There's an inflection point where this becomes usable, then another not too much further where it becomes competitive, and yet another after 4pt8 where it becomes superior.

Does anyone know where these points are?

I looked for a discussion of it--if there is one, a referral would be great.

Thanks.

How much does it change if you have enough time to pull of a rupture or two? I'm asking because Kologarn seems to be the most commonly cited example for FoK being padded DPS versus a good use of it. The right arm usually lasts long enough for two ruptures.

Hey, while this may be a skosh off topic, Dark Matter has the proc chance for 600 something crit rating and is being rated as the BiS trinket, so I was curious as to whether the Jouster's Fury from the Argent Tournament yielding a 328 crit strike rating increase for ten seconds would even be interesting to play around with. Standard 10% proc chance with a 45 second ICD. Thanks

Well, about half the benefit of Dark Matter is the proc - the rest is the passive AP. And since Jouster's Fury has only roughly half the proc strength, and no nonproc benefit (for PvE), it's PvE benefit is going to be 1/3 to 1/4th as good as Dark Matter - meaning, from a PvE perspective, it's absolutely horrendously bad and should be avoided if you have any sort of viable alternative.

In terms of actual numbers - 328 crit rating with 20% uptime is roughly equivalent to 66 AP, or about 110 EP for both Combat and Mutilate.

Compare this to, say, Mirror of Truth (~310), Fury of the Five Flights (320), and Darkmoon Card (380) - it's clearly not as good. Basically, any remotely reasonable PvE trinket from WotLK will be much better. Heck, most PvE trinkets from TBC will be better - DST, Ashtongue Talisman, and the like certainly are. And even Drake Fang Talisman (from BWL) doesn't come off that badly in comparison if you need the hit.

So, in short: thumbs down on Jouster's Fury.

Can someone explain to me why if you went mutilate spec, you would choose a slow MH and a fast OH? What's the difference between the MH and the OH that would warrant two different dagger speeds on both hands?

If you wear 1.8 daggers (slow) on both MH/OH then your mutilate hits would be harder
If you wear 1.4 daggers (fast) on both MH/OH then your chances of proccing focused attacks is greater.

Poison PPM were normalized for all dagger speeds, so weapons speed would not change the proc rate on poisons (correct me if I'm wrong here)

So shouldn't it come down to either slow daggers are better than fast daggers or vice versa? Why have on speed on MH and another speed on the OH.

Your MH Weapon will have Instant Poison applied to it. Slower weapons will apply Instant Poison more frequently when you make instant attacks (Mutilate, Rupture, Envenom, etc.), and allow your mutilates to hit harder.

Your OH Weapon will have Deadly Poison applied to it. Faster weapons will stack Deadly Poison back to 5 more rapidly following an Envenom. This will increase overall deadly poison DoT dmg and allow for more frequent and higher damage envenoms. You'll also gain more Focused Attacks procs.

Hence, Slow MH/Fast OH.

That said, the impact of speed is sufficiently small that, in general, a plainly superior weapon will be better in either hand, regardless of it having a non optimal speed - and some of the disadvantage of such non-optimal setups is offset by the trade offs you point out above - the spreadsheets are handy for figuring out exactly where this breakpoint is for any particular weapons or gear sets, and are best consulted for any non-obvious choices.

There's two main reasons.

First, speed of the MH weapon affects Mutilate damage more than speed of the OH weapon does; the MH weapon does it's full weapon damage, while the OH weapon only does 75% of it. Thus, a change in speed on the main hand results in a larger damage increase the the corresponding change to the OH. However, the same is not true of Focused Attacks - energy is equally viable regardless of which hand it comes from. Thus, while incentive (via FA) to have a fast weapon is equally strong in both hands, it costs you less Mutilate damage to do so in the OH than it does in the MH; thus, this alone is going to favor putting your faster weapon in the OH.

Second, PPM poisons favor slow weapons. Not by much, but they show a slight preference; hence, for whichever hand wants to use Instant Poison, a slow weapon will give more procs. However, Deadly Poison is not PPM - it's a straight % chance, and since you're clearing your stack every 6-10 seconds, the ability to restack it is good - hence, having a fast weapon to apply it with is a good thing.

So: we want DP on the faster weapon, and IP on the slower weapon; we want the slower weapon MH and the faster one OH; and we generally want IP on the MH so it can proc from finishers. All this pushes us, when using daggers of unequal speeds, to have IP on our MH, slower dagger, and DP on our OH, faster dagger.

When you actually work out the numbers for this setup, it turns out that the demands of poison application coupled with the FA vs Mut hand imbalance makes it work out to be preferable to use slow MH fast OH.

Edit: As a quick comment on Feist-Mok's reply: the fact that quality matters more than speed is more or less true for the MH, but someone less so for the OH; as a rough ballpark figure, each .1 speed is worth about 3 weapon DPS on the MH, but more like 6 weapon DPS on the OH. As this works out in practice, it means a fast MH tends to be roughly comparable to a slow OH that's a half tier below it, while a slow OH needs to be a full tier or more better to keep up with a fast one - for instance, Combatant's Bootblade is as good an OH as Fang of Oblivion, while Bladetwister is competitve with Daschal's Bite and Perilous Bite in the MH.

I couldn't find any decent info on engi as a profession, so I started doing some napkin math.

First, really quickly, I'll go over the pyro rocket. I have nothing more than first glance observations (I shot like 120 rockets). It's a pain in the ass to test it on dummies:

1600 avg dmg per 45 secs = 35.55~ dps increase. Plugging some numbers into the combat spreadsheet, gave about equal for 44 AP enchant to gloves instead. However, it can crit. The limited testing I did suggests it goes off spell crit. Not sure if it can miss (did the majority of tests on a lvl 80 dummy), but it does get partially resisted on the skull dummy, so it's a wash again. RED and PotW didn't seem to affect it, but again, I only did very limited testing.

