You mean, other than Berserking?

Greetings, EJers.

I'm a newly-dinged-70 Muti rogue, as you can see. Because of this, I realise that I need to sort some spec issues out and such.

I tried a HfB build, and I simply couldn't stand it. Keeping up HfB and an untalented SnD was a lot of effort for not much gain - it was as if I was trying to avoid a 9% damage and 30% attack speed debuff, rather than increasing my damage done. So, I tried a 47/7/7 build, missing out CttC and HfB completely.

This is the spec that I use (I use QR and FF for indirect DPS increases and for preference): Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

What's the difference in DPS between 47/7/7 and 51/5/5? Is it enough that I would have to deal with the irritation of HfB in a raid environment?

If you are unable to keep HfB up, may be combat is the better choice. But if you want to use Muitlate I think its better to spend your points to something else than HfB.

As far as non-HfB mutilate, I would probably go with a build like Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft (50/5/6) if you wanted to keep CttC (which I would) or Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft (43/11/7) otherwise. These builds are based on the standard 51/5/5 build, so they don't take fillers like QR and FF, although you could easily swap out talents for them at a slight loss of dps, or you could put points in those talents on your way to 80. I would say that since HfB is worth a 9% damage increase, it's probably a significant amount of damage such that it's usually worth the pain of keeping up. CttC is a large damage increase as well, since it allows you to use envenoms (never use eviscerate... it's just bad) to refresh your slice and dice, essentially giving you an extra envenom every time you have to refresh SnD. I would never drop CttC for a PVE mutilate build, as it's (along with Mutilate and HfB) one of the defining talents of the assassination tree.

If you do decide to continue using HfB and CttC, get a decent set of timerbars such as NeedToKnow so that you can easily track your SnD and HfB timers.

If you absolutely cannot stand keeping HfB up and using CttC, then, as Seyjuro said, you should probably try out combat, as it might work out better for you. Otherwise, get used to HfB or resign yourself to inferior dps.

As far as how inferior goes, that's entirely dependent on your gear level, so grab one of the great spreadsheets on this site (I use the Roguecraft one myself), then plug in your gear and fiddle around with different specs.

As already mentioned, if it is impossible for you - due to lag, bad add-ons, or for some other reason - to maintain hfb, you should probably go combat. For instance the previous posters suggested spec using cttc and not hfb ... you are losing hfb, a 9% damage increase on everything that you do, for +10% to mutilate alone. I don't think I need to dig into why this is a bad trade-off.

With equal item level and equally well itemized weapons, at 70, combat is very slightly behind mutilate according to the most recent numbers I have seen ... however if you're struggling to maintain mutilate cycles, then for you combat would be the superior choice.

As an additional note ... you are using snd glyph, right? 3 seconds can be fairly helpful in making rotations more realistic.

Some of your problem might be gear related. As you said you just dinged 70, this means you probably have a lower than normal crit rating. Your rotations should become smoother and easier as your gear improves. Most of those speaking of the ease in keeping up such rotations are in T6 or Sunwell gear and the rest probably have at least all the badge gear they could want. Combat cycles are easier to scale down for weak gear but I'd guess you might run into the same issues with not being able to keep up with suggested cycles of those with much better equipment.

I noticed something tonight that may be something worth noting for the models - [anecdotal] Sword Spec now seems to be proccing extra attacks with the same weapon, not just the MH anymore. I went to practice on the training dummies with Vanir's mainhand, Blade of Savagery offhand.

2220 AP
105 haste rating
201 Hit
58 ArP rating
41.75% crit

Relevent procs would be SSO necklace (Aldor) and Shard. DST's not relevent, since it would not change what the attacks were hitting for.

I got 9 sword spec procs in 128 seconds, and the average damage done by those 9 swings was 175. Considering my character sheet tooltip says that Vanir's hits for 576-732, and BoS for 240-304, it seems much more likely to me that the Sword Spec attacks were hitting with the offhand than the mainhand, unless armor values on level 70s have gone WAY up.

Is this an error in Recount (it's counting the attack that procced Sword Specialization, not the procced attack), or something worth looking into further? It seems entirely possible to me that the former is occurring, since I don't know the way recount collects data.

I would say the best way to truly figure this out would be to buy a [Gladius] for your offhand to test with and remove any gear that procs anything that would increase your attack power, and then post a log or review a log of it, it could be that recount isn't accurately displaying the procs so this would be the definitive way.

Edit: It may be even better to go with something like [Proximo's Rudius]

Hello all, I've been a long time EJ reader, I've posted a few times but, now I'm kinda stuck, normally i can find my answer on here by searching but, when it comes to something as Detailed as this, i think I'm better off asking..

I just got Blade of Infamy off Anetheron tonight, and I've always looked at that sword as one of the best sword there is for someone not in sunwell, and hates PVP, so, with that said, up until then I have been using Vanir's Right fist of Brutality (both with mongoose obviously) and I'm sitting here in Ironforge doing some testing and I'm not noticing any difference at all between the two, it could be that they are just so similar, or i could be using the wrong poisons, or something, I briefly remember reading a couple pages back that fists are now a better MH now, or something along those lines, I am using Deadly poison for my MH and Wound poison at the moment for my OH, because i remember reading that wound was a better dmg output, which is true for muti, so some clarification would be greatly appreciated.


