PvE DPS / WotLK Discussion - Page 234

Kryptyx · 10/16/08, 11:25 AM

Originally Posted by Leto

Scour the last 4 or 5 pages for posts by Chalon and you should find some clear descriptions and discussions of logic for mutilate play.

Some key things though:

1) use the slice and dice glyph
2) use a mod to track buffs/debuffs (specifically slice and dice, hunger for blood, and rupture). I'd recommend needtoknow or classtimers.
3) stack hunger for blood before you start combat, then refresh it before it runs out to keep the 9% dmg buff for the whole fight.
4) open with mutilate, get 4+ cp then slice and dice, and then either rupture or envenom once you get 4+ cp (depending on how much time is left on snd)
5) keep snd up using envenom and keep rupture up as much as you can, but priority should be given to snd and hfb. 6) Pool energy before finishers to allow more flexibility in your cycles.

Check the logic I mentioned in previous pages for more details on how to best maintain snd and hfb while using rupture.

Great post, sorry for being such a newb... After using Combat Swords so mindlessly it got confusing trying out a new spec. I will def try this over the weekend. Should be interesting how much of a DPS change it will make.

I have needtoknow, although I havent set it up yet, no real reason to if you keep your rotations up for Combat Swords... but with Mutilate taking so much more "precision" I suspect it will be very helpful. SliceCommander sounds cool I may look at that too since I dont even have n2k running yet.

nemowish · 10/16/08, 11:50 AM

I can confirm that Dotimer refresh Slice and Dice bars when Envenom/Eviscerate is used with Cut to the Chase

Tleilax · 10/16/08, 12:11 PM

Originally Posted by Tinwhisker

It is my understanding that you cannot perform special attacks (like Sinister Strike) while under the effects of Killing Spree but other effects that are activated before it work during the 2.5 second Killing Spree (eg, hitting Blade Flurry before Killing Spree with make all Killing Spree strikes hit an additional target).

This is correct.

I have also been playing around with killing spree in the new combat build, and when using it on trash mobs I will usually always pop blade flurry before killing spree to "double dip" on the AOE damage - which is a lot of fun BTW.

However, for single target boss fights, I am wondering if anyone has done any testing to determine whether or not it is optimal to use blade flurry and killing spree at the same time? In this situation perhaps one could do more damage by not stacking the buffs and using them sequentially instead.

P.S. I can confirm that the newest version of Class Timer (2.0.1) is not working with the new patch.

Demi9OD · 10/16/08, 12:15 PM

Originally Posted by Tleilax

This is correct.

I have also been playing around with killing spree in the new combat build, and when using it on trash mobs I will usually always pop blade flurry before killing spree to "double dip" on the AOE damage - which is a lot of fun BTW.

However, for single target boss fights, I am wondering if anyone has done any testing to determine whether or not it is optimal to use blade flurry and killing spree at the same time? In this situation perhaps one could do more damage by not stacking the buffs and using them sequentially instead.

P.S. I can confirm that the newest version of Class Timer (2.0.1) is not working with the new patch.

Since you only want to stack haste buffs, which KS is not, I see no reason to stack BF and KS on single target. Especially since you may need to reposition or fight frontal for a short amount of KS time, reducing the damage boost from BF.

saveben · 10/16/08, 12:47 PM

Originally Posted by Demi9OD

Since you only want to stack haste buffs, which KS is not, I see no reason to stack BF and KS on single target. Especially since you may need to reposition or fight frontal for a short amount of KS time, reducing the damage boost from BF.

In my experience during our raids last night, it's best to ignore KS when using your cooldowns and pretend you're playing in the last patch, i.e., use your BF/AR and AP trinket (if you use them) when your shamans use Heroism or after threat is stable and use KS on its own, when you know the jumping around mechanism won't hurt you. Speaking of, I've found it helpful to use our fantastic new Sprint around uses of KS to help in quick repositioning.

One note...I vote we call KS Omnislash. Kidney Shot is already our KS, that'll just get confusing. Everyone knows Omnislash, and all the rogues in my guild use Omni regardless, I didn't remember it's actual name for a while, haha.

PS - New patch is too easy. I just did BT - ZA - Kara last night, 5 hours total. What the hell.

DJmaya3d · 10/16/08, 1:23 PM

Thank you Bowen for the reply.

I wanted to know if those numbers are specific to a combat build only or if they apply to a mutilate build aswell.

Originally Posted by Shaker

Special cap is 9% (same ol' 63 hit rating after precision), Poison cap is 17% (190 hit rating after precision), and the white hit cap is 363, again, including precision.

