The above snippet was what I was getting at; you wouldn't need the MS and *enh* shaman either. The second snippet is a fair point, too, but what I failed to communicate is that you can't say this of any other class thus far. What this shows is that rogue dps is expendable since other dps classes can come to a close enough range to diminish this while providing some other utility for the raid group.

It's just the tired and overdone discussion about rogues bringing nothing else to the table, therefore they must be clear and unrivaled single target boss beater-uppers. I guess this thread is premature anyway since we've all been drooling over the impressive future paths of other classes while rogues have been given zero guidance as to what to expect.

Ok, so to eliminate the possibility of off-specs throwing off the sample.

Quick side note: the worst case of this is warriors by a wide margin and the average DPS listed roughly 85 DPS lower than the average DPS of only DPS specs which isn't enough to tip any of the scales even if you assume this kind of massive variance in every other calss

Lets look at the numbers for just the Top 15

Top 15 hunters 2706 - 3042 Avg = 2808.13
Top 15 mages 2388 - 2651 Avg = 2451
Top 15 warlocks 2568 - 2792 Avg = 2649.667
Top 15 warriors 2414 - 2816 Avg = 2527.267
Top 15 shaman 2152 - 2392 Avg = 2222.067
Top 15 paladin 2058 - 2143 Avg = 2096.067
Top 15 rogues 2727 - 3031 Avg = 2822.2

Here we see a similar, though less pronounced, version of the same story. The top rogues average better DPS than the top DPSers of any other class, in most cases by wide margins. Could you replace a rogue with a BM hunter in the melee group and be better off? Yes, if you replace the rogue with a hunter who is among the best in the world.

The chances of having so many hunters that are so good at DPS in the same raid that it would actually be better to stack them instead of replacing the worst of them with one rogue is, on average, very very very small and that chance gets smaller and smaller as you move on to other possible replacement choices.

The only wrench in this entire endeavor is that the death knight is it self a melee class that will more than likely benifit from melee buffs in some significant way. The questions that remained unanswered are how well they scale with melee buffs vs. other buffs and what buffs, if any, they will provide the party they are in.

How is this a step in the right direction? Every single dps class out there has a right and wrong answer attached to it. You either follow the well-tested, researched and developed max-power spec or you're wrong. There will always be a clear right and wrong answer. Making Mutilate the new de-facto must-build for raiding rogues doesn't really do anything other than shift our skill cycle.

I like the ideas about having the Mutilate debuff talents stack and affect the raid group, though! Turning a Mutilate rogue into the rogue equivalent of an Expose Weakness hunter would be a nice option.

This is a very strong point all around, and I think it is particularly important to emphasize that a cycle is a BASELINE. The general rogue population seems to be under the impression that choosing the correct cycle and sticking to it is the only possible way to DPS and will always yield the maximum. I think that a lack of emphasis on situational deviation even during a tank and spank (there is plenty of literature about how to play when you have to move), coupled with a lack of emphasis by most on the necessity of energy pooling and watching procs, has led to many instances of weak DPS rogues.

Another small point. After a 5 point rupture in a 5/5 cycle if well timed can often come at a time in which you have 95 energy and are about to tick over. Using that rupture with 1 second before your energy tick will mean that in the 10 seconds of ashtongue without any combat potency procs a rogue can generate 4 combo points with ease if I am not mistaken. With a ruthlessness, that is enough for 5 combo points. If no ruthlessness, you might run into trouble, but I was considering 0 combat potency procs.

Itemization is outside the scope of this comparison as the current items in game are something entirely removed from the actual DPS mechanics of a given class. It could easily be argued that a DPS weapon set for rogues is blizzard's answer to rogue balance at the high end level and that to get the entire picture between classes samples with said weapon set must be included.

That said, the original analysis was an average for all specs of any given class with all the gear sets and arrived at a very similar, and much stronger, conclusion.

My only grief against having Combat better for raid than Ass. is that combat is clearly already better for solo/grinding PvE. (Blade furry is a talent in that direction... I think that's what combat is all about). The problem is that Ass. as it is clearly the weakest talent tree so far. I agree my point wasn't clearly related to the present discussion beside the fact that buffing combat more isn't, imho, where the buff should go. It should be something in Ass. to make this spec wanted again for raid DPS.