[edit] Sorry, i don't know how to link the items in the post >.<, I know wowhead links them in-game, also, armory has already updated me, so if you want to see my spec it's there.

It's not surprising that you don't notice a difference. These items are so close in quality that you'd need a huge number of observations to observe any statistically significant difference in your average DPS. Frankly, in-game testing is so prone to human error (and sampling error, or "randomness") that it is not reliable for detecting small changes. Use a spreadsheet to figure out which is better.

Pretty much hit the nail on the head , now am I "correct" in assuming Deadly poison MH and Wound poison OH is still the "correct" way to go?



[edit] also, can you inform me on how to post wowhead links in threads, such as this? >.<

yeah, I just looked at my spreadsheet and found the same information, kinda sucks cause i waited -forever- for that damned sword. Thanks all.

Same here, even if I managed to keep HfB and SnD, it was pain in the ass, especialy on trashes. So I changed to 49/5/7 (80% CttC) and in the fact it was worth it. On dummies my dps increased by 5% and I noticed only one SnD drop (almost, because I refreshed it manually in last second using 1CP from Ruthlessness) during about 4minutes of spamming Mutilate/3+Envenom. The drawback was that AToL wasn't procing so often. I'm not sure if I can manage to keep SnD on with 5e rotation but then again - 5e forces me to use DP on both daggers, not only MH.

I have one noob question - does +hit affect chances for poison to apply? (Besides the obvious chance to hit with the weapon) I've got some strange misses with poisons on the WWS. And if so - what's the cap?

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

This is my Multi build and worked pretty good at level 70. With cap raised to 80 and 10 more talent points ill take CttC and HfB and rest in Close combat.
I didnt take CttC and HfB simply cuz i lacked in energy regen and HfB and CttC didnt cover that lack.

Also what Glyphs u use. I used SnD 3 sec longer and in this patch i used Vigor that gives 10 more energy.
That Gives me 120 Energy to start with and thats good. ANd i bet that will shine at 80.

Yes.
While testing on the PTR, I've seen such ridiculous entries as Rupture sword spec proc with a value matching exactly my Rupture ticks, or Deadly Poison SS proc with the same value, etc.
I don't assume the developer has magically improved his algorithm to deliver correct results. AFAIK it just fetches the first entry before/after the sword spec message in the combat log.
I still wish this 'feature' would be removed from Recount, or at least an option to disable it.

To reach a 17% spell hit cap, you'd need 17 * 12.6154 =~ 215 hit rating at level 70 vs. a level 73 mob.
With Precision, it's 12 * 12.6154 =~ 152 hit rating.

Yes, to start with. On sustained combat it has absolutely no purpose. It may be good on trash and in PvP, but useless on boss fights.

Are you sure you've linked the right build there? You appear to have missed out Find Weakness in favour of Deadly Brew and Vigor. I didn't think you would be able to get the Vigor glyph until Northrend either?

After a similar first impression with hunger for blood, I started looking at spreadsheets for a mutilate build that would come close. This 42/12/7 build was the closest I could find, running Xs/Yr/Ze. Not that it matters much now. The level 80 equivalent build could fill in some missing DPS talents in combat and assassination, but while it will remain below the theoretical DPS of a HFB, the additional tolerance for error/interruption could well close that gap?

In the light of Ghostcrawler's latest comments I think we can expect to see some changes in assassination post Wrath launch, but I am not holding my breath.

It just pictures that you have to be very unlucky to get S'n'D dropped with 4/5 CttC. And you get two talents to spend on Opportunity instead. And remember - we are talking about one last week of raiding - obviously there will be few nerfs and buffs before we start Naxx, that may affects builds. And meanwhile - each of us will respec into one's favorite solo spec. Mine will be burst-mutilate/stealt, I believe

Thanks for the info. Couldn't decided if I should put +crit or +hit badge dagger in OH. And obviously - still can't :>

I think you meant "Use a spreadsheet to figure out that they're almost identical, enabling you to save your DKP by not buying it in the first place". Upgrades that marginal really aren't worth obsessing over.

I was thinking the other day about how double mutilate crits get a "wasted" CP from seal fate, and I wondered how not taking 5/5 SF would impact CP generation. I found that a rogue with a 45% chance to crit with mutilate loses about 3.9% of their combo points generated (by mutilate only) with 4/5 compared to 5/5. If this is the case, is there some talent worth taking an extra point in that could lead to an overall increase in DPS, or do the extra combo points trump everything else?

I wrote this with the assumption that every muti rogue gets 5/5 Seal Fate, and I suppose that's not necessarily the case. Is there any established wisdom on Seal Fate's value point by point?

If I remember correctly, there was some math earlier in the thread leading to the conclusion that anything more than 2 or 3 points in SF would net only a marginal DPS increase. I'll try to dig it up...

EDIT:And here it is.

I have had some trouble lately with Killing Spree giving me an "invalid target" note when I try to use it. It seems to be only on ghostly type mobs but not all of them. Is this a bug or is there something about Killing Spree that I have missed?

As a side note I was tossed off the tower while fighting Nightbane in Kara. I popped Killing Spree on the skeletons and it chose the dragon as one of the targets while he was up in the air past the edge of the ramparts. He then fireballed me to death on the ground below. Hurray for fun with the spree.