Correct me if I'm wrong but as far as I remember, Cold Blood (buff) doesn't disappear after Garrote/Rupture like it does after Mutilate, Evis or Envenom. So until there are some hidden changes, it won't disappear in 3.1. I don't think that having or not particular item worn would change it.

I'm also levelling a Rogue who had been shelved for a while, currently Combat Swords (still using S1). I have found the advice given above to largely fit with what I have been finding. Stealth at the last possible second on approach, but go into it with more of a melee DPS mentality than a 'stealth around obstacles' one. I'll skip clusters I don't want to deal with but I largely wade in and hit stuff.

I do have a related question: I am considering making a change to my build to drop some DPS talents to add back in a bit of survivability. At the moment I'm looking at dropping the 3 points I have in Ruthlessness to pick back up Deflection and Riposte. More parries plus an additional counterattack that disarms. My hope is that it will add to survivability and allow less downtime between larger fights or multiple mobs. What is the general take on something like Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft with one floater point available as purely a solo leveling/questing build?

This is my first post here on EJ... so hello everyone!

I do apologize if this question has been asked before in the spreadsheet thread. I tried a couple searches, and skimmed as much of the 64 pages as I could... but did not find what I was looking for.

My raid lead has asked the class leads to put numbers behind evaluations of our raiders. To do that, I've been using Vulajin's spreadsheet (v0.4.7) for dps calculations for both myself and the rogues in my guild. Obviously, the spreadsheet is a "perfect world" calculation, and some percentage of deviation is expected. My question is what percentage would be considered good?

All of us run between -5.4% and -6.8% of the sheet's estimations on the basic 25 man Patchwerk fight. To put real numbers behind that... the sheet says I should be around 5200dps, but I'm consistently coming in 4900dps.

Granted... using Patch as a test of "is this person a good raider" isn't the best example. But what I'm looking for here is simply a way to measure how well someone understands and puts to use the basic mechanics of the class. I'm thinking anything within 10% could be considered decent and a good sign the player knows how to use the class to put out the damage expected given their gear and buffs.

I appreciate any and all responses. Thank you.

The spreadsheet , is accurate most of the times... I'd say + or - 1% ...

You have to check your raid buffs and the fight duration between your WMO or WWS and the fight duration set in the spreadsheet ( a short figth means more dps)

Given how much difference buffs from other players and precise timing on trinket/skill usage (e.g. using Cold Blood on a 5 point Envenom is going to be more dps than using it on a Mutilate), a difference that small is really to be expected in a real fight. It's just that difficult to have every buff up 100% of the time and to time everything perfectly. The spreadsheet gives you a goal. It does not tell you where you can expect to be all of the time. Even the best players will have a very hard time approaching the theoretical max dps. And if a particular raider is outside your proposed 10% threshold, look at why that is before you decide they need to improve. Perhaps they're doing something else that is necessary for the raid as a whole to do well. Perhaps they are assigned to apply Expose Armor, which will certainly drop their dps, while helping to improve everyone else's.

Can this build still do good dps?

The next victum of rng. Of course it is best to envenom just right the dp tick, but it is not a 500dps difference, but a mere 60 or something, so in order to practically see it you have to perform tests with length of days in order to minimize the rng effect. Just accept it as a fact

When the DP happened about 1 second ago is it smart to envenom or wait for the next tick. If so at what point does it become smart to envenom immediately.

DP ticks every 3 seconds. Say you have 5 stacks that will tick in 1 second. If you envenom 1 second earlier you are left with 0 poisons, so you lost that mad tick. If you wait for the tick to happen, then envenom 0.5 second later, you will have the 5 stacks rebuilded before the next tick time, effectively losing no DP damage

Would Greater Assault (32ap) be better for boots than Ice Walker after reaching the poisons cap?

This depends upon several important factors. Combat daggers hasn't really been competitive since the end of AQ40 days. So when you say "still do good dps". I'm hoping that you're referring to the old days.

Try a simpler solution. Grab a spreadsheet. Put in the build you'd like. Put in a standard combat swords/maces or a mutilate build. Look at the results.

