Schiznak

I havent really seen this discussed much, but all level 80 bosses are having their armor increased by 10% to fix the imbalance between casters and physical DPS in wotlk.

I understand that this is worse for combat than it is for mutilate, but how much, and will mutilate beat combat on non-murderable fights, eg all the way through naxx?

 

◊ chalon

It's hard to say exact numbers, because it depends on a wide variety of factors, and it's something you can run through with the spreadsheet. But Mutilate was already slightly ahead of Combat on unmurderable fights with stationary/single target DPS (eg., Patchwerk). So now it'll be a little more ahead. But that doesn't mean Combat won't be able to out damage Mutilate on certain fights, depending on the mechanics. Don't discount the advantage of Blade Flurry and controlled burst.

 

Rectafire

I thought they increased the armor because hunters were doing a surplus amount of damage because their ranged attacks could not be dodged or parried. This 10% increase to armor neutralizes that problem.

I read on MMO-champion that warriors and rogues were in line for a small buff to make up for this 10% armor increase. Overall it may be worse for combat, though it is hard to say and your spread sheet will give you a definitive answer.

What I am more worried about is poison immune mobs and bosses which effectively takes away 33% of Mutilate damage and approximately 25% of a Mutilate rogues overall damage.

 

◊ chalon

Well, there were two problems. The first was that physical DPS was doing more damage than magical DPS across the board, so the 10% increased armor was intended to help balance that. The second problem was that even within the physical DPS realm Hunters were head and shoulders above everyone else. So to fix this they made it so Winfury/Imp. Icy Talons no longer give ranged haste. The only buff they threw in there were to Fury Warriors, because they were lagging behind Arms.

 

life_source

Ok. That's nice and all, but what happened to items where the AGI matched, or in some cases surpassed, the STA value on the same piece of gear?

Some people hate STA. With all their heart. All the WotLK items they can see make them want to retch, because, for no reason at all, Blizzard decided that the only Stat leather wearers want is STA.

PS, IT'S NOT.

Edit: I should probably clarify my griping. I don't feel Blizzard is giving us ENOUGH options for gear. I'm not talking about several different options for each class, but more, a different option for each play type you might have in mind.

A piece that is heavy on the STA, a piece that is balanced between STA and AGI, and a heavy AGI piece.

 

◊ chalon

There are some pieces which have slightly more Agility than Stamina, but they are few and far between for the most part, and there's certainly not any pieces that stack only DPS stats and have no stamina. Furthermore, it's not like Leather is the only thing itemized in this way. Look at all the DPS Plate, Mail, and Cloth. It's all being itemized in roughly the same way. They've said multiple times they don't want to min/max items for specific specs.

I'd consider the "hate" for Stamina pretty misplaced, though. Part of it is at least likely due to the fact that you want to run close to 20k raid buffed HP for something like Malygos (though Rogues have it a little bit more of a cushion since we don't take fall damage after a vortex). And you aren't necessarily losing that much by having a decent amount of Stamina on the gear, given how cheap itemizing Stamina is.

 

Arindelest

I agree with this. Furthermore, I'd like you all to remember that back before TBC, everyone was complaining about the same thing (how much stamina was on all the gear and how it took away from DPS stats). The fact is that stamina is *incredibly* cheap as a stat and that you'd hardly gain anything at all from using those itemization points to get something else.

 

Schiznak

That just reminded me of another question, I always assumed that mutilate would come out ontop in a mobile fight, due to the fact that combat will cap their energy out much faster off the target, due to vitality and lack of HfB.

Dropping SnD in mutilate is essentially the loss of one envenom, due to the fact that your next finisher will be a SnD instead of an envenom.

No real numbers can be worked out for this sort of thing, because they are situational, except to work out how much energy is wasted off the target in combat, and how much energy is wasted off the target in mutilate

Assume x= time off the target and you start your time off the target with a generous 10 energy. Also, mutilate users will HfB once whilst off the target

combat
energy / second = 12.5
so off the target for x seconds, you waste [(x*12.5)-90] = 12.5(x-7.2)

mutilate
energy/second = 10
off the target for x seconds, you waste [(x*10)-(90+30)] = 10(x-12)


Taking this a step further, any time over 7.2 seconds, combat will have lost more energy than mutilate, and will continue to lose an increasing amount of energy than mutilate.



Is this relative energy gain for mutilate overcome by the loss of an envenom?

 

◊ chalon

Well, my line of thinking was that for something like 4h Redux, the way the fight works is a cycle of burst, time off target, burst, time off target, and so on. For that fight I think the controlled burst of Combat (and less cycle setup time) would have an advantage.

 

Arindelest

Once you've capped out on energy off-target, you're not losing any damage. You're still off-target, so therefore it's impossible to be actually doing any damage with that extra energy. In fact, short interrupted fights with favor combat because you regenerate more energy while off-target. It's basically the exact opposite of how you put it: if Combat gains enough energy so it caps out (while off-target), while Mutilate does not gain enough to cap out, then Combat holds the advantage in having more energy to work with when getting back on target.

 

OnTheHissay

Will [Consecrated Sharpening Stone] beat poisons on some level for Naxx @ 80? Like, DP mh, CSS oh e.g. Since you can start collecting [Necrotic Rune] for their purchase already now, it would be nice to see some dps numbers on one vs the other.

 

• Aldriana

170 AP at level 80 is worth perhaps 100 DPS. Instant (or Wound) Poison averages at least twice that in a raid setting. So I'm gonna go with it not being worth it.

 

drumbum

It is clear though that if the interruption is long enough for a Mutilate rogue to cap energy, then he would hold the advantage. So it's going to be extremely dependent on the type of fight.

