Leto

With my gear at least, raid buffed, I have almost a 90% chance to get 3 cp from mutilate. I don't consider a 10% chance very risky, and for me, starting my full cycle sooner is definitely worth the risk.

The lost rupture dmg would likely be greater than the dmg gained by garroting and the mutilate dmg (including poison procs, etc).

Rogue at heart.

 

Xerop

One thing I observed when people model mutilate cycles... Nobody seems to take into account Ruthlessness. I for one have some cycle issues with it, since it seems to overflow me on CPs sometimes... for instance:

Mutix2-->4-5SnD( 90% 5cp)-->Ruthlessness( 60%)-->Mutilate-->4Cp( if ruthlessness proced) Rupture-->Mutilate-->4cp Envenom
And here is where issues start, I have too much duration on slice, and basically i gotta "waste" one finisher instead of 2 mutilates.

 

saedo

What's the waste? You envenom regardless of SnD time left.

 

koaschten

Did you consider just forcing the 3CP Mutilate by using Cold Blood?

 

Rilias

Or saving the start if you do not crit by just going for envenom first. Nonlinear decisionmaking is kind of the core of the spec.

 

Xerop

The waste is that by following that cycle I think you cut your Deadly poison dps by huge amounts, you don't bring any extra damage, since you didn't do 2 mutilates, and you made up for that with 1 extra 4-5cp envenom..

 

songster

Your argument only holds true if you ignore the fact that 2 mutilates cost 120 energy between them, while the Envenom only costs 10 energy (due to Relentless Strikes). Since the limiting factor on our yellow damage is our energy income, then the factor you need to look at is damage per energy. A 4-5cp Envenom is MASSIVELY more damage per energy than any number of Mutilates.

 

Hillz

I just recently hit 80 and my guild is currently starting naxx 25. I am some what new to rogues and am curious if you should stack for expertise and about how much you need for naxx.

 

Tinwhisker

There is no "how much do I need".

Read the first post in this thread carefully and pay attention to all of it, use Vulajin's spreadsheet to help guide you through gear selection, be careful and mindful with your rotations (which are now dynamic, not static), and with some practice you'll do fine.

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

 

Leto

Using cold blood to increase your crit chance by 10-20% on a mutilate seems a lot less efficient than using it to increase the crit chance by 50-60% on an envenom, especially since crit envenoms do more dmg than crit mutilates.

Rogue at heart.

 

Bliksem

You should always use your CB on mutilates as opposed to envenoms in my opinion. You are not taking into consideration the energy gains from focused attacks. You will gain twice as much energy from guaranteed muti crits than a guaranteed envenom crit.

 

• Neto-

Well... I'd argue with that. With 60% mutilate crit (pretty low), there's a 84% chance that you crit with at least one hand. So, using CB will only actually double (more than that with modifiers, but for the sake of simplifying) your Mutilate damage only 16% of the time (meaning if your mutilate would have crit with at least one hand, so it would do double damage with one hand, and same damage with the other, totaling 1.5x damage), whereas it will double your Envenom damage 55% of the time.

2 energy is hardly worth the damage loss, as gaining 2 extra energy on a 2minute cooldown is only a 0.016 energy per second gain.

 

drumbum

Crit factor is far from being something that can be ignored for this calculation. Envenom has a 2.06 crit factor and Mutilate has a 2.38 crit factor.

Also, it's not fair to only look at when Mutilate is changed from a double hit to a double crit. CB also changes 1 hit + 1 crit into double crit, which has about a 48% chance of happening in your example scenario.

I still think Envenom is probably better overall, especially considering its damage is not mitigated by armor, but you'd have to consider everything to be certain.

 

• Feist-Mok

There's also something to be said for coldbloods ability to guarantee a 5 point finisher immediately following - use it after Ruthlessness fails to proc and you can guarantee yourself the chance to follow up with a 5 point finisher, which has some value in terms of cycle stability (since a 5 pt finisher is a guaranteed RS proc, which is handy if you're going to be cutting it close on HFB), as well as some small DPS value.

