The only time you really need to gem for hit is when you're mutilate and below the spell hit cap. Any other time, gem for agility or ArP. You should check a spreadsheet to see what gemming options would be best for you.

Stop gemming for pure hit (+16) once you have 99 hit rating, for all specs.

Agi/Hit, Expertise/Hit (if needed), or AP/Hit in Yellow sockets (Reds, Prismatics, and Blues, should be straight AP, Agi, Expertise, or Armor Pen, depending on your spec and gear, with one Nightmare Tear for meta gem activation) - up until the poison cap for Mutilate - see the Pocket Guide for hard numbers re: the poison cap for a variety of specs and raid setups.

After the poison cap, AP/Crit or Agi/Crit is a superior choice for Yellow.

The only enchant with Hit you should use is Icewalker to boots. +44 AP to gloves is superior to +20 hit.

Don't gem for hit, ever, with your gear you probably want to gem for attack power until you get the 4 piece set bonus, then gem for agility until you have around 200 unbuffed armor pen from gear, then gem for armor pen, but NEVER gem for hit.

Edit: Feist beat me to it

I know this thread is for the trivial questions & problems we face in the dail life as a rogue. So here is my little Story which bothers me a little bit.

Accroding to my spreadsheet my Approximate cycle should be 3,8s/5r/5e but in a raid environment it is almost impossible to stick to that. In fact i see myself in nearly every situation far away from this rotation and it bothers me to hell if i may lose DPS because of this.
Sometimes when i have to refresh SnD i still have plenty of time before it uns out so i fill in with some 3-4 Point Evis. Otherise it can occur that SnD runs out before i can complete a full Cycle.
I really would like to improve a a little bit more but it feels sometimes uncomfortable to get a good feeling with my class because of the problems i have with the rotation.
I am sure some of you guys know what i am talking about and maybe some of you can give me an advice about it.

Don't let SnD ever fall, keep rupture running as much as possible, eviscerate when you can.

The 3.8/5/5 cycle you're given is "ideal", which you're not going to find in any fight in Ulduar between Flash Freezes, Lightning Charges, Slag Pots, Gravity Bombs, whatever.

Similarly in TOC- the closest thing so far to a perfect spank and tank is the snobold boss in the first encounter, and it's dependent on your strat what you do about it. Jaraxxus is close but you'll probably have to interrupt, faction champions is obviously weird in every regard with cycle, since you're weaving in stuns.

On steelbreaker last, it's probably plausible to keep something approaching a perfect cycle going on steelbreaker, but you're going to want to get up your wound and deadly poison debuffs and rupture before the second target actually dies, then regenerate some energy, so that's going to feel weird too.

All in all, get a feel for your character, keep SnD going and rupture as much as possible, without wasting CPs or any more energy than you have to, and eviscerate when you're able, and you'll do less than "ideal spreadsheet DPS", but you should still do pretty admirably.

Just a general question using the spreadsheets. I've been using the mutilate one for some time, with the new gear i was basically replacing one item over a previous one as I was unable to understand how to add extra space to input my own gear. I was sure that I changed everything of value, agility scores , weapon damage and speeds. This work okay? i noticed the dps values went up on the new gear I put in myself (looked correct as clear upgrades).

I've been using Vef's Spreadsheet sheet for a while and love it's features and cleanliness. Top Work old chap. However I've got to question the accuracy of the calculations though, especially around the T9 bonus applications where Mutilate is Concerned.

Simply put. Replacing all of my current set gear with 25-man Triumph set results in a net dps loss of around 4% when gemmed for Agility, and 1% when gemmed for AP, which seems inconceivable.

I can understand Agi being devalued without the Rupture crit ticks, but the complete lack of forward movement on that set is infuriating me. Now, looking at the amount of AGI on the Latter levels of ToC gear, i can't see it worth replacing my 4pc T8.5 for anything short of full Heroic Gear, which is unlikely to be achievable with my current guild.

