PvE DPS / WotLK Discussion - Page 28

• Vulajin · 07/20/08, 4:04 PM

This was the post I made on the alpha forums regarding Cut to the Chase when it was released:

Originally Posted by Vulajin

Now I'd like to talk very briefly about Cut to the Chase. This is a fantastic idea for a talent, but the execution proposed (20/40/60/80/100% chance to proc on Eviscerate/Envenom crits) isn't so spectacular.

Here's how Mutilate cycles typically work: using Mutilate twice guarantees that you will have at least 4 CP to spend on a finisher. A 4 CP Slice and Dice, with 3/3 Improved Slice and Dice, gives you 26.4 seconds of Slice and Dice, which is roughly enough for 4 Mutilates. This means that you can Mutilate twice, cast Slice and Dice, Mutilate twice, cast a different finisher, and repeat.

Usually, "a different finisher" refers to Rupture, which is almost always superior to Eviscerate or Envenom for raid-buffed rogues. Blood Spatter certainly seems like it will not change this. However, in order to gain the effects of Cut to the Chase, we need to switch from Rupture to either Eviscerate or Envenom. I noticed that Eviscerate rank 12 seems to receive, on average, 5% of your AP per combo point spent on it (whereas previous ranks receive only 3% per combo point), which means the loss of switching from Rupture to Eviscerate will surely be reduced. And thanks to the increased effect of Improved Poisons, a Deadly Poison stack removed by Envenom will be restored more quickly, lessening the impact of switching from Rupture to Envenom. Still, it is almost undeniably a loss switching away from Rupture.

Now the question is, how much DPS gain do we get from Cut to the Chase? Enough to offset that loss? Well, what exactly does Cut to the Chase do for us, anyway? Let's look back at that cycle definition. Basically, we have one finisher between Slice casts. If we make that one finisher an Eviscerate or an Envenom (we'll assume Eviscerate from here for brevity), then that component of the cycle loses a slight amount of damage, but gains a chance to proc Cut to the Chase. A proc will enable us to perform another Eviscerate and hope for another proc. If Cut to the Chase doesn't proc, we have to use our next 4-5 CP to refresh Slice and Dice.

We always perform 1 Eviscerate. For a crit rate of X, if we get a crit, then we perform 1 more Eviscerate. If we get a crit, and then get another crit, we perform 1 more Eviscerate. And so on and so forth. The series we obtain for the total number of Eviscerates performed is:

1 + 1 * X + 1 * X * X + 1 * X * X * X * ...

This is a geometric series, which evaluates to 1 / (1-X). For a crit rate of 30%, this means we perform on average 1.429 Eviscerates per cycle. For a crit rate of 50%, this means we perform on average 2 Eviscerates per cycle. For a crit rate of 70%, we perform on average 3.333 Eviscerates per cycle. In addition to these, we always perform 1 Slice per cycle (i.e. we assume that the cycle starts with a Slice and ends when Eviscerate fails to proc Cut to the Chase). So for the 30% crit rate, our cycle has 1.429 Eviscerates per 2.429 cycle components, or 58.83% of our cycle components being Eviscerates. For 50% crit rate, it's 2 Eviscerates per 3 cycle components, or 66.67% of our cycle components being Eviscerates. For 70% crit rate, it's 3.333 Eviscerates per 4.333 cycle components, or 76.92% being Eviscerates.

So to really compare against Rupture now, we need to know how much better a Rupture cycle component is than an Eviscerate cycle component. A Rupture cycle (which doesn't allow Cut to the Chase procs) has 50% of its cycle components being Ruptures. Thus, switching to Eviscerates with 30% crit rate and Cut to the Chase increases the percentage of your cycle components that aren't Slice to 58.83%, an increase of about 17.67% over Ruptures. So if a Rupture cycle component is worth 17.67% more damage than an Eviscerate component, or more, then Cut to the Chase isn't actually providing any benefit. For the 50% crit rate case, it becomes slightly better -- Eviscerate components become 66.67% of our cycle, so that Ruptures must be worth 33.33% more than Eviscerates to outweigh the gain of Cut to the Chase.

