Would it be correct ito presume that 51/13/7 (with 3/3 Ruth and 2/2 murder and 0/3 TtT) will be superior to the current spec in Ulduar, or would 2/3 Ruth 1/3 TtT be better?

Since we know there are changes coming of which we have not yet been told, it would not be correct to presume anything.

It's important to remember that the spreadsheets available are to be used as a reference/guide to maximizing your dps; they are not rogue-law.

According to Vulajin's spreadsheet I am using a sub-par spec (15/51/5); however, because of how I use my build I am able to pull off Mutilate numbers/percentages. My point is that any of the major specs can be superior, depending on your playstyle; these number junkies do us a great service (for free by the way), but how you use the data is the real reward for their philanthropy.

well said.

Hello all,

I just had a few questions for everyone. First off id like to say thank you for your time and everything. Now ive been playing my rogue again, and i've gotten back into the swing of things full time. My issue is my dps. Ive hashed these forums. Ive read all the literature I can and I am at a loss. Ive played 2 other level 80 dps classes and both I had great success with.

I am very frustrated. My cycle is usually like so. snd @ 2 combo points, mut till 4 combo points-> envenom ( for snd refresher), mutilate to 4 points ->rupture, refresh hunger, repeat. swapping between evis/ rupture every 4 combo points.

Now maybe im not pooling enough energy ? or perhaps pooling to much ( i never go over 100 energy.) Any help would be appreciated .

ps: main hand instant, off hand deadly.

my gear:

The World of Warcraft Armory

Well, armory is broken again, it seems, so I can't see your gear. However, i will offer two bits of advice.

1. Read the SQSA thread. You'll get loads of great info there.

2. Your rotation seems a bit too structured. A Mut cycle is more fluid, and depends on several factors. This is pretty well standard for Mut:
Stack HfB 3 times pre fight
Start off with anything to get 1-3 CPs
SnD
Now your rotation starts
Mut to 4+ CPs
If SnD < 10 seconds, pool and Envenom at ~75-85 energy or when SnD < 3 seconds
If HfB < 10 seconds, pool and refresh at ~75-85 energy
If SnD and HfB are fine and Rupture is down or time left < (90 energy - your energy)/10, pool until Rupture runs out and reapply
If Rupture, HfB and SnD all have plenty of time, pool to ~75-85 energy and then Envenom.

You'll notice when following this that you will frequently do two (maybe even three) Envenoms in between Ruptures. This is normal and will give you significantly better overall dps by maxing out your Rupture ticks/applications, as well as the use of the Envenom buff to poison application. Once you get this cycle down, you can begin trying to time your DP ticks so that you Envenom immediately after a poison tick.

Would Ip/Ip with dual Sinister revenges and envenoming hold any merit. Yes, it seems odd. At every third or fourth combo point using say, a LPC with deadly Poison, shiving on DP. and switching back to you main weapons(GCDs permiting) and envenom to recieve increased Instant poison proc chances.

If would allow the use of Rupture, HFB, and Mutilate glyphs and free up 3 points out of Imp Eviscerate.

Well the droping Eviscerate Glyph is not a huge loss.
As for moving 3 points from Imp Eviscerate back into Ruthlessness, I'm not really for it.
The lack of Ruthlessness stabilizes Mutilate cycles tremendously.

Also weapon swaping is a dps loss due to reseting the swing timer.

Every spec I have seen for IP/IP Evis drops the single point from Ruthlessness, spreadsheet indicates that it would be better to drop the single point from seal fate, is this likely to be a quirk of my particular gear, or am I missing something more fundamental?.

Forgive me if this has been covered:

What is the view on 4 finisher cycles?

I have no hard numbers, but in some of my dummy testing on the PTR it seems as though doing a 4s/5r/4e/4e rotation was netting me about 50-75 more dps than a normal 2/5/4 rotation. i did 2 runs with 2/5/4 to 1 million dmg and then 2 runs with 4/5/4/4 and both 4/5/4/4 runs were slightly better than the 2/5/4 runs.

Has anyone looked into this much? Surely someone has.

Despite the thing that testing cycles on dummies may be a fail (energy and cp generation is affected by your crit and hit, and this is somehow increased in raid environment), with Glyph of Sinister Strike it is quite possible to do even four full 5-points finishers in cycle, but this is risky and you must adapt to RNG to be sure your SnD won't drop.

If you want to make the comparison more accurate, put your gear into spreadsheet, select all your standard raid buffs/debuffs and then change your char's AP items/enchants/gems to +hit and +crit, to make as close hit, crit and exp from spreadsheet as possible. This still won't be 100% accurate, but as long as you're not testing HaT, will do. Numbers will be lower (as you remove many of AP items) than in raid, but CP and energy regeneration will be better and closer to real combat.

I'm not sure however what is better - said 5s/5r/5e/5r, or three finisher Xs/5r/5e. In TBC the shorter rotation was, the better (remember 1s/5r cycle for 2*T4 gear?), but now with glyphs messing around the answer is not that easy.
This is general problem (or fun) with Combat tree this days - with glyphed SS it's much more assassination-like fight, when cycle length may vary quite randomly.

