sublime1090

It has come to my attention that the mutilate and combat spreadsheets do not entirely coincide, therefore deciding between the two specs based on weapon options does not entirely work using the spreadsheets.

I current have Golem Shard Sticker in my off hand for both combat and mutilate.

However I have the option of using either:

[Kel'Thuzad's Reach]- Combat Mainhand (156.6 dps)

or

[Sinister Revenge]- Mutilate Mainhand (171.1 dps)

While the dps difference may make SR the obvious choice, I am severely below poison hit cap at 159 unbuffed and cannot reach it with my current gear options without drastically sacrificing other more beneficial stats. *(note I am expertise capped as both specs)

My question: Is the poison hit cap crucial enough to the mutilate spec that using sinister revenge as my mainhand will produce lower dps than using kel'thuzad's reach as combat?

 

campiona

Yes, it's that important. The Assassination/Mutilate spec is built almost entirely around poison application and proccing. If you are below the poison hit cap, your dmg totals will suffer significantly.

 

Abashii

Hi,

With my current gear setup I have enough expertise to drop one point from Weapon Exp and still hit the cap. I am 5/5 in Mace spec and use mace/mace as weap's.

My question is:

Is there a particular talent that my spare point should go in? Looking through the talents I am thinking of putting it in Throwing specialization, for the interrupt or maybe in Endurance.

Any thoughts on this?

 

Chack

Maybe not a simple question.

I recently started playing combat after raiding as mutilate. I have some problems with the rotation. I tried multiple roatations on a target dummy (L60 one):

5s5r(5e)
Basically SS to 5 then SnD, SS to 5 then Rupture, SS to 5, if there is alot of time left on SnD use Evisc else pool a bit and SnD.
The Problem with this rotation is that as soon as i get an eviscerate in, i will refresh SnD so late (basicaly at the same time as rupture falls off) that my rupture uptime gets completely crippled (about gaps of 6-10 seconds without rupture on my target)

Xs5r5e
I tried 3s5r5e, and I seem unable to keep SnD up. Very often i will be forced to SnD with 2cp, which makes it impossible to build cp for an eviscerate after the rupture. Usually the cycle will fall apart and end up as 3s5r. I also tried 4s5r5e, but i get very poor rupture uptimes similar to the cycle above. Maybe the SnD glyph is mandatory for this rotation?

Basically I am wondering if it is usual for combat to have a rupture uptime of only 70% when using eviscerate in the cycle? Or is maybe my 1.5 offhand just to slow to supply me with enough combat potency procs? Or do i just generelly fail and should stay with a mutilate spec?

Thanks for the help.

 

Mavanas

It's easier to maintain a better cycle in a raid because you are getting raid buffs such as 1.2*1.03 extra haste, perhaps heroic presence, all of which increase your energy regen. But also 80% rupture uptime is not that uncommon.

Some things that might help: do 3/4/4 instead of 3/5/5, going for an extra sinister strike while at 4 combo points is wasting half a combo point. Also in practice, a cycle is not a fixed number of snds, ruptures and eviscerates per cycle. Instead it's closer to triggering those abilities when having a certain number of combo points and keeping snd and rupture up. To increase snd uptime, refresh it at 1-2 seconds before expiration instead of going for an extra eviscerate, or pool energy and then refresh it, like you are already doing. To increase rupture uptime, put eviscerates on hold if rupture is due in 2 seconds or so, pool some energy instead.

 

Theownt

I have a fairly simple question: what can I be doing better?

As Mutilate (my Armory will mostly likely show Combat gear, but I have a [Belt of the Twilight Assassin] and a T8 chest that are gemmed to the Expertise cap, as well as a [Strong-Handed Ring] in place of [Band of Draconic Guile]; I main hand [Sinister Revenge]), my DPS feels like it is lagging significantly behind where it should be.

Specifically, most spreadsheets I have consulted projected a DPS of about 7k. This is after I account for raid debuffs I often don't have, and after meticulous checking to see that I've correctly selected my gear.

I'd simply call the spreadsheet absurd and leave it alone, but then I see parses of 7.5k or 8k on Ignis by other Rogues (with better gear, admittedly), and I wonder what I must be doing to clock in so low.

My personal best on Ignis is 5.5k - which seems pathetic to me. Yet for the life of me, I cannot seem to pinpoint what it is I'm doing wrong. Pouring over the threads here and on the WorldofWarcraft.com forums has revealed nothing to me that I wasn't already aware of, yet for the gap between where I should be and where I am to be as big as it is, I figure I must be missing something big.