To summarize, basically all Cut to the Chase allows a Mutilate rogue to do is downgrade from a superior finisher (Rupture) to an inferior one for a slight gain in the frequency of non-Slice finishers. Alternatively, it lets you spam low-CP finishers (which are provably inferior for DPS) to sustain Slice and Dice. As a corollary, it seems a bit silly that any Eviscerate or Envenom crit (even with 1 CP) might be able to refresh Slice to its full 5-CP duration. So, with all of these considerations in mind, here would be my suggestion for how this talent could better fulfill the purpose I imagine was intended:

Cut to the Chase
5 points
Requires 45 points in Assassination talents
When you perform Eviscerate or Envenom, you have a 20/40/60/80/100% chance to refresh your Slice and Dice effect as if you had performed Slice and Dice with the same number of combo points.

This would allow a Mutilate rogue to use an alternating Eviscerate/Rupture cycle (or Envenom/Rupture), which would provide increased DPS much more in line with what a 5-point talent at the second-to-last tier in the tree should provide. It would require ramp-up (performing Slice once initially) and sustaining (performing Eviscerate again before Slice expires), but couldn't be gamed using low-CP Eviscerates.

Slyness · 07/20/08, 4:07 PM

Is it just me or did they change Unfair Advantage? It looks like they added "Whenever you critically hit an enemy" in addition to dodging an attack.

edit: Unfair Advantage

Whenever you critically hit an enemy or dodge an attack you gain an Unfair Advantage, increasing your chance to critically hit and dodge by 2% for 8 seconds.

Arindelest · 07/20/08, 5:26 PM

Originally Posted by Slyness

Is it just me or did they change Unfair Advantage? It looks like they added "Whenever you critically hit an enemy" in addition to dodging an attack.

edit: Unfair Advantage

Whenever you critically hit an enemy or dodge an attack you gain an Unfair Advantage, increasing your chance to critically hit and dodge by 2% for 8 seconds.

Assuming it can refresh itself, it should pretty much be up all the time -- but even with 100% uptime, it's 1% crit per point, which is not really a spectacular talent for how deep it is in the tree. Oh well, at least it adds DPS, unlike Stay of Execution.

Slyness · 07/20/08, 5:50 PM

Assuming it can refresh itself, it should pretty much be up all the time -- but even with 100% uptime, it's 1% crit per point, which is not really a spectacular talent for how deep it is in the tree. Oh well, at least it adds DPS, unlike Stay of Execution.

I assume 1 pt of Stay of Execution helps somewhat to ensure that Prey on the Weak is active.

Densor · 07/21/08, 12:48 AM

Assuming a 47% crit rate base (cause that number is used in my previous calculations) and 3500 AP (random number I decided on), Rupture would be doing 4336.18 damage on average with only Trauma or Mangle. Eviscerate would be doing 4913.02 damage on average with 15% mitigation from armor. Both are assume to have their improvement talents for 20% and 15% increases to damage respectively. Rupture would be scaling better with AP in the same situation, although if mitigation from armor goes to 0%, then Evis would become better for scaling. If both Trauma and Mangle are available instead of only one, rupture will be better on a per finisher basis.

For the 47% base crit rate, that gives us a 53% crit rate with Evis, and results in an average of 68% of your finishers being Eviscerate. Throwing that in, we get 3340.85 average damage per finisher using Evis, vs 2168.09 average damage per finisher using Rupture. At that point, even with both Mangle and Trauma active and a 15% damage mitigation from armor, Evis will be the better finisher, resulting in using Evis and CttC better than Rupture without CttC, though specs could change that.

Since getting CttC and the necessary support talents forces us to not get DW spec, CttC 58/8/5 should be a reasonable spec. Using two 115 DPS, 1.7 speed daggers, we get average mutilates of 3929.31, assuming 15% armor mitigation and FW up for both. We get 1.09s swing times, with no haste rating, expertise cap, and a 19% miss rate with no hit rating beyond what is needed for specials. This gives 885.49 DPS from autoattacks. Poison damage would be hard to calculate without knowing level 80 poison values, but since most mutilate specs should have the same poison DPS, I'm not going to worry about them.

Now, I need to calculate the value of FW for this build. Assuming you pool energy before using S&D, your next evis will occur during FW. However, if you are trying to get FW on that evis, you can't pool energy to allow your next finisher to benefit from FW. As such, the number of eviscerates affected by FW will be equivalent to the number of S&D's you are forced to use. As FW has no affect on S&D, the uptime for FW should be .32/.68 = 47.1%. This increases the average finisher damage to 3498.07. Now, I'm not entirely sure if it is possible to get 2 eviscerates in under FW per S&D, or how often that might occur, so I'm going to assume it doesn't happen. If so, it increases damage slightly, but I'm not sure how to figure out how much FW uptime it would give.

