That would almost always be an upgrade for Mutilate, but it's impossible.

51.18.2 or 51.13.7?

Yes, this is one of the main benefits of the HFB change. It allows you to spend less energy keeping HFB up and more time using Envenom, which then gets boosted from the MP change, making the cycle a lot more relaxed then it was before.

http://elitistjerks.com/f78/t54257-3...efore_posting/

Oh good catch! Curse you 10pt pre-requisite!!!!!

Out of curiosity, what pieces did you upgrade that had a lot of expertise on them?

As mutilate the number one DPS increase is still going to be expertise until you reach the cap.

I have a few suggestions for you. Expertise food buff is going to be your friend until you can catch up. Keep pushing Malygos, even if you have to pug it, in hopes for the chest. Finish up your jewel crafting as well. It's going to be more helpful for you to put your effort into leveling JC and gemming 3 expertise dragon eyes then it is for you to regem all your gear with sub par gems and still fall short of the cap. I'd work on these things before having to fall back on a bad trinket and gems.

Manavas recently stated that with the 3.1 patch, Hunters are no longer the best partners for HaT and there are big changes to DPS, but there was not much of a definitive follow-up.

My simple question: Where is HaT compared to Mut/Combat if you have the current "stacked" group of arcane mages given that the Rogue/guild is just starting Ulduar but BIS all current 25-man content? Does it still dominate, same, or below the Mut/Combat BIS of the same Rogue?

I'm level 3x and wanted to try play around in battlegrounds for fun. Is it better to open with garrote or ambush? and which poisons are best to use when doing PvP?

I'm going for a mutilate build btw, although I don't think it matters much at my level.

I'm having trouble deciding the best course of action at the start of combat. To give you the background, I am a mutilate spec rogue, so the important things are slice and hunger for blood at the start of a fight. The issue I have is to start with garrote or to not start with garrote. It is a great opener, gives you 1cp for slice and puts a bleed up for hunger for blood. However you need to be stealth'd to garrote something and I don't always have sprint ready to use.

So is it better to spend 5secs walking slowly to the mob to garrote, or running up and going mutilate > rupture > hunger > slice (if you get a cp from rupture) / mutilate(if no cp from rupture )> slice and then rupture/mutilate/envenom as required?

In the first option you waste 5 seconds or so just getting to the mob (I've seen moonkins throw out three wrath bolts before I have even got garrote up).

However in the second option you end up having to do 5 or 6 things before you get into the cycle. Although you are DPS'ing during that time.

Is it worth it now to hit both the expertise and spell cap as mutilate now? I understood in 3.0 it was and so did so. I recently looked at the rogue faq and pocket guide and both value expertise and poison hit bellow that of agility/ap.

So should I regem for agility/ap at the expensive of being poison/exp capped?

Expertise and hit caps are not magic numbers that you need to reach to suddenly see a huge leap in your dps. So, granted you're above the specials hit cap (99hit) gemming for Agi/AP instead of exp/hit will likely be a dps upgrade depending on your gear. Using a spreadsheet (like the ones found here: http://elitistjerks.com/f78/t39136-c...updated_3_1_a/) will be most helpful in finding out what gems are best for you.

Now, that being said, I personally like the piece of mind of being expertise capped (or close to it). Gemming for Agi would provide a slight theoretical dps increase for me (something around ~1 dps last time I checked, and its only one gem for me), but i prefer to near the expertise cap to avoid having a envenom/evis dodged with less than 3 seconds left on SnD. It is a personal choice, but having SnD drop even once is enough of a dps loss that losing the few dps to gemming expertise is worth it in my opinion.

If you're the only one who is able to get a bleed up quickly, open with garrote, hfb, snd, and start up with your regular cycle, at least for boss fights. I'd recommend saving your sprint for the pull so that you can get started quickly, and you can get pretty close to many bossed while stealthed, decreasing the distance you need to cross before you can throw garrote up. Beginning your cycle 5 seconds after the pull is something I'd generally try to avoid. If someone else is going to apply a bleed quickly (feral druids, warriors, other rogues) you can either wait til their bleed is up to start attacking and pre apply HfB (which means you're waiting again). What I usually do is open with Mutilate after which the bleed is up and I can HfB. Then just go with your regular rotation. While you can eek out a few extra dps by getting a good start, these first few seconds of the fight typically shouldn't have a huge impact on your dps as long as you're in your full rotation within the first 7-10 seconds of the fight or so (i.e. have SnD, HfB and Rupture up).

It's like this...
I knew because people were saying to me: "Slow/Fast is best DPS in combat and in general, blah, blah, blah..." and i saw that base damage changes when you equip slow weapon in main hand.

Now what confused me...the other night in naxx raid i had in main hand [Titansteel Bonecrusher] and in the off-hand i had [Hatestrike]. Base dmg was around 900-1100, DPS MH 405 OH 321 cca.

Then i got [Maexxna's Femur] and puted it in MH.
So what happened?
Base damage changed a lot, like 600-900, but base damage remained the same DPS MH 405 OH 321 cca.