Currently, I:
-Use Finishers at four Combo Points
-Maximize Rupture and Envenom buff uptime (I wait instead of Envenoming right after reaching four combo points)
-Don't let SnD or HfB drop
-Stay behind my target where possible
-Use Vanish and Cold Blood (for what it's worth) on cooldown

I frankly don't know what else to add; I've gone over the pocket guide countless times and use the rotation listed there. This may seem like just another "My DPS is bad, halp!" post, but that's not what I'm getting at - my DPS is okay, but it could (and should) be better. I just can't figure out how.

Any input would be appreciated. I agonize over performing my best, and that I can't seem to really pains me.

 

Ormack

You need to talk to your raid group. If no one is putting up a major armor debuff you need to put it up its that important to your dps.

 

CrayonOfDoom

It's pretty easy to see the value of run speed on boots. Say you're at 7k dps on average. Every second off of a boss is worth 7,000 damage. In a 3min encounter at 7kdps, one second off the boss drops your dps to 6961dps. That's nearly 40dps loss for a single second off boss. Fights like Yogg with lots of time off boss end up blatantly favoring cat's swiftness, while fights like kologarn, ignis, hodir, etc... favor icewalker so long as you're on target.

 

KasumiRevy

Few things here:

If you don't get all your raid buffs the dps difference will be significant. I often can hit 7k in my regular 25 man where I get tricks, have a dranei and all other buffs are accounted for. If you are often not getting those it's going to impact your dps no two ways about it. Looking over your gear you should be able to at least hit 6k on stationary target like patchwerk. Ignis you should be pushing 7k if not more. (if you're not getting put in the pot). The spreadsheet assumes pretty static up time on a target if it says your dps is 7k it often is not truly reflective of your max for various reasons. It's an excellent guide but nothing more then that.

As for methods of improvement. Thistle tea, speed potions, during heroism? Save cooldowns when applicable to burn phases (such as xt's heart). Using a mod like envenomous to keep track of deadly poison ticks so you envenom right after a tick will give you a slight bump. (if master poisoner is changed this will no longer be needed). If you can keep track of when you get tricks of the trade or hysteria and react accordingly to those buffs.

I didn't see you explicitly state, that you are saving energy right before you envenom (60 energy is what I recommend). Also make sure you only cold blood envenom. Last thing I can think of as a minor thing is to try to ride the buffs as long as you can within reason. Hunger for blood in particular should not be refreshed until the very last moment if the fight does not interfere with it's upkeep.

Mutilate does require you to think about the boss fight to best manage your cooldowns and general strategy to max your damage on that fight. When to vanish, when to cold blood for example. In conjunction with good cycle combination. Vanish for overkill, when envenom buff is *down*, tricks of the trade when envenom buff is down and all other buffs/debuffs are solid.

 

Teromus

Unfortunately, this doesn't take into account the potential amount of time saved from using Sprint/how many times you can use it in a fight. Also, to have a decrease as dramatic as 40 DPS from not having Cat's Swiftness, you would have to be able to get back on your target one second faster than not having it (which equates to a much longer distance covered). Just some additional points to consider.

 

Cetyrz

I have a quick question regarding the hard cap for poisons. I am currently undercapped on hit due to some really bad luck on the pyrite infuser dropping (I run 10 man strict) but am now expertise capped thanks to picking up my t9 shoulders. Until I am able to pick up the pyrite infuser to drop my mirror of truth is being poison capped as a mutilate rogue ESSENTIAL? If so I can regem and eat some hit food as a stop gap measure but I am just wondering with heroic presence in my group and having about 260 odd hit will I notice much if any DPS loss due to poisons proccing PPM?

 

Mavanas

The EP value of poison hit was slightly lower than that of agility for mutilate at 3.1 BiS level, which means it's not worth regemming or eating hit food. The only regemming I can think of is if you have yellow gems filled with deadly ametrines, using glinting ones would be beneficial in your situation. Do try to get into a heroic presence group since it's gonna boost your dps by 40 or so.

 

Redemptionz

I am using the 1850 Furious Fist/Dagger, are these viable for PvE combat? Also, I am contemplating gemming agi instead of armpen because I am around 40% but i do not have a grim tol or runestone so i can't hit hard cap. I just want some information on what i should do since I am curious.

 

trrdr

Most likely not, but it really depends on your available alternatives. As with your other question, any more detailed information is to be found in the spreadsheets. Use them.

 

MassMan

Short question: I assume the only damage we do that's unaffected by armor penetration is Rupture, or are wound poison and deadly also unaffected?

 

Tinwhisker

Poisons are not affected, they are a magical attack (nature school).

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

 

ubertoast

I have a quick question regarding berserking procs. I normally run combat, however i switched to mut for an ignis fight to compare my dps to a fellow rogue. Our gear is very similar with a few differences. When i analyzed the WoL parse afterward, i noticed he got 24 berserk procs, whereas i only had 12. Can rng affect the procs of berserk that much, or am i missing something?