So, with Focused Attacks, I get 10.776 energy regen per second, 6.48 energy cost per finisher, and 117.77 energy cost for 2 mutilates. That results in an 11.53 second cycle. That results in 984.97 DPS for specials. For a total of 1870.46 basic DPS, plus whatever poisons gives.

Now, I'm assuming that you aren't using HfB with the above numbers. If you are, the cycle goes to almost 15.98 seconds, which means you'll be losing some S&D uptime or need more crit or have to drop to 1.6 second daggers or something and you lose FW on finishers due to pooling issues. Either way, assuming you don't lose S&D, your special attack DPS ends up at 700.84. Adding in the 15% bonus damage, you get 1824.28 basic DPS, plus 115% of poisons.

Okay, now assuming we go back to the rupture cycle, we get Non-CttC 45/21/5 as a possible spec. Same poison talents, of course. Again, two 115 DPS, 1.7 speed daggers, we get average mutilates of 4400.81 damage. Our average DPS from autoattacks with the same stats as above is 1033.08. All the damaging finishers will benefit from FW, so the average finisher damage is 2384.90. With 12 seconds between finishers, average DPS from specials ends up being 932.21, giving a total 1965.29 basic DPS, plus poisons.

Now, I suggested my cycle build, I might as well run the numbers for it. Using the same stats and the CttC build above gives me ~95% S&D uptime (and also 95% of finishers are evis), 839.29 DPS from autoattacks with 3929.31 average mutilate damage, 4056.22 average finisher damage, and 7.09 seconds per finisher, all affected by FW, for a total of 1126.31 DPS from specials. That results in 1965.60 basic DPS plus poisons. I can't see HfB being useful, since S&D uptime would drop a ton. So, I'm not going to bother with that calculation.

Both builds with HfB will improve considerably if HfB can be used for free, of course.

Edit: I did not account for FW applying to finishers, because I'm not sure of the percent of finishers which will occur while FW is up. With the current Mutilate cycle, all damaging finishers occur while FW is up. With CttC, I think Vulajin's proposed cycle (the first one, plus the HfB variation, maybe) will have a percent uptime for FW equal to the percent of finishers that are S&D, as being forced to use S&D will allow you to pool energy before using your finisher, so you can get the next evis off during the FW buff. For the final two cycles I did calculations for, FW should apply to all the finishers. I think that might result in a cycle that doesn't actually focus on keeping S&D uptime at 100%, which is counter to current DPS practices. I also forgot to factor in manual refreshes of S&D for the 4th cycle.

I've now added in those things to the best of my ability.

Prima · 07/21/08, 7:26 AM

Focused Attacks seems really...underwhelming to me. 30% of your crits give you 3 energy. So you would need to crit over 60 times to get enough energy for one mutilate, which is projected to be less than 6k damage afaik. It seems like a 20% increase in poison damage would overcome this easily, because you are more likely to get an instant proc (subsequently proccing deadly) than to gain this 3 energy.

Heres my 4 am math:

Assuming 50% crit it takes around 120-130 attacks to gain enough energy for a Mutilate. This would increase total damage done by around 4k damage as per the above post. In 120 attacks, with the generic talents Instant would proc 45% of the time, or 54 times. If the 80 instant does, say, around 30 more avg damage as was the increase to the TBC poison, then that would be 54 X 200 avg damage or 10.8k damage. With Vile posion this increases to 12960 damage and with Infectious to 15120. This is without adding in deadly uptime/envenom viability with such easily stacked DP.

Ok, now someone proves me wrong. Go!

EDIT: Lol.

Ashere · 07/21/08, 7:36 AM

So, overall, what would seem to be the PvE Mutilate rotation in WotLK?
4/5pt SnD followed only by evisc/envenom?
or
4/5pt SnD followed by rupture after every SnD refresh, filling up the rest of the SnD time with evisc/envenom to try and get it refreshed?

And yes, suggesting Envenom isn't that far-fetched, with the change to WF, which allows rogues to use poisons on both weapons again.

