◊ Shaker

7685 is a normal armor level, and not that big a deal at all... melee should dominate the Brut fight because they don't have pushback, no running to burn zone, and absolute 100% time on target.

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

 

• Neto-

Well, I get about 250-300 DPS just from changing to 6200 armor (I assume it's more depending on your gear, obviously), I would say it's one of the biggest factors that gives melee the "advantage".

Also, although 7685 is the "normal" armor level, Sunwell has only Brutallus with 7685 armor (correct me if I am wrong - not sure about M'uru adds and Kalecgos) - hopefully, we might see the same thing in WotLK (of course, with different armor values but still few bosses with higher and more bosses with lower armor).

 

• Aldriana

7685 is certainly a fairly common armor value, but it is fair to say it's not optimal for melee - the 6200 armor bosses can allow higher DPS values.

Also, melee win that fight only if melee has good buffs. If you're running without an Enhancement Shaman or a DPS Warrior, or the casters are getting chain heroismed, or some such, it's very possible to get beaten. However, the point is valid that it's a fight where melee tends to do well.

 

UberDrivel

Hey guys, long time reader, first time poster. This is sort of esoteric, but hopefully you can help.

My rogue's been into Karazhan a bunch of times, and unfortunately my guild realistically doesn't have the numbers to move into T5 content. However, I've had some success PUGing - there's this guy on Drenden, Classic, who does them all the time. Last Thursday, we went and downed Mags, Gruul and A'lar and Void Reaver (I was lucky enough to get my T4 Chest and T5 shoulders). Here's my armory: The World of Warcraft Armory

So, I know I have rep/mats to grind for enchants, but as far as item upgrades - I have 63 badges saved, and I was wondering what I should get next. I was thinking of either Angelista's Revenge, Bloodlust Brooch or Belt of the Silent Path. The Ring would replace Vindicator's Band of Triumph, the Brooch would replace Terokkar Tablet of Precision (embarrassing green, but it gives +22 hit rating), and the Belt would replace Guardian's Leather Belt. Currently, I have 299 hit rating and 1507 AP. Should I stop prioritizing hit at this point and focus on AP?

Potentially, but secondary options include Vanir's Left Fist of Savagery (an upgrade over S2 OH) and Choker of Vile Intent (however, grinding honor for a Guardian's Pendant of Triumph is another option). My goal with this character is to clear as much of Zul'Aman as possible and to do competitive dps in 25-man, T5 raids, whenever I get a chance to do them. Realistically, I don't have the playtime to get into T6 content, so I would also like upgrades that will hopefully last me well into Northrend in November as well.

Any thoughts?

 

◊ Shaker

There's nothing esoteric about gear upgrades, nor the answers to them. If you were really a long time reader, you'd know we have 3 different spreadsheets to answer that exact question. Check them out.

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

 

madman

Any opinions on what the best theoretical professions for rogue are going to be? Leatherworking seem to be getting some LW-only leg enchants in addition to BoP crartables, which would make it even stronger than today, so I guess it is a no-brainer. The skinning-bonus will also help dps, but so will enchanting, blacksmithing, alchemy, inscription, maybe even tailoring bonuses. My current herb/alch combo will be comparatively worse than today becase the herb-bonus is non-dps and others professions are getting buffed. So although it is a very nice moneymaker, I am considering switching. Any thoughts?

 

Tel

I'm currently leaning towards LW (obviously - the LW sets will be hopefully a big enough leg up to skip some of the initial 10 man struggle for raid spots and jump into the real raiding) & either blacksmithing for sockets (which with the new gems will be big, and could provide Dragonstrike-esque weapons too) or go inscription if there are enough 'essential' raiding glyphs to make it worthwhile.

With the huge bonuses all the professions are getting come WotLK I think its going to fall very much to your personal preference which you pick, at least till we start hitting the min-max content a couple of tiers down the line.

 

tetracycloide

There are several interesting pieces of information in this thread on what professions might be worth taking. The short version is, we don't know yet how big a gain to expect from the new professions and the old professions are looking to be ranked with roughly the same way they are now.

