nosille

The only way I see Turn the Tables being good is if it is stackable. Then, in the right group, your chance to crit evenom and eviserate and therefore to trigger CttC would be nearly 100%. However, this interpretation seems a little too good.

 

path411

If I'm running an Expose armor cycle as mut and only have 4 cp, should I shiv or mutilate again for the 5th point expose?

 

Hidden

Usually Mutilate, Shiv has a very low Damage/Energy value.

 

Left

Mutilate again. Never shiv ever in raid DPS situation with a Mutilate build. A slow offhand dagger shiv offers the about worst energy efficiency of any rogue weapon attack. Even a sinister strike would be better than a shiv as a combo point filler, and we know that a mutilate is hands-down better than a sinister strike.

 

path411

Well currently I'd be mut with a 1.4 offhand so it would be a 34 energy shiv. I've seen some math supporting shiv as combat to avoid poison dropping, and was curious if this case would be similar. I'd definitely guess with much higher mutilate damage vs SS, as well as dagger normalization that shiv would fall too much behind.

 

Left

Yeah, you basically hit the key points. Mostly normalization kills it for daggers.

 

path411

Okay, thanks. Wanted to make sure I didn't overlook something.

 

• Vulajin

Interesting news of the day: in Wrath, all ranks of Rupture gain 6% of your AP per combo point across the duration of the ability (currently 4% for 1CP, 10% for 2CP, 18% for 3CP, 21% for 4CP, 24% for 5CP). All ranks of Eviscerate gain 3% of your AP per combo point on the minimum damage, and 7% of your AP per combo point on the maximum damage, for an average of 5% of your AP per combo point (currently 3% per CP). All ranks of Envenom gain 7% of your AP per combo point (currently 3% per CP). All ranks of Garrote gain 42% of your AP across the duration (currently 18%).

 

◊ Shaker

Well, that and if you don't have DW Spec, that would just obliterates its damage.

Consistency. It's only a virtue if you're not a screwup.

 

• Aldriana

As expected, they're making finishers a higher portion of our damage; what this means is that good cycle selection and management is more important - gone are the days where one can reach 93% of our damage potential with SnD alone.

So, if I'm reading this correctly, if Rupture is 6/12/18/24/30 now, that means it's 1.5/2.4/3/3.43/3.75 percent of your AP per tick, as opposed to the current 1/2/3/3/3. The immediate implications of this is that it makes using undersized ruptures somewhat less desirable than it currently is, but removes the current discontinuity where 3 point ruptures are significantly more worth using than the smaller ones.

Secondly, in a raid-buffed environment, we have Mangle boosting our rupture damage, and mitigation from armor does not apply. Hence, in practice it's 7.8% of our AP to each point, or 9.36% with Blood Spatter, or 10.14% with Serrated Blades. Meanwhile, Eviscerate gets up to +21% damage from Talents, plus 1.4x (or so) from the chance to crit, mitigated by perhaps a factor of .8 by armor. Hence, in practice, the 5% per point works out to something closer to 6.5%. And Envenom has +20% from Talents, and 1.4x from crit, and is not subject to armor, so gives us something like 11.5% in practice. So my guess would be that at low gear levels Rupture is still probably the way to go, but at higher gear levels it seems likely that Envenom will catch up. However, we'll need some better numbers on what raid-buffed crit/AP/ArPen/etc. look at level 80 before we can work out all the details.

Speaking of which: do we have numbers on the base (non-AP) damage of the finishing moves? That would be helpful for making comparisons.

 

• Vulajin

Eviscerate
Eviscerate - Spell - World of Warcraft
Eviscerate - Spell - World of Warcraft
Eviscerate - Spell - World of Warcraft
Eviscerate - Spell - World of Warcraft
Eviscerate - Spell - World of Warcraft
Eviscerate - Spell - World of Warcraft
Eviscerate - Spell - World of Warcraft
Eviscerate - Spell - World of Warcraft
Eviscerate - Spell - World of Warcraft
Eviscerate - Spell - World of Warcraft
Eviscerate - Spell - World of Warcraft

All ranks of Eviscerate keep the exact same damage range but gain 4% of your AP per CP on the high end, increasing the overall damage by 2% of your AP per CP.