For the poison part as a muti rogue in PvE:
Dual Instant, Instant + Deadly or maybe even Dual Deadly? Dual Instant seems the most obvious, since Instant would also proc Deadly. However, Deadly has a 10% higher proc chance, which in the case of using Envenom as a finisher would seem rather useful as well, since Envenom is only viable (compared to Evisc) if you can get your poison stacks back up in a matter of seconds.

Evisc/Envenom and which poisons to use with it may well end up as one of those things that depend a lot on your equipment. Poison damage is non-scaling, while Evisc is to some degree. So mediocre equiped rogues might be better off using envenom, while well geared rogues might benefit from using Evisc instead.
Same with poisons. Muti rogues with little haste and low +hit may benefit from using Deadly Poison on 1 weapon, while Muti rogues with high haste and high +hit can get away with using Instant Poison on both weapons simply because their amount of procs over time is noticably higher.

drumbum · 07/21/08, 7:41 AM

Originally Posted by Prima

EDIT: At first glance reading over this I seem to remember that poisons do not proc off of yellows, but even if 50% of your attacks are yellow (not gonna happen) this would still appear to yield much more damage to spec into Infectious poison over Focused Attacks.

Poisons do proc from special attacks.

Thx_138 · 07/21/08, 6:43 PM

Great post Vulajin! I thought the same thing the first time I looked at CttC. Warlocks and SPriests are able to refresh their primary damaging spell simply with the use of one or more different spells, why the extra crit requirement in the rogue tree? Warlocks corruption is simply reset by any type of shadow bolt and there is no crit requirement there...in my opinion it would actually make more sense for the warlocks to have the crit requirement than the rogues. After all you can spam many shadow bolts in the time it takes to build the combo points for an eviscerate. Was there any positive feedback to your post?

Maaras · 07/21/08, 6:48 PM

I don't recall seeing this anywhere, but is the debuff limit on mobs going to be raised/eliminated in Wrath? I ask only because I was looking at Deadly Brew and it occurred to me that with various combinations of poisons, a rogue could chew up 3 debuff slots just by auto-attacking, and I know the debuff limit can be tricky to manage already. (Not that you'd WANT to go IP/Wound or IP/MN, just that you COULD.)

• Aldriana · 07/21/08, 7:25 PM

I could certainly see going MN/IP or MN/Wound on some bosses; as it stands it's not uncommon to use Wound on bosses that heal (Illidan, Council, etc.) and Mind-numbing on bosses with effects to be disrupted (Reliquary Phase 2). Hence, it seems totally reasonable to me that such fights will continue to exist; and if they do, it would be natural to put that on one weapon and IP on the other.

That said: I expect most bosses will be immune to crippling, so it's only one extra debuff relative to the status quo - instead of n rogues applying n-1 DP and one wound/MN, you'll get n DP applications and the wound/MN. And all in all, I'm not too worried about 1 extra debuff slot on select caster bosses that require an additional poison.

Maaras · 07/21/08, 7:59 PM

Originally Posted by Aldriana

I could certainly see going MN/IP or MN/Wound on some bosses; as it stands it's not uncommon to use Wound on bosses that heal (Illidan, Council, etc.) and Mind-numbing on bosses with effects to be disrupted (Reliquary Phase 2). Hence, it seems totally reasonable to me that such fights will continue to exist; and if they do, it would be natural to put that on one weapon and IP on the other.

That said: I expect most bosses will be immune to crippling, so it's only one extra debuff relative to the status quo - instead of n rogues applying n-1 DP and one wound/MN, you'll get n DP applications and the wound/MN. And all in all, I'm not too worried about 1 extra debuff slot on select caster bosses that require an additional poison.

While I agree with your analysis 100%, it doesn't answer my question at all

(Which, I'll admit, isn't really a rogue-specific question, so I can ask elsewhere if you'd prefer...)

I wouldn't have even thought about this if it weren't for the fact that we tend to raid heavy on casters, and they love to blame rogues for DP bumping off TC or DS on Brut, etc. (I love you Demon!)

drumbum · 07/21/08, 9:07 PM

On a similar note, is there a (known) limit to the number of buffs a player can have? With so many of the common party buffs changing to raid-wide buffs, you can expect to have quite a few more buffs at a given time. Basically you can expect to have one aura buff from each paladin, several totem buffs from each shaman, Unleashed Rage from enhancement shaman, warlock pet aura(s), warrior shouts... and anything else I can't think of at the moment. It sounds a bit cluttered to me.

