Then your guild will not progress as fast as it should. It's blindingly obvious that with the streamlining of buffs, ALL dps buffs will be assumed to be present on ALL 25-man raids. If you do nothing else for WoTLK, organise your recruitment and speccing so that you ensure all buffs are always present. With bleeds being a significant part of DPS warrior damage as well as feral and rogue damage, it's not something you can just ignore.

Certainly I think all rogue theorycraft should proceed under the assumption that the bleed debuff is present.

To complicate things more, when comparing Rupture to Envenom, you also have to take into account the short downtime of Deadly Poison and the increased poison proc chance after its performance.

I have to agree with Aldriana, surely you can calculate some theoretical numbers, at which AP level Envenom surpasses Rupture in base damage, but there are still factors unaccounted for which could easily change the whole equation.

I think the spreadsheet handles that quite fine.

On a totally different note: Cloak of shadows broken too?

Of course the title is largely populist, but I too have noticed several occasions of "bad luck", where spells simply came through an activated CoS. Mostly in battlegrounds, but some also during PvE encounters.

Now, what might be possible, due to the recent miss/resist change on spell mechanics, could the 90% "resist" rate from Cloak (which is effectively "miss" now) be affected by the caster's hit rating? And wasn't before patch 3.x?
Did anybody test this already?

Are there some other factors playing their role? What about resists (which are now the spell "dodges" as explained in this thread)? Do players have a base resist and miss chance, adding to those 90%?
Is it even different for each class, akin to the base dodge chance?

Ok, am i the only one confused by this post from GC?
World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Are rogues "done" until WotLK content patch?
As i understood it, they are debating to make Hemo a speccable variant of Backstab which adds the debuff?

I read it that at some point in the past, they contemplated to create a talent to that effect.
Not something that is in the process of being released.

I've followed these forums for a long time, but this is my first post. I am a combat spec 5/51/5, cleared up to KJ. I hadn't noticed the rupture glyph. Would it be better for me to have the SS and Rupture glyph, or the SS and SnD glyphs?

BTW, if anyone didn't notice, the SS glyph is being upped to 50%.

Ah, I didn't see that the Glyph of Rupture was a WOTLK glyph. Guess that answers that, lol The extra 10% to SS will be nice though. I don't know about anyone else, but I've had real problems on KJ doing 5 SnD/5 Rup/5 Envenom rotation. The SS glyph doesn't seem to proc anywhere near 40%, at least for me.

I'm rogue class leader for a casual raiding alliance, but I'm getting more into the theorycrafting myself. So far, we don't enforce particular talent specs, although I do "have a talk" with players who have totally random talent selections (as opposed to one of the several commonly acknowledged "builds"). Our raiding progression definitely slowed down going into 2.3; part of that was a numbers game, and part of that was getting to fights where one or two people screwing up, irrespective of class or role, (e.g. Teron) could wipe the raid.

Are there any "lolspec" builds I should watch out for as obvious rejects in a PvE context? In my own experience it seems like the hit from switching to Mutilate or Deep Subtlety is significant, but maybe not big enough to ruin a player's fun in a casual context.

Do you know the order the glyph proc chance is calculated when combined with Seal Fate? For example, if you've talented 5/5 into Seal Fate, does that mean you have a 100% chance to get two CPs and a 50% chance to get a third CP on a crit? What if you're only partially talented into Seal Fate, say 2/5 (I realize this is a stupid build, but I think the example is illustrative)... does that mean you have a 40+50=90% chance of generating two CPs always, or the more complicated distribution of having a 40% and then a 50% chance (thus also giving a 20% chance of getting 3 CPs)?

In general, this seems like a good glyph to have, especially given how our crit chance increases when fully buffed.

I'm stuck in bit of a dilemma,I recently acquired the [Boundless Agony] and [Dagger of Bad Mojo]. I've checked the spreadsheets and it says the Bad Mojo is better over Boundless for mutilate is that correct?I'm aware pre-patch it was but with the changes to mutilate mechanics is that still correct?

Bad Mojo has much better DPS stats, so that does not surprise me. Since they are the same speed there are no mechanics to figure out, just damage and stats.

From 3.0.3 patch notes: Killing Spree: Instead of making the rogue untargetable, now causes all players to lose targeting on the rogue and the rogue to be unstoppable during its duration.

I'm at work so I can't test it, but is this unstoppable ala Bestial Wrath or ala Divine Shield? Either way, Kspree could see a lot of use as a utility spell in raids, getting around fears/stuns/etc.

I dunno if this is the place to put this but I’ve worked out a build I think is superior to 5/51/5.
I am mostly kara geared, no epic gems, nothing horribly awesome about my gear unfortunately, but I haven’t been playing WOW as long as most of you. I’ve spent lots of time on the training dummies, in heroics and raids testing and reviewing recount data and this is what I managed to get the highest consistently repeatable dps every time.

11/50/0
The 5 points in relentless strikes is no longer needed with 3 points in ruthlessness. I find ruthlessness along with a SS glyph generates combo points so much faster that the lower energy regen is a total non issue. I also use a S&D glyph.

I am able to keep rupture and S&D up 100% of the time and have enough left to throw in the occasional evis or enven without having anything drop.

In a kara raid or just about any heroic I average 930-1050 dps
During my daily quests on the Island alone I get 745-800 dps.


With the changes to killing spree in the 3.0.3 patch IBM going to test 10/51/0

When you do those tests, could you log or parse the data so we've got more than just anecdotal evidence? Hard numbers lend lots of weight to statements such as, "I've found a better build!" especially when spreadsheets have become quite reliable and widespread.

