◊ chalon

Your 35 + 60 + 25 calculation is incorrect because it doesn't take into account Relentless Strikes. It's the worst case, but the best case is 10 + 60 + 0, average case is something like 15 + 60 + 5.

In your specific example, if you're at 0 energy and your Rupture has less than 6 seconds remaining you can safely pool without vigor and refresh when Rupture fades. If it's greater than that you can Envenom and wait till the next rotation to Rupture, at worse you lose maybe 1 tick of Rupture, which has barely any effect on your DPS. And best case you actually didn't lose anything.

You're arguing that if you have 6-10 seconds on your Rupture in your example you should pool and wait. That's just pointless though. What do you gain by waiting all that time? If anything you may actually have a lower Envenom uptime as a result.

 

songster

What do you lose though? So long as you don't cap out, you spend the same amount of energy on the same skills, you're just postponing them a few seconds. I take your point that pooling for a long time and then spamming several moves in quick succession may lead to you losing some Envenom uptime. On the other hand, not pooling will affect your Rupture uptime. It's far from clear what the net effect on your DPS would be in either case: almost certainly margin-of-error stuff which will get curbstomped by the inherent RNG aspect of the game.

 

kwinto

I believe that this glyphed Vigor is helpful in two cases:
a) uber skilled rogue can have almost two additional seconds to wait for chance-on-hit proc or to wait for next DP tick before Envenom, or do something else that is equally uber.
b) underskilled rogue has almost two additional seconds to make a decision if they want to Rupture, or to refresh SnD (and if later - if they have enough DP stacks to Envenom or if they better Evis). Or if they should get the frak out of this void zone they're standing in. Without Vigor, rogue has like 3.5 (minus lag) seconds to make Mutilate. Not too much time to check all buffs and debuffs when you're also designated to do something useful.

For those folks glyphed Vigor may be helpful, will it be instead of 1/3 Ruthlessness or 1/5 of Seal Fate or something else.
From the theorycrafting point of view larger energy buffer does not harm DPS in any way as long as you are not locked by GCDs. You still can perform the same amount of Mutilates, Envenoms and everything else, but you have more flexibility when to perform them. And with Overkill and short fights (like trashes) larger buffer is slightly increasing DPS.

I realize that Vigor will become obsoleted in 3.1 and there is no point for TTT article to cover pre-3.1 issues, but I think that since the discussion has taken place anyway, it is good to present all the arguments.

 

◊ chalon

That's sort of my point though. There is no mathematical evidence showing that pooling in the 6-10s case is better than simply performing an Envenom and then Rupturing the next time. And it's not like the case of pooling for 10s is even immune to affect on your Rupture uptime, depending on how the timers line up. You will never have 100% Rupture uptime as Mutilate unless you clip your Ruptures, which we know due to procs may not always be possible (and clipping them is a bad idea anyways).

Vigor gives you a bigger buffer to work with, yes. My point is that the bigger buffer means nothing in the majority of cases. But what does mean something in far more cases is not proccing Ruthlessness. We all know how frustrating it is when you have a bad string of Ruthlessness non-procs, and how your DPS tanks. All you're doing is shooting yourself in the foot by reducing that proc rate by 33%.

So while yes, if you're ignoring Ruthlessness, Vigor vs. no Vigor means nothing. If however you take into account Ruthlessness it's a big deal. With Ruthlessness 3/3, something like 55% of the time you only have to do 1 Mutilate after a finisher. If you're 2/3 Ruthlessness, that number drops to ~35%, which is significant and can't be ignored.

 

songster

What does pooling before a finisher have to do with whether or not Ruthlessness procs? Pooling does not change the number of finishers you do, therefore it will not change the returns from Relentless Strikes, it will not change the return from Ruthlessness, and it has minimal effect on the Rupture / Envenom ratio.

I'm sorry, you are just not making any sense.

 

Ticia

He was talking about the opportunity cost of taking Vigor. Obviously pooling can be done without Vigor, but the only argument that Vigor is at all useful is that it allows you to pool for longer. However, chalon was pointing out that while pooling for a little longer might be a dps gain sometimes, dropping a point in Ruthlessness (in order to take Vigor) will definitely be a dps loss every time.