Densor · 07/21/08, 9:46 PM

Focused Attacks is very underwhelming at first glance, especially when compared with Combat Potency. It scales with crit though, which looks like the main staple of a Mutilate CttC build. If you are CttC, there aren't really any other talents you can get which are better than FA. I suppose you can put the points in Precision...

Using my previous examples' gear: 9% hit (or a 19% miss rate), 47% crit, 3500 AP, expertise cap, 115 DPS 1.7 speed daggers in MH and OH.

Base white hit damage modifier due to the hit table: 1 - .24*.25 - 1*.19 + 1*.47 = 1.22
Adding 3 points in Precision increases that modifier to: 1 - .24*.25 - 1*.16 + 1*.47 = 1.25
Damage increase for white damage: 1.25/1.22 = 2.459%.

The 3 lost points in FA reduces energy regen to 10 per second, increases mutilate energy cost to 60, and increases finisher energy to 17.722 in the 4th build for which I did calculations (6.8 energy per finisher in the 1st build). This changes the cycles to 7.77 seconds, up from 7.09 seconds (12.68 seconds, up from 11.53 seconds). The DPS loss for specials is 8.752% (9.070%).

As specials account for more than 50% of the DPS I calculated for both builds, a ~2.5% gain in white damage in exchange for a 8.5-9% loss in special damage sounds like a terrible idea. Extra poison damage from the extra hits is not going to equal the difference.

So, FA is better than Precision, which is probably the best alternative talent in a CttC build. It is probably better than Blood Spatter or Infectious Poisons in a non-CttC build, too. I don't feel like crunching the numbers for it right now.

Hidden · 07/22/08, 1:28 AM

Originally Posted by Densor

For the 47% base crit rate, that gives us a 53% crit rate with Evis, and results in an average of 68% of your finishers being Eviscerate. Throwing that in, we get 3340.85 average damage per finisher using Evis, vs 2168.09 average damage per finisher using Rupture. At that point, even with both Mangle and Trauma active and a 15% damage mitigation from armor, Evis will be the better finisher, resulting in using Evis and CttC better than Rupture without CttC, though specs could change that.

Did you include the increased cycle length using Eviscerate(35 Energy) instead of Rupture(25 Energy) in your calculations?

Densor · 07/22/08, 4:39 AM

Originally Posted by Hidden

Did you include the increased cycle length using Eviscerate(35 Energy) instead of Rupture(25 Energy) in your calculations?

Yes. The things I did not take into consideration are talents or debuffs that affect all builds equally and are flat modifiers or the things that I mentioned not taking into account. For instance, I assumed that you would not have both Mangle and Trauma on the targets. If you were to get both, Rupture would be a better finisher, improving the non-CttC build. I did not take into account that envenom might be a better finisher than eviscerate either, as that would require a lot more work. Until someone gives me level 80 poison values, I can't calculate poison DPS, or lost poison DPS for envenom, accurately. I'll have to get to that eventually, as it may be significant. I should also do calculations on a non-CttC build that includes FA, as I didn't realize how much of a difference it made to yellow DPS. Maybe I'll even get a rough spreadsheet working so that more reasonable values can be used than just the stuff I make up for ease of calculations.

pixL · 07/22/08, 6:16 AM

Originally Posted by Coffin Burier

This is how I see the rogue in the WotLK background for both PvE raids and PvP:

Mutilate/Dual Wield Spec 51/20 (very strong poisons, nice white damage, very high combo generation, must stay behind the target)
Combat/Assassination 20/51 (the usual combat sword spec, with increased crit damage and incresed burst damage)
Combat/Seal Fate 30/41 (the usual combat sword spec with increased combo generation and poison damage)
Seal Fate/Hemorrhage 47/24 (an evolution of my spec, very high poison damage, very strong bleeding effects, weak white damage)

Shadow Dance/Assassination 20/0/51 (spec pvp, very high survivability, very unpredictable damage output, must stay behind the target)
Shadowstep/Cold Blood 28/0/43 (spec pvp, very high survivability, increased healing and movement speed)
Shadowstep/Seal Fate 30/0/41 (spec pvp, the usuale pvp rogue with increased combo generation)
Combat Mace Spec/Assassination 20/51 (spec pvp, the old combat pvp spec with increased survivability and high burst damage)

I can't see anything else at the moment... there may be some other few specs for PvE, like an Hemo/Combat Potency or maybe a new kind of Three Spec Hemorrhage. I also see Mutilate viable in PvP, even if still weak in survivability.