 

• Neto-

Yeah, I just used a simplified way to explain it and said it could turn a 1.5 into a 2.0, which was admittedly not the best approach. Let me go over this again:

Assuming equal weapons (such as two Webbed Deaths) and 60% mutilate crit, you will have 24% chance to crit with each hand (48%), 36% chance to crit with both hands, and 16% to not crit.

36% of the time, Cold Blood will do absolutely nothing. 24% of the time, it will make your MH crit, and the other 24% of the time, it will make your OH crit, and the other 16% of the time, it will make both crit. So, you have a 16% chance to effectively increase your total Mutilate damage by 2.38, 48% chance to make one of your hands hit for 2.38 damage and the other will just hit, and 36% chance that your Cold Blood would do absolutely nothing.

So, 48% of the time your Cold Blood will make one of your hands crit for 2.38x and thus result in a double crit, which would be an increase of 0.69 total crit damage, and 36% of the time it will increase your Mutilate damage by 0, and 16% of the time it will increase your crit damage by 1.38. This is, averaged, an increase of 0.552 Mutilate damage.

With Envenom, you would have 55% chance to increase the crit damage by 1.03, and 45% chance of doing nothing. This is, averaged, 0.566 increase in Envenom damage.

Of course, this would be meaningless if Mutilate did enough damage to overweight that difference, but it does not, specially if you account for Envenom's armor ignore and raid debuffs such as Ebon Plaguebringer.

Edit: forgot about offhand penalty... it would just favor Envenom even more, though.

 

Bliksem

Well Neto, you've made a believer out of me. 5 point CB envenoms it is.

 

Furu

I have a question about the Master Poisoner talent. I am using the 51/13/7 spec with Turn the Tables because to my knowledge the effect of Master Poisoner does not stack with Totem of Wrath or Heart of the Crusader.

But now I read this comment on wowhead by mekrith:

Master Poisoner - Spell - World of Warcraft

I haven't seen anything about this on EJ or anywhere else. So I just want to ask if anyone has more information about this?

 

Tinwhisker

This was an old bug that was fixed a while ago.

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

 

Farodsbro

First of all, I want to say great work to everyone who has worked on the rogue forums as it truly is a fantastic source of information for rogues like myself.

Secondly, this is my first post here so be easy on me if I say anything stupid.

My question here involves when to use envenom. I am currently running the 51/13/7 standard mutilate build with a rotation similar to the one stated in the pocket guide, ruptures when possible and envenoms to refresh SnD, because that's what my testing showed as the most dps.

The question is, say I reach 5 combo points. My target already has a rupture on it, so it would not make sense to recast rupture. SnD has enough time on it for me to pool energy before evenoming. Is it correct to cast envenom immediately or to pool as much energy as possible before envenoming?

The question seems easy, pooling energy takes advantage of previous SnD time, gives me more energy for the next rotation, and probably gets another tick out of my deadly poison. But say I pool energy and evenom. Now my energy is maxed out because of ruthlessness and I have another choice. Do I cast mutilate immediately and lose the 50% damage from the lack of a deadly poison on my target because I just envenomed, or do I wait for a DP to proc and then cast mutilate, resulting in a damage increase but causing me to waste energy waiting for DP because I am at 100 energy.

So the question finally boils down to what is more important, the energy that is pooled from the envenom, the 50% mutilate damage, or the energy wasted waiting for DP to go up? Keep in mind - the situation only applies to 5 combo point envenoms in my mind, as a 4 combo point envenom would leave a DP on your target and the correct choice would seem to be pool energy, envenom, mutilate.

It seems like a valid question to me, and while it focuses heavily on playing rather than gear, I'm sure the geniuses at EJ will have a good answer. Keep up the good work and thanks for all the fantastic data and information.

