Piggy backing onto his math and question...I just picked up Malice and Rune-etched off hand. My question is during pulls where it's a Fan of Knive fest....would it be more beneficial to use Malice and say....greed in the offhand to fan of knive....or still swap in my 2x Sinister's Revenge.? Just trying to be optimal....100% HUGE HEAVY SWORDS/FIST or 150% Wep damage with 2x SR? And no your not crazy for using wep swappers.....too many rogues don't do it...and it's a considerable gain in damage.

On any trash where you are predominantly AEing (Hodir trash, Mimiron, most of Naxx, etc.) Slow/Slow with Wound on both hands will likely be superior. I've done it before, but generally I don't bother. It's certainly nothing for people to get on your case about.

Counting the 150% damage bonus with daggers to Fan of Knives, [Sinister Revenge] has an average damage of 407. [Greed] has an average damage of 373. Not considering poisons, [Sinister Revenge] would win in damage.

However, wound/wound would be optimal when using Fan of Knives. With [Greed] being able to proc wound poison more often, I'll have to see if this increase in poison damage can make up for the lesser damage output before poisons.

Along the same topic, assuming you have 2 piece tier 8, in a situation where you are using FoK as your primary source of damage, would you want to continue to use deadly poison on one weapon instead of wound or instant x2? Even if it only ticks twice on a mob before the mob dies, would having ticks from 5 or more targets generating extra energy make up for any loss in poison damage?

Greetings EJ! - this is my first post here after many months of using you as my main resource for my Rogue.

My simple question is this:

Pre-3.1, but Post-3.0, I read that a Mut Rogue's slower dagger belonged on the off hand with IP, due to Dual Wield Specialization I think. As far as I understood, since the only weapon-based attack in their rotation is Mutilate, this provided a DPS increase to both Mut and IP's damage, since the poison was compounded into the attack itself. Now, after 3.1, I read that the slower dagger should be moved back to the main hand. What is the reason for the change? The rotation hasn't changed, and DWS is still there. I am clearly missing something.

I have heard that the off-hand weapon suffers a hidden penalty to its damage, but surely that existed prior to 3.1 when the slower weapon was still in the OH, so I fail to see how that explains the issue.

I looked around for an explanation to the change, but I'm sure i just couldn't find it in amongst the sea of information. Sorry if this is an overly redundant question.

Please help. Thank you for reading.

The reasonings are wrong. What ultimately determined which dagger goes in each hand was Instant Poison Procs. In the past, putting IP on a fast main hand made it proc the most at a very small cost to mutilate damage. So that won out. In the present, PPM favors slow weapons regardless of which hand, so that in turn gave you more poison procs. Then, putting slow weapons back in MH gave back the lost mutilate damage, so more boosts there.

Yes. I think it's 50% but not completely sure. So when you take the 5 points in dualwield spec, you reduce the penalty to 25%.

If this qualifies as spam please delete it - just wanted to say thanks for the fast responses and the ongoing wealth of knowledge that's been provided here.

I’ve got a question I’ve been wondering about for a while now.

I normally run a 3/5/5 or a 4/5/5 rupture cycle.
Often enough I end up with 5 CP at a moment that I’ve got 4-5 seconds left on my rupture (even after pooling energy) and while there is plenty of time left on SnD.

Now my main question is whether to reapply rupture, or get an Eviscerate in at that point.
Getting an Eviscerate means rupture will drop of for a while, and getting rupture means I waste that 4-5 seconds of rupture time.

I remember from the past that in that case it was better to eviscerate (If I recall correctly), but does that argument still stand?

I also found out that it is not possible to refresh rupture in a certain interval of the rupture uptime. (I.e. if there is much time left, I can refresh. If there is half of it left, I cannot. And I can refresh again as the duration comes beneath 1-2 seconds)

I don’t know if this is intended behaviour or that it is bugged, but this sure does tilt the scales in favour of eviscerating.

Second thing I noticed is that a lot of time the SS glyph makes me generate CP like hell, and that I end up with 5 CP at the moment my SnD is about to expire.
(I do get that 5th CP in, in order to not waste energy due to maxing out the energy-bar, and to not refresh my SnD too soon either)

I am wondering if that is beneficial to my DPS, because due to the longer uptime of SnD, I can often get a second eviscerate (and hence going to a 5Snd/5Rup/5Evis/5Evis cycle), but getting a longer cycle, and hence rupture tends to drop off a lot.(Somewhere between the second eviscerate and the rupture refresh)
This behaviour is often the main cause of the “problem” described above as well.

I tried to put this in the gear spreadsheet, but to no avail.

Any thoughts?

If your energy won't cap out by waiting a few seconds to rupture, then pool and rupture, you can build up another 5 CP's and do your eviscerate afterwards without the rupture downtime.

If, by some miracle, you can eviscerate and still avoid rupture downtime then go for it, but that's somewhat doubtful with 4-5 seconds.