My vanity is justified.

 

• Aldriana

I'd like to take a few minutes to discuss an issue that I first noticed a week or two ago, and has been bothering me ever since. Consider, for the sake of argument, this WWS report, specifically the Brutallus kill section of it. Lets take a look at my energy expenditure during the Brutallus kill.

So, over the course of the fight, I launched 119 successful Sinister Strikes, which thus uses 40 * 119 = 4760 energy. I additionally had 4 missed Sinister Strikes, each of which uses 8 energy, for a total of 32 energy spent on that. I had 88 ticks of Rupture implying 11 Ruptures performed, which is another 275 energy; 2 eviscerates at 35 energy each for 70; and 3 Blade Flurries at 25 each for 75. Thus my total energy expenditure for the fight is 4760 + 32 + 275 + 70 + 75 = 5212 total energy spent.

Now, lets consider how much energy I had available to spend. My presence is listed as 5:51, or 351 seconds; in this time, I should regenerate 3510 energy. Additionally, I start with 100 energy at the beginning of the fight, and end with somewhere between 0 and 40; hence, there's an additional 80 energy (on average) to spend from that. I popped AR twice, which is a further 300 energy; and WWS reports than I gained 1095 energy from Combat Potency and 650 from Relentless Strikes. So when we add this all up, my total energy available is 3510 + 80 + 300 + 1095 + 650 = 5635 total energy available.

Now, I'm not going to claim I played perfectly, but I didn't do *too* badly. So I was very surprised to see that there's a discrepancy of almost 400 energy between what I should have earned and what I spent. I'm really pretty certain that I didn't let my energy cap out *that* many times. A discrepancy of 50 or 100 I could see being due to edge effects and occasionally clipping a tick; but 400+ energy just doesn't seem in the realm of the reasonable to me.

Based on this, I went and checked the WWS of other rogues on other Brutallus fights, and what I found is that for every rogue and fight I checked, it was always the case that there was a difference of 400-600 energy between theoretical energy gained and actual energy spent. Hence, I don't think player error is really a viable explanation; even if *I'm* a horrible rogue and manage to clip 400 energy over a 6 minute fight, I don't think it's fair to assume that *everyone* is that bad - particularly since some of the parses I checked were, like, top-15 WWSScoreboard rogue performances. So clearly something else is going on.

So, the obvious source of error is as follows:
1) I'm failing to account for something in my calculations. This is entirely possible, though I've doublechecked them a couple of times so am reasonably confident that this isn't the case. But, if you see something, let me know.
2) WWS is reporting things wrong. This is also possible, though unlikely; we may have to manually parse some logs to rule this out, though.
3) We're not regenerating as much energy as we think we are. The only real source of error in that calculation is the energy per time component; if we were somehow regenerating only 9 energy per second instead of 10, that would bring us into the realm of the reasonable. Well, this struck me as unlikely but easy enough to test, so I headed off to Dire Maul and stabbed an ogre for a while and concluded that energy regen - at least in that test - is spot-on 10 energy per second. So this doesn't seem to be it either.

Thus, my question is: what's happening to this energy? Why is there a consistent 10% gap between what we regenerate and what we spend?

 

mako

Aldriana, did you account for slice and dice? If I am not mistaken, it costs 25 energy every x seconds to keep it up.

<Bad> Dragonmaw US
www.damnwesuck.com

 

• Aldriana

...sure, go ahead, point out the obvious mistake in my logic. That would in fact do it. Thanks.

 

nosille

I do not see where you accounted for energy spent on slice-and-dice.

 

Dorvan

Well, depending on exactly how WWS is calculating your presence time some of that energy loss might be attributed to initial positioning time. I was under the impression that presence only takes into account the time within 5 seconds after your name appears in the combat log, but if you're automatically assumed to be present at the beginning of the battle of presence is calculated in terms of 5 seconds after *or* before any action that could account for some of the energy difference. Still, with your first Sinister strike coming 6 seconds after the beginning of the log split that would account for at most 60 of the missing energy.

edit -- slow posting ftl....I too missed the obvious answer :P

 

Greyhawk

I just have a nub question regarding poisons.

