Nevermind I fixed it.

ArP does not play a huge role in Mut spec due to majority of attacks being spell based (Envenom, Instant, Deadly), although it doesn't hurt to have some if it comes with your gear.

RS contributes a lot to your energy regen and therefore contributes a lot to cycle stability, I would say the energy regen outweighs the 3% crit and haste that you gain through the combat talents.

Lately I have been working to sync up using BF, KS, and AR with trinket and beserking procs. I picked up Procodile so that I know when trinkets procs will be off cooldown. The issue I'm dealing with now is how long to wait once an ability is off cooldown to use in conjunction with a trinket proc.

For example, BF is off cooldown and I have 20 secs until trinkets will proc, is it better to wait those 20 secs or would it be more effective to use BF immediately after cooldown so that it has max usage during a fight? I've generally been using 10-15 secs as the length I'll wait to use an ability with trinket procs, but I am interested to hear how others deal with this. Thanks.

The deferment cost of delaying a long cooldown like a trinket is big if it means you'll be limited to one fewer use of the cooldown during the fight, and zero if it has no impact. For example, in a fight that lasts 6 minutes 15 seconds, you'll want to use Blade Flurry as soon as combat starts so you can fit 4 full uses of it during the fight. However, in a fight that only lasts 6 minutes, you won't get the fourth Blade Flurry in so you have a total of 1 minute 45 seconds to defer your 3 uses of Blade Flurry. Since you can usually get a good idea of how long a fight is, I would recommend looking at it this way, on a fight-by-fight basis.

Use the spreadsheet or the simulation, both will be able to provide you with answers to your questions. If you look at Aldriana's sheet, on the "Settings" page, you can turn on 3.2.2 ArP changes.

I haven't been able to keep up completely with the discussions here lately and I'm finding some new things mentioned but am unable to find the sources for them. So I have a few questions.

I understand weapon swapping for assassination with the changes to MP, but I'm also seeing weapon swapping discussed for combat. What changed with combat to make poison swapping worthwhile?

If you swap weapons with assassination you can switch to envenom only cycles. Is this strong enough to do even with 4pc T8 or is it something that only becomes viable at higher gear levels? I'm sure swapping is always viable, just not sure about dropping rupture.

I was playing around today with the 18/51/2 spec that was listed on the pocket guide thread and had a few questions:
1) Is Eviscerate still the finisher of choice for excess CPs when Rupture and SnD have a good bit of time left? With Vile Poisons it seemed like Envenom might be superior, and it turned out to do significantly more damage than my Eviscerate when I was testing on dummies. Does the loss of my Deadly stack balance out the increased damage that Envenom has over Evis?
2a) If Envenom is better than Evis with this spec, should I be using Instant instead of Wound?
2b) If Evis is still better, should I be using double Wound instead of using Deadly in the OH?

Thanks to anyone who responds.

EDIT: For grammar

Hello there dear rogue folks !
Long time reader, first time poster here ^^ Wanted to ask you guys a question, to get the most accurate answer. Does attack power gets less important after some point ? I have currently 4400ish attack power, and if you check my armory, im currently stacking AP all the way. I can go upto 7.5k dps(25 man w/ most melee buffs) in no dmg up fights. I'm using assasination since wotlk, and i just love the playing style of it. So here the 2nd question comes, should i change my gems into 10agi+10 haste or 20 agi ? or just leave it as it is ? Between im using a macro to swap weapons, and would love to hear some advices about it.

There goes the macro,
/cast Envenom(Rank 4)
/equipslot 17 Daschal's Bite /////have the 196 dps dagger in oh, changing it with daschals bite
/sw 9
/script Stopwatch_Play();
/in 9 /script PickupInventoryItem(17);PickupContainerItem(0,14);

Thanks for your time

For some reason, I've heard that an Evisc-only talent build and rotation is quite popular these days. I just can't figure out why this has happened all of a sudden. Can anyone explain if this build/rotation is actually superior to the normal combat cycle, and if so, what makes it better?

Furthermore, what would be the best to gem for if one was to use this build? A guildmate is obsessed with gemming for ArP since he feels it increases his damage more, I guess. Can anyone explain/clarify?

Jiposs as far as i know, ArP has a big value for combat spec, at least that is whats wrriten on the EP value table. You should aim for gemming arp and getting trinkets like Mjolnir Runestone. Again, as far as i know when you have 4-t9 and that trinket, you get the points from blood spatter(and 1 pt from ruthlessness) and put it into evisc, then there you go with a rupture free combat dps cycle ^^

This is correct, but generally only with near-BiS gear, though. It takes a lot of gear to make it worthwhile to break 4pc T8.5. Since the 3.2.2 patch Armor Penetration nerf, gemming for Agility is usually going to be better than ArP. Check the spreadsheets to be sure though. One more small but important thing: Ruptureless cycles require you switching your Rupture glyph to the Eviscerate glyph.

Unless I'm remembering this backwards, Icehowl's increased damage phase is a debuff on him rather than a buff on the player. This would mean that he only takes increased damage while the debuff is active on him, meaning that whatever damage that is done to him is calculated normally and the result is then multiplied while the debuff is active; once the debuff wears off of him the increased damage would fall off, meaning that the Rupture would then do normal damage for all remaining ticks. So your Rupture would do increased damage as long as the debuff is active, but once it fell off the Rupture would not continue doing the increased damage that it would have at the time it was applied.

E.G. You drop a 5pt Rupture with 10s left of the debuff. Ticks that occur within those 10s will do increased damage, but ticks that occur after the debuff falls off will do normal damage.

If this information is incorrect, please correct me as I don't want to be giving bad advice.