Also, what kind of cycles were you running in your tests? Were you able to maintain them easily, or were there lapses? And lastly, investigate whether your noted differences in DPS could be the work of other factors. There's lots to look into before such a statement as you made, though I don't want to discourage you from trying to better the class or yourself.

The two builds are close enough that rng factors will nullify any sort of consistency you may appear to have.

Also, at level 80, you'll have enough points for all of those talents from both builds, so it's sort of a moot discussion at this point with a week to go.

So, there's a couple things wrong with this build, but the major one that I want to address - because it's a mistake that a lot of people make - is this: Generating more combo points is not an acceptable substitute for having more energy.

The key point is this: generating more combo points in the same amount of time - for instance, with Ruthlessness - does increase your damage somewhat, because it allows you to spend your energy in a more efficient manner - that is, it increases the damage-per-energy of your cycle. Generating more energy means you can generate more combo points during a SnD, meaning you can also usually move towards a more efficient cycle - *and* you just plain have more energy to spend. Hence, if you can achieve the same cycle with either Ruthlessness or Relentless Strikes, it is significantly better to do it via Relentless Strikes, as it means you're generating more energy, hence doing more damage. Ruthlessness gives you extra combo points. Relentless Strikes gives you more Sinister Strikes (which also give combo points). And Sinister Strikes do damage in addition to giving you that combo point, while Ruthlessness procs do not.

As it turns out, because having more energy is so powerful, Relentless Strikes is almost always worth taking. Even as a 5 point talent, it's among the better damage-per-point talents around (which tells you something about the power of the old 1-point version). So I'm fairly confident that 5 points in Relentless Strikes will beat 3 points in Ruthlessness and 2 in - Blood Spatter, I guess? - at almost all gear levels. It certainly does at every gear level I've checked (though admittedly I haven't tested down to Karazhan gear levels).

As a secondary point: Killing Spree may have it's issues in terms of boss fights, but it's good enough on enough different fights that I'm fairly confident it's worth taking over one point in Lethality (or whatever). So even if you were inclined to believe that 10/51 beats 5/51/5 (and it doesn't), I still have a hard time justifying taking 11/50 over 10/51.

Aldriana,
I havent noticed im missing SS because of lack of energy.
Ill spreadsheet it out and save some logs.

If i can follow the same combat cycle as a 5/51/5 rogue and get the 30% more dmg in ruputre because I have blood splatter I should do more damage.

You are correct though, with a week to go its a moot point untill we hit 80 and see what works best there.

If they don't have: Relentless strikes, Duel wield specialization or malice I think it's pretty safe to say that build is not PvE.

The 4-piece set bonus for the rogue T4 set procs completely independently from Ruthlessness. That is, it is possible to immediately gain 2 combo points after using a finisher when you have 4 pieces of Netherblade equipped and Ruthlessness talented.

Based on this, I'd *assume* that the glyph also would behave in this fashion in conjunction with Seal Fate. However testing is always the only definitive way to find out.

For a really simplistic comparison of Ruthlessness vs Relentless -
Relentless gives you 62.50% of a sinister strike (25 energy out of 40) when you perform a 5pt finishing move, that is .625 combo points (before the SS glyph), .625x the damage of a SS, .625x the chance of proccing your trinkets on the hit, etc.

Ruthlessness gives you .6 combo points when you use a 5pt finishing move. So even in the "combo points" department, (assuming 5pt finishers), Relentless gives you more combo points, and is therefore, at all gear levels, a better talent.

It's not that it speeds up your cycle per se (though it may) - it's that you do more in the same amount of time.

Let me spell this out so we're perfectly clear. Lets assume we're running 5s5r5e. To sustain this cycle, we need to generate 15 combo points.

With Ruthlessness, you get .6 CP (On average) for each of the three finishers, so you need to generate 13.2 combo points by Sinister Striking. With the SnD Glyph an average SS generates about 1.2 combo points, so each cycle you perform 11 Sinister Strikes (or so) to sustain the cycle.

With Relentless Strikes, you perform those same 11 Sinister Strikes - but you also get 75 energy back from doing the 3 finishers, giving you energy to perform an *additional* 1.9 Sinister Strikes, generating, on average, 2.2 extra combo points. Hence, in the *same* amount of time, you generate, on average, 15.4 combo points. So you're doing more or less the same cycle, as the number of combo points you're generating is pretty similar.

However: with Ruthlessness, you did 11 SS. With Relentless Strikes, you did 13. You're doing the same cycle, and you're doing it in about the same amount of time - but Relentless Strikes also gives you the damage of 2 extra Sinister Strikes. And when the choice is doing 15% more Sinister Strike damage versus 20% more rupture damage - it should be pretty easy to see that the former is going to be a lot better.

Answering my own question a bit, but this comment on wowhead has been rated up a lot, and claims that the glyph does get calculated after Seal Fate. Unfortunately I don't know anyone personally who has a rogue in beta, so I'll just have to wait to confirm. At the moment, this is one of the majors I'm planning to get.

Yeah, I used to question anyone who didn't have (pre-3.0) the standards in Assassination (Malice, Relentless Strikes). I'm guessing I'll be spending time reiterating why there are 5 points worth using in every tree.

The once thought of successors to Mongoose - Massacre and Greater Savagery - have just been made for 2H weapons only. So it would seem we won't see a new enchant on the scale of Mongoose for a while.

EDIT: Damn, forgot about Berserking. NVM.