Ultimately the trouble with deep Subtlety is directly coupled to HaT. While the mechanic is something different for rogues, and as such welcome, it's balance in the Subtlety tree is poorly implemented. I summarize this in two points:

1) HaT comprises far too much of Subtlety's maximum theoretical DPS.

coupled with

2) HaT is completely dependent upon the other 24 members of the raid.

When these two things are grafted atop each other you end up with a build that shines under optimal conditions, dare I say even much stronger than traditional PvE specs, but is equally skewed to the other side of the spectrum, to the level of near-obsolete in challenging situations. In short, the problem is variability.

In a fight of trivial content, with a raid geared to maximum or near-maximum capabilities, HaT receives excellent contribution from his party's crit rate. Due to the overcompensation of HaT into Subtlety's DPS it provides a constant stream of combo points to such extent that all the rogue does is spam finishers. Well that sounds great (and is in that circumstance), but what happens in progression?

In any circumstance where the raid is not optimally geared, there is a encounter design that splits up on-target time among players (running around doing different tasks or spamming CC), difficult encounters where a few raid-members can reasonably expect to die, or (worse) a combination of any of those factors, HaT begins to significantly decline. Since the tree has to be somewhat balanced assuming optimal contribution from HaT not making the rogue overpowered, that means essentially that there is direct proportionality to the difficulty of the fight making the rogue weaker. This is a horrible catch 22. Instead of the rogue being the last DPS standing & bursting all his damage to down the boss' last 1% (old Gruul fights?), if a HaT rogue ever gets to that point his damage has decreased to such an extent that the tank (under wrath mechanics) is probably doing just as much damage.

HaT needs a significant nerf (in proc rate I suspect) in order to reduce it's variability in output. However, that means the rest of Subtlety will need a significant buff in terms of more consistent damage sources in order to be reliable and on par with more traditional PvE specs.

So in conclusion: Deep Subtlety (HaT) is beautiful for fun fighting in content you've already got on farm, but is far and away the worse PvE choice for challenging content and/or progression.

I was under the impression that using Evis instead of Envenom would be better in a standard combat build, so please correct me if I'm wrong also, I would rather get SnD up asap(in other words 1 or 2 SS then SnD) and then build to 5 combo points to get a full snd off.

It was really just supposed to be a quick guild to the rotation that the spreadsheets usually spit out (ie, quick, dirty and flawed advice). But since I guess I wasn't clear on that, I'll edit appropriately.

The maths are kind of fuzzy for me, but doesn't it seem a reasonable assumption that doing ~4 virtually guaranteed critical ambushes every 2 minutes is a pretty significant part of the Subtlety DPS? (Seeing the huge yellow numbers deliciously bounce across my screen may have struck me frigtarded.)

In addition, your argument that "learning" content is much better with a vanilla combat build seems tenuous. The advantage I have always seen when doing "unlearned PvE" with Subtlety is in having more "oh shit" mitigation (a la preparation) and more time on target when things become confusing (a la shadowstep). This seemed to apply in small raid situations (such as first seeing Kara) as well as large raid settings (such as Vashj).

*edit* Shadow dance is also pretty fantastic on CCable mobs, as you can cheap shot them when someone is about to get splattered.

Clearly I am a voice of dissent, and combat sword/fist/blah blah blah may well be the most optimal PvE build, but I find it to be boring and mechanical.

Scriv, you are not alone on your stance when it comes to HaT, however I can see both sides of the story.

#1 It's terrible for leveling and WotLK is 24 hours away (do not spec HaT for leveling purposes).
#2 As stated above it relies completely on a optimum raid setup.

I am very excited to see endgame performance with HaT as my rogue counterpart and I have had the most fun in months in BT the last couple weeks with this build. Blowing the charts up is an understatement.

As for WotLK I'll be pushing out a nice combat build for leveling purposes with sights set on an optimistic endgame mutilate build and a prayer that HaT may be viable in endgame content. Especially considering we will have dual-spec on the horizon.

Hey guys, I've been following this thread up until around just after 3.0 came out, i'm about 12 pages out of date now,
just wondering if anyone has posted the hit minimums/caps / expertise caps for 80.

Just looking a simple layout of:

Hitcap
Hitcap w/ Prec
Poisons.. etc..


I realise Hit is not worth going for as the ultimate stat anymore, just good to know these things to balance ourselves around.


Thanks.

