And if there *is* an aggro person for anyone in the raid - which will happen for most other classes long before rogues - you should be tricksing the tank anyway to get rid of it. Rule of thumb: if there's an aggro issue, tricks the tank. If not, tricks a rogue.

Just some additional information on this... latency likely isn't an issue since I have vanished up to 2 or 3 seconds before a shock blast before and it still hasn't hit me. I'd imagine it's more a function of not being unable to enter combat with the encounter during the vanish buff.

Note that it's still best to wait as long as you can, to reduce the risk of other factors knocking you out of vanish, such as flames on mimiron.

I am pondering a dual weapon specialization spec. Currently in my gear, not gemmed for hit, I achieve 350 hit rating and expertise cap. Since this was the case, I speced out of Precision to max out 2 weapon specializations.

Helm: Hood of Lethal Intent
Neck: Seed of Budding Carnage
Shoulders: T8.5
Cloak: Drake of the Lithe
Chest: T8.5
Bracers: Fluxing Energy Coils
Hands: T8.5
Belt: Soul-Devouring Cinch
Legs: T8.5
Boots: Footpads of Silence
Ring 1: Dexterous Brightstone Ring
Ring 2: Ring of Callous Aggression
Trinket 1: Dark Matter
Trinket 2: Mjolnir Runestone
MH: The Grinder (Heroic) vs Golden Saronite Dragon
OH: Combatant's Bootblade
Throw: Twirling Blades

Using ArP food and KS/Rupture/SS glyphs

On spreadsheet it is telling me that:

5/5 Mace, 5/5 CQC, and 1/5 Precision is 7673.4
5/5 Mace, 1/5 CQC, and 5/5 Precision is 7770.3
5/5 CQC and 5/5 Precision is 7816.9

Am I being deceived by the spreadsheet? I am fully gemmed with ArP and it seems that dual weapon specialization should yield a higher DPS for my gear. Do I need to shift over to a Rupture-less cycle with Improved Eviscerate and glyph in order for maces to achieve a higher DPS than fist/dagger? I would imagine that 5/5 in two weapon specializations should yield a higher DPS than 5/5 and 1/5 especially since I am absurdly over the poison hit cap. Is this an anomaly or can this be explained?

Quick question that I haven't seen an answer to yet. Does the AOE reduction from Feint work with Anub'arak's Leeching Swarm? Was doing Anub last night and the thought crossed my mind after we downed him and I had a couple tight spots during phase 3.

Versus:

So no, it won't affect it.

You are not being deceived by the spreadsheet. One way to look at it is that the 5 points in precision affect both your mainhand and your offhand, whereas the points in CQC affect only your offhand. Thus halve the EP value of the 5% crit and compare that to the full value of the 5% hit. Even past the poison hit cap, 100% hit EP value is a lot more than 50% crit EP value.

Also, from what I've seen, it's always better to go with the spec of your mainhand weapon as opposed to your offhand weapon.

Does anyone know how latency and/or the computer's own latency(as seen in fps) affects the dps? I assume that a high internet latency would affect the number of special attacks that you are able to do during a fight, and thereby also cap your energy during adrenaline rush however white attacks should remain unaffected, right? Or does the client send some sort of data to the server for auto-attack hits as well which would affect compat potency proccs etc?

And what affect does the computers own internal latency have on the dps. I can imagine that a lagging computer with low fps and an overworked processor would take a longer time to process commands from the user into the client and thereby generating a slower response time on instant attacks with risk of capping energy during adrenaline rush or a high number of potency proccs.

I hearing something about how latency affected the hunter auto shot/steady shot rotation before they changed auto shot. I wonder if anyone made any similiar calculations based on rogue dps but I guess it would be hard to calculate since we dont know exactly how the client and server communicates and come to think of it I guess this isnt really a simple question with a simple answer either.

As far as I know only way that latency can affect rogue dps (on tank'n'spank fights) is energy capping and that shouldn't happen even with high latency (if it's playable at all) other than during adrenaline rush. So how much it affects your dps depends on how much you are energy capped and that's something you probably have to estimate yourself.

Ofc in fights with movement it takes more time to move if you have high latency and interrupts are more difficult etc but I think that you were only talking from pure dps point of view.

The precision with which you can string/clip SnD, Rupture, Hunger For Blood, Envenom Buffs are all somewhat affected by latency (although unlikley to suffer much from The difference between 50 and 300ms).

If you have higher pings or tend to spike higher you should, to compensate, clip your SnD's earlier, for instance. That loses you a little efficiency over a high ping player, but is still better than ever letting SnD fall off.

As mentioned above, though, the bigger issues is your ability to react to things in the fight; double-damage phases, movement of mobs, etc.

A question concerning sword spec. The last time I had ever had experience with a rogue and sword spec was back in preBC when it would proc off windfury totems and other extra attack items.

What does the current sword spec talent proc off of, and what type of attack is it considered (MH or OH)?

Envenom in particular you will want to hit a little early, even with a strong 150 ms ping you can't envenom at the last 0.5 seconds of your slice. It seems that the extra client/server side communication for it to verify slice is running requires at least 1.0 second to receive the bonus from cut to the chase.

