This thread is not intended as a place for you to ask any sort of advice about playing your rogue. That advice can be found in the Rogue: PvE DPS article itself, or by seeking it in the Rogue: Simple Questions thread. Posts asking for advice in this thread will be reported.

Since we have this nice new forum all to ourselves, I think that a thread specifically pertaining to the Rogue: PvE DPS article in the Theorycrafting Think Tank is appropriate. Basically, I intend for this thread to contain any discussion regarding the article, including comments on its accuracy/completeness/comprehensiveness, suggestions for its improvement in any fashion, or provision of new data and/or analysis which might alter the landscape on which some of the article's conclusions are based.

To start with, the article is obviously out of date, as its most recent revision is from before patch 3.0. We are now about to enter the realm of Wrath of the Lich King raiding. I'm working on the updated version as we speak, but to start this thread off, I'd like to see some discussion on the current version of the article:

- What parts of it are too wordy? What parts of it are not fleshed out enough?
- What kinds of questions does it not answer? What kinds of questions are answered only obliquely, without enough supporting detail?
- What parts of it are obsolete due to changes in the expansion? What parts of it were simply never necessary?

I'm counting on some help here to make sure this article achieves its stated purpose, which is to help all rogues achieve the level of knowledge necessary to reach 100% of their theoretical DPS level.

A reference to or (updated) copy of the 1-roll / 2-roll explanation from Melee Combat Mechanics would be welcome, since this especially applies to rogues, and it has come up a few times during the past year.

I liked the EP weights part for the various tiers, since they gave good rough estimates, but always felt that the trinket section was maybe a little overdone. I'd rather see people use the spreadsheets for that sort of information, while maybe have a locked sticky for best-in-slot comparisons in case the spreadsheets have trouble modeling specific items.

Obviously, we'll want some extra paragraph about glyphs. For Combat builds, the choice is obvious. Muti has a little more freedom perhaps, since there's no muti glyph.

I'd personally stay away from any sub or hemo builds untill more data is gathered from doing lots and lots of raids of various difficulties. It's probably sub-par (no pun), and it definitely needs some work from Blizz's side, but as long as it's hard to model, it's also hard to make any definite guidelines for those who want to try.

I would also say that for now, the sublety builds listed on shadowpanther (emphasizing HaT and a crit heavy group) would not be good for players learning new content, as the sustained dps of that spec drops dramatically when you lose a group member. Considering not all of us are fully sunwell geared and will be able to clear these entry level instances as easilly as sk/nil, we should probably stick to combat or mutilate.

A brief section on PVE rogue specific Addons and Macros might be nice. With the addition of at least three new abilities on our bars consolidating some of them into said macros would be a welcome trick to learn for new rogues. Also, the information on Envenom vs. Eviscerate and the explanation of when to use Expose Armor are not supported in detail.

Adding spell hit caps and an explanation on why they were added might be obligatory now.

I'm also missing the EP Part, because i got little time at the moment, browsing through all the available new loot.

As for macros the only one i have got is
of course you might also use targetoftarget so you don't have to rewrite it with a new tank. But since it its that way you can easily help the tank to build up some AoE threat by macro+Fan of Knives plus pull some mobs for him and of the healing classes

Using focus for this works well if you're not using your focus for anything.

*point at tank* (presumably the start of every run)
/setfocus

then:
/cast [target:focus] Tricks of the Trade

Saves you losing any white dmg while off-target

On beta, I was trying to optimize Tricks without needing to constantly rely on changing my focus. What that ended up with is me having 3 versions of Tricks on my hotbars: one with focus as the target, one with the other rogue as the target (always), and one without a specified target (for switching threat on the fly).

Is there any way we can macro that into one thing? Tricks is easily one of nicest new... er, toys to play with. But having to devote three hotbar spots to it was uncool.
Can we use two conditionals at the same time? Using a [modifier:shift] to go to the [target=focus], with the else going to [target=OtherRogueNameHere]? I'm not that fluent with the macros, though I'm passable, and I just don't know what we can or cannot do now. My main goal is to simplify Tricks for future use. :/

Ofcourse you could always use a mouseover macro. This might however be worth for discussion in another topic. I just mentioned it as a suggestion for the TTT Article. Let's get back on that.

using focus is some good input, thx

Anybody checked out which cycle is the best for Combat atm? Got Anarchy last night but missing a good OH. Currently I'm thinking about doing 5s5r5e with impr. Evi because I hate all the filler points needed to go to serrated blades

BTT: try collecting all new information in one (the first) post would be really nice, speaking of ratings, caps, Cycles, Gemming etc

I did something similar with my hunter, basically using MD/TotT on my focus but resetting my focus depending on the way the button was hit. Since TotT has the buff attached to it, this will need to be changed but it should basically be used like this (done from memory):

Right-clicking resets focus to a new target (either the tank or someone you have targetted). Hitting the button normally uses TotT on your focus, or if you have no focus set, the tank.