There's general consensus that when WF is up you use Deadly poison on you OH. But is that also the case when you got two rogues in the Raid?. The poison will stack to 5 in a short time and you thereby "waste" your poison procs. Wouldn't it be more benefitial to have only one rogue on DP and the other on IP?

The same can be said if you dont have WF up, then i have heard stated again and again that you use DP on OH og IP on MH.....Again with two rogues, would't you loose alot of poison DPS as the application of DP far exceeds what is needed to keep the stack on 5?

And as a final question on the two rogue raid setup. As stated in the Rogue 101 thread Rupture>Eviscerate>Envenom, except for mutilate. But would Envenom be viable as finisher in the two rogue OH DP setup?

 

Left

1. Don't sign your posts.
2. For a long time now, each rogue has had an independent Deadly poison stack (unlike Mind Numbing or Wound poisons). There can be multiple stacks of DP on a mob: one for each rogue using it in the raid. (DP from different weapons of the same rogue does not form two stacks, however.)

Therefore, the decision to run DP or IP is different than it used to be: the number of rogues in the raid is now not relevant to the decision.

 

lade

Each rogue gets their own stack of poisons and their stacks are independent of each other. As such each rogue should maximize his or her damage potential by using DP on their OH.

 

tetracycloide

The important thing to remember with rupture is that in a 5-5s/5r cycle, which is optimal for almost every situation as a mutilate rogue, it's damage is essentially free i.e. 0 energy cost. Envenom would have to deal rupture damage + lost DP damage + 10 energy's worth of mutilate damage to compete. Even after you factor in crit rates and that envenom ignores armor this is very rarely the case.

My vanity is justified.

 

Amerilina

I have not seen much said about poisons and the effects of the crit and hit changes in Beta. The change to make crit and hit rating apply to both melee and spell damage also seems to have made poisons a little more interesting. I had noticed almost no resists on my IP and what seemed like a lot more crits, so I installed recount on my Beta client.

What I have seen IP Crit around 15% I have 240 crit rating at 71 which is about 10% crit. Spells have a base chance of 5% to crit I believe so that works out to 15% crit chance on IP.

I have 169 hit rating which works out to about 10% chance to hit. I quested for a little bit to get a little data IP procced 536 times and I had 0 resists. I had a hand full of partial resists, Recount Show 1046 partial resisted damage out of 140036 total nature damage.

Moster levels for the above ranged from 71-73.

This does seem to make poisons a bit more interesting.

 

• Aldriana

I think the reason why the poison discussions haven't been discussed too much so far (other than the usual reasons of the earliness of the beta and the lack of information) is that poisons are such a small portion of our damage. Even assuming an Assassination spec and all the new poison talents, I would expect poison damage to still account for at most 10% or so of our damage output; so these changes, while they do increase poison damage by 10%, only increase overall DPS by about 1%. Now, I'm not knocking that - I'll take any DPS increase I can get - but changes at the 1% level are unlikely to have any far-reaching implications for the class.

 

Amerilina

I agree they are by no means game breaking, but every little bit does help.

 

Elumae

I have a concern about gemming.
At the moment gems give the same amount of Agility or Hit rating ( 10 for the epics). In WotLK that seems unchanged (27 of either off the new epic JC gems).

My concern is that Agility gives attack power and crit, while hit rating gives hit. At level 80 the Crit from agility and the hit rating from hit rating are both at 48% the value they were at 70, but the AP from agility has the same value.
This seems to make gemming for Agility the superior choice to Gemming for hit rating, even before you hit the hit rating cap.

Am i right about this? This would seem to devalue Combat Potency to an extent.

 

• Aldriana

The trick is that because AP totals will be considerably higher, the absolute damage benefit from 1% crit (or hit) will be higher than it is now, while AP will be worth the same as always. If Blizzard is smart - and I suspect they are - they've tuned the crit from agi and rating conversion such that AP, Agi, and Hit preserve more or less their current relative value. How successful they are at this remains to be seen, but I suspect that's what they're going for.

