HaT is already reactive enough with eviscerate, add the necessity of dp stacks with 0/5 imp poisons, and the lack of control of combo points with hat, and you're left with poor finisher damage. Also "riding the envenom buff" is much harder and potentially wasteful to do with how CPs are gained.

Even with the bug fix, it seems that this spec - when the raid is stacked, works very well. Our 25man raids always have 2 Dk's, and 3 hunters so I think I will be good. Now, I have two questions.

1. Are the hunters/dks etc. required to be in the "same group" or are these crits raid wide?

2. I have greed, sinister revenge, hand of nerub, librarian paper cutters as weapons.

Which two would I use, after reading I assume Sinister Revent w/wound HM --- and LPC w/would OH ---> but curious if Hand of Nerub with the better stats would be a better OH option.

Thanks.

The Hunters/dk would have to be in your group for you to get credit for there crits.

Also your second question is of mixed oppinions. Some run 2 daggers for the posion application. Some like running a fist main, and a dagger (or fast fist) offhand. With this spec its really up to you, if your not using Hemo alot, just use the daggers. But if your in a group that you have to keep using hemo to keep your CP up (usualy one that is a 10man or not stacked well) run a slow mainhand, for those higher damage hemos.

So I would say use Sinister in main, and use the Hand of Nerub in our offhand. Till you can eather get another Sinister, or Webbed Death

i haven't seen this tried yet but i was considering messing around with glyphed (for the 50% 2cp on crit) improved sinister strike instead of hemo in HaT build. as crit rating goes up the combo points per energy expenditure actually becomes more efficient with ss and you gain damage bonuses from aggression. the downside is that you lose a couple of points from precision. this is the build i was considering: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't putting 5 points into lethality instead of 5 points into aggression be better? With 10% crit from glyph, 30-35% from gear and talents and then another 5%+ from raid buffs evis would have around 50% crit rate. Doing the math it seems as long as you have over 48.5% crit or so lethality edges out aggression during a boss fight.

Yes, but Lethality does not affect Eviscerate, while Aggression does. And since you get a lot more damage from Eviscerate than you do any move affected by Lethality, it's pretty clearly better to take Aggression.

- Using SS over Hemo, even glyphed, would provide no benefit. Mainly because Hemo, or SS, is not ever going to be your main source of damage, and if you find yourself constantly using either to maintain a rotation, then your group is not good enough as is, and you're better off as another spec.

- You don't use Rupture as sHaT, so Blood Spatter is not a useful talent to take in the build. Also, you would still use Garrote over Ambush as an opener. It will almost always do more damage then Ambush could.

There are quite some HaT rogues who also have Shadowstep. In their case, Ambush could be a prefered opener since they can be on the target the exact same moment that the tank is, and since Ambush can crit, that makes another CP for the Eviscerate following right after it. By that time, the rest of the party should be picking up and you can commence "rotations" as normal.

Shadowstep is dps increase aye, not only as fast way to get to the target in the perfect position, but used regularry in the fight too. Garrote on the start is just okay: premeditation(2cp)->shadowstep->garrote(2cp) (this all single macro) and you are ready to start full cycle

Since improved ambush has a very high critrate i was under the impression that an ambush crit > garrote and you get 3 cp's instead of 2 which means you can start up your cycle even faster. I haven't tested this extensively though, just spent some time on a target dummy comparing the 2 and imp ambush seemed favourable.

By opening with (imp.) Ambush you'll trade off a fifth combo point (and a little more damage) for almost twice the energy cost. Don't forget your Garrote only costs 35 energy with Dirty Deeds.

I'm not the most experienced HAT player, but with 4 combo points and 75 energy pooled I wouldn't use hemo to get to 5 combo points, but rather use a 4 combo point finisher. And if by then your hunter(s) didn't start sending you combo points, then tell them to get their head in the game.

But I think it mostly depends on your mainhand weapon. If you run 2x webbed death, then an ambush on a (most likely) not fully sundered boss isn't verry impressive in comparison to your Garrote damage. I think that's the main reason I'm using Garrote.

My main reason for Ambush is it's instant damage, which gets transfered to the tank immediately through TotT, though reduced by 50% from ShS, but Garrote would suffer the same penalty.
This is followed by an Eviscerate, also for the instant agro transfer through TotT.
If any adds are or may be in range, I follow up with FoK, which still falls within the TotT timer, otherwise I boot up SnD with whatever amount of CP's I have.

Using FoK right after the Eviscerate tends to energy starve me, but it's a foolproof way to ensure adds go to the tank, on top of any abilities the tank may have himself to grab them.

1) Assuming you have Shadowstep, don't waste your first one on a crappy opener, regardless if you have dropped talent points into Improved Ambush. Go with Garrote, get much more consistent and reliable damage, and don't waste a Shadowstep on some crap opener. Save for 1-2 seconds later when you have TotT up and can drop in a 8k Eviscerate.

