• Neto-

I guess I can do that.

 

PSGarak

I think the strongest evidence that there are stacked windfuries going on and not just latency, is the fact that the windfury buff never fades or is reapplied during those sequences. My guess is that the double-procs aren't supposed to happen, but some sort of edge case lets them slip through. Perhaps if the weapon buff is refreshed in between the initial attack procing and occurring it evades the prevention because it's a different buff?

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

Roywyn

I have no explanation other than "odd stuff that happens randomly".

It's like Master of Elements (mage talent, refunds mana after a spell crit) that sometimes refunds mana twice after an AoE crit.
It's not supposed to happen, it was looked at and bugfixed twice.

And it still happens sometimes during mass AoE spam. Very rarely, I don't think it happened to me yet (I didn't really pay attention to it though), but happens every now and then to someone.


I know it's a shitty explanation, but I feel it's something similar here.
Just some random fluke.

The Blue Bar and you - the complete Fire Mage 2.4 mana compendium: http://elitistjerks.com/658230-post3191.html

DPS spec and class comparison in Naxxramas gear: http://code.google.com/p/simulationc...i/SampleOutput

And [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] doesn't proc on AM.
Neither does [The Egg of Mortal Essence] since 3.1.

 

ArchVile125

I think I had read somewhere on here about this and an explanation on why, but I haven't been able to find anything on it after some hard searching.

The trick is this: I have noticed that as I have started getting T6 gear (armor penetration, haste, etc.), I'm really starting to pick up in BT and, at least the boss fights, in Hyjal. But I noticed that when I started running heroics, my DPS tanked. I really freaked out when I ran Gruul with an old guild and noticed that their Rogue who is in mostly T4\T5 gear (and some sunwell badge gear), out DPSed me by a decent margin. That, at first, made me really question if I was playing properly, so today, on our guild BT run, I very strictly timed my cycles, and improved my DPS, but still did really well. Afterwards, I went back into H SP and my DPS was sometimes even below the Pally tank. Luckily, to test things out, I brought some of my old T5 gear and put it on, and sure enough, my DPS skyrocketed back to the top.

It seems that my T6 gear does great in T6 and tanks me in T5 and below (at least heroics and Gruul that I have tested). I kinda remember reading something about this before, but i cannot find the info. My girlfriend plays a hunter, and we got to discussing it, and she's questioning the whole thing completely. She doesn't quite buy it, even though I showed her the damage meters. Basically, her thing was, she needed an explanation for why that was, and I honestly didn't have an answer outside of speculation (my theory, which may be wrong, was that armor pen is not too important at those low levels, and the loss of hit that comes from my current T6 setup, hurts me in some of the earlier instances).

Does anyone have any idea why this is?

 

• Vulajin

The reason your DPS is terrible in heroics is that you get almost no buffs, and therefore lose out on half or more of your theoretical DPS value as compared against a raid.

There is no special reason that any stat is worth less when running tier X content than it is when running tier Y content. Armor penetration increases in value (relative to attack power) as your gear gets better overall, but this is not the same thing as what you are describing. The only explanation I can think of for that rogue outdamaging you with worse gear is that he's simply better.

As for your DPS "skyrocketing" after equipping your T5 in heroic Slave Pens, I can imagine two explanations. One is that most rogues do not use Rupture in 5-mans, preferring Eviscerate for a secondary finisher since targets die too quickly for Rupture to tick to its full duration. The T5 2-piece bonus heavily benefits Eviscerate, obviously. The second explanation is the placebo effect. You thought your DPS was astonishingly low, you took steps to correct it, and then experienced the gain you wanted to experience.

Your girlfriend is right. You should be thinking things through logically, instead of panicking and jumping to conclusions.

 

Greymist1

As Vulajin said, rogue DPS is heavily influenced by raid buffs, and it is normal for rogue performance to drop off in 10 mans and drop off a lot in 5 mans.

You weren't. Or you got left out of the melee dps group (enh shaman, warrior, maybe feral druid, etc.). Or maybe your gear isn't actually as superior as you think...

I looked at your armory and wowjutsu'd your guild. The first problem is something you can't do anything about right now. You really need more than just the gloves to be T6 geared. The 2-piece T6 set bonus is that powerful.

