I think tooltip directions should be a fairly good standard by which to judge the frequency and probability of both events (with Seal Fate in particular going off your buffed CP-builder critical-strike rate.) I think what the previous poster meant was not that Mutilate itself had the potential to generate 4 combo points per critical strike, but rather that Ruthlessness and Seal Fate proccing would lead you to a final total of 4 combo points in that particular cycle, seeing as Ruthlessness is not tied at all to Mutilate and would not affect the outcome of its usage.

In further regards to "positional tricks" which affect the likelihood of one or more of your talents proccing, there is currently no known geographical requirement to having either of these talents proccing, unless there is some geographical component on the ground that increases your critical strike chance with Mutilate, buffing that particular ability's potential to generate an extra combo point.

The tooltips are accurate as far as Ruthlessness goes. As for Seal Fate, if 1 dagger OR both daggers crit, you'll get 3 combo points. As for rarely getting Ruthlessness procs, anecdotally I can offer that there have been fights where it seemed as though Ruthlessness was very rarely or never activating for me either, but it does happen.

Pretty much spot on. Dont rely on ruthlessness but use it to your advantage when it does proc. You have enough uptime left on your slice and dice/rupture? Perhaps you can afford to wait a bit longer before using envenom to:

1- Pool energy without capping it
2- Wait for a trinket/weapon enchant/raid proc to maximize your next envenom or rupture
3- Wait for an extra deadly poison tick and/or stack

Guidelines are nothing more, how you optimize your rotation and dps is in your own hands.

Okay, so I've seen many posts about what specs are more viable for a certain fight in Ulduar, and it's pretty clear to me. But what about Naxx? Most of bosses are undead, do they count as humanoid/beast (like Gluth) or is this a non-murderable type? I've seen many charts of top DPS and basically combat seems to be first at every boss encounter in Naxxramas.

I also re-rolled for combat from muti not long ago (i didn't have any combat MH at all), and wanted to check how things are going with it in real fight. I tried dummy before and usually combat was really dissapointing but it turned out that it didn't tell me anything at all. I expected trash fights to be pretty high but what surprised me is how my dps on bosses improved even when it was a tank and spank fight. I'm just talking about heroics now and I'm only HC geared too, and tbh HC bosses fights aren't really long, but well, let's get into the topic: are there any tips I can be given as combat? I'm pretty sure I'm keeping good rotation as it's not really complicated, but wanted to ask about cooldowns. As I said HC fights are pretty short so I usually just start up BF and AR as soon as the fight begins and then KS when AR fades out, KS again when cooldown is finished. I end up with 3,5k dps on boss so with my current gear I'm satisfied, but still wondering if there's anything I can do better. This is also why I'm asking about superior spec in Naxx, so i can maximize my dps, and some tips from experienced rogues, because I'm pretty sure I have muti rotation mastered, not sure about combat though.

Sorry for wall of text but I usually can't keep up with words. :P Thanks for hopefully upcoming answers

P.S. You can check out me on armory and tell me if I should expect higher dps with my current gear, doing something wrong, or if it's OK.

Everything in Naxx is Undead other than Faerlina (Humanoid) and Maexxna (Beast). And Faerlina favors Combat anyways, so really there's only 1 fight which is better for Mutilate.

Are you really quite confident in the metric you use to judge which talent spec has the advantage on any given Ulduar fight?

As chalon stated above, a vast majority of fights in Naxxramas do give Combat the advantage quite apart from the 4% damage reduction Mutilate already experiences on them; the mechanics present during the Maexxna and Faerlina encounters, for instance (the two only Murderable boss mobs in the entire instance) allow Mutilate full use of its Murder talent, but favor Combat for quite different reasons. Maexxna's Web Spray poses a greater threat to Mutilate's highly outcome-dependent cycle and target-switching (non-achievement) and premeditated burn phases (achievement) lets Combat enjoy some advantage that may or may not be satisfactorily compensated for by a 4% flat damage increase.



No head, shoulder, chest, gloves, or weapon enchants are a good place to begin your scrutiny. Comparing your dps, on-target time, and rotation to other Rogues is all well and good, but properly augmented gear will be a pronounced hindrance to any benefit you seek to gain by switching to a "superior spec in Naxx, so [you] can maximize [your] dps."

Well, your choices are effectively 12 hit rating + 12 crit rating vs. (approximately) 29 hit rating + 6 agi. I don't see how the first combo comes out ahead.