Hit isn't a super important stat in the post-WF-as-a-weapon-enchant era, my general recommendation for people who have 300ish hit rating is to convert all their yellow +10 hit gems in yellow sockets to 5hit/5agi gems, and all their 5hit/5agi orange gems in red sockets to 10agi gems.

Shaker, would you mind explaining to me why this WF change affects hit so much? I am quite puzzled about this as I canlt find any explanations about this anywhere.

Wodahs · 10/16/08, 1:35 PM

Its a combination of things. AP now affects poisions, well. More hits do not buy you more wf procs. Add it all in, and hit cap isnt something to aim for anymore. Im running 32.5 crit, 20% armor pen, 259 hit, 2325 ap, 19 expertise, and a passive 10.15% haste. Raidbuffed, 5/51/5 build with agi food/agi pot, I ran 4200 dps on a 3 minute brut kill. Dropping excess hit and turning it into agi had a good affect.

Tinwhisker · 10/16/08, 1:37 PM

Originally Posted by DJmaya3d

Shaker, would you mind explaining to me why this WF change affects hit so much? I am quite puzzled about this as I canlt find any explanations about this anywhere.

Here's your answer about TBC Windfury and why it made hit so valuable for rogues who had an Enh Shaman in their group.

Originally Posted by Aldriana

Windfury is perhaps the single biggest factor in the powerful scaling of hit rating, for the reason that damage done by WF (which is considerable) scales quadratically with hit. With the change to WF totem, while it's still a considerable source of damage, it no longer double-passes on hit rating, hence the value of hit is lowered somewhat.

I.e. more hits created more WF procs and more damage. There's other things going on there but it's not important anymore. Just note that the removal of the TBC Windfury mechanic is part of the reason rogue poisons were made to scale.

Leto · 10/16/08, 1:40 PM

Originally Posted by Shaderoth

this has probbaly been said already but can you tell me perceiver level 70 best dps spec and 80 dps specs and a little reasoning why

appreciate all your hardwork vulajin and aldriana

thx

Mutilate or Combat/ss for both, personal preference basically which you want to use, so at 70, spec to match your gear or what you have access to, or just want to have fun with since everything is so easy now.

Mutilate will pull ahead a little bit on murderable targets (humans,giants, beasts, dragonkin), but it is more difficult to play optimally, hence the personal preference thing.

Shaker · 10/16/08, 1:45 PM

Originally Posted by Tinwhisker

I.e. more hits created more WF procs and more damage. There's other things going on there but it's not important anymore. Just note that the removal of the TBC Windfury mechanic is part of the reason rogue poisons were made to scale.

Actually the fundamental difference isn't that it created more WF procs - WF's interaction with Rogue DPS was rather nicely laid out as such:

AP - caused WF procs to hit harder
Crit - caused WF procs to hit harder
Haste - caused increased chance for WF proc to happen

Hit - caused increase chance for WF proc to happen AND increased WF proc damage by reducing number of WF attacks that missed.

That "double dipping" is one of the major contributors to rogues being so hit-focused in TBC. Now that the WF mechanic has changed, we are no longer as interested in hit. It's a good stat, but we have lots of good stats, and currently Agi/AP are showing out better than everything else.

Schpeel · 10/16/08, 1:56 PM

Originally Posted by Tleilax

P.S. I can confirm that the newest version of Class Timer (2.0.1) is not working with the new patch.

As a combat rogue, I have been using ClassTimer since tuesday and it has performed flawlessly.

Cybelirrae · 10/16/08, 2:13 PM

Originally Posted by Wodahs

Its a combination of things. AP now affects poisions, well. More hits do not buy you more wf procs. Add it all in, and hit cap isnt something to aim for anymore. Im running 32.5 crit, 20% armor pen, 259 hit, 2325 ap, 19 expertise, and a passive 10.15% haste. Raidbuffed, 5/51/5 build with agi food/agi pot, I ran 4200 dps on a 3 minute brut kill. Dropping excess hit and turning it into agi had a good affect.

Wodahs, we have put off sunwell until tonight so I was interested to see how a similarly geared end-sunwell rogue would do as 5/51/5. Do you have a screenshot of the DPS meters or of a WWS report from last night? Actually I am not sure if WWS is even working, but I am curious to hear how you performed on Brut and KJ versus the other classes.

Also, did you swap in AToL for DST, or were you one of the unfortunates that had bad luck with DST?

Wodahs · 10/16/08, 2:21 PM

I ran AToL and Naaru sliver all night. I also ran dp mh, wp oh and people keep telling me that is the wrong combo. I have a stasis parse up, but Im asking the host if I can link it first, Im not sure what sort of traffic he can sustain.