Going off this; if you take 3/3 Ruthlessness out of the typical Mutilate spec, you can put them into Improved Eviscerate. Comparing to the other options, this will net you the highest increase when using the IP/IP/Evis setup. Be warned, however, that this creates a cycle that is much tigher, and getting bad luck with RNG can cause issues with the rotation.

First of all, this is my rogue: The World of Warcraft Armory

I have been a frequent browser of the rogue forums and I've recently become familiar with the spreadsheets to some degree, although I am far from being completely competent with them.

I am just about to start raiding with sèpsis, and i have a few questions that you guys might be able to answer:

1. I have the spreadsheet set up twice, once with the standard buffs for 25 man as given, and another with only my self buffs (being ap food and flask of endless rage(alchemy 450).

I have gone back and forth tweaking buffs/attack sequences to try to figure out where the break-point exists for using a sequence of 3s 5 r (deadly/wound) self buffed VS. 4s 5 r (wound/wound) raid buffed, with my current gear and using 7/51/13 fist/dagger.

On one extreme the former, and the other the latter. I cant seem to narrow down what causes the shift in terms of stat changes.

If I find myself fighting to "prove my dps spot" in a new raiding group, I'd like to be able to spot when I should change sequences/poisons (if possible) from applied group buffs.

----Is anyone familiar with this situation? Could you point me towards what I should be looking for when I receive my group buffs?

2. I have also seen on the spreadsheet where it shows using glyph of blade fury as a +.33 dps increase over using glyph of slice n dice.

-----This may be mathematically correct, but does it work out to be a problem with sustaining cycles in raid?

3. I had originally used my gem slots as a 450 JC to get my hit rating to poison cap and my expertise to just under (.5% off), but according again to the sheet, I was losing a huge amount of dps by not gemming for ap and taking the hit loss.

I changed these over to pure ap ( mixes of ap/hit/expertise/ag were all showing dps losses).

I then read in a few threads where hit on the spreadsheet was being questioned (cant find it again at the moment), but I seemed to be picking up that the cycle interruption caused by missing should be of some concern.

-----I cant say that I fully understood the debate, but I seemed to be under the impression that going back to hit/expertise gems might be the optimal path. Would this be correct in my case at least?

Hit to specials cap and Expertise to cap are of increased importance to Mutilate cycles since refreshing SnD with an Envenom or Eviscerate in the last second of SnDs uptime and then missing the finisher forces you to reapply SnD from scratch thus loosing an entire damagefinisher and possibly even some SnD time.
This is not the case for Combat so the cost here would "just" be to recast the finisher and deal with the annoyance unreliable Finishers in general (ie. having to check if the rupture really landet before spamming some Sinister Strikes).

hi im see all these people saying that ip/ip/evis with improved evis instead of ruthlessness is better than the envenom cycle, so i got a few questions.

1. To get maximum dps with this spec, i would need to start gemming hit until poison hit cap? correct?
2. I armoried quite a few people like neto, aldriana, grunge, etc however they are still specced envenom way. What gives?
3. This spec doesnt work in 5man or 10man where there's only 1 rogue?

Remember in 25 man you usually have a shadow priest or a boomkin, so you only need 210/237 (Draenai/No Draenai in party) hit rating.
But yes, gemming for hit and expertise is a good idea.

I was doing a caster heavy Malygos10 6min, without a hunter or a retribution paladin. So I specced Master Poisoner for the raiddps increase.
As for others, I can't comment for them.

It works if there's a hunter. Although Serpent Sting doesn't have 100% uptime with some specs.

well according to vulajins spreadsheet as IIV I should be somewhere around 5800 dps on an undead target fully buffed.

But I dont ever see it happening, past couple weeks I've been fully buffed

I've only been able to hit 5700 on a murderable target. I really dont see what I could possibly do. And now with this post by a more knowledgeable person of the numbers saying something I was thinking of anyways, I whole heartedly think that was aldriana said is the case.

Unless someone can help me get the numbers the spreadsheet says for IIV, im personally am never speccing it again.

Since the most challenging encounter so far is S3D 10ppl where you may not have a spriest nor a boomkin (especially with physical setup stacking buffs for maximum synergy) I wouldn't recommend leaving hit rating below 315. This can be easily achieved if you just won't shard [Grim Toll] next time it drops and use it occasionally for situations like that one.

I understand the need not to respec all the time, but couldnt' you keep the current integrity of the 51/13/7 (given aldrianas previous post) by moving the 2 points from murder into quick recovery - for NAXX ONLY 25man RAIDS?

I tried the iiv build and one week it was awesome, another - painfully bad. So I can't relish the inconsistency that it might prevail upon me. But I can't shake the waste that murder gives in NAXX (except for two bosses), so I was hoping removing murder points and shuffling them into quick recovery would be of some benefit considering i am not expertised capped. I am at 16 expertise rating (134 expertise). Any thoughts on that?

Well since Grim Toll is BiS, you'd have equipped anyway.
However for cases where you don't have a Draenai/Shadow Priest/Boomkin, having Dawnwalkers and Belt of the Tortured would be useful.
And since rogues don't have much competition on leather anymore, obtaining them wouldn't be that hard.
Especially if you're the min-maxing type who would care about poison caps and such.

Why is Grim Toll going to be BiS in 3.1? :x

Grim Toll has been best in slot for some time due to the overbudgetted nature of its proc. The changes to ArPen in 3.1 could well see it improve even more I believe.