The energy regen from t9 is actually quite similar to t8.
Some knapkin math: at 2% chance to proc you need 50 ticks or 100 seconds of Rupture time to get 40 energy. That's 0.4 energy per second for t9 where t8 is 0.33 energy per second. Rupture isn't up constantly though but at 80% Rupture uptime (decent estimate on algalon) you're looking at 0.4*0.8=0.32 energy per second.
While the benefit from 2t8 is easy to scale up linearly by spreading Deadly Poison with FoK, only HAT specs can put out multible Ruptures. I'll leave it unsaid whether that's actually a good idear or not.

Off the top of my head I'd say the stat gain on the ilvl245 set is enough to warrant breaking the 4t8 bonus when you have 3 pieces of t9.

Hi, this will hopefully be simple but it's currently confusing me

I've been running with 4/5 7.5 for ages with 1/5 8.5. I finally got a second piece of 8 and went with the 2/4 8 and 2/4 7 bonuses - however when I make the change in my spreadsheet it comes out as less DPS then sticking with 4/4 7.5.

I've tried using 8.5 gloves instead of 8.0 in the spreadsheet and though it's less of a loss, I'm still losing DPS.

Something I'm missing? I'm gemmed and chanted correctly and have all the caps I need to (don't bother armourying me, it hasn't updated with all my new gems etc),

I'm pretty sure it boils down to this:

4pT8 > 4pT7 > 2pt8 + 2pT7

I don't recall whether or not the increased stats on T8 allow mixing the two set bonuses to overtake 4pT7 if you have three pieces of T8, but my gut says that they don't. Basically, keep your 4pT7 until you can start wearing 4pT8. And don't let anyone in your guild give you shit for rolling or spending DKP on T8 that you aren't using right away.

Thanks for the response.

I was under the impression that once you got 2/4 T8 you should break the T7 bonus but apparently not.. guess I'll just have to wait on the 4 piece bonus instead.

One more question.. I've always gemmed to keep the expertise cap, yet when I replace all those exp gems with AP ones in a spreadsheet, my DPS goes up, not down.

Is this something I should ignore and stay expertise capped, or as long as the sheet says I get more, should I just gem for AP?

edit: eg, I replaced 3 bright cardinal rubies with 3 prescise ones to give me exactly 210 expertise. The result was a loss of .10% DPS. Not much, but it doesn't seem to make sense to me as I thought expertise was important and going from 150 to 210 is no small amount to hit the cap.

My understanding on the spreadsheet is that it does not accurately show the true value of expertise in your rotation. So you would often get a shown dps loss with any expertise gems. I recall Aldriana saying that continued work on the mutilate spreadsheet isn't much on his to do list so you will need to put forth more personal effort to use.
For example many hard mode 10 man items have not been updated to reflect the buff they received.

Correct, unless the value of the socket bonus is ridiculous (think Midgard Serpent level of ridiculous)

I think there are two schools of thought on this matter:

1) Gem for Expertise until you are capped because it will guarantee your Mutilates and finishers aren't being dodged, which translates into cycle stability, via more poison applications and more room to Cut to the Chase right before Slice and Dice would otherwise run out.

2) Don't gem for Expertise, and instead gem for Agility. This translates into more damage and more crits with all your attacks, as well as more damage with Fan of Knives, which does not benefit from Expertise to my knowledge.

I know many people here follow the first school, but a Mutilate rogue in my guild wearing 4pT8 felt that gemming Expertise was unnecessary, and has said that his numbers have gone up since switching all his Exp gems to Agi. I know this is secondhand, anecdotal evidence... but I think it is supported by spreadsheets, so...

You have to make a choice about which is more important to your play style: do you want absolutely reliable cycle stability, or are you willing to accept a dodged Mutilate or finisher now and then for more raw damage on everything that does land?

The point is that you want to gem enough expertise that you're not having trouble with cycle stability. Once you can sustain your cycles, the spreadsheet(s) do a decent job of telling you what's going on; but if your cycle falls apart, they're no longer accurate. Thus, you want to gem "enough" expertise - how much that is depends on the player, but for most people it's somewhat short of full expertise gemming (if for no other reason because you have more sockets than you need expertise). So in general, one sockets a little expertise as necessary, but many if not most of your sockets are going to be AP or Agi.

In terms of which between those is better: I haven't look at Mut much, but for combat at least the loss of 4/5 T8 is offset by the generally increasing quality of your gear, such that by late T9, agi is worth even more than it was with 4/5 T8. Thus, my expectation is going to be that, while there may be some window where AP gemming temporarily does more damage than Agi gemming, in both the short and long term it will generally be better to gem Agi.

