Leto

Fast daggers proc focused attacks and poisons more, so you get more. Generally that means improved dps, but the difference is so small that you should simply go for the highest dps daggers available to you.

As for which dagger mh or oh, the difference is small as well (slight advantage for faster in mh, slow in oh), but personally I prefer slower in the mh for heavier hits and more burst.

Either way, just make sure to put instant poison on the faster dagger.


Get a spreadsheet, plug it in for yourself, and see what the differences are for your gear and make a judgment from there. For me, switching faster dagger to the mh netted ~15 more dps, which is well within the margin of error, so I'm sticking with slow mh for now.

Rogue at heart.

 

◊ chalon

I think at least part of this is just due to the fact that so many classes get bonuses at <20% HP, which is when Heroism/Bloodlust is burned, and we don't. Mages get Molten Fury, Warriors have Execute (which is borderline ridiculous at the moment), Ret Pallies get something too I believe. So that sort of hurts. It also doesn't help that 1/3 to 1/2 of the fights in Naxx really don't cater to us. We aren't going to win out on fights like Noth, Gothik, and 4h.

I've been generally clocking in somewhere around 5th or 6th on DPS for boss fights which we're more suited for, which while I'd like to be higher I can't complain that much given how terrible a lot of my gear is (other than my weapons which are decent). I also think that for some reason we have a gear hump that we have to get over before we really start to be competitive. Other classes do a lot better with less gear for whatever reason, and it's only once we get over that hump that we really start to move towards the top on a fight like Patchwerk.

 

Leto

The mechanics and talents for both specs have changed dramatically since TBC. I assume you just started reading up about rogue theorycraft today if you aren't aware of the changes and the potential of both specs.

Rogue at heart.

 

MissnL1nK

Would it not be better to put Deadly on the OH, in case of a needed Shiv. From what you are saying you have Deadly on the MH with Instant on the OH. Overall I doubt this point even matters I just wanted to bring it up.

Also the 51/13/7 Mutilate does not include Deadly Brew which makes having Instant on the OH that much worse imo, unless of course you spec'd for Deadly Brew =P.

 

Leto

Why would deadly brew matter at all? They changed it many patches ago to only proc crippling poison, which is useless on bosses.

As for shiving deadly... it doesn't drop often enough wip imp poisons to warrant that I'd say. Whether or not using the energy on shiv to refresh a stack if it does drop is worth it, I do not know, there are all sorts of potentials to consider when figuring that out. Deadly poison could proc shortly after shiving, making the shiv simply used energy.

Rogue at heart.

 

Tinwhisker

I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume you've not read the tooltip for Deadly Brew since September. It has no place in PvE.

You can find EP values on the first page of this thread. This should help you greatly when choosing gems.

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

 

MissnL1nK

The reason I mentioned Deadly Brew is because it puts on poison on the target. If Deadly Poison somehow drops for some reason you need a shiv to get it back on fast or you lose mutilate dmg. With an instant in the OH the shiv is worthless.

I also wasn't making an effort to bash anyone just simply saying for efficiency it seems you shouldn't do it.

 

Tinwhisker

So what you're saying is that you would rather drop say, 2 points in Murder, losing 4% damage to around 2/3 of the WoW mob types so that you don't have to wait (pool energy) a calculated 2-3 seconds at most to mutilate again?

Leto simply said he doesn't run the optimal setup because the difference in DPS in negligible when spreadsheeted (personal preference within the margin of error). What you suggest though is far from negligible no matter where you take those two points from.

The idea to Shiv to proc or maintain a DP stack isn't new but when talented that far into Assassiantion the down-time for DP should be very, very low. I would imagine the energy spent isn't worth the very slight increase in uptime. It's simply easier to pool energy until DP is up before Mutilating.

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

 

MissnL1nK

You are misunderstanding everything I said. I clearly put in my above post that Deadly Brew is NOT included in the build which is why I was saying not to put Instant in the OH. I understand the difference is small when not having deadly in the OH I was just saying the risk to me wasn't worth having deadly drop by some chance. But while I do understand that the downtime on Deadly should be low it is still a risk none of the less if you are trying to max your dps output.

