Ghostcrawler on the "fast/slow dagger issue":
"Changing Mutilate (or dagger itemization) to beef up slow daggers a little would be nice. The way we'd do that though would probably be to mess with poison procs, which risks being a nerf to rogue dps overall, so that's not something we're comfortable doing at this stage. We think you're still cool using a high dps slow OH dagger, so you shouldn't always be in the situation of sharding any slow daggers. Long-term it's something we'd like to revisit though."

Well, this rather bad Poisons/FA/Mutilate synergy has been bugging me for a long time. Would a speed dependent FA be out of hand?

1.8+ = 3 energy
1.6 - 1.7 = 2 energy
1.5 and below = 1 energy

as i was doing this spreadsheet query yesterday i thought i might share some of the findings i saw at least for my gear level. DP is on offhand unless otherwise stated

simply plugging in my gear/spec, crux against double fang setup wields (where crux is gemmed with a delicate crimson spinel):


fang/crux (DP): 2882.45
crux (DP)/fang: 2879.92
fang/fang: 2876.21
crux/crux: 2866.05
crux/fang (DP): 2859.18
fang/trackers: 2841.86
fang/messenger: 2835.68
fang/SBoU: 2827.95
fang (DP)/EoO: 2825.71
EoO/fang (DP): 2821.74

with a typical 51/5/5 build, may be different for your gear levels, just posted for comparisons sake

edit: added crux/crux

That would make slow daggers more desirable, sure, but it would also nerf our DPS at this point.

Bottom line is yes, it's true it's a bit unoptimal. But at the same time our current "best" weapon combination appears to be MH Webbed Death (1.4s) and OH Sinister Revenge (1.8s). He is correct in that a slow OH w/ DP isn't really a huge DPS loss compared to a fast one, though obviously if there were a fast 171 DPS weapon that would be a bit better than Sinister Revenge.

EDIT: Checked the arena weapons, and the Deadly Gladiator Shiv has the same speed/DPS as Webbed Death, so therefore Sinister Revenge is the best OH.

Probably i made a mistake, but playing with rings, seems with the ArP decline, as angelita/Runed/Stormrage have ArP, and with agil/AP gaining more, seems Hyjal exhalted rep ring to be closer if not a little better than those 3, with HKB being first. Again not sure, maybe someone else can run that ring to see what it ends up.

2 notes and a question

Playing around w/ spreadsheets show AToL surpassing DST for me with a combat build atm, by a pretty substantial (20-30 dps, depending on spec/cycle) margin.

Similarly, I've found at least in my case (Early sunwell gear), I'm well past the Agi > hit point of inflection.

Finally, since I've been having trouble managing to hammer out a definitive answer for myself and I've seen enough conflicting information that I want to try to get a handle on this.

For mutilate, Fast MH, and highest DPS OH is the way to go w/ Instant Poison MH.

For combat, Slow MH, Fast OH, with Instant poison MH and deadly off. Correct?

There really isn't a hard and fast rule for Mutilate necessarily. OH DPS/stats can offset speed, but only to an extent. It's really hard to say definitively, it depends on what weapons you have available and what your gear is.

As for combat, you're generally correct, though it's actually much closer on whether the MH should be IP or the OH, and depends a bit on what the speed difference is.

EDIT: Oh, and for combat it depends on whether or not you're Swords, Fist, or Fist/Dagger

For weapons with the same stats (PvP daggers for instance) what's the best combo to have? If I have access to either two s2 1.8 speeds, or one MH and one OH s2 dagger, what's my best combo?

Can you give any numbers for the inflection here? I picked up a s2 MH Fist weapon to go with my EoO for combat in case I don't like Mutilate, and don't want to get my poisons in the wrong hands.

I've seen all the new spec that you guys did for the new upcoming patch. What are you planning about the hit rating cause without precision we gonna have to get a real high hit cap or they gonna reduce it, anyone have a answer to that, my rogue have 344 hit rating unfood buff.


Thanks in advance from a fellow rogue

Ferommor Kirin Tor Horde side ftw :P

Wisdom from Aldriana:
Also keep in mind that once we start leveling to 80 in the expansion I think most people will be picking up precision after maxing opportunity/RS. You won't have it until then, but as Al said you don't really need it to do competent DPS.

