◊ chalon

I don't even buy that Combat is better than Mutilate for most of the Ulduar fights to be honest. But yeah, assuming you have at least 1 Combat Rogue I think you'd be foolish not to run 1 Mutilate rogue...otherwise the MH dagger drops just go to waste.

 

Tinwhisker

Or alternatively, anyone should be willing to take those other drops and spec for the better weapons. I myself planned on being Mutilate for as much of 3.x as possible but then last week, "Hello mainhand fist." And here I am.

Making sure the debuffs are covered and that you are using the best weapons you have will have far more impact on your raid than any debate over "which spec is best."

You're a lot of DPS, you know that? You wanna' earn 14 achievement points the hard way?

 

• Aldriana

Depends on how you're defining "Ulduar". If we're talking regular-mode Ulduar, as has been previously discussed, it's somewhat close. In hard modes, if we're counting murderable bosses as Mutilate favored and ones where cooldowns are a significant advantage as combat-favored, I count 4 as clearly in combat's camp (XT, Mim, General, and Yogg), 2 as clearly in Mutilate's camp (Hodir and Thorim), and 2 that don't meet either criteria (FL and Algalon). Looking at the remaining 2 briefly: Iron Council is murderable but is also strongly a cooldown/burn fight; in my experience, I've found the second to be the stronger effect, and I post better results as combat than I do as Mutilate. Freya *is* murderable, but the adds (which are the bulk of the challenge of the fight) are not, and the cooldowns are nice for dealing with certain waves - so I have to put this in Combat's camp as well.

Thus, I come up with:

Clearly Combat: 4
Leaning Combat: 2
No particular advantage: 2
Leaning Mutilate: 0
Clearly Mutilate: 2

That looks like more fights favoring combat to me, hence the original comment. But, in most cases, the differences aren't large, so I think both specs are reasonable to run in Ulduar - particularly in the interest of improved itemization distribution, as, in addition to weapons, there are a couple other slots where Mut itemization and Combat itemization don't agree.

 

saedo

Would XT and General really be in Combat's camp?

As hard mode XT, after you break the heart, it's mostly just minutes of tank and spank dps with no special vulnerabilities. Sure, combat CDs can pad the meters with Heart dps. But if your raid already has sufficient dps to break it without relying on combat's CDs, the rest, and more significant portion of the fight should be relatively even.

For General, only CD advantage would be the Animus' speedier death.

 

• Aldriana

Well, the point is, neither is Murderable, so the average, sustained, DPS is pretty similar between the two specs; hence, in the absence of cooldowns, it would be a wash. Thus, the fact that combat has cooldowns, even if they're not *super* useful, is all it takes to tip the balance.

Besides which: yes, on Vezax, cooldowns are really only important on Animus. On the other hand, that's the hard part of the fight, so the faster you can get it down, the better. It's not quite at the level of IC where the burn is the only part of the fight that's challenging at all, but it's definitely pretty important to get it down as fast as possible.

As for XT: when my guild learned the fight, killing the heart was a significant DPS check. Since the most recent nerf, it's of course somewhat less of one; but killing the heart quickly is still at some level a DPS check, and wants to be done as quickly as possible. The argument that "as long as you can kill it it doesn't matter what your DPS is" is sort of fundamentally invalid, as much for the heart as for any other fight - it's always better to do more damage than less, rather than expecting your guild to cover the difference.

Besides which, the way to think about XT is this: in order to get the kill, you need to do 5.6 million to get to the first heart phase, 7.2 million to kill the heart, and 36 million to kill him once he's in hard mode. Thus, independent of killing adds and stuff, one needs to do 48.8 million damage to XT directly to win. Thus, killing the boss is purely a function of how fast you can deliver this 48.8 million damage to it in all it's forms. Thus, damage towards killing the heart is as good as damage towards any of the other phases in terms of speed of killing it. If you can kill the heart in 28 seconds instead of 30 by blowing cooldowns - yes, you transition it either way, but you get to start working on the last 36 million HP that much sooner. Thus, even when you get to the point where you can transition him reliably, doing damage faster is still beneficial.