The real problem for my spec (Seal Fate/Hemorrhage) is to understand how much can the poison damage be increased in WotLK. I'm litterally going crazy about that. :P

Combat/Seal Fate could be a nice spec at the beginning. It has only one new ability (Cold Blood) and may focus on Eviscerate as a third finisher. Agility would be stronger then ever.

P.S.
I have a question... which one do you think would work better? Find Weakness, Focussed Attacks or Turn the Tables? I'm making some calculations bases on my WWS parse. I know it's early, but I really spend a lot of time thinking about theese things, instead of playing. At the moment, they seem pretty similar in the damage output... but I'm not that sure about how they work, for example: would find weakness work for poisons as well o maybe for white damage? The combo moves of Turning the Tables are intended to be Mutilate, Hemo, Sinister Strike or does that include finishers? If you have any idea, please, let me know. :P

Well, I'd like to add another spec here that I had in mind before I even saw the new talents. What about 41/25/5? I'm not entirely sure how powerful focused attacks but some points could be moved from either dagger spec or opporunity in order to fill that talent up as well. I see no real reason why you'd want to go higher in assassination and the dagger crit and opporunity should provide a nice boost. (It always annoyed me that I couldn't get DW and oppor at at the same time at 70 so that's why I'm bringing this up.).

Bunta601 · 07/22/08, 8:18 AM

So I've been looking at the rogue talents that are poposed for Lich King, and I have some questions that I would look to put out there as you guys are for more adept at this I am.

I'm looking primaraly at end game again here, and I know that current the one of the most common ways to go is combat with sword spec factored in with for the extra attacks. whether you go fist/sword as I've gone as its the based way for me to optimise my output we're only just starting th T5 stuff so the 2.4 fist with season 2 off hand makes the best combination for me.

The lich King talents to me though, seem to indicate that it might possibly be best to take the assassination route with point in subulty up to serrated blades and ignore combat. I can see know that immediatly people are going to disagree but I'd like to put my case forward and see what you guys think.

I find that when I play I tend get a slice and dice/rupture going as that maximises my dps I find, especially if mangle is on a target thanks to a druid. So with mangle damage from bleed effects is increased by 30% and with improved mangle reducing the cooldown of it it should be up permantly.

The build I have quickly thrown together and linked below, tries it best to give the maximum chance to crit strike. With turn the tables everiserate and evenom have an additional 6% chance to crit which if it does crit will refresh slice and dice up to max 5 point. I'm guessing that the refresh will depend on how many cp you had when go the crit so if you had 2 it will refresh up to two point, and if 5 then it will refresh up to 5. It seems logical to me that it would follow that pattern but confirmation from anyone in the beta would be nice around this.

So rather then build up a slice and dice, it could be feasible to use a single point from ruthlessness and crit on a single point eviscerate or envenom depending on what poisons you are using on a boss a particular time.

Therefore the best thing to me seems garrot, ss, snd, ss, ss, ss, ss, ss, rupture, ss, ss, ss, ss, ss cold blood, eviserate/envenom, then get into a rupture and eviserate/envenom pattern when turn the tables is up using hunger for blood when needed.

The othervantage of this build and the major thing it would rely on, which is where your input would be most helpful, is that it contains both serrated blades and blood splatter. Not only does this give armor pentration, but of these talents increase the damage cause by rupture and add that the mangle, would this scale high enough to be able to recommend it as build to ignore combat. Blood splatter increases it by 20% and serrated blades by 30%. Will these talents stack so as be to scale the damage to greater hights, or will only one have effect on rupture. Again, this is where those in the beta would be ablke to possible provide information on this, but people views and comments on this would be appreciated. The build is link below. Some talents obviously aren't final as they are essentually just fillers to move up a level such quick recovery, but it the stack of rupture that I'm particually interested in if anyone could help answer this.

Thanks.

World of Warcraft Europe -> Info -> Classes -> Rogue -> Wrath of the Lich King Beta Talent Calculator

Saccharine · 07/22/08, 8:59 AM

Originally Posted by Bunta601

So I've been looking at the rogue talents that are poposed for Lich King, and I have some questions that I would look to put out there as you guys are for more adept at this I am.