1) I've always felt that Vulajin's sheet overestimates the value of AToL somewhat. I'm not entirely sure of all the reasons, and I can't say it hasn't been fixed at some point along the line; but while AToL is getting a bit stronger, relatively speaking, I confess I'm skeptical about it beating DST that badly.

2) As a general rule on Mutilate, you want fast weapons; if you only have one, you probably want it in your MH. But you should really really really check the sheet to be sure, particularly when comparing weapons of significantly different DPS.

Regarding AToL, it is definitely superior to DST by a fairly significant margin for a Mutilate build, and has always been. For a Combat build, I would only assume that AToL could surpass DST if you stacked a lot of haste rating, and even then certainly not by 20-30 DPS.

I'm very confused about using fast MH/OH Dagger for mutilate

I don't understand how fast/fast daggers will help you out in PVE situation since my understanding for sometime now is that two slow daggers was the best option for mutilate.

I'm guessing come WoTLK its a better option to go with a fast MH/OH for PVE? And also I know this thread isnt for PVP but what about that?

The choice between a fast\slow dagger for offhand is not a rule.. the best thing is testing different choices with the available spreadsheets i guess.

For example i found out that for my gear , Tracker's blade beats The Mutilator as mutilate offhand ( hardly guessable if not using spreadsheets ).

Well, even with patch, the hit cap doesn't change tbh.. since the Precision Talent remains the same for weapon attacks ( just a poison component hit is added ). Hit cap, also, depends both from target lvl and player lvl ofc and this doesn't change in patch ( but does in wotlk ).

Anyway, the cap values for hit are actually these ( font : rogue pve dps on this forum ) :

Attack Type Boss (73) Lvl 72 Lvl 71 Lvl 70
Special 64 16 8 0
White 363 316 308 300

This is with 5/5 Precision and without draeneis ( i am horde ) and without imp FF..
So the ''hard'' hit cap, is 363 against bosses. Hard to answer ''is that value worth reaching?''.. the common answer is ''it would be if u wouldn't have to pass up on so much other stats to reach it''.
The real matter is that talking of PVE DPS , hit is a very important stats ( more than others for a combat build ), but still the dps depends from even a balance of stats , as always the best way to see if u should go up on hit , is using a spreadsheet.

It has to do with Instant poison procs and Focused Attacks. The fast one goes in the mh for Mutilate specs because finishers only proc off the main hand and since you want IP on the faster weapon, you get slightly more IP procs by putting the fast weapon in your main hand.

This has been extensively discussed recently in the thread. If you would like to learn more, use the Search function and search this thread. There is an abundance of math here and you can always use the spreadsheets too. People here aren't trying to be dismissive but the question has been asked, and answered, multiple times in the last 20 pages or so.

I just wanted to call out this statement, because while it's generally true in 2.X, it is no longer widely true in 3.0. Once you're above the poison hit cap, hit is not necessarily the best individual stat - for instance, socketing for hit isn't necessarily the way to go. Agi, AP, and Crit are increasing in value relative to hit, such that for some rogues, Agi may well be a better individual stat. To figure out whether you're in this category, I recommend use of, that's right, you guessed it, a spreadsheet.

Actually using Vulajin's sheet for 3.0 ( BC version ) seems like that regemming all my stuff on agi gems ( or almost all ) would be a dps improve even with a combat build. So i guess it must be like that.

Can I just ask to confirm the reasoning on this? As I understand it, it goes like this:
1) Assumption: you will be using instant + deadly poison because this gives maximum dps and enables envenom
2) you want instant poison on the fastest dagger to get maximum procs
3) you want instant poison on your main hand because specials have a chance to proc instant poison as well
ergo, instant poison on fastest dagger in main hand.

The reason I wanted to pick up on this is that I believe it's getting picked up and repeated out of context. People are talking about this in the context of levelling, which is natural given the imminent expansion. I don't know about you, but I won't be using deadly poison for levelling, I've always found it hazardous to leave dots on everything I touch in a solo environment. I figure you can either take all the poison talents and level with instant poison on both weapons (with deadly brew applying crippling for 'is poisoned') or you could ignore improved poisons and go with dual wound for a surprisingly small loss in DPS. The latter option gives very fast apply rates, and thus short time to 'is poisoned' which might make it more appealing for levelling. It also frees up talent points low in the assassination tree for other useful levelling talents like remorseless attacks or improved eviscerate. In this context, with dual wound poison and no improved poisons, the reason to have the faster dagger in mainhand is hardly compelling, surely balanced or even outweighed by the larger mutilate (or even ambush) damage.

