rampant speculation here, as I think this conversation has largely passed the point of productivity; that said, it does seem to me that most people are taking the position that the benefit of rogues is purely a damage-based one. I'd simply like to suggest that this needn't be the case. It would certainly be a modification of our existing position in raids, but since we're saying that such a thing is needed on some scale anyway, it's probably worth considering the notion.

So what do I mean by non-damage based roles? Consider the ret pally. Yes, he provides a modicum of DPS, and yes, he provides some useful damage buffs, which means that his overall damage contribution is on the same order of magnitude as the damage contribution of a full DPSer. But that's not why you bring him - if it were just "I do as much damage as a rogue, spread across fifteen different people", there wouldn't be a lot of motivation to bring a ret pally over another rogue. No, the reason why you bring a Ret Pally is that in addition to their overall DPS contribution, they provide a valuable service in keeping Judgement of Light and/or Judgement of Wisdom up on bosses, which is a valuable service for most DPS classes. Additionally, they allow an extra pally buff, meaning you can give all classes their 3 pally buffs without needing 3 holy pallies. They provide valuable raid utility that's not directly damage related in addition to their damage contribution - and that, as much as anything, is why you bring them. Similarly Shadow Priests and to some extent Affliction warlocks.

So, how does this apply to rogues? Well, instead of giving us either more personal DPS or a DPS buff, they could concoct some way for us to provide additional utility on fights, either by design of the fight and use of existing abilities, or by the addition of new abilities. Lets address the first of these two first.

There are already some number of fights wherein the specific abilities of a rogue - usually in the form of our efficient spell interupt - come in handy. Reliquary of Souls is perhaps most easily done with 3 rogues for P1 enrages and P2 interrupts. Illidari Council needs interrupts and potentially wound poison on one or more targets (as the MS warriors can't be everywhere). And so on. If they continue to add fights of this sort where rogue abilities are specifically needed, our role would be secure with no fundamental class changes at all. They'd just need to be more creative on fights. For instance, what if, on Brutallus, instead of being randomly targeted, Burn was always cast on the closest target to him? Suddenly, the fight is best done by having 3 rogues rotating in to eat the burn and cloaking it off. Could you do it without? Probably. But it'd give a definite benefit to having rogues in the raid. And with a little thought I imagine good uses for Evasion, Sprint, and the other rogue abilities could be found as well.

The other option is to give us new abilities. Harkening back to MC/BWL days: what if instead of Hunters getting Tranq shot, rogues got Tranquilizing Poison? Or Soothing Strike, a tranquilizing finishing move? What if we had a way of restoring mana, or life, or reducing threat, or piercing mob immunities? There are *plenty* of other ways for us to potentially contribute beyond raw DPS - most of which would make playing a rogue somewhat more interesting to boot.

Additionally, I'd like to suggest that whatever utility gets added to rogues needn't take the form of a bland party or raid buff, stacking or otherwise. It seems to me that the finishing move and poison mechanics are already well set up to provide a means for giving raid utility. At the moment, nonSnD finishers and poisons in general are pretty much irrelevant - combined, they're maybe 10% of our damage output. We could easily replace these with things that provide far more interesting raid benefits. Even in the realm of raw damage abilities: what if we had a finishing move that increases all damage taken by the target by 10% for 10 seconds? In small-group PvP, it's not particularly better than a standard damage finisher; In large-group PvP, Rogues need a boost anyway; and in PvE, the ability to increase total raid damage by 10% via 3 rogues rotating it is pretty potent.

My point is that solidifying the rogue role in raids need not just be a passive bonus; I think it would make things far more interesting if it provided greater diversity and need for skill to get the maximal benefit out of rogues, and I think finishers are a natural way to do so; poisons perhaps a bit less so, but with Shiv even managing those could be interesting. For instance, they could increase our DPS fairly significantly by simply having no cap on how high Deadly Poison can stack, and while shivving to save a 5 stack isn't really that worthwhile, if you're 5 minutes into Brutallus, shivving to save the 50-stack you've built up is definitely something you'd want to watch, and would definitely help distinguish the good rogues from the bad).

Regardless, while I'm sure we can come up with all manner of interesting speculation in what they could or couldn't do to fix the problem we may or may not have, ultimately we'll just have to wait and see. Hopefully they won't leave us hanging for more than a few more weeks.

• gwystyl · 06/10/08, 6:09 PM

All good points, Aldriana.

The only reason I've posted at all in this thread is that I know Blizzard looks at these forums. What I don't want is for a prevailing belief that all is well and good and all rogues need is the next rank of Sinister Strike and maybe a new Eviscerate and they're fine. Certainly not what I want them thinking after having perused the wonderful transformation they're giving the other classes as seen in Alpha.

The worst thing rogues can do is stay silent and wait for... nothing.

Arakas · 06/10/08, 6:52 PM

Blizz has also said that they intend to find a method of buffing dagger rogues (I can't find the link to the second Podcast to get the exact quotes, sorry).

Much like builds for other classes, I would imagine that they may just choose to tie the raid utility components to specific builds of rogues. To avoid forcing a stereotypical build for 95% of the class (presently combat sword rogues for raiding) they'd be able to address this by placing the talents high enough in the Assassination or Subtlety trees. Pure combat rogues would still be able to churn out strong DPS, but other flavors would be viable because of their utility.

