I apologize if this has been covered in the past. I haven't been able to find the answer to this after searching the archives.

I have been experimenting using glyphed Vigor with a standard mutilate build, sacrificing a point from Ruthlessness, to allow better energy pooling without either capping energy or clipping SnD, rupture, or HfB. Also, this allows better use of the envenom buff to allow a couple of mutilates to occur during the envenom buff.

According to the Roguecraft LK 0.4.7 spreadsheet, making this talent switch costs me 0.18% DPS (5651.91 vs 5662.24 DPS). My question is how well does the spreadsheet model energy pooling, especially regarding the additional mutilate during the envenom debuff? This seems a trivial loss in dps for the possibility of more optimal energy usage and potentially more poison damage from 2 mutilates occurring during the envenom buff.

Thanks.

Please explain how Mutilating while Envenom is up is a gain of poison damage? Because I'm not understanding your reasoning.

Mutilate is an instant attack with both weapons, which should proc poisons from each weapon with increased application chance when the envenom buff is up. IE: getting in an extra mutilate during the envenom buff allows 2 additional poison procs during the buff.

(For 5pt envenom, there is a 15% increased chance of procing poisons for 6 seconds following envenom.)

But I think the more important contributor to increasing net dps would be the additional flexibility of waiting longer without capping energy before refreshing SnD/rupture. I just don't know whether or not this is modeled accurately on the spreadsheet.

Ruthlessness' effect on cycle stability really isn't accurately modeled in the spreadsheet. It shows 3/3 vs 0/3 not really being a big difference, when in reality it will substantially alter your cycle.

Also your logic regarding Vigor is a bit flawed -- with Ruthlessness 3/3, about 55% of the time (or a little bit more), you only will have to do 1 Mutilate after an Envenom to be at 4 CPs, in which case pooling extra energy to do a 2nd mutilate is pointless.

You are able to set the minimum energy to pool before doing a finisher in the spreadsheet. Also note that you will not be performing two mutilates in the majority of cases with ruthlessness, as a ruthlessness proc + crit mutilate will put you at 4cp again, in position to pool for another Envenom / Rupture.

I appreciate the responses, guys. Thank you.

I tried changing the energy to pool before a finisher. The DPS value doesn't change regardless of what the energy pooling is set to. It doesn't even look like it's doing any calculations whatsoever when I change the value. I'll look into it some more.

Thanks, Vulajin.

Am I therefore correct in concluding that the effects of glyphed Vigor on optimizing cycle timing is not modeled by the spreadsheet? If so, I think the extra flexibility in refreshing the SnD and rupture timers to allow better use of DP ticks and the envenom buff may more than offset the trivial drop in dps the spreadsheet reports from losing a point in Ruthlessness.

Vigor is modeled, insofar as it allows you to pool more energy, but it has virtually no effect, because even with Vigor, pooling anywhere near 100 energy is a very bad idea (and also highly unnecessary). Ruthlessness has far greater an effect on your cycles, but it's not currently well-modeled by the sheet.

Why is it a very bad idea? If both SnD and rupture have significant time left, what do you lose by pooling more before envenom? This allows more mutilates within the envenom buff (assuming ruthlessness doesn't bring you to 4 CPs with 1 mutilate) and also doesn't waste ticks of SnD or rupture. Furthermore, with the greater reservoir to pool into, there's less chance of having to clip one envenom buff with the next, increasing net poison damage. What am I missing? What is the downside of pooling to approximately 100 energy with glyphed vigor? That still leaves 20 energy buffer for energy replenishment procs without capping.

Glyphing Vigor is stupid and, between latency and reaction time, you will easily have a net energy gain from the time you initiate an Envenom until the time you initiate your next ability, making it highly likely you'll overshoot the energy cap. In either case, in every situation in the past where someone has believed that pooling energy would make a substantial difference to DPS, it has been shown that the difference is minimal at best. It certainly isn't enough of a difference to make it worthwhile to glyph Vigor instead of something else and drop a point of Ruthlessness for Vigor.