You can edit this to use either shift/mouseover or something else to reset focus depending on your playstyle. I used right-click on my hunter because as BM there wasn't a lot else going on in TBC.

First post to comment on that, edit for my suggestions:

Avoiding Death, WotLK fights are more movement and death dodging than most people may be used to. This could probably be expanded to talk more specifically about how to do this (siting specific fights and mechanics as examples).

The thistle tea paragraph can probably be dropped, at 20 energy gained at level 80 it's practically worthless.

Since poisons figure much more heavily now, a poison selection section should be included with the builds. I'm specifically talking about combat builds which may go DP/WP or WP/WP depending on the fight and the pros/cons associated with it. (Resetting/dropping of the blood poisoning debuff, etc.)

As has already been said, there's a lot of emphasis on trinkets in the old article, this is probably unnecessary and misleading. Trinkets are important but not so much as implied there.

Perhaps a section on professions is needed as well; pros and cons of each. This may or may not be part of PvE DPS directly but with profession specific enchants now available to all this affects PvE DPS as much as normal enchants.

A section on race abilities might also be useful, especially to help people select race for a new rogue (though that probably happens less now). Some of them are basically like using trinkets, but others require a bit more finesse.

For example, night elves can now use Shadowmeld to get more returns from Overkill (you can Shadowmeld->Stealth->Mutilate for cheap) in a Mutilate build. Which is awesome since previously the NE racials always sucked for PvE rogues.

Approximate EP ratings of the different professions might be a useful feature. E.g. BoP LW bracer patch, Alcemy bonus from pots/flasks

In my understanding (and experience), rogue dps, like most other classes, is moving away from a static cycle model and more towards a priority queue, based on a variety of factors: obviously things like gear, build and glyph selection, but also things like set bonuses, trinkets, positioning, mobility requirements, and buffs. I think the thinktank could greatly benefit from further exploration of this.

Well, now that Blizzard has said that the bosses will have 10% more armor, and thus eliminating combat as top DPS, being replaced by Mutilate. I was thinking it should include a mutilate build along with a combat build section. As well as alternate rotations regarding each's 51 point talent which are toss-up's on whether they are truly worth that one talent point.

I'd like to see a glyph guide, by spec. For the most part, it's fairly clear when you'd use a given glyph, since they tend to be tied to particular abilities, or have an effect that only applies in certain contexts... but since you can only choose 3, I have a hard time ranking them right now without more information.

As far as tricks of the trade macros, the best one combines most of what's been mentioned:

/cast [help] [target=focus, help] [target=targettarget, help] Tricks of the Trade

This should (if it works correctly) cast ToT on your current target if it's friendly, on your focus if your current target isn't friendly and your focus is friendly, and finally on whoever's currently targeted by whatever you're attacking (i.e, the tank, or you if you're soloing).

You need Sons of Hodir Exalted for the shoulder enchants, and Knights of the Ebon Blade Revered for the Helm enchant. In terms of other reps: if you're going straight into 25-man raiding, there's not a lot of need to worry about the others - nothing from them will last very long. But if you're going to be doing heroics or 10-mans for a while, there are a few more items worth keeping in mind, such as:

Darkheart Chestguard - Knights of the Ebon Blade, Exalted
Dragonfriend Bracers - Wyrmrest Accord, Exalted
Mind-Expanding Leggings - Kirin Tor, Revered
Boots of the Neverending Path - Argent Crusade, Exalted
Lightblade Rivener - Kirin Tor, Honored

All of these have reasonable alternatives from heroics or badges, but they are certainly things you might consider wearing in a pre-raid setting.

For lockpicking, a list of densely populated humanoids might be useful as well, for leveling off junkboxes.

I levelled lockpicking without a second thought just by pickpocketing quest mobs as I levelled. It's really, really, really, really easy.

To Add to this:

[Fang of Truth] - Wyrmrest Accord Honored
[Reaper of Dark Souls] - Knights of the Ebon Blade, Revered.

Good swords to start raiding with.

The lockboxes in Zangarmash still skill you up. I did that to 375 and now just easily leveling off people's froststeel boxes.

1) Lockpicking is easy to level, and
2) It's not really endgame content of interest to these forums, so
3) Please do us all a favor and stop talking about it.

Thanks.