Energy regen turns out to be fundamentally pretty powerful, so even though you don't necessarily get a lot of regen off the Heartpierce proc, it is about the right amount to make up for the lack of other stats. That is: Heartpierce is about as good as any other 277 1.8 speed weapon (i.e., it's quite similar in quality to Rib Spreader). Hence, which is better depends on exactly where you are gearwise and exactly how the items score for you - Rip Spreader may be better for some people, but Heartpierce is better for others. I assume it's on Mavanas's BIS list because it works out to be better for that selection of gear.

That said, the LK25 Heroic Dagger is better than either, so true BIS gear uses that instead; but short of that, Rip Spreader, Heartpierce (and, for that matter, a 2nd Lungbreaker) are totally reasonable dagger options. To figure out which is best for a specific set of gear, consult a spreadsheet or other modeling tool.

The point is, that even if Aldriana's sheet shows 2xLungbreaker to come out ahead for a particular, or hell, even all sets of gear, the difference is, when comparing all 277 daggers against each other, pretty damned small. Small enough to be easily eaten up by RNG, latency, skill, use of non-modeled consumables (Thistle Tea, Engineering Bombs, Flame Caps, Midsummer buffs, whatever), or any number of other factors. It's not like we're comparing a 277 dagger to a [Dulled Shiv] or even an LPC here. If he's playing well, and is wearing good gear, of course he'll put up good numbers with a 277 Heartpierce. It's a Good Dagger, and excepting the LK weapon, for many gear sets, is in fact the Best Dagger. It isn't always, as you've noted, but even when it isn't, it's close enough that, in practice, it'd be pretty hard to notice the difference.

I do apologize if this has already been answered but I can not find it.

Agility vs Attack Power:
looking at the spreadsheet it shows a higher dps when using 40 AP gem vs 20 Agility gems.
However reference the pocket guide agility has a higher EP than AP almost a 2/1. so why is it that there are better gains from AP then Agility?

I know I am probably missing something obvious and once it is pointed out I will crawl into my noob hole and wonder how I could be so blind.

Thanks in advance.

Edit:
I believe I found the answer. I was under the incorrect assumption that Rogues were still double dipping from AGI 1AGI = 2 Ap. How ever it looks like Rogues get 1 AP = 1 AGI the addition EP comes from AGI contributing to Crit, Dodge, Armor and AP. Looking more carefully into Envenom, the dmg done is directly based off Deadly Poison dose plus AP.

5 doses: [1075 + (AP * 0.45)]

Sorry for the noob post. I am leaving this here for all to lol at me and hopefully prevent someone else the same humiliation.

FYI:
I want to thank everyone who post here, I have 6 different toons and this site has been the ultimate reference guide for all of them.

Because 20 Agility is only 20 stats and 40 AP is 40 stats and if Agi value isn't over 2 it's not worth more EP than 40 AP.

EP values example:
AP value: 1
Agi value: 1,9

40 AP gem: 40 stats x1 EP = 40 EP
20 Agi gem: 20 stats x1,9 EP = 38 EP

1) Rupture is better... but with an asterisk. Running Rupture cycles will usually be more DPS for sustained burns (Festergut, Saurfang) but gives away a lot of its advantages on fights with lots of short-lived adds and target switching (Putricide, Sindragosa, and LK come to mind). You may note, however, that the list of fights where Rupture is unlikely to be better looks a lot like a list of the hardest fights in the instance. So: many rogues run a more evis-centric spec for those fights; some additionally swap to a rupture-based spec for the easier fights, while others decide it's not worth the effort to pad the meters slightly on farm fights.

2) SnD is always the higher priority. If you're heavily optimizing for rupture uptime, you want to plan your SnDs and energy maangement to ensure they aren't ending at the same time to the extent that such is possible. More typically, the rule of thumb is just "keep SnD up, Rupture if it's down, Evis otherwise" - which tends to wind up with ~70% rupture uptime but often is still better than anything else you could be doing.

Additionally, I've found that (at my current gear level) a rupture cycle is higher dps than an evisc-only by a very small amount in an ideal case. ~150 dps, if i recall correctly. Based on ease-of-use, I find it worth while to simply stick with the evisc-only rotation so I can focus more on timing cooldowns and watching the environment.

In the spreadsheet topic, there are instructions for setting up the sheet to evaluate a forced evisc-only rotation, so you can compare the numbers side-by-side.

If you're uncomfortable mucking about with the spreadsheer, 9 times out of 10, you can force it to select an Eviscerate cycle by speccing appropriately (3/3 or 2/3 Improved Eviscerate, 0/2 Blood Spatter), and setting the Bleed Damage debuff (Mangle/Trauma) to false.

No.

The only way it's advantageous to delay the use of cooldowns for procs/other cooldowns is if you can guarantee you won't lose a use of it during the encounter by doing so. For instance, you can typically afford to save the very last killing spree for a blade flurry if you can be sure it wouldn't be up again before the fight finishes should you just use it on cooldown.

Glyph of eviscerate is a terrible dps boost. The only reason it's used is because, for people who choose not to use the glyph of tott (which is wrong), there are really no other options.

More importantly, you said yourself what the answer is. It's a dps loss. The simulators take procs and on-use abilities into account, so when you disable the glyph of ks it's lining up the cooldowns by itself. And even then it's still a dps loss. The difference in dps if it *didn't* receive the benefit of further stacking would be larger. Glyph of KS is pretty much the only glyph combat rogues would never drop, and glyph of tott is essentially the only glyph a raider should never drop.

Personally, I'm against castsequence macros for raiding rogues. They're just not going to let you react and play as effectively as keybinds. I assume you open with garrote before you hit that macro, anyways, or you'd be wasting energy left and right. The only really useful macros for rogues are tricks macros and adding /startattack to your ss and fok binds.

Your armory link is broken so we can't see what gear you're talking about.

Maybe I misunderstood something, but isn't this macro what you right after the pull? (or right before for the potion).
You lose lots of energy via overpooling by doing this. That's a much more significant dps loss than switching your glyphs.

I failed to mention that I use 2 to 4 sinister strikes, and pop SnD, before I use this macro. By the time I get through using all those sinister strikes and SnD, my energy bar is usually depleted. I get the adrenaline rush off as soon as the killing spree runs out (so I still have time on BF, speed potion, and 1000 AP) - my energy bar usually has not fully recovered after this.



Here are the list of abilities that I pop together, in order, at the beginning of a boss fight:

Sinister Strike until i've gotten 3 or 4 bubbles > SnD > 1000 AP trinket > potion of speed > TotT > blade flurry > Killing Spree > Adrenaline Rush > Sin. Strike x (until i've got 5 bubbles) > Eviscerate

Is this a good sequence overall (do all these abilities complement eachother efficiently), or am I losing out on dps with this?



I only use combat macros at the beginning of the fight to try to get in all of the complimentary abilities in as close to eachother as possible (and to not forget to type in something). The rest the time I just fight manually - trying to keep SnD up while popping eviscerate every 5 bubbles.


Sorry about the link, should be fixed.


Edit: I forgot to mention that I do open with garrote.

I was under the impression that opening with garotte is a net DPS loss over starting without stealth and opening with Sinister Strike. There is usually no +bleed effect on the boss that early when you apply garrote and if you're waiting for it you might have lost precious white DPS time.