Here is the WoL parse:
World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

Im hubert, kaleb is the other rogue.
Any imput would be appreciated.

Thanks

EDIT:
My armory has my combat gear atm, but we both use dashals MH, and both 1.4 speed OH

 

Mavanas

Envenom is also not affected by arpen, as it is a poison attack.

Regarding Berserking procs, RNG can technically account for it, but chances of seeing 24 are kind of low. I ran a simulation of 300 fights as mutilate with 2min 40 sec duration. Out of those 300 tries, the number of berserking procs ranged from 6 to 28, with 15 average. Standard deviation was 4. The gear I had loaded is probably different from yours, but I don't think the distribution would change drastically. Either way you can see the variance of the number of berserking procs in a 2min 40 sec fight is pretty significant. In the gear I had loaded, there was a 2% chance to observe a number of berserking procs of 24 or above.

 

Sleightt

I've been looking at the DPS I did on XT HM for the last two weeks, and I noticed a huge (700 DPS) difference:

Last week: World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis
This week: World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

I looked over them, but couldn't find anything noticeable that would change my DPS this much between these two weeks (both weeks were with the exact same gear, and I never got more than 1 or 2 bombs for any of these).

My question is, is there anything specifically about the combat rotation that could affect this? Things like waiting and pooling energy instead of using an eviscerate, or anything else.

I'm not sure if it was just RNG this week, but I'm trying to find out so that I can do single-target DPS like that more often.

Thanks

 

• Feist-Mok

Well, the most immediately noticable difference in the two logs you posted is a 20 second difference in killtime. That's more Heroism uptime, more cooldown uptime, more (relative) time on the heart with that damage buff, all of which are going to inflate the 'per second' part of DPS, so that's a part of it - i.e. when everyone else in your raid does more DPS, so do you.

You did 175k more damage on the higher parse though, so it's not entirely on them.

On the worse of your two parses, you got Gravity Bombed 3 times, and Lightbombed once. On the better parse, you were never Gravity Bombed, and Lightbombed twice. With Searing Light, you can run out of the melee clump and stay on XT to DPS him. With Gravity Bomb, you need to actually run off target and away from the boss that is, according to this WoL, somewhere between 18 and 21 seconds that you weren't DPSing on week one. That's about 125,000 damage at the rate of DPS you do, (lowballing a bit to account for dots ticking while off target, pooled energy, etc.)

So... yeah. Basically RNG.

 

Mavanas

You really need to analyze the parses more before asking others because there are many obvious things.
There are at least five reasons I can see right away:
1. Difference in buff/debuffs and their uptime
-you had moonkin and improved scroch up second time
-most of your abilities did more damage per hit, which points to either more attack power or armor pen (sunder and faerie fire uptimes are about same). Some abilities did up to 7% more damage per hit. Some of it could be rng of course but when such difference is present in white attacks, there are probably other forces at play, such as buff uptime or debuff uptime.
2. RNG was definitely at play as your sinister strike and eviscerate crit rates were a lot higher second time even though white attack crit rate was about same.
-Sinister strike damage is single biggest source of difference between the two parses.
3. Second fight lasted shorter, which will increase your dps because it magnifies the effect of the heart phase on your dps.
4. You had gravity 3 times on your first attempt and spent 4% of total time running with it.
5. The only cycle related difference I see is slightly higher rupture uptime second time, but it's a not a very big difference.

 

DrRusty

I'm very glad someone brought this up. I have noticed my DPS fluctuate all the way from low 3ks to 5k+ ever since I switched from dual mongoose to dual berserk. I didn't do anything different in my rotations, but the difference in DPS was always there. Even doing a fight in a heroic, and then fighting the same boss the next day, the fluctuation was sometimes very big.

Is there any kind of benefit from running mongoose/berserk as apposed to berserk/berserk and mongoose/mongoose?

 

• Aldriana

So, there's no direct advantage to mixing Mongoose and Berserking, as both stack with themselves just fine. At high gear levels, however, Accuracy becomes the best OH weapon enchant for some gear setups, and at *very* high gear levels it can even happen that Mongoose becomes a reasonable option for the MH - it's less than 5 DPS behind in some setups I've tested, and given the difference in defensive stats that's close enough that it may be worth considering. This assumes, of course, that the proc rate is the same between the two enchants, which is the current theory but I'm not sure we've ever definitively proved it.

 

Wreckful

I vanish immune whenever I can in raids, some examples being Sapphiron's nuke and Emalon's Lightning Nova. I was wondering if Algalon's Big Bang can be vanish immuned.

 

• Feist-Mok

IIRC, doing so will trigger an Ascend.