But you've also got some basic gearing problems which could allow a well-optimized T4/5/badge rogue to effectively have better gear, especially since you yourself are T4/5/badge/a tiny bit of T6. First, you need a better cloak. [Drape of the Dark Reavers] (Kara), [Cloak of Fiends] (ZA timed, from early bosses so it's relatively easy to get), and [Dory's Embrace] (badge) are all better. Next, you're wearing [Band of Devastation]. Yes, it drops in a T6 instance, but it is itemized poorly, so you may gain DPS by going back to what you were using before it. (For example, the Prince Malchezzar ring is probably better, and the Hydross ring is almost certainly better.) Finally, if you can buy the Hearts of Darkness and the pattern, make the LW haste shoulders: they're best in slot before Tier 6 shoulders.

You also need to regem a lot of your gear. Your hit rating is quite low and yet you've got pure AP and pure agility gems. You should fix that. Specific recommendations: gem Tunic of the Dark Hour with pure hit, Slayer's Handguards with hit, Belt of Deep Shadow with two hit gems, Trousers of the Scryers' Retainer with 1 hit and 1 agi/sta, and Nyn'jah's Tabi Boots with 1 agi/sta and 1 agi/hit gem. The belt, pants, and boots are the most important to change: at present you're using your required 2 blue gems to activate a single 3 agi socket bonus, but you could be using them to activate two 3 hit socket bonuses. 3 hit is better than 3 agi, so 6 hit is pure win over 3 agi.

On large pulls, paladin tank DPS shoots up just because they're hitting a ton of mobs with consecrate and reactive damage.

More likely you happened to switch just before a boss fight (single target), or something like that.

Hit is hit no matter where you are. You don't need less of it in T6 instances. The mobs are all the same levels as T4/T5 (trash 70-72, bosses 73) and the hit mechanics don't change.

Armor pen tends to increase in value in 25 man raids as opposed to 5 or 10 man. Each point of armor pen increases in DPS value the more armor penetration you stack. In 25 man raids you have a much greater chance of getting a full set of armor debuffs on mobs (Faerie Fire, Curse of Recklessness, Sunder, etc), which improves the value of your armor penetration. However, this is not likely to be a big enough effect to make T6 gear underperform T5 gear in any context.

Trust us. You're imagining it.

 

• Aldriana

1) While your recommendations aren't wholly invalid, I think they miss the point to some extent. Yes, some of the socketing is a bit question, and there are some slots in need of upgrades, but the relevant thing to keep in mind is this: as long as your socketing is even remotely plausible to start with, redoing is only going to affect your DPS on the order of 1% - which is barely noticeable without long-term analysis. So if you're noticing large deficiencies in your DPS, it's more to do with playstyle and/or buffs than any gear problems you may or may not have.

2) At the gear level in question, hit and agi tend to run pretty close, so I wouldn't bother resocketing hit over agi. The AP gem is a bit questionable - if you can get an epic hit or agi gem, it would help a bit - but again, we're talking under the one percent level.

3) If you're having trouble with 5- and 10-man DPS, it's probably related to the fact that the fights are shorter and the buff level lower. This significantly changes stat weightings (in particular, AP increases in value significantly, and ArPen, Hit, Haste, and Expertise tend to drop), but more to the point it drastically changes optimal cycles. For instance, you're running with a pally tank; thus, on any mob that survives longer than about 30 seconds, you want to be getting Expose Armor - preferably improved - on it. On bosses you probably want to be running 5s5a.

Trash, the big limitation of is the short time on each target. Rupture becomes largely useless, and your cycles tend to be highly improvised based on circumstances - there's really no substitute for practice and good intuition. As a general rule, you want to keep SnD up as much as you can, and utilize Envenom as your direct damage finisher rather than Rupture or Eviscerate.

Regarding the increase seen with T5 gear... it depends on what the gear is. I mean, you're not using any majorly compelling pieces of T6, so it is actually possible that your overall performance in T5 gear is better.

 

ArchVile125

Thanks for all the responses. I needed the honesty, because i was starting to feel like I was slipping in my DPS (which I was). The sad thing is, you guys pointed out some really obvious things that, for one reason or another, I didn't really consider until you mentioned them. I think sometimes I may rely too much on rigid numbers.

I do use the DPS spreadsheet though and pretty much use it as a bible. The only reason I am using the Band of Devastation, is because it was replacing the Kara ring, which the spreadsheet said was an upgrade. I was a little concerned about the loss of +hit too, so I've been switching back and fourth between them to test things out. I haven't really had enough time to determine the difference yet.