It is likely that the reason you are sometimes unable to overwrite a previous rupture is that it was applied during a period when a buff (weapon or trinket activation) was active, giving you a higher AP when that rupture was applied. Rupture damage scales with AP and you cannot overwrite a more powerful rupture with a weaker one. It isn't a bug and has nothing to do with the amount of time left on that rupture.

I dunno if it's the best thing, but I Eviscerate and deal with the Rupture downtime accordingly -- I almost never take five Sinister Strikes to get back to 5CP, so I'd rather do something with my 5CP and have a little downtime on Rupture than do nothing for the time that it takes me to cap my energy and lose out on more potential damage.

I imagine my process might change a bit once I'm wearing four pieces of T8, but right now I feel that more is lost by indecision than the wrong decision. Waiting to Rupture if my energy caps out strikes me as very timid, especially when there have been times that Ruthlessness procs, followed by two extra combo points from Glyph of Sinister Strike procs, and I had my 5CP to refresh Rupture in a matter of seconds. (And if you stall, perfect time to blow Adrenaline Rush to get yourself back into a tight cycle, provided it's not a fight where you want to pour on the damage during a certain phase, like XT.)

Look at it this way: letting your energy cap definitely costs you damage; hitting Eviscerate and gambling on how quickly you can regain the combo points and reapply Rupture might cost you damage -- it might also turn out to be more damage if you get the procs you want! Personally, I'd rather gamble than sit back and look at my full energy bar...

Can someone point me in the direction of the thread that deals with optimal time to use rupture based on combo points with 4p 8.5 set bonus? I'm looking specifically for when do you use rupture? always 5 points based on crit possibilities with the set bonus? or 4 or 5 depending on what the rotation gave you?

You already answered your own question, at least partly. I'm assuming you're asking for combat but I'll answer for both specs anyway.

If you're combat it depends on your optimal rotation given current gear.

If you're mutilate it depends on the RNG with ruthlessness and the mutilate cp you get afterwards. Given a ruthlessness proc, a mutilate crit will yield you 3 cp and you'll end up doing a 4p rupture, otherwise you will be using a 5cp rupture. The golden rule is to avoid using rupture with less than 4cp and to avoid going for a 5th cp if you're staring at 4.

No, i didnt answer my question. (using Mutilate)
Option A: Have 4 points in a mutilate build. 4 points: [(199 + 0.03428571 * AP) * 7] damage over 14 secs do i use my rupture now or
Option B: generate another point(via whatever method that yields the least amount of energy) 5 points: [(217 + 0.0375 * AP) * 8] damage over 16 secs given that I want the most amount of time up on rupture to allow for crits of said rupture. In addition, won't the crits be higher in a 5 point rupture than a 4 point, in theory.

Therefore is it worth it to always use a 5 point rupture at the cost of energy to generate that last point when necessary?

While the theorycrafting isn't one hundred percent conclusive the general rule is to go ahead and use a 4cp finisher.

No.

As mutilate, once you have 4cp, use them on the appropriate finisher (rupture or envenom) . In the case of rupture, if you're at 4cp and spend energy getting another CP for a 5pt rupture, it negates the entire idea of rupture being your highest DPE finisher, since you've just wasted the energy (likely more, but I haven't run the numbers) that you could have put into a mutilate after the rupture, where the extra CP's generated won't be wasted.


Edit: Posted too late. And yes there is a thread in mutilate cycles were (maybe still are) being analyzed in more depth. In-depth Mutilate Cycle Analysis. Additionally, this have been discussed pretty extensively in quite a few threads, I'd suggest using the Thread Search tool to find what you're looking for.

Using the spreadsheet with my current gear (puts me at 6329 AP and 44.5% crit) and adding a 4rth terrorblade piece I get 5510 damage done by a 4cp rupture versus 6687 damage for 5 cp. The difference being 1177 damage done.

Using the cheapest move to gain that 5th cp (shiv) which can no longer crit, I would think the energy loss is better spent on a faster mutilate afterwards and would yield more dps over time. It is arguable that a 5 cp finisher yields a higher percentage of relentlessness proc but I dont think its enough to justify having to wait longer to build another finisher.

Have you tried switching up to 51/7/13 for 30% more damage of rupture, provided you were still hit capped and running those numbers?

Well I did not originally but after testing it in the spreesheet I come up with a similar offset between a 4cp rupture and a 5 cp rupture (1230), again this value seems underwhelming compared to putting out a faster mutilate/envenom finisher.

Surprisingly the serrated blade build only yields me a 15dps increase. Rupture accounts for 753 dps compared to 617 using the standard 51/13/7 build.

Just wondering how there being more 1.8 weapons makes them a better choice? I find that with two fast weapons i proc more with berserking (Im pretty sure it was in the patch notes that weapon procs are based on weapon speed now).
also for a pvp set up would slower weapons be better for putting out dps? Im kind of lost with my Rogue at the moment since gear set up has changed a bit compared to a month or two ago.

Berserking is a PPM proc, so therefore slower daggers would proc it more since your Mutilates will have a higher chance to proc it...