Actually, with the inclusion of a Legandary bow, you have to assume that as part of the Hunter's "outfit" as well, since you're considering glaives part of a rogues "outfit". At that point, I'm fairly certain, actually 100% certain, a BM Hunter can outdps even the most skilled/geared rogue AND provide a group buff. once we get some stacked parses from stefang I think you'll see, but a 2800 Hunter with the bow now becomes 3k, easily.

I respectfully disagree that normalizing the presence of legendary weapons put to their ideal use is valid for comparison, but am content to leave it at that.
=)

So, to address your points very briefly:

The thing about that extra AToL proc from the 5-point Eviscerate is that it will most likely carry into the time where your Slice is dropping, meaning that you're losing even more potential damage from the Slice downtime. Downgrading from 5/5 to 3/5 or 1/3/5 or any other variation for one cycle to avoid Slice downtime does prevent you from losing Slice DPS but delays your next Rupture even more and also wastes some energy on finishers.

I assumed no haste rating for the CP math. However, on inspection you can guess that haste rating will benefit Combat Potency much less than it will your white damage. Yes, Bloodlust/Heroism does increase the value of Exploit Weakness, as it does most other procs, but you obviously don't really plan around that. When Bloodlust is up, you will get more energy, and you can use more finishers.

It's true that some rogues tend to be over-reliant on cycles, but cycles are part of the fundamental understanding of the class that you really need in order to be able to make on-the-fly optimizations such as the ones you're suggesting. A rogue running 4s/5r without ever deviating will almost always perform better than a rogue who has never heard of a cycle and simply uses his abilities in haphazard fashion. You don't even need to know that you're following a cycle; as long as you know that your finishers should be used in a certain priority ordering, and that high-CP finishers are generally better than lower ones as long as you can manage enough combo points, you are following the general cycle principles.

Pooling 95 energy is not generally a good idea if you have Combat Potency, unless you like having your energy tick over 100 from a poorly-timed proc. Even using a finisher ~1 second before the next tick doesn't necessarily guarantee that you won't tick over.

All good points. The second paragraph is nothing I'm disagreeing with, it's exactly what I am getting at.

The last part about pooling 95 energy, I probably should have made more clear. I would never pool over 80-- the 95 is due to a proc. I don't think I emphasized that. Pooling for greater than 85 would obviously be silly, but one can really tread a fine line with timing their energy ticks up to that point.

Once again, thank you for the time/math. I am looking forward to the next several months with a cleared Sunwell, where I can really test these and other things, and our guild can once again push for good parses instead of just racing to kill bosses.

Actually, it's not. By including a legendary set for one class as part of his gear and possible dps potentional, you have to include at least the possibility of a Hunter with said legendary. That is now possible, since Stefang has one AND is a raider. Moreover, you posted rogues with about 20dps more than Hunters, on average-upper-end for Brutallus. That bow will be more than 20dps change for hunters. So while, for now (say a week or two at most) we can only see hunters pulling in right behind rogues, they still offer a 3% buff to each other's dmg, which would include the off spec, thus pushing them well ahead of said ~20dps difference.

Also, you're comparing rogues to hunters/other classes without coinciding their gear sets. How do you know all those rogues had roughly equivalent gear to the hunters (leaving out legendaries)? You don't. And Legendary weapons on a rogue put him WELL ahead of most other classes in terms of gear equality for given slot. No bow, until Thor'idal, matched up even close to that amount of damage in one-two slot(s). If you only looked at equivalent peices, aka a hunter in his best in slot up to X boss with a rogue having best in slot up to same boss, you might have an argument.

And again, you are making theoretical arguments yourself, yet saying that a group with 3 equally geared hunters is so small that it wouldnt occur, thus giving a spot up to a equally geared rogue? How is that even quantifiable. It's entirely possible that a guild, or even multiple guilds, see the potentional of a 3 hunter group, gear 3 of them out before anyone else and thus give you that perfect group. Just like it's fair that 2-3 rogues could be amazingly geared because of a guild/his/her own ideas.


Edit: Just noticed "pulling 3000 DPS from auto-shoot". What does that have to do with anything. No rogue, glaived or not, pulled 2800 from white attacks only (the equivalent to auto-shot). While anecdotal doesn't stand for much, I've already seen hunters pull close to 3k in non-parsed fights, without that bow, in less gear than I have now, so yes, it's still relevent.