Thanks heaps mate.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I'm seeing some contradictory examples of cycles re: mutilate. I've noticed some people saying, for example, garrote 1CP, SnD, build 4+CP then rupture, whereas others are saying the same thing but envenom first to get CttC proccing (4+n, 4+r). To me, the latter makes more sense since, if my brain napkin math is in the ballpark, you would not have enough time in the 12 seconds (I think) of SnD to envenom for CttC after you used your energy on the rupture because you have to mutilate two more times after said rupture.

For combat there are exceptions where wound poison is more optimal in the mh instead of the offhand, basically you want wound poison whichever hand attacks more. So say you have a 1.6 off and a 2.5 mh (I know these are way less than optimal speeds) it may in fact be better to have wound poison in the main hand.

Update regarding the PvE DPS article...I'll be working on it furiously tomorrow and hope to be able to release a very rough Wrath version of it before Wrath actually launches. However, I don't genuinely expect to meet that goal, so expect to wait for at least a week while I get to 80 before I have time to finish it up.

Same goes for the Roguecraft Spreadsheet.

You could argue Sub is just as mechanical as Combat. Even as HaT, you're basically waiting for 5 combo points and following the same rules as Combat or Mut. You keep Slice up, keep Rupture up, Eviscerate(instead of SS/Mut) otherwise. You can weave in things like vanish for MoS buff and shadowstep but your energy is never variable like it is with the other two specs. Sure you can shadow dance but how's that any different from other CD abilities like AR, BF or KS in terms of CD management. So while it might be fun having a different spec, I don't see the playstyle dynamic being so different other than having Prep. That said, I'm not against it being viable; I've already mentioned it'd be awesome if HaT was viable. There's just so many downsides that have been mentioned. Your DPS plummets when your teammates die, same for when you can't craft an optimal crit group for whatever reason(raid attendance/raid strategy).

Thanks for all your work Vulajin.

Urraaah! Thanks! I appreciate your work!



Anybody know what the criteria was on the gear fiasco yesterday? Rogues seemed to get the stink eye. My Priest on the other hand got both Merciless sets (Moon & Soul), plus some of the Guardian jewelry. Woulda been nice if one of the rings or something was available. Flesh out a few slots with that AP and Crit.

It's not like I don't have the honor to buy them anyway, or already don't have better, but y'know, free! lol






"Folks, the horde of Evil Minions will be here any second. Now's your last chance to get a Horde Minion Hunting Permit."

The realms were taken down last night to correct the problem, and all items that were purchased for free or without the required rating were removed from the characters who purchased them.

Just had the Blue post come through.

Realm Maintenance 11/12/2008

".....Once the maintenance concludes, players who obtained such items will notice them removed from their inventory. However. any tokens or arena/honor points spent on said gear will be appropriately refunded. -Cinterome"

At least if you actually bought something you won't get screwed. I know a couple of my guildee's bought some of their Brutal gear yesterday.

I have a feeling for the next week the game is going to be...interesting, in the Chinese way.......

And what if you wasted money on gems and enchants for these items? I'm not talking about the ones that were received for free, but for people who actually spent the honor or arena points buying the items AND the gold to gem and enchant them, only to have the items taken away. Even if you get the honor and arena points back, you still have to gem and enchant them again.

Need a Draenei in the GROUP, not just in the raid.

While I agree any spec would see a loss of DPS with certain raid members dying, HaT gets hit harder by a party member death because you'd lose a source of combo points along with the raid buff they were providing. I can see the progression spec argument going both ways. In certain scenarios like you being one of the last alive, your DPS would be gimped compared to a typically specced rogue. On the other hand, your defensive CDs may allow you to live longer to finish the boss off. In any case, I think most rogues would agree it's a pleasant surprise that there might be a 3rd option later in raiding.

I've only really seen one mention of Shadow Dance along with HaT and have yet to see anyone specced for it as well. I've only mentioned it in terms of playstyle comparison not actually stating it's a viable use of points. I don't really know what you mean by others.

Hope everyone has fun sleeping 4 hours a day on their way to 80 =P

Thanks. I've added the information to my original post. I also believe that Heroic Presence is only party-wide, unless someone has evidence to the contrary.

I don't know where else to ask for this information so I'll start here.

Has anyone ran numbers or done anything theorycrafting for a Mace Combat build and how much dps is generated over or under a Sword Combat build?

I'm pretty sure spreadsheets handle that. For the most part I believe with equal quality weapons, mace spec still loses.

I am quite interested in the hat builds because of the opportunities it opens for us. One example is that we will be able to spam deadly throw in no-melee fights if we group with hunters. Can you post a WWS report of your fights? That way we can analyse the fights ourselves.