Have I missed something obvious, is there an issue, or Does T9.25 just suck.

(unfortunately my current armoury shows my Combat gear from Yogg last night.)

Hoping to get opinions on this:

Right now due to real life circumstances I am forced to play on an internet connection that although solid, during raid times it runs at 700-900ms latency (mobile phone broadband connection).

This causes some significant lag, for instance in Hodir I need to get on the safe zone before the icicles drop on my screen to not get frozen during flash freeze.

The DPS problem is that I find that I am not coming close to optimally using my energy, as my previous command has not been input before it time to enter the next command. I have been Assassination since 3.0, but I find that it is very difficult to keep good uptimes with SnD and Rupture, due to this lag.

This past week I have been running HaT, it seems to work a little better, but I find myself constantly at full energy again due to input lag, however, because of the way the CPs gather I am able to in the middle of big fights just mash my evicerate button without worrying about anything else -- not optimal, but functional.

I do have the gear to go to combat maces as well.

So what do you guys think is the best spec for a rogue if you are dealing with significant (but constant) lag?

I have been combat for a while (15/51/5) and I tried out a new spec (18/51/2) that gave me points in poisons, it did admirably on the charts. Has anyone else given this one a go? I found that coming from mutilate originally the crazy amounts of poison damage just wasn't there in combat. Thoughts?

I did up similar test on a spreadsheet and the tier 9 stuff just isn't cutting it. The loss of the rupture crit ticks is a HUGE potential loss. I agree I won't be dropping my 8.5 for anything less than full heroic ToC, which could happen but is unlikely.

HaT is the most likely to waste dps though lag, as you are at constant risk of CP capping, Energy capping at least generally takes at least 5 seconds from 0 energy even as combat, with HaT you can CP cap in an instant, Mutilate has the slowest energy regen but you are at risk of letting slice and dice drop if you try a dynamic cycle, Honestly you cant really expect to do good dps at 900 ms, if you can keep energy from capping I would say go combat, and try to maintain a predetermined cycle like 5s5r5e

Could somebody do some more professional research about rogue energy regeneration? Or at least tell me what could i improve in my method.

I used HyperCam2 60 fps recording and Windows Movie Maker to check frames, but still got some strange result deviations, recording at training dummies in Ironforge, using 31/33/0 build without any other energy modifiers than Overkill and Vitality.
Generally i cut video in 2 places, at time i use Sinister Strike at 110 energy and at time i reach 110 energy again (using more SSes around 60 energy)

EDIT:
Counted everything again after respeccing and testing on manekins for 30 to 130 second fights. Every combination of Overkill/Vitality gives simply 100% + Overkill% + Vitality%, results were surprising accurate for so long fights (+/- 0,5% regen rate). For Adrenaline Rush it's bit more random, cause it showed 25,7 EPS, but i think it was just my mistake and it should be 25,5.
Maybe constantly i made some mistake for first 2 days, or maybe they fixed it during today's maintenance.
However, short records (up to 20 sec fighting) give noticable higher results (always higher, never lower), made ticket about that and waiting for answer.

But does SnD really affect the 0.5s time between attacks of Killing Spree? If not, there's no reason to have it up that I can see. But maybe I'm missing something. I was under the impression haste didn't affect KS.

You're still performing white attacks. They're still affected by haste.

I had a couple questions that we have been debating in guild over some rogue mechanics I hope I can get an answer to:

1.) Are auto attacks active during Killing Spree. This question arose when discussing a rotation with KS and I was saving a SnD refresh for after KS but the other combat rogue said that he always keeps SnD up during KS for increased damage due to auto attacks still being active.

2.) I recently gemmed all ArP and am seeing a significant increase in DPS, mostly in burst. I am concerned though since currently im sitting on 570ish passive ArP. When my Runestone procs and I gain the 600 or so more ArP, how much passive ArP should I have to avoid being capped out and losing out on top end dps. Do diminishing returns apply when say at over 85% ArP? What is the official ArP cap either total or armor reduction percentage.