If you really need the movement speed increase, it is preferable in this case to enchant your boots with Cat's Swiftness, unless of course, you are white-hit-capped, in which case, the situation you describe constitutes a small increase in DPS.

I've been mutilate for a long time now, and suffer a huge DPS drop when swappin gover to combat. It's purely a L2P issue which annoys me but losing 1k dps goign crom SR/Kingsbane to CG/Kings is unacceptabe to me and my raid partners, so i'm sticking mutilate for the rest of Ulduar.

With the overkill of +Hit gear in the place, i've dropped several points out of Precision and added them into Imp SnD purely because a number of the "addy" fights (Razor, yogg, thorim, freya, Mimi at least) seem to support a longer SnD time. Less points spent getting it up should equate to more points spent making things die is my thinking.

The problem is i'm having great trouble justifying it with theorycraft, mainly due to sucking at mathmatical modeling. According to the Spreadsheet there is a not loss of around 0.7% dps from dropping those 2 points of Precision. Is it even possible to model the (assumed) increase in damage you get from the longer SnD cycles, or am I barking in entirely the wrong direction?

Concerning the Mutilate spreadsheet, as far as I know, it is intended to model the ideal fight circumstances for Mutilate -- sustained, uninterrupted time on target against a single "tank 'n spank" raid boss, such as Patchwerk. Trash and/or chasing around adds on boss fights is not an ideal situation for any rogue, let alone one who is Mut-specced. When you are on a single boss target the entire fight, a Mut-specced rogue should never need the extra SnD time from Imp SnD to sustain his cycle. However, the Precision talent still adds dps, even when you are over the poison cap. So the spreadsheet thinks you are simply dropping points in a dps talent (Precision) and placing them in a non-dps (or at least minimal-dps) talent (Imp SnD). Though in practice, on boss fights with adds, you may find that your dps is increased against the adds when you have a longer SnD duration, you would probably not experience those results on a tank 'n spank boss fight. In other words, regardless of any personal dps increase you may experience on those fights with adds, don't expect to see that increase reflected in the spreadsheet, because it was not intended to model that type of fight.

I had an argument with someone on another forum the other day. Now, I'm not even sure if the guy plays a rogue, let alone if he's actually done Ulduar before. Regardless, he was posing that rogues should be speccing in Throwing Specialization in order to make the Thorim arena phase easier. I told him that it makes no sense to waste a dual spec, or even worse a main spec by putting points in that talent. Not to mention it didn't guarantee downing Thorim to begin with. Frankly, you would be gimping your ability as a rogue to do damage, just for that encounter. I was flamed, and told that I shouldn't be talking strats unless I'm in a top 25 US guild.

Anyways. I wanted to 'check myself', so to speak. Anyone disagree with my assessment?

edit: I'm sorry, I didn't realize this was infraction worthy. I apologize. I usually only read posts on the site, and rarely, if ever, post.

For a CQC combat rogue, it doesn't gimp anything. You do get 1 filler point you can put into Imp Throwing Spec which does help. Less healing, less shields, less damage, adds go down faster, people have more mana, so you start off in a better position to try to kill Thorim when he comes down.

But it's not absolutely necessary. From how it sounds, you're both wrong, a bit slightly. He goes the extreme and says rogues need it. You go the other extreme and say it's a waste. It's a quite beneficial if you have it thing.

Consider that in a typical 15/51/5 Combat build, you need to place 1 filler point anyway, so why not place it in Throwing Spec. That gives you a 50% interrupt chance on FoK, which IS certainly useful for Razorscale adds and Thorim arena, and for that matter, any other fight with casting adds. There is no other significant dps talent to place that point in, so you are not sacrificing anything with 1/2 Throwing Spec. It is not a waste.

Now does the intensity of those fights can justify removing an additional point from a dps talent to have 2/2 Throwing Spec? That depends on how much trouble your guild is having with those encounters. Personally, I don't think it's necessary to max it out, but you could argue its usefulness.

As a side note, please don't come to the EJ forums looking for confirmation of your success in some "flame war" you had with somebody else on another forum. We come here to become better rogues, not to thump each other on the back for winning arguments.

I just respecced for Throwing Specialization for that encounter last week, and I have no plans on speccing back out of it for 1 point in Precision unless I desperately need it for yellow cap. But even now, the spreadsheets show it as a 43 DPS loss for me, and that's fine when I consider how much utility it brings to my raid. Don't knock it 'til you try it -- the mindless utility of interrupting with Fan of Knives is extremely useful, and not just on Thorim. I've found it to be very useful on the trash leading up to most of the bosses, as well as the adds during some of them. In the least, you can drop the 1 point from Endurance into it.