Another thing to consider is that if a Mutilate cycle has at least 25% higher DPE than a Combat cycle, then the Mutilate rogue would still be better off even after gaining less energy during the downtime. This would be because the Mutilate rogue would turn 10 energy into more damage than a Combat rogue would turn 12.5 energy into. Without running any numbers I'd say this is fairly likely to be the case, because Combat's energy regeneration is much higher than Mutilate yet the two specs are fairly close in overall damage output.

 

MasterDinadan

The idea is that Combat needs a large advantage in energy to match mutilate (and it has one due to the talent). Consider a fight where they can just DPS the entire time. Combat will have a lot more energy to work with, but doesn't necessarily come out on top.
Now consider a fight where you are running in and out. Even if BOTH specs are capping out at some point, the energy regeneration is the SAME for both when capped out. Combat loses it's advantage of higher energy regen. Basically, in a world of infinite energy, Mutilate would win. In in-and-out sort of fights, the energy to auto attack ratio (For both specs) increases but mutilate makes better use of the extra energy.

 

Pittaxx

Yea, it seams that it is much easyer to cap energy for combat rogues now (even while we had faster energy regen before, combat potency didn't proc while we were running around so there wasn't much different) and as it is vigor would actually make more sense in combat tree and if they are going to introduce many fights that require alot of movement i am tempted to drop 1 point in lethality to increase my energy cap.

As far as insane ammounts of stamina are concerned I am not too happy with it myself, but larger hp pool doesn't gimp my dps and seeing that our dodge is getting nerfed (I've lost ~10% dodge this pach due to some ppl that proved rogue tanking possible, my respect to them newertheless), it seams that increase in hp will be really nice for soloing even if aoe damage in raids will not justify it.

 

xvvx01

Did anyone notice an upgrade in hit or haste on their character?

I used to have 177 hit and 10.72% haste. Just logged in and I have 195 Hit and 15.73% haste.

EDIT: Now it is gone, I was in STV and it stayed, hearthed to Shatt and it dissapeared. Did not observe any buffs on me.

 

jdpowers19

There had been some discussion a few pages back about capping expertise. While messing around on the target dummies, I got to thinking that pooling as much energy as possible before Envenom (51/5/5 build) would be ideal in order to try to fit 2 and perhaps 3 specials in during the Poison Application Buff. While this seems like another way to optimize ones dps, the issue of dodged Envenoms came to mind.

Due to server lag (or possibly my connection in part) I find that I have to Envenom with around 1 second left on SnD to make sure it refreshes. Clearly the longer I can wait the better. With yet another advantage to pooling (the increased poison proc buff for 2-3 specials), is it possible that a rotation that tries to utilize this strategy could find greater benefit in expertise?

I think my concern is that this rotation lives a bit dangerously in terms of renewing SnD via CttC. Is it possible the extra dps from the poison proc increase due to pre-Envenom pooling could outweight the dps loss of having to gem for more expertise over agi/ap?

 

Asmodeu

I know im probably just going to get told to use the spreadsheet for this, but i always prefer actually seeing the logic to things...

I'm currently sitting at 291 hit, and i was using the shard from HMGT and Madness of the betrayer (worst luck with gruul EVER), and tonight i got blackened naaru sliver. I was just wondering if i should drop madness or shard?

I have t6 boots, and i'm combat, so without the shard im sitting @ 16 expertise, with it im at 27.

I know normally it would be expertise >> all, but with the new stuff in 3.0, i dont know...

 

Ratoon

Vulajin made the guidelines pretty clear in the first post he made and there is a updated spread sheet out there.

 

◊ chalon

Right, so as I said in my last post on this topic, I had anticipated that regemming entirely for Expertise as I did would have shown a very slight DPS loss in the spreadsheet, but make up for that with the cycle flexibility. However, it turned out that the spreadsheet also thought I would get slightly more out of gemming for Expertise as opposed to AP. So it does appear that at least at the nearly maxed out Naxx 25 gear level that you're better off gemming for Expertise even from the theoretical standpoint (assuming you aren't capped of course), or at the very least it's nearly equal to gemming for AP.

From a cycle standpoint, I definitely noticed more cycle stability and flexibility from not having finishers dodged and messing up my rhythm. So for me at least, I plan on gemming for Expertise when the time comes.

 

Haoli

Asmodeau, I believe the current consensus was that Ashtongue Talisman of Lethality was absolutely amazing for both combat and mutilate, and if possible should be used in tandem with the Blackened Naaru Sliver.

I can't really see why that wouldn't be accessible to you, if you have MotB, so that would be your best choice.

That said, you might look into dropping your hit by a fair amount. Agility seems to perform far better for both mutilate and combat builds, though keeping hit above 177 (hit cap with misery/spellhitdebuff) for stopping poison resists seems to be ideal.

 

jdpowers19

I'm concerned more with flexibility than stability. Stability is easy without expertise; Envenom with 3 seconds left on it and no troubles. Expertise capping would allow me to push my cycle to its maximum effectiveness, and from the posts/testing you have done it seems like it is at least a wash dps-wise while allowing for more precise execution.

 

Makdoh

how much better would it be to dualwield fangs of kalecgos instead of my current combo shard of azzinoth/fang of kalecgos?
the spreadsheet refuses to use the fang in the MH

 

Octaviann

People have already posted several times how to add weapons from the offhand list on the spreadsheet to the mainhand list. Essentially, you unhide the offhand and mainhand sheets and copy the weapon you want in place of a weapon you don't care about.

 

Makdoh

My bad, thanks anyway :o