Envenom
Rupture - Spell - World of Warcraft
Rupture - Spell - World of Warcraft
Rupture - Spell - World of Warcraft
Rupture - Spell - World of Warcraft
Rupture - Spell - World of Warcraft
Rupture - Spell - World of Warcraft
Rupture - Spell - World of Warcraft
Rupture - Spell - World of Warcraft
Rupture - Spell - World of Warcraft

All ranks of Rupture keep the exact same base damage but increase by portions of your AP.

Envenom:
Envenom - Spell - World of Warcraft
Envenom - Spell - World of Warcraft

For example, the current rank of Envenom loses 32 damage per CP but gains 4% AP per, meaning you gain damage if you had 800 AP or more.

 

• Aldriana

So, to clarify: there are currently two new ranks of Eviscerate and Rupture, but no new rank of Envenom? That's... surprising. Hopefully they'll add in a new Envenom rank or two, or the AP changes may proved to be for naught.

 

• Maestroquark

Bah, too slow on spell ranks.

Don't trust poisons yet. There's no new poisons at all past 70, and that's suspicious to say the least. My hope is that they're making poisons scale, and just reworking all the base numbers and thus aren't in yet.

 

• Vulajin

There are also no new ranks of any poisons, so I'm pretty confident it's an oversight, or else they just haven't gotten around to it, rather than intentional omission.

 

Eulenspiegel

A quick aside from the current conversation - I've been trying to follow some of the threat changes in Wrath, and wondered what impact they may have on rogues in WoLK. First of all, and most significantly, Blessing of Salvation is GONE, replaced with Hand of Salvation.

"Blessing of Salvation renamed Hand of Salvation, which reduces total threat of the target by 2% per second for 10 seconds while also reducing all damage and healing done by 10%. 2 minute cooldown."

Also, no more tranquil air totem (I'm not sure how much this was used anyway):

"Tranquil Air Totem has been removed. (Threat is being addressed by modifications to the base threat of players and/or "baked" into tanking abilities.)"

This means that no class will have the party passive threat reduction option either. Salvation will be an emergency cast from the paladins (probably going to warlocks often because of the shadow threat coefficient). I've heard mention of tanks getting increased threat in the xpac (see above), but no actual figures on how much buffing they will get. As far as people wanting rogues to be more viable in end game, I would think that classes that can easily drop aggro would be more desirable than in TBC. I seriously doubt that Blizzard is going to arbitrarily increase tank threat by 30% to eliminate that Salv requirement, especially with the new Hand of Salv (which will probably be used on CD).

Also, there are two new ranks of feint available in the expansion (still questionable if the reduction will even be worth having it on your bar, as it is essentially worthless at the moment).

Anyone else have any other input on how threat changes may impact the end game viability of rogues?

 

• Vulajin

What would lead you to believe this? What possible reason would they have to remove Blessing of Salvation and Tranquil Air Totem from the game, and then not buff tank threat by 30% to accommodate that change? In what sense is a 30% tank threat compensation buff "arbitrary"?

 

• Aldriana

It's not immediately clear whether or not tanks will get a full 30% increase, but I bet they get pretty close to that. It seems to me the major purpose of this change is to reduce the paladin requirement in raids by one. Currently, you really want 3-4 pallies in raids to get all the blessings; now that can be reduced by one to 2-3, which is more in line with the "2.5 members of each class" number.

They might also make threat a bit more gear-dependent, causing a more complex itemization picture for tanks with tradeoffs between aggro and survivability, which I could see being interesting/good.

However, I suspect at the high end they won't tighten the aggro situation by more than 5 or 10%, since doing more would be annoying at best and crippling at worst.

 

Eulenspiegel

I have seen no math or indications at all to support any percentage that tank threat will be buffed at. For all we know, Blizz could plan on doubling the amount of threat that tanks can generate in the Xpac. Yes, to a point this is somewhat of speculation as opposed to hard math - but the entirety of this thread goes hand in hand with some speculation.