3.) I read somewhere recently about a white crit cap. Just wondering what this is. I have currently about 41% passive crit due to the fact that I dropped all my agi gems for ArP but im still sitting at about 53% crit fully raid buffed. What is this cap?

Thanks for reading my "quick" questions lol. These answers will significantly help out our raid and are appreciated big time.

Kiro

ArP is increasingly valuable until you reach the hard cap of 1232 rating, at which point any more is worthless. With Mjolnir's proc of 665 ArP the "soft cap" for passive ArP from your other gear is 567. You can probably go over this by a small amount but after that you will have to consult one of the spreadsheets to determine whether to gem differently, change trinkets, or something else.

The white crit cap is the point at which your white melee attacks cannot benefit anymore from any additional crit from rating or agility. To determine this:

Crit Cap = 100% + 4.8% boss crit reduction - 24% glancing blows - X% dodge chance - X% miss chance

I picked up [Daschal's Bite] the other night because no one else is the raided wanted it. Since then I am quite confused. Currently, I am Combat 15/51/5 with [Calamity's Grasp] and [Webbed Death]. Would switching to Mutilate with DB/WD be more DPS or am I just as well off staying with CG/WB and Combat?

My next question is will Mutilate with DB/WD surpass CH/WD as Comabt once 3.2.2 comes out with the changes to the Assassination tree?

Throwing spec isn't needed for the faction champions and neither is any type of PvP spec. Equipping your PvP trinket is probably worthwhile but other than that there's isn't much to be gained.

The best way to deal with faction champions is to simply outplay them. As a rogue it should be your job to either help burn down the main assist target or to "lock down" one of the casters. The easiest NPC for you to deal with is probably the holy paladin; between interrupts, incapacitates and stuns you won't be able to kill them but they won't be able to do anything either.

If you're really having trouble with the faction champions is likely that quite a few in your raid are "tunnel visioning" and not paying attention to what's going on. Classes that can peel should be peeling melee off your healers and classes that can CC should be rotating the worst targets. You need two minutes of good coordination, a couple dead NPCs and then five minutes of face-rolling the rest.

I have to disagree with Tinwhisker on Throwing Specialization, it can be incredibly useful at Faction Champions depending on your strategy.

We had 3 rogues, each on one of the healers, while trying to FoK any other opportunity targets in the range, and it has pretty much cemented my thoughts on FC being the most boring fight in the instance.

Although you don't need FoK to do this, simply assigning 1-2 interrupters per healer is enough to stop the majority of the damage while the rest of the raid can take care of the dps.

Either way, with the healers locked down, the rest fall shortly.

If you opt to go for a "CC/Burn one" strategy, you might consider HaT, it excels at single target fights.

If you have three rogues, fok is completely unnecessary. A rogue should be able to lock down a healer by himself with kick, gouge, and kidney shot if you're not being cced. You also have blind and vanish for sticky situations.

Yes obviously that's possible. But then you're spending energy on abilities that don't really provide damage.

Sure you'll be able to Sinister here and there, but considering that my avg FoK on FC hits on avg for 1.3k per target (WP, Mh, Oh, not counting potential DP ticks on multiple targets), while my SS avg hit was for 1.9k.

So having 3 or more targets in range, it's more beneficial to still FoK, even with the AoE dmg reduction aura.
Deadly on multiple targets is quite nice as well.


I don't think you realize that the point isn't to lock down just ONE healer, but any of the caster dps near them as well.
Also I'd like to mention that on n25 the caster damage is quite laughable, but on heroic, 13-14k Frostbolts from the mage can be very very painful when coupled with hunter or the rogue bursting as well.


Regardless, it all depends on the strategy you decide to execute.

Deleted

Conventional wisdom says don't ever Shiv.