Okay, so just to make sure I'm understanding these new changes with our weapons setup as Mutilate. We want the faster of the two weapons in our MH w/ IP, and the slower of the two in the OH w/ DP? Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this is my conclusion from what I've been reading.

If your conclusion is from the reading the last 20 responses in these forums to this exact question, then yes.

I would agree that this information is correct, but would one of the Administrators please update the main post to reflect this information if it is in fact proven to be correct.

What if one the slower dagger is significantly better than fast one? Like LPC being the fast, and an anarchy, or mist being the slow weapon. Still LPC main?

I think You would have to plug the values in the spreadsheet but i from what i see, LPC is better than Twilight mist.

Is this only thru 'game experience' or spreadsheet?

I am less geared than you, running 4/5 t7.5 w/ greed & papercutter and the 7/51/13 lags over 100dps less than the 15/51/5 with my gear.
I am not seeing how your build could ever bypass the 15/51/5 build. Of course, I am not went thru all the permutations and rotations.

hey guys thanks for this thread i've found it extremely useful and come back to it regularly.

i noticed you totally discarded what used to be a very decent option for dagger rogues - the backstab spec.

As we all know, for positioning reasons backstab is not exactly practical or down right possible in certain fights (ie Naxx's Thaddius) but since we should (parries, blocks)/ must (cleaves, etc) stand behind bosses in most fights I still find it a very competitive damage dealer.

I've been on par and above fellow rogues in raids with backstab. In some fights where I can pretty much stand there and nuke I believe I'm actually above them in damage meters, and we have about the same level of gear.

Any comments as to the viability of backstab in lvl 80 raiding will be much apreciated. I went with it as the best MH i got so far was a dagger, and couldn' stand looking at my toon with "Greed" so I've used Knife of Incision and Hailstorm.

thanks

With regard to the 15/51/5 Vs 7/51/13 combat specs...It is only by going though the different cycles with different values for x, y & z that you will find out whether one is truly better than the other. For a while I was sticking with 15/51/5 on a 5s/5r/5e cycle, changing only the talents to 7/51/13 on the spreadsheet always showed a drop in dps...Until I changed not only the spec but also the cycle and some of the minimum point values. Now the sheet shows the best dps I can with current gear is a 7/51/13 spec using a 3s/5r cycle. So when comparing specs remember to compare cycles too.

Also remember that 5s/5r/5e is not the maximum DPS roation for 15/51/5 either. Ruthlessness allows roations like 3s/5r/5e or 2s/5r/4e, depending on your gear. With fist mainhand and a right roation I always get more DPS using 15/51/5.

I mean in both spreadsheet and practice. When I compare the specs I also play with rotations and glyphs to squeak out as much as I can from that given spec before I try to compare (I don't play with gear/enchants/gems as I just don't have that much patience for all those possiblities) Now some of the 15/51/5 specs are not that much behind (just 30 DPS), but for myself I have not seen it better. Not saying it isn't possible...I just have not seen it. And from my toodling with the spreadsheet I have not gotten better than a 5/5/5 rotation

the big difference between 7/51/13 and 15/51/5 is imo biggest on your trash dps, and kinda small on boss. i use evicerate>rupture on trash, and the letality helps.

when changing specs, you must take into account the rotation and glyphs.
my findings (3300ap 330haste 35%crit expcapped poisonhitcapped) were 8dps in favour of 15/51/5, according to the spreadsheet.

i think the main thing you have to ask yourself is: higher trash dps (15/51/5) vs easier boss rotation (7/51/13).
(where the easier rotation gives more dps on fights that get interrupted. for example 5/5 on bosses like maexxna and noth are not that hard. you can keep that up 100%. with 3/5/5 though, the interruptions in the fight are fucking up your chance to do the 5evicerate, leaving you with snd+rupture also (atleast for that 1 rotation. possible to squeeze in that evic again the next rotation)


about the 5/5/5 rotation... the point is to have 100% snd uptime, and as most rupture uptime as possible, using the spare combopoints on evicerate.
now in 25mans, seeing my combopoint generation, i can do a 2-3s/5r/5evic rotation (2-3 depending on combat potency, ss glyph procs, raidbuffs (haste and critbuffs)). now why stick to a 5s5r5e? its just wasting seconds of slice and dice. go for 2-4s/5r/5e. youll have more rupture uptime, and can still squeeze in a evicerate.

about fok. how will the no-cd change our trash rotation? something like: drop tricks, walk in, 1snd, fok, fok, bs+ks, fok, fok, fok, repeat untill 3 mobs are left, then ss becomes more energy efficient?

Considering that clearing the trash usually takes just as much, if not more, time than the bosses themselves, I think it's a rather silly assertion on their part to not care about trash clear. Sure it's easy, but over the course of a raid night, it's a significant amount of time, and can be the leading cause of a slow raid if people start to get lazy and die from doing dumb shit like chaining cleaves and standing in the fire.

I'd prefer we not get back into the "trash matters! vs no wai it does not!" discussion. Suffice it to say one person's thoughts, even if they're the GM of the leading guild on the server, does not make for gospel for the very same reason that players in the best guilds in the world are not necessarily the best players in the world.

Even if trash does matter to people, I don't really think spec does. Both Combat and Mutilate should win trash clears now with proper use of FoK.

I've tried both extensively. Assuming I do my job perfectly, 7/51/13 edges things out by a bit on Patch and equvaient fights.