I tried playing like that just to see what's that all about, somehow i think my damage dropped a lot...at least according to Recont.

And my question is this...

Can someone clarify me what's the real difference between Slow/Fast vs. Fast/Fast weapon with same DPS rating?

P.S. And does Haste affects damage if you need to have Slow/Fast weapon?

Thanks,

MaDCaT

The difference is that your Sinister Strikes will do a lot less damage with a fast MH of the same DPS for the same energy cost. Keep the Bonecrusher in your MH and put the Femur in your OH and watch your DPS soar.

Ok i did it and added Mace spec, improved nicely. Thanks

I entered the Weighted Stats values from the Rogue Pocket Guide into Lootrank.com and it is telling me to socket everything with 32ap gems. I seem to recall reading a lot that 16agi tends to outweigh pure AP at some point, but I'm not sure that I am at that point. I am limited to 10 man raiding with the occasional 25 pug, so I am curious what I should be gemming for. I am running the standard 51/13/7 mute build.

My Rogue (just picked up T7 shoulders last night and havent gemmed/chanted)
The World of Warcraft Armory

WWS from last night's Naxx -
Wow Web Stats

IIRC, Fully raid buffed I was roughly 4200AP, 39% crit, 330 hit and 19/19 Expertise. Is it more beneficial for me to Gem AP or AGI?

I have not had a problem with the Mongoose enchant, or the way it proc's. If you are running a sub spec, make sure that you have your 5 points in precision, and have your hit rating at 300. Remember that in order to proc, you have to at least be hitting the target. Once you find a nice weapon, that you want to keep, you should put the Beserker enchant on it. The main problem that I had was that I had used the Grim Toll trinket to subsidize my hit rating. I then won the roll for the Fury of the Five Flights trinket. I had lost a whopping 83 hit rating, that I had to replace with gems.plus, make sure to find a way to boost your expertise up to 25/25.

Hunger for Blood is a personal buff, thus you carry it with you. The bleed requirement only need be present on your current target to activate it; it's not even required that you actually be attacking your target.

Case in point, you can pre-buff HfB before beginning the Thorim encounter using the worm.

AP is superior from a pure DPS point of view until you have 4pcT8.
However the difference between agility and ap is not great, and agility offers dodge that provides some defensive benefits.

First of all, I'm new to Rogues yet I find the guides here to be very helpful and I'm confident I will eventually master the class. I'd just like to thank the community for building such an insightful forum.

Now, from my limited understanding, stacking offensive cooldowns provide greater results in terms of overall DPS output. I was reading the Rogue Pocket Guide to WOTLKand Aldriana's 3.1 Rogue FAQ Guide and one thing stood out to me the most... optimal use of cooldowns.

Naturally common sense tells me to hit my cooldowns as often as possible throughout the duration of the fight and two suggestions were highlighted in the Pocket guide: Killing Spree + Blade Flurry or Blade Flurry + Adrenaline Rush. It was also noted that Adrenaline Rush + Killing Spree was not recommended due to energy capping (which makes sense).

Now that being said, there seems to be a clash in terms of on demand cooldowns and specifically stacking them.

1 min 15 sec - Glyphed Killing Spree, considering it's the best for sustained DPS.

2 min - Blade Flurry

3 min - Adrenaline Rush

How do you personally tackle this issue when specced for Combat? Do you Macro KS + BF and create another Macro for BF + AR and use either of the two accordingly based on the situation during a heroism/bloodlust?

With the KS +BF combo I know you don't wait for BF to come off cooldown in order to stack them again since it would completely kill the reason for using the glyph in the first place... So, do you keep them separate and just smash them accordingly whenever they light up? Unstacked what is the DPS difference?

Also which do you think provides better DPS output during a heroism/bloodlust, KS + BF or BF + AR?

Again, thank you.

Get SnD up as quickly as possible, drain energy, then Flurry/Fury (I'm an Orc) and pop KS, and then AR as soon as KS ends (sometimes I have to SS once first to keep from capping energy after the KS). This burns your cooldowns as soon as possible and overlaps them fairly well. Assuming you know how long a fight will last (i.e.: in a 3:20 fight you could only get everything twice anyway) you can hold cooldowns to stack them again, but if you guess wrong, or it takes longer than you expected, you can lose damage that way, so I tend to just burn everything as it comes off of CD.

Since KSpree includes a 20% damage increase during its use, I find it best to use Blade Flurry beforehand whenever possible (while not saving it purely for such unless its cooldown is nearly up). This is also a good time to pop your haste pot, because the more hasted attacks you can get in under that 20% extra damage cushion the better.

Appologies if this has been asked before.

I read in Aldriana's Q&A that Combat Daggers is just a NO, and I accept that.

Why is this?

CQC covers both Daggers and Fists, so theoretically, you're receiving the same bonus. Does it just have to do with the damage range of slow daggers being smaller than slow fists?

Thanks.