Just going to throw my two cents in as well. I completely agree with all of this. I've played both specs on all the hard modes and Combat seems to be the clear winner in my eyes. I do think however, that Mutilate isn't far behind especially on fights such as Hodir and Thorim where its nothing but a straight sit there and DPS burn, but as for Freya and Mimiron specifically, being Combat provides a lot more to your raid (ex. Blade Flurry for the 3 pack and AR for the Tree and Mimiron you can use AR for 3/4 phases, also you can Blade Flurry in stage 4 for the middle and bottom). As for the other hard modes you can make an arguement as to why Combat is also alot better. I'm not trying to sit here and say that Mutilate is bad, because its obviously not, but Combat provides those cooldowns where you can make up a lot of the DPS slack for certain phases on most bosses. Keep in mind as fights get shorter, they are going to favor classes with short cooldowns more as well.

I agree with the last post, neither spec is difficult to play. There are multiple opinions being represented here, from both the well versed in class mechanics and those some would consider "noobs". All in all, the consensus is both specs are pretty comparable in dps, and what really matters are the mechanics of the fight, what weapons and gear are available, and the composition of your raid. So, instead of continuing discussion on which spec is "better" per se, it would probably be more beneficial to start a thread discussing how each spec contributes differently to different encounters, or encounter types, if that is even permitted or useful. But this back on forth on which spec is better seems to keep hitting the same dead end.

This.

And for fuck's sake, can we get past this need to try to prove whichever spec you use is better already? Both are viable, both are well suited for certain encounters, and which you use should be based on your personal comfort level and play style. Every poster chiming in with his opinion on why Combat is better than Mutilate, or vice versa, might as well be shouting in the playground, "Genesis does what Nintendon't." or some shit. Nobody cares. Get both, play both, decide for yourself what works best for you, and stop cluttering threads with posts meant to change the minds of players who aren't already open to the pros and cons of both builds.

I've taken a lot of very useful information from these forums, in the form of pure numeric data, as well as play tips for certain situations. The one thing I have come to learn on my own while implementing this information is that the best buffs you can give yourself are confidence and understanding, and they go hand in hand. Understanding the information I have gleaned here has given me the confidence that I was "doing it right" in a lot of situations, and that confidence enabled me to perform better than I might have otherwise. (This is starting to sound like cliche sex advice. "And once I understood how the clit worked, I had the confidence...") And once you get to "doing it right" long enough, like Bruce Lee, you can start to break form and make decisions that are tailored more specifically to your own style and circumstances. For instance, I know that Icewalker yields better spreadsheet numbers, but I refuse to move at base speed, so even now I use Cat's Swiftness. And I could probably find the post where I asked if Aldriana had the numbers to compare the two, but once I knew what kind of sacrifice it was to my DPS in the spreadsheet, I was confident in deciding for myself which enchant to use, and Cat's Swiftness was the way to go... rather, it was the way I went. It might not be for you, but that's the kind of call you have to make for yourself.

A discussion like this was started in one of the threads but quickly waded into the "hard mode" territory which was not allowed at the time. Currently only a few bosses remain off limits for discussion.

The reality of it is that if you play the spec you are quite aware of it's strengths and weaknesses and shouldn't need each encounter spelled out for you once your raid has decided on a strategy.

Hey guys I am new here so I have a fast question. I know most people go improved rupture, but I get more dps with improved Evis. Im sure this question has been answered but should I stay with the cookie cutter rupture build or go with the evis? On the training dummy in org i have pushed 2700dps with evis but with rupture the most i have seen is 2200.

Thanks guys.

Now try it again fully raid buffed, and make sure the dummy as all the debuffs too. At the very least relavant ones that affect you. And make sure it's hours upon hours of testing to eliminate as much RNG as possible too. Thanks.

Stick with Rupture.

Using test dummies is not the way to test things like that because there's too much RNG. In any case, you're also forgetting raid buffs like Trauma/Mangle that increase rupture damage.

edit: saedo was faster

Yeah, that's funny - this is also the result that I am getting when using Aldriana's EP weights (gear similar to my own) in calculating the EP value of each, which results in a difference of 15.52 EP in Perilous Bite's favor.

When calculating the value of Perilous Bite using hit's somewhat increased value for Mutilate Rogues under the poison hit cap, the difference increases, again favoring Perilous Bite.

It almost feels as though those lists were made without accounting for the Red Socket and its bonus on Perilous Bite.




Yeah, this is why I suggested what I suggested; it seems the original post's author is aware of the iLVL change.

If the first post's list was compiled before 3.1.2 patch and hasn't been updated since, it would perhaps explain this as Perilous Bite wasn't item level 232 until 3.1.2.

The list might not be updated with the buffs the 10man hard mode weapons received recently. When I equip Perilous Bite with old stats on Aldriana's Mutilate sheet, I get a DPS loss in comparison to Daschal's. The live version (as you guys are seeing) is better.

edit: wow 2nd time I posted 3 minutes after someone with the same post content. arrrr

While the 51/7/13 spec provides higher dps come late Ulduar, would it be beneficial dropping precision altogether providing you have a high enough hit rating?

For example I have 279 hit rating at present, lets say I get Blood of the Old God bringing me up to 387 hit, and way past the poison cap with 2/5 precision.

Basically my question is should we change precision according to our current hit rating, and put the 2 talents somewhere more useful? And if yes, where would be the most beneficial place to put them.