Blizzard has already showed disposition to associate daggers with the Assassination tree by placing Puncturing Wounds there. And I wouldn't be surprised to see Opportunity follow into that tree in the future to push DPS higher. Since any large gains in the Combat tree would likely be shared with swords/maces, they wouldn't really be helping daggers to level the playing field by making many changes there.

So with the percentage of poison talents already located in Assassination (the fantastic window of options that others have already pointed out for new poisons), and Blizz's claims that daggers will be strongly improved in WotLK, this is the tree that I'll be watching most closely.

Antumbra · 06/10/08, 10:34 PM

This is crossposted from a short discussion that occurred in the benefactor's bar:

Vulajin suggested that it is essential for a rogue to maintain ~100% SnD uptime in order to maximize DPS, and that even 99% was not acceptable in most cases. This didn't seem correct to me, so I spent a bit doing some napkin math that seemed to indicate that he might be wrong. Doing some runs of Aldriana's new python-based simulator resulted in data that more or less backed up my napkin math.

However, I haven't ever seen any other math or discussion on this topic, and I'm not all that confident in the math I did. Essentially, the question is this - given the following three options:
1) Sacrifice a small amount of remaining SnD uptime (0-3 seconds) in order to avoid capping your energy, by refreshing SnD early
2) Allow SnD to drop for a short amount of time (<1 second) sometimes in order to run a cycle that avoids overwriting SnD too early and avoids capping energy
3) When your energy is going to become capped, waste a combo point by using SS at 5cp
Which of the three is the most efficient? In my experience and based on my calculations, Of the three, #2 is probably the best, but I haven't spent much time looking at #3 and my math has some oversights.

For reference, my napkin math:

This is all based on my character's stats from a hyjal parse I had sitting around (I got this data from an Anetheron kill where I had 99%+ dps time, raid buffs, etc)
swing timers: 2.6|1.5
SnD swing timers: 2.0|~1.153
40 energy = 1 combo point + 1 SS
25 energy + 5 combo points = 1 SnD refresh
Energy per 5pt SnD: 225
5 point SnD = 30.45 seconds
Cost per second of SnD uptime @ 5 points: ~7.4 energy
Energy/second: 10 (20 every 2 seconds) + 2 (combat potency)
Energy/second under SnD: 10 (20 every 2 seconds) + 2.6 (combat potency)
Average SS damage: 1417
Damage/sec from SS: ~446
Damage/energy from SS: ~35.4
Average swing damage: 735
Damage/sec from MH+OH autoattack: ~1005
Minimum time to refresh: ~18.8 seconds
Minimum time to refresh under SnD: ~17.9 seconds
1 second of SnD uptime = 30% haste = ~0.115 MH swings + ~0.2 OH swings (roughly ~232 damage), ~0.6 energy (combat potency)
This is a bit off because I don't have separate data on damage averages for MH vs OH.

Assuming SnD is already up, this means:
You regenerate ~225 energy in ~18 seconds. In those 18 seconds you use Sinister Strike 5 times and then use Slice and Dice. That 225 energy generates an average of ~7085 damage from sinister strikes, and produces 30.45 seconds of SnD uptime.
Assuming you spend another 18 seconds to renew SnD before it drops, this leaves you with ~12.55 seconds to DPS, which is enough time to build about 4 combo points. This gives you a comfortable 5s/4r rotation, completely ignoring Ruthlessness and Relentless Strikes.
If you factor in Relentless Strikes and Ruthlessness, running 5s/4r means that sometimes you will have already built 5cp for SnD, be approaching the energy cap, and have a chunk of SnD uptime remaining. Your two choices for dealing with this are to waste a chunk of SnD uptime by using SnD earlier, or to switch to a 5/5 rotation and let SnD drop sometimes when you get unlucky with procs.
From my math, that one lost second of SnD uptime costs you 0.6 energy (~21.24 SS damage), and ~232 autoattack damage. In comparison, each overwritten second of SnD uptime costs you approximately ~7.4 energy, which is approximately ~262 SS damage.
That comes out to a second of dropped SnD uptime costing you ~253 damage, and a second of wasted SnD uptime from an early refresh costing you ~262 damage.
Based on this, I would speculate that wasting 2-3 seconds of SnD uptime in order to run 5/4 is possibly worse than running 5/5 and letting SnD drop sometimes. But I'm not factoring in the actual damage dealt by rupture or the effect of RS/Ruthlessness, so maybe I'm way off?

A run of Aldriana's calculator suggested that 5s5r was superior to 4s5r by approximately 7 DPS for my current gear, and in practice when I run 4s5r, SnD drops periodically. When I run 5s4r, I often end up energy capped before SnD has expired.

Thoughts? Links to previous TC on the subject? Suggestions for other cycle calculators to run to compare?

I've been trying to decide between 4s5r and 5s5r since breaking my T4 2pc bonus, and I still haven't been able to decide which of the two is ideal (after running both on various fights), so I'm curious to see what more experienced rogues have to say.