I'm looking primaraly at end game again here, and I know that current the one of the most common ways to go is combat with sword spec factored in with for the extra attacks. whether you go fist/sword as I've gone as its the based way for me to optimise my output we're only just starting th T5 stuff so the 2.4 fist with season 2 off hand makes the best combination for me.

The lich King talents to me though, seem to indicate that it might possibly be best to take the assassination route with point in subulty up to serrated blades and ignore combat. I can see know that immediatly people are going to disagree but I'd like to put my case forward and see what you guys think.

I find that when I play I tend get a slice and dice/rupture going as that maximises my dps I find, especially if mangle is on a target thanks to a druid. So with mangle damage from bleed effects is increased by 30% and with improved mangle reducing the cooldown of it it should be up permantly.

The build I have quickly thrown together and linked below, tries it best to give the maximum chance to crit strike. With turn the tables everiserate and evenom have an additional 6% chance to crit which if it does crit will refresh slice and dice up to max 5 point. I'm guessing that the refresh will depend on how many cp you had when go the crit so if you had 2 it will refresh up to two point, and if 5 then it will refresh up to 5. It seems logical to me that it would follow that pattern but confirmation from anyone in the beta would be nice around this.

So rather then build up a slice and dice, it could be feasible to use a single point from ruthlessness and crit on a single point eviscerate or envenom depending on what poisons you are using on a boss a particular time.

Therefore the best thing to me seems garrot, ss, snd, ss, ss, ss, ss, ss, rupture, ss, ss, ss, ss, ss cold blood, eviserate/envenom, then get into a rupture and eviserate/envenom pattern when turn the tables is up using hunger for blood when needed.

The othervantage of this build and the major thing it would rely on, which is where your input would be most helpful, is that it contains both serrated blades and blood splatter. Not only does this give armor pentration, but of these talents increase the damage cause by rupture and add that the mangle, would this scale high enough to be able to recommend it as build to ignore combat. Blood splatter increases it by 20% and serrated blades by 30%. Will these talents stack so as be to scale the damage to greater hights, or will only one have effect on rupture. Again, this is where those in the beta would be ablke to possible provide information on this, but people views and comments on this would be appreciated. The build is link below. Some talents obviously aren't final as they are essentually just fillers to move up a level such quick recovery, but it the stack of rupture that I'm particually interested in if anyone could help answer this.

Thanks.

World of Warcraft Europe -> Info -> Classes -> Rogue -> Wrath of the Lich King Beta Talent Calculator

I still feel like there are a lot of talents in Sub that are just there to get you down to Serrated Blades(Dirty Tricks, Improved Ambush etc.) And since I definately not believe that we're going to rely less on white damage than in TBC, I don't think that Ass/Sub would be a good combination, because we lose so many important talents.(Precision, Dual Wield Specc). And also since Dual Wield Specc has proven to be better for Mutilate than Opportunity.

I'm still working on a specc myself, having a big problem in deep Assassination atm. I mean, Focused Attacks isnt that great tbh, although it might work out pretty good together with Turn the Tables.

This is what it looks like atm:

Assassination 51/20

This specc would use Envenom as a primary finisher. Anyone have any suggestions what I should remove to get Infectious Poison though? To me it seemed like more of a PvP-talent, hence why I left it out.

Bunta601 · 07/22/08, 9:13 AM

Originally, I went with a build very much like myself trying to take advantage of as much as possible in the combat tree.

I do think if your going to go assassination, the blood splatter is going to be essential as its a boost to what I find is a finisher i always have up.

The question I'm curious about though is whether the two rupture improving talents will stack. I would like to know the answer to this so that when it comes out, I can play with builds and see whether I would be more beneficial to the raid to have one rogue who maximises dps from the DoT when combined with mangle from a druid. So if the max is used by one, while the other 2/3 maximise sword spec dps to take down adds and other mobs.

Iscariot · 07/22/08, 10:16 AM

I think infectious poisons will be the better choice over blood splatter, due to the increased poison damage we will be doing with dual instant. Im currently thinking of Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft as cut to the chase does not seem all that viable at the moment.