Also, the fact that there will be 3 strong Mutilate Glyphs in 3.1 means that the discussion should really be between Ruthlessness and non-Glyphed Vigor, since we definitely won't want to give up any of our actual DPS glyphs in order to take 10 extra energy for pooling sometimes.

 

◊ chalon

Right. My point is you can't just look at 100 energy vs. 120 energy in a vacuum and decide that 120 energy gives you more room to pool. Of course it does, but my point is that extra room does pretty much nothing, and losing a point in Ruthlessness does have a non-trivial negative effect on our cycle.

 

Kruk

Discussion is about "Glyphed Vigor + 2/3 Ruthlessness while pooling before finisher" vs "3/3 Ruthlessness no pooling".
It is not pooling which lowers number of finishers. It is 20% less chance finisher will give free combo point that will lead to less finishers and less Relentless Strike procs (less energy).

 

◊ chalon

Just to clarify, I'm not advocating never pooling at all. As I said, I pool to ~50 energy before Envenoming. This both ensures that you get 1 Mutilate in during the Envenom buff and if you're doing back-to-back Envenoms, you won't overlap the Envenom buffs. However, pooling beyond that amount is fairly inconsequential.

 

Fulrem

I actually ran Glyphed Vigor + 2/3 Ruthlessness for quite a long time at the start of this xpac thinking about how pooling could situationally help... But really my envenom uptime was much lower due to the lack of Ruth procs. The moment I dropped Vigor I found my cycles being much smoother & able to squeeze in a LOT more envenoms, even though spreadsheets say it's not much of a dps difference I personally noticed a big difference and it was all from extra poison procs really.

 

macbuz

/sigh .... not sure where to post this. I'm a relatively new rogue and have had a lot of help along the way, so I'm not 'completely' ignorant, but I still have a lot to learn. ..... Okay, I have read through most everything here (many times), I'll try and keep this focused to a couple related questions.

I'm attempting to use the Roguecraft LK 0.4.7 spreadsheet and trying to assimilate the info in the Rogue PVE Guide (even though it's dated, there's still good info there).

In the PVE guide it says:

Rogues with T4 2pc should use 1s/5r or 2s/5r. Rogues without T4 2pc should use 3s/5r, 4s/5r, or 5s/5r. Slight differences in hit rating and off hand speed matter quite a bit for these cycles. In addition, the difference between 3s/5r and 5s/5r depends on whether you use [Ashtongue Talisman of Lethality]. Sinister Strike-based rogues are best suited for the task of keeping Improved Expose Armor up; the cycle to use for this purpose is always 5s/5a.

I don't know how to rate my gear for 'Tier' level.

I don't understand. These rotations - 1s/5r, 2s/5r, 3s/5r, 5s/5r, and 5s/5a are all ss based. The last sentence throws me. I don't know how to keep EA up and Rupture????

To the spreadsheet. I'm not into raiding, not even close. <a href="http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Dragonblight&n=Amaric" target=”_blank”>My Armory</a>. I think my point is trying to understand DPS and optimizing it as I climb the Rogue ladder.

Does the spreadsheet have a use for me? Meaning, can I use parts of the SS and get meaningful DPS info? I have set info in the tabs Talents & Settings, Gear, Buffs (no buffs other than self buffs). The CDs tab and the Cycle settings on the Talents tab throws me. This is somewhat related to my first question relating to the PVE guide above.

I have a gazillion questions, but I'll keep it at this. I re-gemmed last night from lots of +hit to all AP/Agi. My hit is now 287 and AP 3169. I kill lvl 80 mobs in 3-5 seconds and in 5 man's I waste many CPs because mobs often die before I can get my 3 CP used.

Any help with the rotation question and spreadsheet question much appreciated.

 

saedo

That guide is pretty outdated, At least look at the one posted in this section of the forums: http://elitistjerks.com/f78/t37183-pocket_guide_wotlk/

As for the spreadsheet, it doesn't sound like there's too much use for you. Unless you get into raids and have fights that last a decent amount of time. For short fights in 5 mans, mostly SnD asap when you can, Evis otherwise.

If you do get in raids, you can mess around with the cycle settings. It doesn't find what's best for you, just punches out numbers. So by trial and error you gotta see what combo is best. Right now it's mostly likely a 3-5s/5r/5e type of cycle.

 

macbuz

Saedo - thank you. Pretty much what I do, I manage ok - I'll have a look at the pocket guide.