• Aldriana

In theory, yes; but in practice, it doesn't really work out that way. In reality, balancing all specs in terms of DPS across all levels of gear, skill, and content - farming, raiding, 5mans, 25mans, bosses, trash, and so forth - is not really feasible, as all specs scale differently. Factor in the varying level of utility they provide, and what you find is that in order to make 2 specs truly equally good, they must be identical - and if they're identical, they're not really different specs anymore.

Hence, the best that can be hoped for is a number of specs, each with situational optimality; that is, a spec that's a little better on bosses in terms of DPS but it slightly weaker on trash and has less utility (for instance). Or a spec that's good on stationary fights but weaker on movement fights. Or.... well, you get the idea. And the problem is that getting those tradeoffs balanced to the extent that the theorycrafting community cannot pick out one as being generally superior for the common rogue roles in existing 25 man content proves challenging - and in practice, is unlikely to ever happen. As such, yes, while it's *theoretically* possible to have multiple optima, in practice it never happens. This is what is meant by the assertioon "there will always be an optimal spec". Blizzard may at some point prove us wrong about this, but I personally think it somewhat unlikely.

 

Milbo

So whats the overall sentiment then? Combat is best in mass pull groups of 3 or more, where as assassination is about equal to that with the addition of alot more damage output on bosses & sub is only as good as the players your with in your group? If these assumptions are right, & by all means I could be very wrong, then sub outside of a raid or very crit buffed 5 man or maybe pvp is pretty usless, ie in the case of questing. But its also stated that the Savage Combat is great for a raid, thus making at least one combat rogue a great assset in a raid.
So just assuming that you on a raid boss, assassination is going to blow out a combat rogue in damage but overall dps from the raid would be increased from the combat rogue. thus stated both trees have a benifit. the question at the moment is then, are you willing to do a bit less dps to benifit the raid or do you do more damage to make your meter look better? Both sides have valid points here & I think that in their own ways with all things as equal as possible (ie gear, buffs etc) both specs are optimal for a raid situation.

 

Aarcani

sub is fine in solo play, you just use it differently than you would in a raid setting, but then, who cares about solo. When I was hat, I would respec on non raid nights to combat or mut, I actually found farming to be faster when I stayed hat, at least when killing single targets.

For the rest, it depends on the raid. You should have the 2% vulnerability debuff. If you have an arms warrior then the rogues can all play mut, if not, then one should go combat.

I'm not sure which class takes the larger personal dps hit when speccing for 2% vulnerability.

 

Razzerian

Well I wonder what they're aiming for with the announced "Combat buff" they stated in some blue post.
I'm curious and hope it'll come before Ulduar.

 

Krollin

On low count trash pulls Combat is better on both counts, either using FoK or AR/BF while single target DPSing.

On high count trash pulls, similar to those in Spider Wing Naxx, Mutilate FoK DPS outshines everything except a Combat Rogue blowing AR/BF.

The reason for this is three fold [warning, is based on anecdotal evidence gathered whilst raiding].

- Overkill. While this does not scale it lowers the amount of energy required for the initial FoK spam, effectively increasing the effectiveness of Focussed Attacks.

- Focussed Attacks generates more energy the higher the number of targets are hit on one FoK. Combat Rogues get no energy regen scaling like this because Combat Potency does not regen from FoK alone.

- Instant Poison can be used on both weapons and procs off both weapons from FoK.
The effect of scaling due to number of targets hit should be obvious.
Slow weapons are the best for FoK spam, the damage is not normalised: even if you are Mutilate Fist weapons will be better if you have good ones available.

The scaling due to numbers is even more dramatic when you have large numbers of low health mobs, the small spider packs or the murderable packs just before Faerlina.


Saying that one build or the other is better at FoKking is nowhere near as clear cut as some people seem to be saying here. It is totally situational which build does the best DPS on AoE trash, I have pointed out the situation where Mutilate theoretically performs better. On the other hand it is clear where Combat FoKkers should perform better.

So the answer to the question: which build is best suited for FoK spam? is: over the long term, neither build.

 

hawtdawg

It's probably mentioned somewhere that I haven't come across, but as far as combat setups go, my sheet is showing that a 2/5/4 rotation with dual wp is the absolute best setup for my gear. I hear people talk about 3/5/5 most of the time, but its slightly less dps for me. Is there reasoning beyond what the spreadsheet takes into account that i should stick to 3/5/5?

 

Demi9OD

In practice your rotation is never static, 3pt SnD leaves a buffer if you are unlucky with SS crits and ruth procs.

 

Pinch

Dual WD was already BiS pre 3.0.9. Yes, fast is better.

 

Kaidagar

There is still some debate regarding what was best (SR/WD or double WD) and the only reason that SR was on the list is because it's an entire tier above all other daggers in terms of itemisation and no other slow dagger is going to compete. I don't think the dust has settled on testing with the new haste changes as of yet.

 

KasumiRevy

I was one of those rogues on the fence, but with the change, I just went back to double WD. My thinking is with the mutilate nerf, and the hfb/snd buff. You're going to see more poison procs which hfb buffs so this in my mind just pushes us even farther in the direction where faster is better.