If Blizzard removes the threat reduction skills (Salv, Tranquil) from the game and then buffs all tanks' threat by 30%, 5 man groups would be a different game altogether. I don't think this is the way they will change the fundaments of this game. Rather, I think the new focus on raid wide buffs as opposed to party buffs will increase tank threat because they are getting more dps buffs (i.e. shaman dps totems without having to have a enhancement shammy in the tank group). This will add into proposed tank talents that provide extra threat. I still seriously doubt that Blizzard will simply increase tank threat gen by some amount (akin to a rogue's passive threat reduction).

No matter what, tanks will never generate more aggro than they have to - if they are generating on the whole 30% more than their raid ever can get, then they will adjust their spec/gear for more survivability or maybe even non-threat modified dps.

This is more the idea of what I'm referring to - say that on the whole, tanks can generate 15-20% more threat compared to TBC, but now the raid doesn't have the 30% reduction of Salvation. Instead, we get Hand of Salv - which in a rotation is useful for perhaps the 3-5 people on the top of the threat list. People who weren't close to the main tank before are now closer to him, and have to pay attention - with a in-game threat meter that Blizzard has planned, this will allow threat management to be much more exact. With everyone closer to the tank, and the top 3-5 people being watched by the pallies, people with threat dropping talents become more useful - if your top dpser is a rogue, and you don't have to waste cooldowns and mana reducing their threat for them like you might have to for a shadow priest, you can use that threat reduction on the next person on the threat list.

Aside from this, I'm still curious as to the point of 2 new ranks of Feint. No one I know uses it, as it is ineffective, wastes dps, and Vanish does it all, really. Does Blizzard actually intend us to use it? Anyone know how much it is being buffed?

 

Thx_138

Is the +20% damage bonus to Eviscerate on Vile Poisons a misprint in the notes? I dont seem to see anyone talking about it...and it seems very out of place to have an eviscerate bonus on a poison talent. Not that im complaining if its legit.

 

Eulenspiegel

Which version of the notes are you looking at? Vile Poisons currently increases Envenom damage, and Wowhead's WoLK talent calculator confirms that this hasn't changed... maybe a typo on the notes that you read?

 

• Aldriana

I suspect that part of the answer for this is simply that they'll have tank threat scale more with buffs than it currently does. Right now, the only stats that effect threat in a significant way are hit and expertise, which there are really no buffs for. Hence, tanks don't gain a whole heck of a lot of threat from raid buffs - AP will increase their threat slightly, but given that a lot of their threat comes from passive +threat on moves like Devastate and Shield Slam, they don't scale as well as DPSers do with raid buffs. Hence, one solution might be to have them scale significantly better with buffs, such that in 5 man situations (where salv is currently uncommon) things don't change excessively, while in raid situations, their threat scales significantly to overcome the loss off universal salv.

 

Mode

The comment about shadowpriests will not be true WOTLK. Along with balance druids and ele shaman, they're getting a -30% threat talent. What those three specs have in common is they lack a threat dump. Tank threat is definitely being increased somewhat, but The Vision(tm) probably includes all DPS classes with threat dumps being expected to use it at least once per fight.

 

choumarin

Sorry if the question's already been asked: in my mut cycle, if I only get 4cp after my double mut, should I either rupture (with 4pts and 10% dmg increase) or mut again to ensure 5cp (but loose 10% dmg increase) ?

 

neekgan

Amen to that. Puts a smile on a mutilate rogue's face.

 

Oscarvil

Well it _is_ in the TTT article. But it's pretty easy to see why. Rupture rank 9 gets (217 + 0.0375 * AP) * 8 damage when you spend 5cp and (199 + 0.03428571 * AP) * 7 when you spend 4cp.

So notice that a) the base damage of 5cp is really close to 10% higher than 4cp and b) that you get an extra tick with 5cp over 4cp. These two things should give you a clue.

Substituting in for some realistic AP number (2800 raidbuffed because I'm me) shows that the total damage from a 4cp rupture is 2065 damage, while the damage from a 5cp rupture is 2576, so that's nearly 25% more damage using a 5CP rupture over a 4cp one, which is more than the bonus damage FW gives.