Either way, first glance suggests that it's really not worth it to put pyro rockets on your gloves over 44 AP.


Hyperspeed accelerators, going off the haste of my current gear:

Base Haste: 327
Haste use: 340, 10 sec
Haste Coefficient: 32.79

Base Haste: 327
with Imp Ret: 336.81
Haste %: 10.271%
with SnD: 14.380%
with WF and SnD: 17.257%

Use, no base: 340
with imp Ret: 350.2
haste %: 10.680%
with SnD; 14.953%
with WF and SnD: 17.943%
avg over one min: 2.99%

Haste with Use: 667
with Imp Ret: 687.01
Haste %: 20.952%
with SnD: 29.333%
with WF and SnD: 35.199%

avg haste over 1 min:
35.199 * 1 = 35.199
17.257 * 5 = 86.285
------------- + then div by 6 ( * 10 sec intervals)
20.247 %

Seems to be in line with just averaging 340 over the full minute (disregarding rounding errors)

Hyperspeed Accelerators gives the equivalent of a benefit of 2.99% haste after buffs = about 57 haste rating before buffs.
Plucking numbers off http://elitistjerks.com/f78/t37183-p...updated_3_1_a/
57 haste rating is equivalent in a range of 80 - 86 AP
Taking off the 44 AP you would lose from missing the glove enchant, and averaging it for good measure =

39 AP equivalence benefit from Hyperspeed Accelerators, if used on every CD, etc, etc.


Adding BF

Base: 17.257%
with BF: 20.708%

Averaged Use haste, no base: 2.99%
with BF: 3.588%

Base plus avgeraged Use: 20.247%
with BF: 24.296%

Use plus Base: 35.199%
with BF: 42.239%



avg over 2 mins, (BF, no Use)
20.708 * 1 = 20.708
17.257 * 7 = 120.799
------------- + then div by 8 (8 * 15 sec intervals)
17.688%

avg over 2 min (BF + Use)

42.239 * 2 = 84.478
20.708 * 1 = 20.708
17.257 * 9 = 155.313
35.199 * 2 = 70.398
17.257 * 10= 172.57
--------------- + then div by 24 (24 * 5 sec intervals)
20.978 %

avg over 2 min (BF + averaged Use):
24.296 * 1 = 24.296
20.247 * 7 = 141.729
------------- + then div by 8 (8 * 15 sec intervals)
20.753 %
(just to show that, as expected, haste Use with other speed increasing CDs will yield more avg haste)

avg benefit of 3.29% haste buffed
~ 62 haste rating unbuffed
~ 46 AP equivalence benefit from Hyperspeed Accelerators.


I could take this further adding Heroism/Bloodlust, and you'll get extra benefits if you can time it when you recieve TotT, but this is just a rough start for making an engi equiv point value.



Please tell me if I'm way off in this.


Aaaaaand it turns out I forgot lightning reflexes /facepalm. I can add too it later, or if someone else feel like it, go right ahead. I'm going crosseyed from looking at the windows calculator.


EDIT: adding lightning reflexes and a Heroism, but going over it a bit quicker


adding in lightning reflexes, simply multiply by 1.10

132.879
22.779

19.457 without

23.076 with

adding in hero
BF+Use, Use, Hero+BF+Use

42.239 * 2 = 84.478
22.779 * 1 = 22.779
18.983 * 9 = 170.847

38.719 * 2 = 77.438
18.983 * 10 = 189.830

60.402 * 2 = 120.804
29.613 * 1 = 29.613
24.678 * 5 = 123.39
18.983 * 4 = 75.932

total 895.111/36 = 24.864

BF, hero+BF
22.779 * 3 = 68.337
18.983 * 9 = 170.847

18.983 * 12 = 227.796

29.613 * 3 = 88.838
24.678 * 5 = 123.39
18.983 * 4 = 75.932

527.344


755.14/36 = 20.976


~53 AP equivalent benefit this will actually go down if it's a longer fight (above shows a ~3 min fight)

In short, Engi is the worst crafting profession overal. It might keep up in burst fights, but as it is right now it just doesn't.


... at least it's better than skinning.

You're forgetting the use of Saronite Bombs, which yields around 22 dps going by the tooltip. How these scale with buffs and boosmob are unknown to me. If 35.55 dps were ~44 AP for you, then this would correspond to another 27 AP. Rocket Boosts could also turn out viable on some fights.

I'll check out bombs in a bit. If there's no downsides to it, it would put engi in line with other professions.

Nitro boosts are situational though. Besides it being hard to get an equivalence, you won't have the benefit on every boss and the 12 hit rating for 4 crit rating + extra sprint.... meh. I have yet to run into a situation where I thought "rocket boots would have saved the day there"

EDIT:
Again only short test with the bombs, so definately no conclusive data.

The bombs are instant cast, seems to not reset swing timer. i did not run enough tests to say if it can miss or crit (I might get back on this), but it does get resisted like other magic damage. If anyone finds otherwise, I'd be happy to hear it. Particularly the swing timer, which would make the bombs good or really really bad.


As a very much premature conclusion:
If used on cooldown it should bring engineering at least up to par with other professions. Even favoring engi in burst fights.

In 3.2, the hyperspeed accelerators last 12 seconds and the rocket boots 12 hit/12 crit + 5 second speed use. The cloak enchant is 23 agility + parachute instead of 22 agility, too =p