I guess i should explain the gem issue. The +8 agi gem was literally added because there were NO extra Glinting Noble Topaz's available on the AH or anywhere and I only had one, and had JUST got the T6 gloves. According to the spreadsheet, that was the best alternative for the time being (although, curiously the spreadsheet actually gave me a higher DPS with the +8 AGI gem than the Noble Topaz). As for the low gemming, yes I have welfare gems in right now. I have epics that I am holding onto, but the reason I haven't is because I am literally 7 badges away from the badge sunwell belt, which means a COMPLETE regemming of all of my gear anyhow (and I don't want to waste my epics if they are going to be replaced).

Also, today after I mentioned posting this, my girlfriend also pointed out that I may have jumped the gun, because she keeps logs and pointed out that the other rogue was also in a group with an enhancement shaman and was eating up grace of air. I honestly didn't even notice this (the Gruuls run was at 2:00AM after a long 4/5 all-day Hyjal run, and I guess I just wasn't too observant.

I'm really thinking you guys are right about my play styles though. As of yesterday, before I made the post, I had run BT after coming back here and studying up on the cycles a bit. I went back to cycles a little closer to here. I had started experimenting with ways to keep my rupture uptime high, but what I think is maybe my SnD addon was slightly off and not reporting correctly, and that my SnD was actually dropping out when I didn't think it was (WWS reports from earlier raids seem to support this, as it does look like my SnD was dropping out). After sticking to a more strict 3s\5r routine, I fared MUCH better. My current cycle has been Garrote (if feasible or even necessary) > 1s > 3s/5s. Seems much better, and to be sure, I stuck around the 3rd and 4th place on a lot of the fights. Not perfect, to be sure, but better than I was.

I really wish I had some of the better gear. I've held off on the Dory's Embrace because I've been running ZA to try to get the damn cloak which everyone seems to always get, but I have never seen. Same with the cloak off of Shade (never seen it drop either). I do want to work on getting the Shoulders though. I'm just waiting for the pattern to drop (and I stand the most likely chance to get it if it drops).

The only thing I'm curious about is the Band of Devastation. It was mentioned above that it is itemized poorly, but as a replacement to the Kara ring, the spreadsheet says it's a solid upgrade. I'm not sure if I'm able to afford the loss in +hit though (which is why I've been testing both). Any thoughts on this?

Oh and thanks for the responses. I did actually learn quite a few things from all of that. I kinda did expect that my current gemming was gimping me a little bit, but after thinking about the possible armor pen thing, I started to really get curious. Now that I know it isn't true, I know what the deal is now.

 

Oscarvil

I'm not really sure why you're going with 3s/5r. I plugged your gear into my sheet and it says you should be going 4s/5r, perhaps this is why you're losing the S&D buff often. I would even suggest going 5s/5r to see whether you can get it to stay up 100% of the time, then trying to compress the cycle until you can no longer sustain S&D and taking the lowest number of CP that you can sustain it for.

It also shows both Kara rings as upgrades, albeit small ones. Additionally I wouldn't bother with Swiftstrike shoulders, if you trust the spreadsheet, which are a 0.8dps upgrade over the ones you have equipped. I was running standard raid buffs, perhaps your raid setup favours the stats the Kara rings give, which would explain the different ordering in my sheet. Saying that, the gain from switching to these items is similar to that of gemming, a very small difference overall.

 

ArchVile125

I don't know, but I am using the very latest spreadsheet available and it rates me as losing -4.85 with the kara ring (Master Assassin) as well as a 2.57 gain with the Swiftstrike Shoulders. This is also taking into account my standard raid buffs.

 

Oscarvil

I was talking about the Ring of 1000 marks and Garona's Signet Ring which are both better than Master Assassin ring and I assumed you had at least one of. Regardless, both of those upgrades are tiny difference compared to your theoretical output as modeled by the sheet (0.2% and 0.1% resp.).

I still don't think you can sustain an uninterrupted 3s/5r cycle at your gear level, which is comparable to mine, based on all 3 spreadsheets and experience in the same content you are running.

 

ArchVile125

Ah okay. I thought you meant the Master Assassin. I'm trying out the 4s/5r cycle tonight. It gets confusing, because for a long time, I had been told the 3s/5r cycle was proper, and I'm still not entirely grasping when those cycles change. I'm trying it tonight though

 

Oscarvil

Like I said, start with the longest 2 element cycle (5s/5r) then shorten it till you can't keep up S&D. Using less S gives you higher rupture uptime but if you check out the cycle sheets on the spreadsheets you'll see that the loss in dps for loosening your cycle is really quite small.