Eternal Reign Raid History

Couple notes. We didnt wipe on felmyst, not sure why it shows 2 attempts.
We wiped on muru due to confusion the first attempt.
We wiped on kj due to a bomb starting just after the orb buff had worn off of our dragon controller. He had kept a dragon from phase 2, into phase 4 and its duration expired. We had no bombs in p2-3.

chalon · 10/16/08, 2:33 PM

Originally Posted by pdpi

How would exactly a loss of dps be classed as "worth it"? Because it makes the cycles slightly smoother? Under that logic you might as well spec combat rather than mutilate because there's not as much of a dps difference as all that and the cycles are simpler.

Capped hit/expertise aren't magical "must have" numbers. They're inflection points where stats stop being as profitable to stack. It was accepted that hit was the best individual stat of TBC for a rogue, and only in that sense did was it logical to stack it to cap, but accepting a dps hit just to cap on expertise is a fool's errand.

So I guess I should have been a bit more clear in my post (it was late, I'm sorry). However, you kind of completely missed my point

.

So first of all, to be clear the gemming advice for WotLK has been something like this. Fill all your red slots with Bright Scarlet Rubies. Only put one Balanced Twilight Opal in one blue slot for meta, everything else stack Bright Scarlet Rubies. For yellow you may as well put in either Glinting or Wicked Monarch Topaz, since the socket bonus will be better.

However, it seems like for my gear level, even with the calculated "on spreadsheet" DPS values I should gem for Expertise. This makes me think that there either a.) is an inflection point where gemming for Expertise becomes > gemming for AP or b.) perhaps Expertise was under appreciated.

So about the spreadsheet modeling. First of all, Vulajin's sheet currently does not actually model the variable number of Envenoms in your cycle. It's just a simplified 4+n/4+r cycle. So actually modeling that will also slightly increase Expertise value I'd venture. Furthermore, even when it is modeled unfortunately with something as complex as the WotLK Mutilate cycle, it's just not going to be 100% effectively modeled by a spreadsheet. It's not something that spreadsheets specifically are good at. I'm sure Vulajin and Aldriana will come up with excellent models, but they will probably only be 98 or 99% accurate. It's one of the things a DPS simulator would slightly more effectively model. That's fine, it doesn't have to be completely 100%, but my point was that if the "calculated" DPS loss was 20 DPS, when you're doing over 5.2k DPS, 20 is insignificant and well within the margin for error. I'd err on the side of it not appreciating Expertise quite as much as opposed to over appreciating.

As for why expertise, it's not to make the cycle "simpler" or anything along those lines. "Go combat LOL" is a pretty stupid thing to say without actually evaluating it. Rather, it's to make the cycle more efficient. Take a look at this scenario:

Your Rupture just faded. You have 5 seconds left on your SnD, 40 energy, and 4 CP. What do you do?

So if your expertise is capped, it's safe to immediately hit a 4 CP Rupture, then you have a high probability of immediately building 3-4 CP and be able to Envenom in time to refresh your SnD.

However, if you aren't expertise capped, that's not safe at all. If your Envenom gets dodged your SnD will drop. So to be safe, you pool energy 2-3 seconds and Envenom. However, you've now lost at a minimg 5-6s of Rupture uptime.

That's sort of what I'm talking about...maximized expertise lets you optimize your cycles, and I'm not sure that effect is well-represented by spreadsheets.

innoue · 10/16/08, 2:47 PM

Originally Posted by Annihilus

Now that I have the patch two add-ons that I feel like I can't live without are not working for me. Energy Watch I had setup in the middle of my screen so I could easily see my energy and combo points without having to look away for even a second. I also used Class Timer so I could add my buffs and target's de-buffs to the screen on either side of my toon. I can't find a replacement for these. I downloaded the latest Class Timer and it generates errors and I just can't configure it to work. Energy Watch seems to track the energy generation appropriately, although the graphic energy tick is hosed, but it does not display my combo points correctly. I tried the GnoffBar and their is too much of a delay in the energy tick to be accurate and it does not show combo points. What are some good addons that I can use to replace:

1. Energy Bar that is accurate
2. Combo Points
3. My Buffs, Debuffs
4. Target's Buff's Debuffs

Has anybody used DiscoDice? It looks cool, but at this point I've had enough frustration for one evening.

I find myself in the same predicament i had gotten so used to using rogue-power-bars for tracking my procking buff that i am desperately searching for a replacement. Can anyone reccomend a suitable bar timer for tracking proc or item buffs?