I'm Combat and I had a question about my rotation.

What on earth should I be using?

I've heard a lot of different things from different people, ranging from 3s/5r/(5e) to 3s/4r/(4e) to 5s/5r/(5e). I know the answer tends to vary with gear, but could I get a general idea? As a side note, I feel like my rupture uptime is pretty fail, what can I do to improve it?

ALSO! Is combat maces still viable?

The idea that combat has a fixed "cycle" or "rotation" has kinda disintegrated with newer raid gear, glyph options, and better understanding/spreadsheets. For instance, there was a time back in Burning Crusade when combat used to run 5s/5r/5e, or maybe 2s/5r with 4pT4... it's not so simple now, for the reasons listed. Rather than having a strict rotation, we attempt to prioritize our use of finishers such that we are always doing what is going to yield the best damage overall. (Which, to be fair, is the same goal... the factors listed just add a lot more variety to the equation, making it harder to distill it all down to one simple "cycle" that we all use.)

Typically, this means maintaining 100% uptime on Slice and Dice first and foremost (unless we are tasked with maintaining Expose Armor on the target, in which case that takes priority). If your gear supports finishing with Eviscerate only (you have a ton of ArPen; typically multiple BiS pieces are needed), you will want to spec and glyph for it and just blast away with 5CP Eviscerates between refreshing SnD. If you have 4pT8, it's more likely that you will want spec and glyph for Rupture, and keep it ticking away as often as possible, so that becomes your second priority behind SnD uptime. You can still Eviscerate, but that becomes more of a filler when both SnD and Rupture are ticking away with plenty of time left... otherwise, you might just want to burn some energy on an extra SS so you can refresh one of them as soon as it ends.

tl;dr version = read these forums more, consult a spreadsheet to see what you can do with your gear, spec, and glyphs (Aldriana's latest beta spreadsheet even recommends a cycle for you!), and get in the habit of making decisions on the fly while playing instead of thinking that you can just hit buttons in some preordained order to perform optimally.

I filled out a spreadsheet and the rotation it has set for me is 4s/5r/5e. Using that rotation I cannot maintain 100% uptime on both snd and rupture. Should I stick with a 5s/5r with eviscerates thrown in whenever possible or use the rotation given to me?

You won't have 100% Rupture uptime. If you have 4pT8 (armory not working for me this morning), you'll want to use a high Rupture cycle, which means 90%+ uptime when done right.

In any case, remember the context of spreadsheets: they represent ideal conditions. In the real (WoW) world, you don't get too many tank and spank fights where all you do is single-target dps. So the answer is: adapt.

Remember that they generally use a best case fight scenario like Patchwerk for dps simulation, so if you're not in a fight where you can sit still and do nothing but concentrate on pure dps, then your DPS and cycle will change, sometimes quite a bit.

As has been posted, the days of a strict cycle are virtually gone, there is just far too much randomness that can occur to follow a strict "set in stone" cycle. Generally what is shown is the "optimal" cycle, but if you can't maintain it for however many reasons, vary it to what works best for you, like dropping it down to a 4s/5r/4e cycle. It all depends on you, your gear, and your playstyle. The cycle it gave you is listed as priority, so above all keep SnD up as close to 100% as possible, then you'll want to keep Rupture up as much as possible, followed by Eviscerates whenever you have the extra CP's and time to do so.

AP does not have a cap, it's not a stat that can reach 100% and all of a sudden you'll have no more use for it. It's value can however be raised or lowered by the cumulative effects of all your other stats. This is why we have EP weightings, so we can see what affects these stats have on it.

It does not; at least not drastically; no more so than any other stat which gains in absolute (but not necessarily relative value) as all other stats increase (crit is more often if you hit harder (more AP), but the relative valuebetween crit and AP doesn't change much; not until crit's value plummets at the crit cap).

That said, the value of AP will fluctuate depending on your gear (although by our system, whatever AP's value is will be set to 1, other stats change in value relative to AP) since not all your abilities benefit equally from AP; some have higher coefficients than others; as other gear changes, the % of your damage that comes from high AP coefficient abilities may change.

tldr; No; there is no specific at which AP's value drops off (or picks up).

Quick question, is AP more valuable than Agi for the weapon swap specs? Tried 51/18/2 out last night and I'm seriously contemplating switching to it permanently.

First of all, sorry for my bad English :/

I personally see AP as the only stat that increases ALL the damage sources a rogue has. It is mainly an additive stat whereas critics, haste, hit essentially works multiplicatively. I see these two sets of stats as if they were the two dimensions of a square and our dps the area of this square. In other words, critical rating, hit rating and haste magnifies the effect of ap... and ap magnifies the effect of critical rating, hit rating and haste the same way the height and the width of a rectangle magnifies its area. In fact, the biggest area for a rectangle is given by a square when its perimeter is kept constant, it means that "Balance is the ultimate Good".
There is no cap for ap and the exact contribution of ap to your dps depends directly on your template and the techniques you use and the way they fit with each others.

Should we stop stacking ap at a certain gear level ? I do not think so but everything is a matter of balance and you should use a spreadsheet or Rawr to know what is best for you with your template, cycles and current gear level.

Your poison dammages are only increased by raw attack power... but agility will give you more crits and then more energy. The answer depends on your gear level so, only a spreadsheet or Rawr can precisely answer your question.

EDIT : Stats do not have an absolute value, they have a certain value at a certain gear level. It means that each piece of your equipement has a value when you see it with your other items. And this value will change if your equipement is different ! Ok, this is not a big difference but if you are here, you certainly pay attention to details ;-)