Not to mention that you should start by popping a speed pot (as close to combat start as possible); which will pull you out of stealth anyway.

Zulkeir is completely right. But, evl, you're forgetting that there's also no sunder, faerie fire, savage combat, heart of the crusader, or any other buffs/debuffs which affect ss and not garrote. The bleed debuff is mostly irrelevant because it should be applied before the first tick anyways. Garrote and SS will typically be similar dpe which is really what matters, so it's a tossup.

I open with garrote because it reduces the chance that I'm going to pull with an early ss+white crit spree on my part and a streak of bad rng on the tank's part. Opening with garrote I can pop tricks immediately and only have a few white attacks go off beforehand. And I find it significantly easier to get a faster open on the target by prepositioning in stealth than running with the tank. Even a half second more dps time will have a greater effect than the 300 damage you might gain from SS.

Neither will have much impact, so play however you're most comfortable.

@Tunus: You're actually kinda saying the opposite of what's right. Popping a speed pot right after garrote won't lose you any dps; sooner is only better if it gets you another use - which it can't. But popping a speed pot before you're hitting the target, even half a second's worth, will lose you dps. Add to that the fact that you won't have all of your procs up for a few seconds after opening and you can see why it's not really logical to pop a speed pot before you've performed your first action. *If* you were referring to pre-potting, zulkeir's advice is fine.

Wouldn't it be beneficial to pot before doing anything (so it doesn't put you in combat), and have another chance to pot during the fight? Unless you're limited to one pot, that is.

Yes, and this is what Tunus was talking about.

And then you're outside the boss' aggro range (20+ yards?), in stealth (70% movement speed), with the 15 second pot buff timer running. Unless you're on Saurfang I can't see how it would be beneficial to open from stealth?

You can still chug a pot, stealth, then and run in with sprint or rocket boots in fights where movement speed won't be an issue.

You can do the Pot -> Stealth (-> Garrote if Mutilate) combo on Lich King, too. It also goes nicely using two pots with two Heroisms in this particular encounter. You can pull off something similar if you stealth behind Lady DW (you can stealth right up into melee range behind her).

It's an issue of how much you are willing to spend for extra dps. Even if you only use 50% of the haste pot time, it's a dps win, but yeah it costs a haste pot. Same with Overkill only that it's free, and you get another Overkill with Vanish. Imho it's worth it if you take raiding seriously.

ICC Bosses are not detectors, and most do not have additional aggro range beyond a normal 83 mob. It is safe to approach quite close to most of them in stealth (though at this point you'd break stealth with the pot, open with a generator and let the hunters apply the bleed). Also, sprint or rocketboots, if they will not be used during the fight, are more than acceptable to close the distance.

Overall, you can easily pre-pot + stealth to a number of bosses.

• LDW -> You can just normally walk up behind her on the platform, pre-pot + stealth, then sprint onto her back.
• Saurfang -> he's there. pot+stealth is easy.
• Fester + Rot -> both are easy to prepot + run in.
• Putricide -> has a very small aggro.
• BPC -> easy if you have the RP to go through, otherwise, not worth it.
• BQL -> small aggro radius, easy to sprint in since you dont need it in the fight.
• Valithria -> pointless.
• Sindragosa -> ahhahahahahaha
• LK -> theres an RP timer, AND he runs to you! How awesome is that?

That said, starting from stealth is really only important for mutilate rogues, combat can reverse the order, stealth up really close, tricks, and break stealth with a pot. If timed right, you get a free pot in there, if wrong, you pull aggro and die.

In regards to combat. You move at 119% speed while sprinting in stealth, regular run speed with boot enchant is 108%, 8.33 yards per second compared to 7.56 yards per second regular speed. Outside stealth you sprint at 170% speed, 11,9 yards per second. On a regular stationary boss where you start outside aggro range, say Marrowgar with a 10 yard hitbox-to-aggro range (which is what I have on my rogue after testing some pulls), you have five yards that you need to close. This will take the rogue in stealth around 0.6 seconds (my 264 geared rogue loses 13600 DPS on a target without sunder/ISB/CoE) so say 8100 damage lost compared to starting in melee range. The rogue without stealth reaches Marrowgar in 0.42 seconds and loses about 5700 damage. So not using stealth is 2400 damage better in this case. So the only place where it's better to start in stealth as combat is "possibly" at Saurfang and LK, if you even want to bother with using garrote.

Now compare this to the bosses where you don't have to run only five yards, and where you pull with shattering throw (and possibly you BL/Heroism at the start) and let the boss move towards tank+melee to maximize DPS uptime even more.
For every boss here, and add Marrowgar, aside from Saurfang and LK, you can do the same without stealth and gain more damage, or run in from the front as mentioned in the case above and it would be a even bigger difference.

I would say that starting in stealth is a DPS loss for combat most of the time. As for mutilate you also gain 60 energy, at 200 DPE (might be higher for mutilate, guesstimate form my alt combat rogue once again) that's 12000 damage. If I would run for more than 0.88 seconds I would lose damage overall. If it's a benefit to start from stealth depends on how your guild does it's pulls, I think that only on Deathwhisper, Saurfang and LK it can generally be said that it's always better to start in stealth for Mutilate, the other bosses you need to consider other factors.

Use a spreadsheet, use your brain and observe the tactics your guild employs. If you spend even one second too long in stealth, instead of just running in without stealth, you lose DPS.

My thinking is that it would be bad to use the speed potion before you enter into combat. Why waste any potion time before combat? In addition, I would think that you would want to get your first speed potion off at the exact same time as all your other abilities (trinket, ToTT, blade flurry, killing spree, Adrenaline Rush) with a macro or two, so they all have the maximum amount of overlap time - since all of these abilities enhance eachother.


As far as stealthing before or after combat, I guess I should stop garroting as my first attack as a combat rogue, and start sinister striking? If this is the case, i'm guessing the most dps efficient plan would be to stay in stealth behind an enemy before combat starts, and as soon as the main tank initiates the encounter, unstealth and SS as my opener.

The idea of using a potion before combat starts is so you can use another one later (otherwise know as the double pot trick)

Yes, you will be wasting some time on the first pot, but having the residual effects of the first pot as you enter into combat and then using a second during the heroism later will provide some extra dps.

Well, I still disagree. How likely is it that using the pot 3 to 5 seconds earlier than when you'd normally use it is going to net you an extra use of the pot in the battle? Unlikely. If it does, it's just going to net you an extra use during the very end of the battle just as the boss is dying, and by then it really won't have served much of a purpose since the boss is almost completely dead.

Example:

You use potion at 0 sec into fight. I use potion 5 sec into fight to coordinate it with all my other cooldowns for maximum overlap.

If the fight ends at 4:15-5:00 (5:15-6:00 etc.) you've gained nothing by doing this. If the fight ends at 4:00-:4:15, you've only gained less than one full round of 500 haste, and by then the fight is already won so who cares. Why not use you're first potion along with all you're other abilities to create a super condensed wave of dps early on in the fight, when it counts the most? Not try to gain an extra wave of dps at the end of the fight.

EDIT: Oh ok, you can only use them once per combat? Yes I have been living in BC.