As a side note, I also think combat handles needing to run out for Gravity Bombs a bit better than Mutilate does.

Like, I'll concede that XT isn't a *strongly* combat-favored fight, but given that it has an advantage for combat - if admittedly a small one - and no advantages for Mutilate, it does seem to be *clearly* better, even if it's only by a small margin.

 

◊ chalon

I just think you're overemphasizing the value of the cooldowns on several of these fights, especially when in order to save the cooldowns for certain phases you are hurting your sustained damage in the fight. In some cases it's not a big deal, but in others it still is significant. The modelling suggests that Combat and Mutilate are roughly lined up on non-murderable, sustained, fights, with a slight edge to Combat. But this also assumes you are using your cooldowns as soon as they're up (more or less). If you aren't using them on cooldown then you probably are going to have a lower sustained DPS than Mutilate on those fights.

Take the example of General. It takes 4 minutes to get to the Animus, and the overall fight is roughly in the range of a bit over 6 minutes (with a little bit to give or take). If you were purely using AR on cooldown, you'd most likely get 3 ARs on the fight. However, you are only going to get 2 because you save your AR cooldown for the Animus. Now yes, burning down the Animus as soon as possible is very important, but it's equally as important to make sure that General is as low as possible for when after the Animus dies. So I'd really say this is more of a toss-up fight.

Similarly, as Saedo noted XT's only advantage in the cooldown department is in the single heart phase. But I think you also overlook the fact that Mutilate can go into the heart phase with a full HfB, full SnD, Overkill up, and can go into a chain of Envenom buffs once you apply the first Rupture. So I'd argue that really on the heart phase, Mutilate is mostly as competitive as Combat can be -- I'd again put this as a toss-up fight.

I also disagree that the Steelbreaker burn favors Combat in any significant way since you are looking at minute or so of combat, and I think Freya is also essentially a toss-up.

So I guess my analysis of everything out of the hard mode fights would be that 2 are clearly Combat (Mimiron and Yogg), 2 that are clearly Mutilate (Hodir and Thorim), and 6 which are toss-ups.

 

• Aldriana

The thing to keep in mind is that Combat's DPS being similar or slightly superior to Mutilate's on a sustained DPS fight is based on the assumption of average-case cooldowns - that is, for a 6.5 min fight it doesn't count 3 ARs, it counts 2.17. So if you're getting 3 in in a 6.5 min fight, combat is *already* overperforming the predictions. Thus, if you give up one of them to do it at the most important part of the fight, you're still more or less even with the calculations, and are thus ahead of the game due to the well-timed burn.

Besides which, if you really want to get picky, you can debate the assertion that Mutilate beats Combat on Hodir; while the high-end potential of Mutilate is clearly higher, the more realistic situation where you don't get near-100% storm power uptime allows combat to time those cooldowns against buffs and make greater use of them, turning the fight into a tossup at the very least. In the lucky situation where you get 100% uptime (or close) this advantage evaporates, of course - but that's to some extent the exception and not the rule.

The point here is, whichever you happen to think is better (and, for me personally, that's combat), the differences are not large, hence the original assertion that you'd be foolish to go Mutilate in Ulduar is in error. In terms of the specific fights of which spec is better for which fights I don't think we're necessarily going to come to a consensus - nor do I think we need to. The fact that there is a reasonable debate to be had over it is confirmation of the point we were both making.

 

Istaril

I'd like to add that I'm increasingly convinced that HaT has a place in these debates as well :P.

Just to throw another wrench in the works.

 

Ashandir

My guild is struggling on Thorim, so figured I would use a combat offspec on this fight to help; my main spec is mutilate. My combat weapons are swords; just wondering what would be the best choices to take talent points out in order to put some points into Throwing Specialization for the interrupts?