But on the other hand if the downtime is low, or possibly never depending on gear, then I am sure his method will prove better.

 

Leto

Just a little support, if you're attacking the target, and deadly drops, you can expect it to be back up in at most 3 or 4 seconds, more often than not much quicker than that.

With reaction time and global cool downs, you probably won't notice and shiv until after 2 or 3 seconds anyway, so you're basically shiving to add 1 more second of deadly up time at best at the expense of a global cool down and ~37 energy. That doesn't seem worth it to me, especially with the extra amount of attention I'd have to pay to it if I was worrying about using shiv.

Rogue at heart.

 

Valustria

I remember a post Aldriana made that calculated how Cat's Swiftness compared to +12 Agility, and the benefit of the run speed was significant enough to make it the better of the two in a vast majority of situations for swords rogues... well, I'm still combat swords, and I was wondering how it stacks up against Icewalker. I hate not having a run speed boost, so if I can't find some other way to get one, I'd be inclined to keep using Cat's Swiftness, but I'd like to know what kind of sacrifice I'd be making if so. Any math on this?

 

Edimus

What are the different spreadsheets that are in development at the moment? I mean which ones can we really rely on for accurate information?

 

ohnoes

I can agree with you on the gear part some what. I've geared up quite nicely this past week and recently spec'd combat fist seeing as how there are not many great swords in the game currently (thaddius sword and the ebon hold revered one, none of both are above 150 dps) and my dps has increased quite a bit for now. So for now I'm aiming on getting the fist off KT which should last me until arena weapons are out.

*edit* actually, i just noticed the deadly swords are only 156 DPS compared to the KT fist thats 171 dps, fist spec going to be the best spec for a while possibly?

 

Octaviann

Wound Poison VII Damage (per attack)= .5*(231+.04*AP)=115.5+.02*AP
0/5 Improved Poisons Instant Poison IX Damage(per attack)= .2*(300+.1*AP)=60+.02*AP
1/5 IP Instant Poison IX Damage= .22*(300+.1*AP)=66+.022*AP
2/5 IP Instant Poison IX Damage= .24*(300+.1*AP)=72+.024*AP
3/5 IP Instant Poison IX Damage= .26*(300+.1*AP)=78+.026*AP
4/5 IP Instant Poison IX Damage= .28*(300+.1*AP)=84+.028*AP
5/5 IP Instant Poison IX Damage= .30*(300+.1*AP)=90+.03*AP

Setting one of the Instant Poison VIII expressions equal to the Wound Poison VII expressions and solving the resulting equation for AP gives the attack power needed for Instant Poison VIII to give equal poison damage per attack to Wound Poison VII. Any attack power above this value favors Instant Poison VIII, except where noted, and any value below this value favors Wound Poison.

0/5 Improved Poisons: No attack power will ever make Instant Poison VIII equal or exceed Wound Poison VII at any gear level; Wound Poison VII is always better without any points in Improved Poisons.
1/5 Improved Poisons: 24750 AP
2/5 Improved Poisons: 10875 AP
3/5 Improved Poisons: 6250 AP
4/5 Improved Poisons: ~3938 AP
5/5 Improved Poisons: 2550 AP

P.S. Something like this should probably be put into the TTT article. I'll post a link to this in the TTT article thread.

 

Kumar

I agree that the lack of a Rogue special when boss is below a certain amount of health is strange.

The one area where Combat suffers and will suffer is whenever the Rogue's health drops below the target's health (as a percentage of the total health) as that removes 20% crit damage from the tree. I haven't run Naxx, so don't know where something like this would be frequent, but there will still be some window of time when your dps will take a hit due to no effect from Prey on the Weak.