 

Iliyan

I was bored, so I started thinking of raid setups... Bit by bit, the grand picture fell into place. You know how people say that "utility classes are better then pure dps classes because they provide the utility" well, this is going to change... You will WANT more rogues, more mages, more warlocks to *use* all that utility... Since you will no longer need specific groups for specific roles.

Lets take a look at what will a rogue gain in a raid situation, with a hypothetical nigh-perfect group.

Enhancement Shaman: Str+Agil( Agil actually is getting buffed from 77 to 86 for base values at 70), WF, Tranquil Air?, Unleashed Rage, Stormstrike( Long shot, but to be complete), Bloodlust( Still party specific, Probably will not change, it would be too OP to have shamans chain-casting Bloodlust/Heroism)

Elemental Shaman: Totem of Wraith, Flametongue( Works for poisons, however it is unclear weather it will stack with WF, it should, otherwise we might have issues with raid-wide totems), Wraith of Air( also of no use to us, but to be complete), Elemental Oath( Affecting party, will see if it works Raid-Wide),

Resto brings nothing, but a replacement for the above, and an additional bloodlust.

Feral Druid: LotP Raid Wide( It has been confirmed in a comment from a blue poster somewhere, I can't find it though), Mangle, Combat Rez.

Boomkin: Moonkin Form( Works for poisons), Faerie Fire( 3/3 Improved, Wow Must-Have for every raid...), Earth and Moon( works for poisons, 6% extra damage)

Resto druid: Imp MotW, Replenish ( I'll have to be nice to resto druids from now on)

Death Knight: Hmm, still under development, but I'll try.

Blood:
Abomination's Might( 10% extra AP, doesn't stack with unleashed rage)
Hysteria( Hmm, I better make some DK friends too)
Blood Aura

Frost: Improved Icy Talons( Hmm, more issues with stacking, 40% melee haste would be a *bit* Op, don't ya think?)

Unholy: Ebon Plaguebringer( Doesn't stack with CoE)

BM Hunter: Feroscious Inspiration( Party), Call of the Wild( Pet ability, 10% AP over 20sec, 5min CD)

MM Hunter: Trueshot Aura( Party?), Improved Hunter's Mark( not likely, probably going to be taken by Survival Hunters)

Survival: Expose Weakness, Point of no escape( not likely to be taken in pve), Hunting Party...( not much to say, I want one), Improved Hunter's Mark( more likely to be taken then as MM)

Mages: We don't gain anything except Focus Magic( which is still dubious)

Holy Paladin: BoK, BoS

Prot Paladin: BoK, BoS
Retribution Paladin: Imp BoM, Heart of the Crusader( 3% Crit), Sanctified Retribution, Swift Retribution( Haste stacking seems to be getting out of hand, Icy Talons 20% + Imp WF totem 24% + 3% = 47% base haste with 3 classes in a raid, ouch)

Priests: PwF, Imp Spirit, Misery

Warlock: Healthstones
Affli: CoE, improved( poisons)
Demo: Demonic Pact( 10% of lock's SP, works for poisons)
Destro: CoR( not likely improved)

Arms Warrior: Trauma( Rupture seems to have gained HUGE boosts from other people, it is highly unlikely that evis or envenom will catch up), Blood Frenzy.

Fury Warrior: Imp Battle Shout

Prot warrior: Sunder Armor

 

• Koban

Deathknight's Abomination's Might and improved Icy Talons do not stack with unleashed rage and windfury totem.
Abomination's might = +10% attack power
Since you also listed CoR for warlocks you should have mentioned sunder armor for protection warriors.

Blessing of Salvation no longer exists in wotlk.

I'm sure there's more to correct in your post.

 

KraxisSingular

Well Abom's Might is returning to 10% Str as far as I have heard.

Base WF totem is 16% haste, while talented it is 20%.

TSA is now raidwide.