2) Following from above; if you're worried that your SS -> Ambush combo when opening up isn't going to give as much threat through TotT because of the SS buff, then maybe you shouldn't use TotT right away?



CP generation is not a valid reason to use Shadowstep with a crappy opener. IF you can stealth into the boss, use Premeditation and drop a Garrote. That alone will give you atleast 4 CPs, and if your group can't manage to get you an extra CP by the time you come out of stealth, then you need to find some better group mates. Anyway, moral of the story is don't use Ambush. It's not as a good as Garrote.

Premed+ShS+Garotte is a perfectly acceptable opener after ToT since it gives you more time on target for those initial 2-4 seconds. Garotte+2secs or more > an initial Eviscerate.

Is the talent tree in the original post the currently accepted optimal HaT spec? If not, where should I look?

Envenom with HaT makes no sense. You launch finishers too fast to get the DP stack back up again unless you put DP on both weapons. If you do that, you lose the main reason to use Envenom, which is that the Envenom buff increases your IP proc rate. Moreover, the second reason to use Envenom over Eviscerate is that it is not mitigated by armor. Since HaT takes Serrated Blades, there is thus considerably less benefit from Envenom for this spec.

In reguards to earlier questions and comments towards the usefulness of other finishers using the HaT spec:

Eviscerate is the bread and butter damage to take full advantage of the enormous amount of CP potentially generated. However, through personal experience, I found a reactive "rotaion" between Eviscerate, Rupture, Envenom and SnD to be overall the best dps policy.

Alot of decisions are based on the boss you are facing. For example, rupture is pretty useless against a boss who breaks out of combat/disappears/becomes immune vs a boss that may cc with with say fear but is still basically a tank n spank. so knowing your enemy is very helpful.

But to the point of this post, I find trying to fit in other finishers when convienient or optimal very benificial to to dps. Basically keeping eviscerate as the reliable finisher while keeping track of SnD up time, Rupture up time and waiting for 5 deadly poison to collect up for an ocasional envenom can raise dps overall. The great thing is that there is no rigidly set rotation. Its all reactive to the fight.

I like HaT because its versital in its rotations compaired to Mut builds. Knockbacks, stuns and various other cc generated by a boss mob can screw up the Mut dps rotation. where those same hinderances (if played right) can play into a HaT rogues scheme and allows the rogues energy pool to replenish while potentially still gaining cp from friendly sources. So while Mut may dominate on paper i believe Hat dominates in practical application in WotLK instances/raids.

But as everyone knows, HaT is extremely party dependant. In raid i find i don't generate CPs very well with mages, destro locks ect in group. But high crit classes like affliction locks, DK, hunter and even disc priests make CP go off like popcorn. So its not unreasonable to request from the raid leader a certin party line-up to maximize your dps. Any smart RL will grant the request.

Currently i'm wondering how important it is to hit the poison cap as a HaT rogue. Because as I stand currently, I'm experimenting with gear. T7 is geared more towards Mut spec so i'm thinking about different gear options to better exploit the HaT spec. Any suggestions?

Reread Songsters post.
The value of Envenom is not as great when you are HaT spec.

For gear options I suggest you check the T7.25 rogue gear discussion
The best items for HaT spec is there as alternatives to the T7.25 items.
You could keep head and shoulders for 2 set bonus. The alternatives for them are weaker then the alternatives for the other parts of T7.25.

Alright, after giving it a try last night with an okay group, and without playing it particularly well in my opinion, I believe a poisons/envenoming build (23/5/43) is at least viable.

The idea of it is NOT to envenom constantly, but rather by only using envenom when at 4+ stack of deadly poison and 4+ combo points, but maximize the buff uptime as much as possible. Use glyphed eviscerate if finishing and deadly poison isn't stacked, rupture is up, and snd is not about to expire.

Wow Web Stats - As I said, I think there's a good amount of room for improvement in my play here, and I was on the unlucky side with envenom crits, though eviscerate crits balance that out a little.

Edit: That links to the patchwerk parse, but as a note loatheb was spore loser and gluth I was handling anesthetic poison. Additionally, I don't take part in much trash (if for some reason you care about trash dps) as I'm master looting.

I posted this a few days ago in the Buggy mechanics thread, but I've had no response and figured this is a HAT problem so I'd raise the issue here as well.

Has anyone else ever had a problem where certain people did not proc combo points on crits when spec'd HAT? I was testing with several guildies this weekend to confirm if a few specific abilities proc'd combo points on crit and noticed a few people were simply.. "broken". I was targeting the target dummy in IF, I was speced into HAT, they other people were in my party. I was able to proc combo points myself if I started to hemo the dummy, but got nothing from other players. This occurred with a warrior (the other 2 warriors I tested with worked fine), an enhancement shaman (the other enhancement shaman worked fine) and a DK (didn't get a chance to test with another).

Apps

I have a hard time swallow that the poison buff would be as good as CqC, Imp Snd, Aggression and Blade Flurry.
Granted its ok but more data is needed to prove that it is as good as the standard spec.