Determine whether or not the dps that combat daggers puts out is sufficient to not be laughed at in a raid.

tl;dr: No

Have found the advice very useful, just a quick thank you.

I'm mostly just an observer who likes to know how everything works (though I do have a rogue alt), but I was wondering if it's easy to sum up what changed from BC to LK to devalue hit so much. The old EPs were in the 2.4-2.5 range, and now hit's down in the 1.4-1.7 range below agi even before the first hit threshold is broken.

I've noticed that white damage is only ~50% of rogue dps instead of the ~70% that it was at the end of BC, but isn't that a self-fulfilling thing where fully capping hit is what produced that distribution in the first place? I'm just curious which mechanics are the real source of the change. Poison scaling? Regen talents? It seems like Potency should still favor a lot of hit for a Combat spec, so I'm especially curious why that isn't even the case.

(Sorry if it's been discussed. I saw the new EP tables but couldn't find the discussion behind them. I can use the spreadsheet but that will mostly just show me that they're correct, not why they're correct.)

Windfury. In BC hit scaled twice because of it - once for the weapon to hit at all and 2nd time - the windfury proc chance to hit. In LK windfury got converted to just haste buff

For a lengthier discourse on the differences, see this post.

Based on your current Armory, I would recommend you stick with Icewalker - but that's just at a glance. But to be absolutely certain, hit the spreadsheet and compare the two.

SR is terrible for combat OH.

In what case would 7/51/13 be better than 15/51/5? The spreadsheet shows them very close for me but I'm wondering if there is a particular raid makeup that would allow 7/51/13 to exceed 15/51/5.

<facepalm> Of course it doesn't - because they don't crit.

You mean like the highly non-hidden change that Rupture will crit when you have the Tier bonus?

What you think is irrelevant - the question is anyone knows or whether it's been tested.

If you're only comparing FoK for those two weapons then SR would be yes superior, but ideally you'd be swapping them, for FoK: SR, for single-target dps: WD.

However if you're already swapping weapons for FoK, then you're much better off with a Angry Dread, Silent Crusader or The Stray (5% extra crit and a slower speed most likely outweighs the stat bonuses) due to the PPM Poisons procing more on a slow weapon.

If I remember correctly then 7/51/13 is only superior to 15/51/5 at a low gear-level, at Valorous-BiS level 15/51/5 should be superior to 7/51/13 in every case.
You can emulate this through enabling/disabling various buffs and debuffs in the spreadsheet. I'm sure at some point 7/51/13 might be superior (No Battleshout/Might perhaps).

In the "3.1 preview"-thread we have established that the 18/51/2 is the best combatspec if you have BiS gear, but its very close followed buy 15/51/5, but the later one seems to be prefered buy many due to it being more forgiving and not needing to keep as tight rotations.

Anyway, this leaves me as a total questionmark when it comes to Glyphs! SnD and SS glyphs seems to be a wise choice in my oppinion, but what to put in the 3rd slot? Killing Spree? Arush? Or use both of those and drop SnD or SS glyphs?

I read all forums on this page daily and even did a search for the this question so please forgive me if it has been addressed.

I understand that Expertise plays a vital role in standard mutilate build however I would like to "challenge" the need to place it above everything else. I am currently capped at 26 expertise and through the past week of watching WWS i have noticed a fellow HAT rogue who recently switched to MUT coming close to my DPS. His exp is only 13 and uses AP food. This now leads me to belive that I am wasting gem slots on EXP to reach cap for no reason when i could in fact replace them with 16AGI and replace my Prismatic 27EXP with 27AGI.

At first i was going to chop it up to a RNG factor and he was getting lucky but how can it consistantly be happening? I am still 50-120 DPS higher but i can't explain why something so vital as exp really is not making that much of a differense. My general idea is my DPS would go up if i dropped my EXP gems and replaced with agi (and still have higher exp than him). I would like to use the spreadsheet but my fear is the sheet is hardcoded that EXP will always trump anything else and yield less DPS.