There will be times at which it's infeasable to keep up a tight cycle (eg Kaz'rogal's stomps, Rage's Death and Decay on melee etc) so the best thing is to give yourself some leeway.

e: I found a decent way to practice keeping up cycles in a controlled situation was to stealth to the Ogre Spirits in DM and bash on them for a while. Although they are 10 levels lower and you get no misses or dodges on them I found that keeping up a really tight cycle was not a guaranteed thing and that lengthening my cycle by one CP made it much easier to keep the cycle stable (as opposed to dropping S&D or being forced to refresh it early and skip a rupture in order to keep it up).

This type of practice also helped me to understand when to pop AR and not interrupt my cycle.

 

weka

Am I right in understanding that if information from WotLK is already leaked into the mainstream (ie. common knowledge for those that google), we are allowed to discuss it here?

If so, I would like to start some discussion about the new rogue talents.

 

• Feist-Mok

There has already been quite a bit of discussion about said talents. Go nuts.

 

Slyness

Blizzard Q&A

I was only excited about the PVP aspects of WOTLK for rogues until these popped up. I don't know about you guys, but my guild often doesn't have the best raid setups due to signups and other factors. This new versatility in group setups makes me uber happy.

I also heard a rumor that windfury weapon will be a buffed placed on the raid, akin to paladin buffs. Can anyone confirm whether they've heard of this?

I also included the vague change they brought of about attack/target range mechanics because in my understanding, druid kitties attack like dagger rogues. My wish is that somehow these changes help diminish latency issues that can make the game think you're attacking from the front even though it appears you're behind the target. Here's to hoping.

 

Pajaro

Someone needed a Windfury test with a slow weapon, so I did one in Blasted Lands.

Weapon used:[Rage],unenchanted, Speed 2.6 (as reported in character screen), Draenai Shaman skilled Restoration, wearing a healer shield in the offhand if it matters somehow

total Swings: 3628 (from wws, windfury swings included as i understand)
Windfury Procs: 624
non Windfury Swings: 3004

giving a proc rate of 624 / 3004 = 0.20772

As for your Chain procs you gonna need to search the log yourself because I'm not too famliar with efficiently looking for it.


WWS:
Wow Web Stats
Log:
http://wiedehopf.net/bla/wftest.txt

EDIT: my latency is at about 35 ms and nearly never spikes.

 

• Vulajin

Thanks for the test. I looked through your log really quickly and found this:

This follows the exact same ordering and timing patterns as all the other purported examples of Windfury chain procs that we've seen, and it's well outside reasonable consideration for latency unless we presume that your latency magically spiked to nearly 2.5s for just an instant and then immediately back down to almost 0ms. So I think it's reasonably safe to say that this is a chain proc.

On the other hand, your observed proc rate was 20.77%. Given the sample size and proportion, the sample standard deviation is about 0.74%, so the 95% confidence range is 19.32% - 22.22%. This is obviously inclusive of the theoretical proc rate if we assume Windfury can't chain off itself, 20%. It's not at all inclusive of the theoretical proc rate if we assume Windfury can always chain off itself, 25%. However, it's still clear that Windfury can chain off itself, given the above example.

So I think that the conclusion that Windfury chain procs are a fluke, and that in any case the overall experienced proc rate will be roughly 20%, is probably still accurate, given this new information. Thanks a lot for the data everyone has provided towards this purpose.

 

Greymist1

So, given that you're replacing the Master Assassin ring, Devastation should be an upgrade. It just wasn't clear what you had stopped using in order to equip Devastation.

Personally, I used [Ring of a Thousand Marks] plus [Ring of Lethality] for a very long time, all the way till [Angelista's Revenge] become available. These rings were good enough that I don't remember Band of Devastation ever showing up as an upgrade in the spreadsheet (or if it was, it was so little as to be unimportant; either way I passed on Devastation a lot).

As you don't have them, the point is moot. Devastation should be your choice for now. Just make sure to check the spreadsheet and see if 1K Marks and/or Ring of Lethality are better so that you know whether to grab them if either should drop.