 

saedo

It has settled. People are slow to change to newer ideas. WD/WD was already BiS, though not by much, and with newer DP models the gap got increased. This new SnD only helps widen the gap again. So now as an OH, it's WD->Murder->SR. With WD of course BiS MH.

 

Terenus

No. I have two Webbed Deaths and a Sinister Revenge. I gain about 100 dps on combat dummy tests from using WD MH SR OH over double WD. The white damage increase is enough to counterbalance the quicker stacking DP. I nearly always have 5 stacks of DP when I envenom anyways, the poison damage I'd gain from a second webbed death is negligible.

 

Tinwhisker

Target Dummies do not approximate a raid environment. At best they are useful for testing specific properties of mechanics or abilities.

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

 

MentalPROblem

I believe he means using another specc (this: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
With double IP and use Evisc instead of envenom as a finisher, glyphing as rupture/evisc/snd and using 4e/4r cycle)
Not deadly + instant poiosn (the old one)

 

Kaidagar

I've seen this spec and rotation crop up a few times now over the last few days, but with the recent SnD changes entered into the roguecraft spreadsheet and this spec/rotation I actually take a 0.91% dps loss, I'm not sure this is the new way to play mutilate.

 

zidaen

Your dummy test matches my spreadsheet exactly for that model. WD/SR is about 100 dps more than WD/WD. Though in a raid situation 100dps could be anything.

 

MentalPROblem

Well, here are my researches in case this might be helpful:
1.51/13/07 spec
Mutilate is the combo point builder
4e/4r(CttC) rotation
WD/WD weapons
IP/IP poisons
Rup/SnD/Evi Glyphs
2.18/51/2 spec
Shiv combo point builder
4s/5r/5Evi rotation
WD/Hailstorm weapons
WP/IP poisons
Rup/SnD/Evi Glyphs
3.51/13/07 spec
Mutilate is the combo point builder
4e/4r(CttC) rotation
WD/SR weapons
IP/DP poisons
Rup/SnD Glyphs
4.15/51/5 specc
Sinister Strike combo point builder
3s/5r/5Evi rotation
CG/WD weapons
WP/WP poisons
SS,SnD,Evi glyphs
All the above numbers were taken from the Vulajin's Spreadsheet.
Note that I've been using slightly different gear choice for combat/mutilate (for example: Thrusting Bands for Mutilate but Sinner's Bindings for combat etc.) because you seem to be over expertise cap when you equip best gear possible with 0 expertise gems with 2/2 Weapon Expertise talents when you go combat.
Hope this helped and... doesn't it mean that there are in fact no debates going on whatsoever onto what specc is currently best? It's Mutilate ain't it?

 

Danzir

Hey. Are we assuming a warrior sundering for this build, to generate these numbers?

 

MentalPROblem

Hey, Yes, we are, for all of those setups.

 

Temptress

If every fight were Patchwerk, you'd have a point but even then, HAT's still the "best" DPS spec with the right raid grouping.

If you look at Ippon's T7 DPS records thread...

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> T7 Personal DPS Records (3.0.9)

.. you'll see a fair mix of Combat, Mutilate and HAT with the top DPS spots dominated by HAT in stacked groups.

As parse lengths have decreased, Combat has improved its showings. Many of the Naxx encounters like Anub tend to favor Combat builds due to Crypt grouping & BF + KSpree... not to mention AR + FoK. Then again, there are a number of Boss + add fights that lend themselves to Combat's strengths as well. So this seems to be a bit more dynamic than, standing still and beating on a boss for 2+ minutes to see which is the "better" spec.

In the end, they're all viable when played well.

 

Grunge

Great Post, Temptress, however what's your equipped gear? I get 5544,59 with my current gear (Far from BiS, Double Murder, etc).
After playing around a bit I managed to reach was 5754,12 on a non-murderable mob. Which is 6124,55 on murderable.

Which I guess is surprisingly good.
I also tried double IP+Evisc in Naxx10 today, and it felt better (another rogue and a hunter providing poison).

I'll definitely try it in 25'man this coming week.

Fans glory to the Gladiators,
Gods glory to the Heroes.

 

Jarathag

So, Do yall think that in 3.1, the "general" rogue PvE spec will go back to Combat? If so, will it be combat sword or maces? I have been told for the sword proc to be anywhere near effective, you need at least 500 hit, I could be wrong though. I'm very sorry if this was already discussed, I tried skimming threw everything to see if it was. But, I would love to hear everyone's comments and thoughts.

 

• Aldriana

Given that we don't have patch notes for 3.1 yet, there's no possibly way to answer that question. Though at the moment there's no conceivable reason you'd ever want 500 hit rating, so I'm not sure where you're getting that.

 

Maweric

Well according to pre information on Ulduar it seems many bosses will be Giants (murderable) which should put mutilate build way ahead others (800dps ahead on my gear)...but 4% savage combat puts 1 combat rogue in raid still needed

 

Simalo

It is hard to tell at this point. With the buffs to combat, and the fact that murder will apply in Ulduar, I think Blizzard is trying to balance all specs across the board. That leaves it to, what weapons you have, and what spec you really feel comfortable playing with.