In fact, on that note, does 1 point get you a 50% chance per use of Fan of Knives, or a 50% chance per hit from Fan of Knives? If both weapons have a 50% chance, that's good enough for me; I'll spec that one point back into Lethality and take my 75% chance to interrupt per Fan.

Since I got an infraction for my last post, I made sure to search the forums this time and came up empty handed.. So, in the hopes that it doesn't happen again :-) here's my question: Do Wound Poison (any rank) and Mortal Strike stack with each other? I'm asking because I don't know Hunters for jack and I was told that MS does the same thing in terms of reducing healing effects as WP, but if you have both a combat rogue and a hunter, will you get the benefit from both abilities, or will one work and the other just appear but not do anything?

They do not stack.

All 3 apply the 50% healing reduction in 1 application (WP App, MS App & Aimed Shot App), which is the maximum effect a player/s can put onto a target.

Throwing Spec or not: at least 2 fights in Ulduar where the ability to shut down casting on multiple mobs makes it worth having 2/2 Throwing Spec as a secondary build.

I am main specced Mutilate and because my gear is still mostly T7.25 level I have heavily gemmed into Expertise. Because of this I am able to avoid speccing into Weapon Expertise and drop the points into Throwing Spec instead.

In those fights, in fact in any fight where Combat is the preferred spec, I haven't seen any significant drop in DPS which would lead me to reconsider my spec and gemming strategy, in practice I am doing enough damage with this (slightly) suboptimal spec and gear combination to be able to maintain acceptable DPS. As I get more Ulduar gear the Expertise question is even less significant too.


The question that you should be asking is: do I spec and gear up for a given role in any one figth or do I make do with an optimal DPS spec and gear even though this is not optimal in each case?

For me the answer is clear, I use my second spec to allow me a fulfill a specific role or where Combat is clearly the best spec to have DPS wise.

You can't put both Blade Flurry and Adrenaline Rush into a single-press macro as they invoke the global cooldown. You can make a single macro but you'd need to press it twice. It'd be worth putting a trinket activation in the macro too.

/cast Blood Fury
/use Potion of Speed
/use Wrathstone
/castsequence Blade Flurry, Adrenaline Rush

Note that the haste from Blade Flurry will result in more Combat Potency procs which, when coupled with Adrenaline Rush, will give a higher risk of capping energy. So it may not be optimum to always use those cooldowns simultaneously. Hence I'd recommend not including Adrenaline Rush in the macro.

You could also tweak the macro so it only uses the potion if you are pressing shift - could be useful in fights with tons of raid damage where you don't want to block access to a healing potion - also to save cash by not automatically drinking a ton of potions while going about your dailies.

/cast Blood Fury
/use [modifier:shift] Potion of Speed
/use Wrathstone
/cast Blade Flurry


Edit: see Making a macro - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft and Useful macros for rogues - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft for more macro examples

I am looking for information of how exactly the interrupt mechanism of Throwing specialization works with Fan of Knives. I am especially concerned with the delay I am experiencing with it. Kick interrupts immediately, but when I use Fan of Knives I have the feeling that the target gets interrupted about 0.5sec later. Even worse, when the target castbar is showing less than 1sec (e.g: 0.9sec) when I do FoK, I fail to interrupt altogether. It bothers me, especially with the typical 2 sec cast time and FoK being on GCD.

FoK is a ranged attack and thus has a flight time. This isn't really a big deal but the interrupt is also a talented secondary effect which means it may actually be calculated after the hit is calculated (and not at the same time). Add these things up and then add in your latency and that might explain some of it.

I have a question about the 51/7/13 spec. Spreadsheet wise, this is a dps upgrade for me despite only being in 4 piece T7. (though perhaps minor in comparison to T8, in the range of 20dps or so)

Anecdotally, given this spec changes the distribution of damage towards rupture more, is there any reason why rogues (with at least the 2 piece T7 bonus) shouldn't be speccing 51/7/13 until 4 piece T8?

If you do not run with a feral druid/arms warrior in your raids, your numbers will be different. The spreadsheet assumes all raid buffs so if your not making use of them then your numbers will be different. Barring that, there probably isn't any reason besides lower solo play numbers.