One other thing I would note is that for Mutilate there really is no penalty for clipping your SnD. The best rule of thumb for Envenoming in my opinion is pooling to ~50 energy and Envenoming at that point. You should pretty consistently be able to perform 2 Envenoms for every Rupture refresh. If you pool to 100 every time you're going to Envenom, you will reduce your Envenom:Rupture ratio, which in turn would lower your DPS I would think.

It wouldn't.

It would only prevent one envenom buff from overlapping the next envenom buff, and possibly allowing an occasional extra mutilate during an envenom buff.

I would say that pooling to 100 energy instead of 50 would be a net loss of 1-2 Envenoms in an average fight, which while it isn't a huge difference, it does affect the ratio.

As long as you don't allow yourself to cap out on energy, it shouldnt change at all. You still gain the same amount of energy and expend the same amount of energy over the course of a fight.

I did some testing tonight using 2 specs. To control the variables as much as possible, I used no buffs other than poisons and did the test on a lvl83 target dummy.

Each trial lasted 8 min.

Here are the results:

Spec 1: 2/3 Ruthlessness, 1 vigor + vigor glyph

Trial / Total damage / DPS

1 / 1241267 / 2405

2 / 1150947 / 2323

3 / 1230371 / 2483

4 / 1270965 / 2620

5 / 1226475 / 2463

ave / 1224005 / 2459

SD / 44405 / 110

Spec 2: 3/3 Ruthlessness, no vigor

Trial / Total damage / DPS

1 / 1186739 / 2407

2 / 1187496 / 2449

3 / 1205334 / 2438

4 / 1222664 / 2464

ave / 1200558 / 2439

SD / 17059 / 24

Conclusions:
1. There is no significant difference in the DPS with either spec ... at least not any larger than the standard deviations.
2. It was SIGNIFICANTLY easier to maintain cycles without risking dropping HfB, SnD, or rupture using the glyphed vigor spec.

I have no idea whether or not this can be generalized to other gearsets. Here's my armory profile.

The problem with using a training dummy, especially in this case is that your energy generation without any buffs whatsoever is markedly lower than your energy generation in a raid environment. Once you have experience in a raid environment you really are never at risk of dropping HfB/SnD, while still maintaining a high Rupture uptime.

While certainly not every fight is going to have you standing still and fighting one mob, at the same time it's not like there is more than a couple of fights where you consistently are capping your energy. And in 3.1, with there being 2 new and very strong glyphs for Mutilate, I can't see you wanting to spend one on Vigor.

The issue with keeping HfB/SnD/Rupture going -- even on a target dummy -- is not an energy regen issue. I had plenty of energy.

The issue is that without vigor there is a much smaller window of time during which you can wait for the HfB/SnD/Rupture timers to get closer to 0 before popping a finishing move. In addition, having a couple of extra seconds to pool without energy capping allows a greater fraction of your envenoms to be done with full DP stacks. I noticed a significant difference in the number of DP stacks that were present during my envenoms during the experiment. Virtually all of my envenoms using glyphed vigor were with full DP stacks. Without glyphed vigor, I had to envenom more frequently with less than 4 stacks in order to avoid energy capping. This would only get worse in a raid setting when energy regen is faster.

Good point.

Why are you concerned with SnD ticking closer to 0 before refreshing it with Envenom?

By Envenoming more frequently you are increasing the Envenom buff uptime which leads to more IP procs as well as quicker DP stack rebuilds. It has been shown that having a higher Envenom buff uptime leads to higher DPS when compared to waiting for DP stacks to become full. SnD is never something I worry about refreshing using Envenom as the SnD refresh you get for free and clipping it via Envenom incurs no penalty.

Your energy regen is higher in raids but so is your haste, at least if you have WF or Imp. Icy Talons available.
Increased haste leads to faster DP stack building, as does increased levels of spell hit due to +hit buffs from other sources (as long as you are below the spell hit cap otherwise).