Hmm nevermind, just realized I could just take points out of weapon expertise.

 

DrRusty

Well Aldriana did say in his rogue faq that HAT is probably highest while in a raiding group and I don't really see any reason to doubt his judgement since he seems to know what he's talking about. I think the reason people hardly ever mention HAT is because combat and mutilate are very close in DPS and the sub tree is used a lot for PvP rather than PvE.

 

Istaril

Have you been pvp'ing recently? Mut/Prep is the build of choice, with a few dedicated deep-subtlety players (and not all that many, mind).

People hardly ever mention HaT because it's no longer as clearly superior/OP as it was back with the HaT bug and certain high-proc abilities (explosive shot, for instance), and so it has fallen by the wayside. It's still a very viable spec, capable of exceeding (In Mavanas' simulations), even at low CPS (1.0), Mutilate single-target murderable DPS, depending on your gear level, and has some distinct advantages for EA application, target switching, etc (and some drawbacks for AE damage, for instance).

 

◊ chalon

Well, I suspect at least part of the reason you don't hear anyone talking about HaT is because almost everyone that reads these forums is still learning content -- only a very small subset have killed Algalon. HaT is strong when you can assemble a stacked group and guarantee that no one will die. However if you are still in the process of learning, losing 1 or 2 group members (or them not having 100% time on target) will seriously harm your damage. So I mean while it may be good for posting DPS records 2 months down the road, it's just not something that's generally going to really help progression.

 

Istaril

True, but once we stopped learning "Normal" content, and we moved on to hard modes - many of which have steep DPS requirements, I've found the switch to HaT beneficial. I pick players that can be relied upon not to die - it's easy enough to find a group of those.

 

Raymeo

Simple question: My previous understanding before visiting this forum, after reading through other popular websites such as Wowhead and Wowwiiki, was that each point of Strength gave a point of Attack Power to rogues. However everything that I'm reading in this forum seems to state that there's a vast difference in the value of these two stats, rating Attack Power as being one of the most valuable rogue stats, and Strength being one of the least valuable rogue stats. I'm not doubting that you guys are correct -- there's no doubt that you have endlessly researched everything in this forum and found it all to be true -- but my question is just a simple "Why?" Why is there such a huge difference between Attack Power and Strength? What exactly is it that Strength is so miserably failing to contribute to for rogues, that other popular websites are somehow failing to notice?

 

Ticia

The problem isn't with the stats themselves, it's with the itemization of them. Yes, 1 Strength gives 1 AP (and is actually boosted by Kings, so it gives 1.1 in a raid setting), however, on gear you get half as much Strength as AP. For example, compare [Bold Scarlet Ruby] with [Bright Scarlet Ruby]. On the Strength one, you get 16 Str, with which buffs ends up being 17.6 AP. On the other gem, you get 32 AP.

Since Str is only slightly better than AP in raw value (due to buffs), but you only get half as much of it for each itemization point, it ends up being a very poor stat.

 

• Aldriana

Basically, strength and stamina do almost the same thing (Kings being the reason for the word "almost") - the difference is that strength costs twice as much itemization budget as AP does. For instance, gems of equivalent ilvl have twice as much AP as they do strength. Thus, from a practical perspective, while point for point they're comparable, the fair comparison is item budget vs item budget, and in that measurement strength is only half as good as AP and thus one of our weakest stats.

 

trrdr

Does trading Tricks between multiple Rogues still make sense? It's been an awful long while since I had another Rogue raiding with me and I'm not so sure anymore if it is a damage boost without the glyph.

 

◊ chalon

Yes it's still worth it to trade it.

 

campiona

I was in the same boat recently with another rogue in my guild who had inferior gear but was always putting out as much or more damage than my rogue.