Now I totally understand that you are focussed on modelling sustained pve dps. What I'm concerned about is that this message is being repeated and distilled out to the masses, and they are ending up banking bigger better mainhand daggers in favour of Edge of Oppression, which I believe to be a mistake.

Given the number of people that will be coming here, prompted by the patch, looking for the latest wisdom, could we craft some kind of simple guidelines? I'll have a go at a starter:

1) for raid dps, use instant poison on one hand, deadly poison on the other. In most cases, apply instant poison to the faster dagger and put this in your main hand for maximum instant poison procs. Use the spreadsheet to determine the optimal weapon combination. The reason for this is that gaining additional instant poison procs has a significant impact on your overall DPS
2) for other situations (e.g. solo play), consider the poisons that you will use and equip your weapons to suit. Options include:
- instant+deadly, as raid pve
- instant+instant, relies on deadly brew to apply crippling poison, higher average damage dagger in main hand
- wound+wound, if not using improved poisons talent and/or deadly brew, higher average damage dagger in main hand

I'm not suggesting these guidelines are accurate, but rather I'm saying that it would be really useful to get these kind of guidelines published and clear to help the community during this period of change.

Looking at the daggers at our disposal, it's obvious that they want us to use 1.8 daggers, from an itemization point of view. Mutilate is not working as intended, when a 156 dps dagger, beats a 171 dps one. Speed dependent FA, would be the more "fun" way of trying to fix this problem, possibly tweaking lethality, to make up for inadequate damage.

Hi all,

I seem to be having some issues with the spreadsheet. Fully raid buffed, the spread sheet says I would do around 2900 dps as either mutilate or combat (actually it says swords > muti zomg!), which seems to agree with what everyone else is posting.

Unbuffed, it says I should be doing about 1400 dps as swords and 1500 dps as muti. When I tested on PTR, I do get about 1400 dps as swords, but I was doing about 1800 as muti, which is completely off from what the spreadsheet is telling me.

Anyone know why this is happening?

Not that it really matters since we only have about a month left, but I would appreciate any feedback since its making me think I'm using the spreadsheet wrongly.

Thanks!

It beats DST by about 15 dps on the sheet for my combat swords setup, which doesn't have especially large amount of haste for t6/ early sunwell level (gear from my armory profile). I've been trying to double check the input for errors but it looks fine to me.

EDIT: in the 0.4.1 spreadsheet

A very dependable variable regarding PVE dps as Mutilate spec ( 51/5/5 ) in 3.0, seems like to be the fact that the boss is or isn't murderable.

Using 0.4.1 BC spreadsheet, with all gear and gems equal ( 10 agility gems, some 5agi+5hit gems and 2 shifting shadowsong amethyst to keep meta gem up ), except weapons, it seems like that Mutilate spec is better dps than a pure fist combat spec ( 5/51/5 ) on murderable boss. Fist SS spec ,anyway, seems to be slightly ahead of Mutilate on non murderable bosses.

As for weapons , for combat spec i used vanir+vanir .. for mutilate i used Blade of Serration in MH + Tracker's Blade in OH

And regarding the hit weight , i have to say that switching my actual gear with about 320 hit, to a more agility oriented gear through gemming and swapping Belt of the Silent Path > Don Alejandro's Belt and Nyn'jah Tabi boots > Shadowmaster boots result in better dps.
As for other pieces of gear i don't seem to have any other option than what i have at the moment.
Hit value seems to be really less valuable in 3.0 than before..

Reading your post I was curious how Wound Poison compares for a combat build.
So I hacked WP into the Spreadsheet and the result somewhat surprised me, Deadly MH and Wound OH beating any other combination by about 30DPS, including Instant Poison.

Of course this is for a combat build, so no use of Envenom or Improved/Vile Poisons.
Also I'm not entirely sure if I did a mistake or forgot something.
A more detailed analysis can be found in the Roguecraft Spreadsheet thread.