 

Brotherbear

This honestly could have gone in the simple questions thread, being what it's for. That being said I'm bored at work so I'll answer it anyway. The correct decision is very situational. On a static fight such as patchwerk you will want to pool energy and then risk capping. If you want to wait for a DP stack, then this is an oppurtune time to refresh HfB. On more mobile fights where you run the risk of being out of contact long enough for SnD to drop, refresh it immediately assuming that you can predict that you will get back in range under SnD.

Also to be completely honest, if you can track your HfB, SnD, Rupture, Positioning, Energy pool, and current DP stacks all at the same time without dying to environmental effects (or capping out energy while checking them), then you're a better rogue than I am. Me, I just Mutilate to avoid capping and I'll live with it if that particular Mutilate does less than optimal damage. I only really check my DP stacks when I'm about to Envenom if I've been particularly lucky in my energy generation and might need to Evis rather than Envenom to avoid capping out.

 

Rilias

If the target is poisoned by another source you aim for all your mutilates that don't succed a rupture to be under the envenombuff (doubly so since mutilate has 2 chances of applying offhandpoison).

 

Drully

There may be an issue concernig the combat rotations outlined in this guide.
The classic Xs/5r rotation may dominate the recommended 5s/5r/5e cycle, at least with high end gear.

I used the Roguecraft Spreadsheet version 0.4.3.
I changed the original settings to a recomended combat fist/sword 15/51/5 talent spec and exchanged weapons to Calamity`s Grasp (MH) and Hailstorm (OH). Poisons were changed as outlined in the original post.

I found for this case that a 3s/5r cycle dominates a 5s/5r/5e with roughly 100 dps (Edit: It is almost 200 dps with glyphs. See below.))

This post may be completly irrelevant if the Xs/Yr/Ze rotation is not modeled as described in this thread. The spreadsheet shows a 100% up time for SnD for a 5s/5r/5e cycle, this may indicate that the model used is close to the recomended rotation.

EDIT:
I have tested with the described combat set up a little further and have found another point concerning the glyphs:

The optimal glyph set up in the case of a 3s/5r cycle would be: rupture/sinister strike/adrenaline rush (4520 DPS*)

For 5s/5r/5e: SnD/sinister strike/adrenalin rush (4331 DPS*)

The surprising result is, that SnD is not used with the 3s/5r cycle.

*DPS was calculated with the recomended 7/51/13 combat fist/sword spec which yields higher dps than 15/51/5. Droping 1 point of imp. SnD and putting it into sword spec. and changing to a 4s/5r actually raises dps to 4535.

I guess this signature will remind me of...

 

Shivawn

I was trying to use 3s/5r before (admittedly, with the SnD glyph in place), and I had FAR too much time up on my SnD glyph that my ruptures weren't falling off the mob before I had to refresh a new one, and I was getting closed to energy capped everytime. Is this normal within this rotation to have excess haste time/rupture time/energy that makes it slightly more beneficial? I always felt the 5s/5r/5e was simply better because it made use of more abilities within the given SnD time.

Although, I do suppose rupture is slightly more dps than eviscerate...

Would you mind showing modeling? Or did you simply use the spreadsheet?

 

• Neto-

The 3s/5r cycle assumes that you refresh your Rupture even with time left on it, and the same for SnD. If it is showing as the best cycle for you, that means reducing your Rupture downtime is a greater damage increase than using Eviscerate, even if it means less efficient Slice and Dices. I'd recommend messing around with the glyphs/perhaps Imp SnD.

Also, keep in mind that the spreadsheet is still assuming 25% Eviscerate AP scaling instead of 35%. I'm not sure if its been confirmed yet, but if Eviscerate's scaling is indeed 35%, a Xs/Yr/Ze cycle should be closer, if not better, than a Xs/Yr cycle. That change can easily be hacked in, if you're curious, though: DPS tab, change J29 to =(2104+0.35*$B$3).

 

saedo

All the EP weights account for buffs/talents. So just use those. Or a spreadsheet.