 

• Vulajin

The formula is still the same as what Aldriana presented: you use a spreadsheet to figure out the DPS of having Icewalker versus the DPS of having Cat's Swiftness, then input those into the formula and figure out the breakpoint. In general, however, Cat's Swiftness's usefulness is currently reduced for three reasons:

1) Other upgraded enchants have increased benefits compared to their BC versions, unlike Cat's Swiftness.
2) Many raids may contain an Unholy Death Knight, who can provide Unholy Aura for the entire raid, rendering movement speed boosts unnecessary.
3) Many rogues are Mutilate, and have the opportunity to spec into Fleet Footed (which also might not be a worthwhile DPS tradeoff).

The Gear Spreadsheet is permanently discontinued, as far as I know, in favor of RogueCalc. The DPS Spreadsheet was put on hold by Dontmindme due to lack of time, as I recall, and I think he was going to be able to get back to it around December -- but don't quote me on that. The Roguecraft Spreadsheet currently has an unofficially-updated version available by sp00n, and I should be able to release the official update soon, hopefully.

So for now your option is basically Roguecraft or nothing.

 

Frysler

I am quite new to handling EP values so could anyone clarify if the crit, exp, haste and arpen values are for rating or full percent?

 

Darktangent

What I don't understand is why it would make a difference which hand the faster dagger is in, just as long as it has IP on it. For that matter, wouldn't two fast daggers be ideal, what with the increased energy from focused attacks, and the greater opportunity to apply deadly poison?

 

Kjallstrom

Since Instant Poison has a damage range (300-400), is it better to model the break-even point using the minimum damage, or the average damage? The former would guarantee enough AP for every hit to be better with Instant, but the latter would give you the average Instant hit better than the average Wound hit, for less AP. I think at end-game buffed AP it might make 2/5 instead of 3/5 the pivot point?

EDIT: added numbers using the same break-even formula, but assuming 350 average roll for Instant.

Imp.	AP Break
0/5	--
1/5	19250
2/5	7875
3/5	4083
4/5	2188
5/5	1050

 

◊ chalon

Assuming similar DPS, yes two fast daggers is better than one fast, one slow.

The reason you want the faster one to be in the main hand is because you are going to place IP on the faster of your two weapons, and your MH slightly more IP proc opportunities due to finishers.

 

Asmodeu

From what i understand the amount of hit we need is something like pre 3.0, 300-330ish; is that what i should be aiming for?

 

Ashere

No, there is no "aim". You should either make estimates of the gears AEP value or use a spreadsheet to decide which items are best when in doubt.

There are some hitcaps, one for yellow attacks, next one for poisons (the spell-hit cap), last one for white attacks. Upon reaching each hitcap, further +hit will have little or no effect for that attack or effect (except that beyond the spell hitcap you'll still gain more hits, thus more procs, but you won't see any resists anymore anyway)

Effectively, this means the value of +hit diminishes a little upon breaking each cap.

In case you have a spare blue gemsocket and wonder if you have enough +hit and should consider gemming for it: insert an Agi gem anyway.

 

songster

On a 5-man run with a higher level rogue today, I noticed that only one rank of DP can be active on a mob at once. I was using DP VII and he was using DP VIII. As soon as his DP procced, mine dropped off. If his was already up, mine would not apply. Apologies if this is already known, thought it deserved adding to this thread in case anyone else encounters the same issue and wonders what's going on.

This seems to be related to the system where stronger / higher level buffs+debuffs will overwrite weaker / untalented buffs+debuffs. However, you would not predict this to occur for rogue poisons, since each rogue maintains a separate poison stack. Does this tell us anything new about Blizzard's internal debuff handling mechanisms? In particular, could it be that multiple DP stacks on the same mob count as 1 buff for the purpose of the 40-debuff limit?

 

Oscarvil

It's probably an artifact from raiding at 60 when it was optimal for one to use both Deadly rank 4 and 5 (both which were stronger than IP) which was nerfed before the personal poison stacks were implemented.

 

Ratoon

Had the exact same experience during an instance so I sent in a ticket, from what I gathered its not intentional guessing there will be a fix for it in the future.