The only other possible changes at this stage are whether to get murder or not, depending on what type of bosses we get in the first set of raids, and quick recovery. There will be expertise gems in the expansion so it seems capping expertise will be relatively easy to do therefore making quick recovery pretty useless from a dps point of view.

• Maestroquark · 07/22/08, 10:54 AM

Originally Posted by Bunta601

I do think if your going to go assassination, the blood splatter is going to be essential as its a boost to what I find is a finisher i always have up.

You can't really think like this, though. You have to go off the numbers, not some arbitrary "I use this all the time". If rupture is only 5% of your total DPS, despite being up all the time, a 20% increase to Rupture is only a 1% increase overall. Also, your Ass/Sub build is overlooking an incredible amount of factors. You spent 10 talent points in Subtlety on non-DPS increases (no, an opener talent does not count) to get to Serrated Blades. You maxed out Deadly Brew but got none of its synergistic talents. You again spent talent points on non-raid talent with Imp KS. You mention a cycle of SS, yet take Mutilate and Opportunity and skip Imp SS.

That's all without even talking about skipping Combat completely, which yes, everyone should disagree with.

Bunta601 · 07/22/08, 11:23 AM

I have nothing wrong with the build, just that I felt removing one point from master poisoner and putting in it in blood splatter would, overall on the longer boss fights where this is aimed, give you higher dps. Of course I could be wrong and please correct if I am. You only learn from making mistakes. Better to make them on here then waste gold respecing.

The point about the build I put together was not a this is what I would use. I state that a lot of talents are fillers just to get to new levels. The point was simply to find out if they do stack. I'm always curious about whether points like this are unintential by Blizzard and they mean to move say, the rupture bonus from serrated blades to a higher tier if it turns out that in boss fights its simply too much. Its a question, not a I'm going to use this build, and one, if anyone in the beta can answer, I would very much like to know the answer to.

A build I would I would probably use is something like this:

World of Warcraft Europe -> Info -> Classes -> Rogue -> Wrath of the Lich King Beta Talent Calculator

I feel that if your going to take deadly brew, you should take infectious poisons as my instant poison is going to apply deadly poison everytime it procs, meaning that I then get a stack of 5 deadly poisons on the target with a 20% bonus to their damage as well just for using one poison if I'm understanding the talents right. Not sure what rank of deadly poison would be applied. Would it be the highest or the rank under the instant poison your using?

Left · 07/22/08, 12:17 PM

Turn the tables still looks underwhelming to me. If I'm interpreting it correctly, it will only affect critable finishers (ie, Eviscerate, Envenom, and Deadly Throw). Thus, it's only really useful in conjunction with a CttC build.

Even if it affects combo point generators, not just finishers, it's still a boost to only yellow damage, making it around 50% as effective as a blanket crit boost would be. So, it would be like having another 1/2/3% crit talent (half of 2/4/6) which is only active in a party or raid. Sounds ok, right? Except wait, we already have a 1/2/3/4/5% crit talent... in the first assassination tier...

8 points for TtT and CttC seems pretty lame, in my opinion.

Hidden · 07/22/08, 1:43 PM

I meant the following part:

For the 47% base crit rate, that gives us a 53% crit rate with Evis, and results in an average of 68% of your finishers being Eviscerate. Throwing that in, we get 3340.85 average damage per finisher using Evis, vs 2168.09 average damage per finisher using Rupture. At that point, even with both Mangle and Trauma active and a 15% damage mitigation from armor, Evis will be the better finisher, resulting in using Evis and CttC better than Rupture without CttC, though specs could change that.

You only compare finisher damage, but wouldn't the higher energy cost of Eviscerate increase the cycle's total duration?
Some maths assuming a 2 Mutilate/Finisher rotation:
Taking 2 Mutilate/Finisher as a cycle, the average cycle energy cost increases from 2*60+25-25=120 to 2*60+0.32*25+0.68*32-25=126.8
Adding the second bleed debuff to Rupture, it would take it to 2818.517 damage per finisher, Eviscerate with 15% damage mitigation are 2839.7225 damage per finisher.
Average Eviscerate Cycle DPS: (2*3929.31+2839.7225)/12.68=843.7179
Average Rupture Cycle DPS: (2*3929.31+2818.517)/12=889.7614

If the finisher damage values are correct, a Rupture cycle would still be better than an Eviscerate cycle then, wouldn't it?