Last night on a perfect execution I'm sadly down to 5057 due to fight duration. A bit less crit than previous weeks across the board, but...that gets me in as a lolworthy #10.

Wow Web Stats

The outliers haven't changed a thing, but combat's still holding up next to mut if you do your job. It's not perfect, don't get me wrong, and I have to work damn, damn hard to get there. Rest of the night, well, I'm not nearly as happy with but when the raid has random 800ms+ ping and constant DCs until abom wing, not much anyone can do.

I sat down with both combat specs and my good friend the Heroic Target Dummy and had a chat last night. This is what they had to say:

7/51/13:

Very easy to maintain rotation at 2-3s5r, which is optimal, (for me), according to Vulajin's SS; Had some issues with not being able to apply rupture with about 5 secs of uptime on SnD and Rupture. because of previous AP trinket proc or mongoose. This caused some annoying energy capping as I scrambled to figure out what to do, (mostly just refreshed SnD when this happened, because the spreadsheet shows a huge drop if I add ANY Evisc with this spec, and I didn't want to let my DoT drop at all), but I never lost uptime on either SnD or Rupture; Pooling energy was a breeze. Very easy spec and rotation to play, as we all know.

15/51/5:

Much more involved and interesting spec to play. Goal was a 4-5s,5r,5e rotation, but because of bad luck, or whatever, I wasn't able to get that 5e in a whole lot. It seems that in a raid environment with more crit and maybe even haste, this would be easier to do, consistently. Pooling energy was a bit harder to do, but still pretty achievable, especially if I was skipping the 5e because I only had </= 10secs on SnD.

Common issues:

The rupture + trink/mongoose proc event can REALLY throw you off with either spec, especially if you are pooling energy. It not only throws you off your rhythm, but it can also cause you to lose precious seconds on rupture uptime if you decide to go to an eviscerate finisher instead of refreshing SnD. I find it really annoying, but it's much easier to live with in the 7/51/13 spec. There is so much to keep track of with 15/51/5, that a couple seconds indecision can really bunk your cycle and concentration.

Okay, with optimal gear from the spreadsheet, my hit rating is an atrocious 201. I would say that half the time I looked at debuffs on the boss, DP stack was dropped or was rebuilding. This did not make me feel good. Also on a 4-6 minute encounter with the dummy, WP would miss ~ 10 times. Furthermore, my white hits were missing in the 16-18% range. All of this is independent of spec.

Damage:

The 7/51/13 spec outperformed the 15/51/5 spec consistently, yet only slightly, during this test. However, the difference was very slight, so either spec is certainly viable all things being equal with my gear level, which admittedly, is pretty low compared to some of you.

My maximum theoretical DPS according to the SS, without buffs, is 1906 (7/51/13) and 1825 (15/51/5). I was in the 1650-1700 range, (1725-30 or so on a couple attempts), without using BF, AR, or Killing Spree, so I'm as comfortable as I could be with decisions regarding my rotation.

That's why after a lot of testing, I'm back to dual wound.

It's far, far more consistent than having deadly drop off constantly.

Makes sense. I think I will try it. The amount of time that the deadly stack is not at 5 is disturbing and was really the most shocking thing I came across in my testing.

Has anyone figured out yet whether wound poison causing savage combat to "fall off" for a second is UI only?

Well, since you said that you did the testing on a dummy, you were obviously missing many raid buffs, such as Windfury Totem and Misery. These, obviously, increase your Deadly Poison uptime. It isn't surprising that Wound/Wound eventually beats running Deadly at all, but I don't think you're making Deadly Poison justice by using an unbuffed situation, specially if you base your argument around the fact that it was dropping.

With a fast offhand, Deadly Poison shouldn't drop much, but there's always the possibility. So, yeah, running Wound will give you more consistent results, even more so if you have passive haste rating in your gear or hit rating, as those benefit Wound substantially more than Deadly Poison; if you check the spreadsheet and Wound isn't much far behind Deadly, it's probably worth switching just so you don't have to deal with Deadly's inconsistency (I'm aware that Wound may underperform just as much, but the damage lost by losing a couple procs isn't nearly as much as losing a full Deadly stack).

Also... I really wouldn't recommend directly comparing specs off target dummy results. How often do you raid unbuffed?

It is a ui glitch.

This post is in regards to Mutilate builds. Mutilate is different from combat in that the combo building is much more erratic. The word "rotation" refers to something that repeats. However, Mutilate dps at the moment does not seem to have a definite pattern. I think that is why we must analyze it somewhat differently than we would for combat dps.

There are three separate factors during the rotation that will determine the time at which certain events occur (actually four if you are not expertise capped):
1. Seal Fate procs from Mutilate.
2. 4cp finishers vs. 5cp finishers (Relentless Strikes).
3. Ruthlessness procs from finishers.
4. Mutilate is dodged or Envenom/Rupture is dodged.

Because of these factors all falling into the equation, a mutilate "rotation" doesn't express entirely what is actually going on. To express mutilate dps in a comprehensive manner, I think that something of a quasi-flow-chart-type-thing must be created.

Don't get me wrong - I mean the advice from this thread is excellent, and it definitely works - but I think we can do better. There is more dps we can squeeze out of this spec, surely.

I'll start working on it this weekend. If anyone has anything to add, go ahead.

EDIT: Maybe it isn't worthwhile, but I'm going to get it done anyway. It will at least clear up some confusion for a few people who don't completely understand what they should be doing as mutilate. I'm just trying to give the best possible understanding of this that they can get until the TTT article is updated.