In this case, the poor itemization is that it has just two DPS stat types. All items have a fixed stat point budget calculated from item level (ilvl), quality (rare/epic/etc), and item slot. The cost of stats in the budget is not linear: as you stack more and more of a single stat, it gets more and more expensive. Therefore, items with small amounts of many different stats end up with more total stats than items with high amounts of a few stats, even if the items being compared are the same ilvl.

Items with just two dps stats are usually the questionable ones. With only 2 stats, at least one has to be stacked to the point where it is noticeably impacted by the nonlinear cost.

As it happens, the Master Assassin ring also has only 2 DPS stats, hit and AP. Haste is in some ways a substitute for hit, at least for hit above the amount needed to hit-cap specials, so losing hit to gain haste isn't going to hurt you. (Both hit and haste increase the number of white damage hits per second.)

 

Khana

Noob question... Does Shadow Dance share the cooldown with Vanish?
Does it wipe aggro upon entering stealth?

There's the chance Shadow Dance can be used to produce a huge ammount of damage with no aggro at all, used with Preparation.
Considering you can throw at least one Shadowstep into a Shadow Dence sequence, it -may- end up that subtlety is a no-aggro generator DPS.

It still however lacks any sustaining damage capability, but a Subt can aim to the role of support class. I mean, really.

 

Ashere

(added question numbers)
1) Who knows? Probably not though, there aren't any rogue abilities with shared cooldowns, so this would make a first
2) Probably not. It doesn't included the "improved stealth mode" thing like Vanish has.
3) This would probably be more because it has the extra agro wipe feature of prep-vanish. As for Prep, Shadowdance might be added to the Prep list, but I highly doubt it.
4) Count on it that it will generate aggro, but how much is yet to see. I'm keeping a finger hovering above my vanish key anyway.

From the looks of it, Shadowdance is going to provide a regular burst mechanism, similar to AR. Maybe not in avarage dps dealt, but in that once every few minutes you'll be able to deal noticably more damage.

 

Slyness

I just hope Shadow Dance doesn't stink like Vanish. A stopcasting macro makes Vanish more reliable but I doubt this can be done for each re-entry into stealth for Shadow Dance.

I don't see how Sub could be much of a support role but then I'm assuming that you'd go daggers for this build so hemo seems out of the question. If having two talent specs available without respecc'ing comes to fruition, Sub can be a good alternative to your main spec as it will have the best mobility of the trees and having two vanishes would be nice for possible Boss encounters that involve multiple aggro dumps.


edit: Switching to Sub spec for a resist fight could allow you to gear for less spell resistance with Heightened Senses and possibly Enveloping Shadows.

 

Kazeo

I believe I might have an explanation for the occurence of double windfury procs. Enhancement shamans imbueing windfury on both their weapons have an effective proc chance per swing outside the 'windfury cooldown' interval that is in fact much higher than 20%. The reason for this is to keep the real amount of windfury procs equal to 20% per swing, instead of 20% per swing outside the 'cooldown'. Windfury proccing off itself might be the result of a similar function in place on the windfury mechanic, designed to keep the actual proc chance close to 20%. As Vulajin said though, since the effective proc chance in all test runs is proven to be around 20% it effectively does not matter what is causing these 'double procs'.

However, seeing that windfury and poisons will no longer be mutually exclusive in WotLK, combined with the fact that swords specs can proc from specials and the fact that wf can proc from sword specialization (as shown by Vulajin's research), it'd be really interesting to find out whether sword spec can proc from poison. Especially considering the fact that poison proc chance will be upped to 45% in the expansion.

Of course, wf, sword spec, and poison mechanics might change in wrath of the lich king, so I don't see the point of actual testing until Wotlk beta, but it is an interesting question nonetheless.

 

grimLox

So upon looking at our new talent tree I am undecided as to what spec to go with, after playing with it for some time it almost seems as if 51/20/0 may be the new optimal raid spec.

I would like your guy's opinions on this please as I am really at a loss at the moment.


p.s. : Here is a link to the new talent tree just in case Yarr! Tools :: Rogue 8472 , I'm not sure if this is the one they are going with but it is posted on the wotlkwiki site.

 

VeeV's

That talent tree calc is not up to date Im afraid. (afaik they changed the Shadow Dance to "can use abilities only usable in stealth")

On the other hand since WotLK is in alpha, and its a long way to the release its early to decide on trees. We dont really know about the weapons, the gear or the upcoming changes to the talents.

Not having Combat Potency will hurt your build tho.