I have since moved ahead of him in the meters by a long, long way by making these subtle adjustments:

1a. Focus like crazy in maximizing your on-target time. Even a second or two per encounter of lost target time can have a dramatic impact on white damage, which is the biggest chunk of what we do. Practice practice practice staying on your target, especially in fights like Hodir and Freya where there is a lot of movement. Minimize keyboard-turning. Rogues have to be lightning-fast in terms of responding to target movement, etc. Keyboard turning costs you damage. Simple as that.

1b. Along these same lines, it's easy to get into a FoK spam frenzy when dealing with big packs of mobs in raid. (Especially once you get the tier 8 2-pc bonus where you get +1 energy from every Deadly Poison tick; multiply that by 10 mobs in a pack, and you're basically spamming FoK on every GCD). But to enhance your dmg output even more, make sure you are always auto-attacking a mob (ideally the tank's target to avoid any aggro issues, although white-damage auto-attacks don't generate much aggro) and keep SnD up.

2. The reference already made about your mixed weapons is acutely important, too. Make sure you use weapons that match your spec. The days of mixed weapon specs are gone.

As for your other question about AP vs. Agi gems, Aldriana's simulator shows AP and Agi gems are just about equal -- but Agi offers better survivability. And since AP buffs come in the form of Blessing of Might, flasks, etc., a little survivability is always good.

 

Coffin Burier

Is there an ApEP updated with Ulduar Normal and Heroic level items?

All I was able to find was the ApEP in the "Pocket Guide to WotLK", but I would like to know more precisely which stats work better at the moment. Aldriana DPS Spreedsheet helps, but unluckily it's not as user friendly as Voulajin's Spreedsheet was before patch 3.1.

Can you help me, please? Thank you.

Indidh, Combat/Subtlety Rogue, Hakkar EU

 

koaschten

Did you even look at Aldriana's Combat Sheet ver1.1? It does AEP and has Ulduar gear in it.

 

Mavanas

Just to make sure there is no confusion about Raymeo's question, when we say AP is a good stat, almost as good as agility, and strength is a bad stat, we do not mean that 1AP is almost as good as 1 agility. It rather means 2AP is almost as good as 1 agility. So whenever we compare attack power to other stats we are used think of 2 attack power points, and like previous posters pointed out, the reasons for that lie in itemizaion of stats.

So if you compare strength and attack power, 1 AP is definitely worse than 1 strength because of kings buff, however 2AP is clearly better. Therefore we say attack power is a better stat than strength.

 

daltons08

so im a combat rogue with calamitys grasp/kinetic ripper but my dps falls short. the problem is my expertise...would anyone be able to tell me the combat rogue expertise cap? if you could it would help me so much thanks

 

• Feist-Mok

The problem is not your expertise. Expertise is a solid 'B' stat for Combat Rogues, right there along with Hit before the poison cap and crit. ('A' stats, by comparison would be Agility, Attack Power, and Armor Penetration). The Expertise cap to prevent dodges is 26/26. Given that as a Combat Rogue, you have 10 from talents, your primary CP builder only costs 40 energy, and that your finishers are undodgeable thanks to Surprise Attacks, Expertise has comparatively little DPS impact. It results in a few more landed Sinister Strikes, and some extra white damage.

In your case, you'll see much better results by getting a real meta gem (Runspeed meta is pretty terrible. Get a Relentless Earthsiege, 21 Agi, +3% crit dmg, the difference is huge), and getting rid of your Hit Gems and Enchant (seeing as that hit, being past the poison cap in a typical raid, is even worse for you than Expertise would be), and by tightening your rotation and flat out playing better.

 

Coffin Burier

Thank you... my Spreedsheet was actually the 1.0. The 1.1 is a great improvement. Nice job Aldriana!

Anyway... I still have a question about the AEP: am I wrong or the AEP doen't calculate when you hit a cap? As I still have high values for Expertise and Hit Rating. So my question is still this... is there any known value for Hit Rating after poison cap in Ulduar equipment? Thank you.

Indidh, Combat/Subtlety Rogue, Hakkar EU