Good way to put it. I think in my reply the "enough" was too implied -- the rogue in my example felt he had enough simply on the gear he was using. He wasn't against gemming Expertise if necessary, he just didn't find it at all necessary with what he was already wearing, and I suspect there are a lot of Mutilate rogues who feel that way if they are wearing 4pT8 and comparable ilvl 226 offset pieces.

I was just wondering, what your opionon on is the best race for a rouge? I am horde faction.

The simulation spreadsheet does not asume cycle stability. If an envenom gets dodged, and snd ends up falling off, you will suffer a dps loss in the simulation just like in a real combat because you have to reapply your snd and resume rotation. That in turn will lower the average dps in the simulation output when all iterations are over. In terms of choosing between agility and expertise, at 3.1 BiS gear level it showed that expertise was basically equal to agility, so other reasons not modeled by the spreadsheet can help you decide in favor of gemming agility, such as for instance using same gear for your combat offspec.

If for some reason your offspec is HaT, then gemming experise can be the way to go since HaT values expertise above armor pen and agility, so you basically have to be expertise capped for it.

First of all would you care to elaborate why agi is getting a better stat than AP as the gear improves? I don't know/see why this is the case.

Has anyone done the Mutilate math? Until now I was under theimpression that AP would be clearly superior to Agionce the 4pc T8 is no longer activated due to TI, DP and Rupture only scaling with AP not Agi.

As gear improves, it is generally the case that "rating" stats increase in value relative to AP, as your weapon damage and AP (which increase the value of rating stats) increase faster than your hit rate, crit rate, etc. (which increase the value of AP). It was true in TBC, and so far it appears to be true in Wrath as well. Since Agi is somewhere in between - given that it has both a crit component and an AP component - it tends to increase in value relative to AP as well, if not as fast as the pure rating stats. At high gear levels, I find agility to typically be worth around 2.1 EP even without the boost to its value from rupture crits.

How much rating does 1/2 Weapon Expertise or the Orc Racial translate into?

From the pocket guide
5 & 3 respectively. Approx 41 and 24.5 rating if my maths is correct.

As a melee your ideal role will /always/ be clicking portals and hitting the brain room. Melee are 1) best at swapping targets quickly and efficiently, 2) Maintaining position on target while breaking facing/LOS from floating skulls, and 3) blowing cooldowns on the brain for a quick burst of damage before getting the fuck out.

By contrast, you are terrible upstairs because 1) Crusher tentacles will insta-gib you if you aren't careful in many cases, just for being near them. So you can't DPS the primary DPS target upstairs, and 2) Clumping up near the tank/dead in the middle of the raid makes it very easy for you to chain malady of the mind - which can wreck peoples sanity and slow down your raids ability to clear tentacles, and 3) The target you are able to do significant DPS on, Corruptor tentacles, should have it's spawn rate limited by doing a good job downstairs cleaning up tentacles in portals.

As to an ideal spec for Yogg, a standard combat build is fine, but personally, I've found that replacing a Glyph of rupture with a glyph of FoK (for hard mode), or Adrenaline Rush or Expose Armor (for normal), to be a DPS gain. Glyphed Rupture ticks just a little too long, and you won't have time to reapply rupture before coming upstairs - if you don't glyph rupture, it's substantially easier to get a fresh 5 pointer on the brain before taking the portal back up and thus gaining some DPS.

Great, thanks for the information. Obviously I haven't done it much. I didn't stop to think about the tentacles. The few times I have tried it we seem to get overwhelmed by them after a portal and wipe.

Is there a huge difference between 10 and 25 man ep values? I've been gemming/enchanting for 25's, but I rarely ever run them and was wondering if I should change some things.

Hey, I was wondering if a rogue could act as 10 man algalon's big bang soaker using feint and enveloping shadows.

If shadow priests can do 90%, can we do it with 80%? Or does it not stack as I think it would?

They stack the wrong way. The only way you can soak it as a rogue, in general, is with Cheat Death. Which works fine except for the fact that you're at 10% health and there may be constellations up shooting at you, so you need some HoTs and/or really fast topping or you risk dying to it. So I find it to be better more as an emergency "oh crap, our usual soaker died" sort of thing rather than as the reliable every-bang soaker.

Feint + Glyph of Cloak + Enveloping Shadows would probably work as well, I know we discussed it a while ago and it came out that even without enveloping shadows it was possible to eat the 10 man version of the spell with the cloak glyph and a power word shield, I believe with all three AE damage taken reduction abilities it is enough to eat the big bang on 25 man, which is the only situation where deep subtlety is really viable, especially with a PWS, once again though you are going to take more damage than a shadow priest would or anyone with guardian spirit from a holy priest, a prot paladin with ardent defender or any number of other possible choices for surviving the big bang.