The only difference in the number of envenoms between the 2 specs is due to the slight reduction in the procs of extra CP going from 3/3 Ruthlessness to 2/3 ruthlessness. Just waiting longer before applying a particular envenom in and of itself does not decrease the total number of envenoms -- it just allows greater variability in the timing between envenoms.

I found that without the additional flexibility of vigor, I was also being forced to occasionally clip the envenom buff with another envenom, and this certainly wastes DPS by throwing away envenom buffs. Ie, I might have been getting higher envenom buff uptime by having the flexibility to time my envenoms more optimally using vigor.

That's true. Good point. The problem I experienced on a test dummy of envenoming with incomplete DP stacks shouldn't be an issue in a raid setting.

I really don't understand why without glyphed vigor you're at such a risk of capping. If you Envenom at ~50 energy, you are never at risk of overwriting an Envenom buff, and the vast majority of the time when it's time to Envenom you will be at 4 or 5 DP stacks. I don't understand why in the non-Vigor case you want to get to 80-90 energy before doing anything. Being in a state where you're usually at 30-40 energy provides no advantage over a state where you're at 0-10 energy given that more than 55% of the time you will only do 1 Mutilate after a finisher.

Here is another way of looking at why having a larger max energy may help in sustained PVE fights.

For the sake of simplicity, let us define time zero to be an instant in the fight where you have just mutilated and have 4-5 combo points and no energy. Rupture is up on your target but will soon be expiring.

Are there any "dead-times" during which you will be unable to reapply rupture?

Case 1: No vigor, no T7 4-piece bonus

You will be able to rupture as your next move between the time your energy reaches 25 and 90 without capping energy (in reality you'll probably cap even by waiting as late as 80 energy, but let's give you the benefit of the doubt). If instead you envenom because rupture will not expire on your target in this time frame, from time zero you will need to gain at least a total of 35 (envenom) + 60 (mutilate) + 25 (rupture) = 120 energy before you can then rupture. There is no way without capping energy that you can rupture between the time when you have accumulated a total of 90 and 120 energy from time zero. (Obviously, you will never get near 100 at any point because you will be applying your moves in the meantime). If rupture falls off your target during that dead-time period you will not be able to immediately refresh it.

Case 2: Glyphed vigor, no T7 4-piece bonus

As in case 1, you will be able to rupture as your next move as soon as your energy reaches 25 but you will be able to wait as long as it takes to reach 110 energy (again assuming that a 10 energy buffer is enough to avoid capping energy during the subsequent global cooldown). If instead you envenom first because rupture will not expire on your target during this time window, you again will need to have gained at least a total of 120 energy from time zero before you will be able to rupture. In this case, the dead-time during which you will be unable to immediately refresh an expiring rupture is between the time it takes for you to acquire 110 and 120 energy from time zero.

In this example, the dead-time during which a rupture cannot be applied is 3 times longer without vigor than with glyphed vigor. In both cases you will have used the same amount of energy and done the same number and types of moves. The potential difference in dps in this example is the improved rupture uptime that might be possible with vigor.

It should be noted that this example assumes...

1. that you will get to 4-5 combo points with a single mutilate following the envenom (which really only happens about 2/3 of the time).
2. that you can wait longer than you really can to use a finishing move without energy capping. In more realistic scenarios, the max pooling you can probably afford without vigor is probably more like 80 rather than 90 and the max with glyphed vigor is probably more like 100.

Finally, I want to make it clear that I'm not arguing that vigor is definitely better than an extra point in ruthlessness. I'm just presenting the rationale about why it might be of use in a sustained PVE fight. I would love to have someone point out a reference that puts this question to rest. Even though it is something of an academic question with the upcoming 3.1 changes, I think the point that a larger energy pool might be useful in a longer duration fight due to increased cycle flexibility is important to understand.