There's no way to know for sure, but anedotal evidence such as the stuff described by KasumiRevy suggests the client has to check with the server if Slice and Dice is active and if so, renew it to the appropriate size. Actually I believe it's an issue more in line with the old Deadly Throw glove bonus and for that matter Throwing Specialization. The game doesn't actually check for buff durations, but it does have to check for some talents - does Deadly Throw allow interrupts, does Envenom renew Slice and Dice. This means the client would check with the server "is Cut to the Chase active?" during the first 1x latency (150ms), the server would reply "Cut to the Chase is active, renew Slice and Dice" during the next 1x latency. Add in normal human reaction time and you're looking at 2x 150ms + 200ms or half a second. Not exactly a bullet proof deduction, but it explains the delay reasonably well in my mind.

If you can renew Slice and Dice late with Cut to the Chase, thank the higher powers. Fact of the matter is alot of people are experiencing these delay issues which suggests there's atleast one serverside check.

Will the coming buffs to Assasination and the nerf to ArP put the speccs close when it comes to theoretical DPS in BiS gear again?

Has there been any modeling done that determines at what point wound (offhand) becomes more beneficial than deadly(offhand) on bosses, for combat rogues? I am curious if on fights such as "northrend beasts" if its prudent to go wound/wound given the time off-boss ie. snobolds, massive crash etc..

Hopefully this hasn't already been brought up; has anyone else noticed Blizzard got really really lazy with the ToC rogue gear?

[Dexterous Brightstone Ring] = [Cloak of the Untamed Predator]
[Band of Callous Aggression] = [Charge of the Eredar]
[Hellscream Slicer] = [Blood Fury] Stats-wise
[Duskstalker Pauldrons] = [Icewalker Treads]
[Frostblade Hatchet] = [Forsaken Bonecarver]
[Garona's Pauldrons of Triumph] = [Garona's Gauntlets of Triumph]
[Garona's Helmet of Triumph] = [Garona's Breastplate of Triumph] = [Garona's Legplates of Triumph] almost equal.

Obviously since stats have different weights they aren't really equal but just comparing the numerical values it's a little weird that there's so many matches.

As far as I can tell, SnD is refreshed at the end of the GCD used to cast Envenom. It's silly really, you would think that it would refresh as soon as Envenom successfully lands on a target, but nope.

Depends on what you're sapping. If you're sapping, say, PvP opponents who are the same level, 236 should generally be enough, unless it's someone in tank gear with lots of defense. If, on the other hand, you're talking about (say) the Faction Champions, who are boss level, 236 is below the no precision special hit cap. If you're sapping people in PvP who are not in tank gear... then I don't have a lot of good ideas.

Specifically pvp opponents, as in actual players, both same faction in duels and opposite faction in world pvp. I suppose it is possible they're in defense gear, as I can't specifically recall it happening against a non-tanking class, but then why is this? Defense passively lowers their chance to be hit by that much through non-mitigating means (i.e. they can't dodge while sapped)? I guess it makes sense, and that every person it's happened against could have had some/all tank gear on. The last two classes I recall were a pally today and a warrior yesterday, so again, quite possibly the case.

Edit: Quick armory check to make sure I'm not crazy, 7.2% chance to hit based on my hit rating, and -5.9% chance to be hit on our guilds main tank, using him as a reference point, and against same level targets the base miss chance is 5%? So I have 3.7% chance to miss someone in full tank gear with a cheap shot even if sapped. If those are the right numbers then I guess that answers it, though I can't really imagine hitting that 3.7% chance in the rare situation of PvP against someone in PvE tank gear more than once in a blue moon, and by my best recollection it's happened at least 5 or 6 times in the last patch or two.

this isn't in the rogue FAQ and i've looked through quite a few pages on this thread.

does killing spree increase the damage caused by rupture and deadly poison if they tick during killing spree's duration?

Firstly, cheap shot can only miss, it cannot be dodged or parried and hence it's irrelevant whether the target is sapped or whether you're CSing from behind. Secondly, additionally to the possibility of people wearing tanking gear, nightelves have the quickness racial that reduces the chance to be hit by melee or ranged attacks by two percent, which might explain your annomalities.

E: to the above, no, damage of DoTs is calculating uppon application so rupture is ruled out of that, and you'll already have deadly poison up when you start spreeing. Starting killing spree right away _might_ increase DP damage, but not having slice up aswel as the boss being practically undebuffed when you spree will more than likely offset this effect.

Actually if starting off with KS makes it so your DP does 20% more damage throughout the fight it would definitely outweigh having slice and dice up, I do not know how DP damage is calculated, if it is recalculated each time a stack is applied to the target than you would have to hope to get 5 stacks within KS, if it is recalculated every time the DoT is refreshed then it definately is not worth doing, However if you can stack DP during killing spree and it will remain buffed by 20% for the whole fight that would be a pretty large dps increase I would think.

Death Knights can spec into Frigid Dreadplate and Mages have Arctic Winds. For reference, our talent Heightened Senses works against blind, but not stuns.