Question:

I am currenty a mutilate rogue and have been reading these forums for a long while now (without posting). I am seeing the majority rogues who are topping the meters either spec'd combat or HaT it seems and am wondering is it worthwhile to respec to HaT over Mutilate? Am I correct in assuming that most of the top dps rogues using combat or HaT or maybe just not seeing the Mutilate rogues posting their WWS?

Actually, I can't fully answer this question because I haven't been Mutilate for a stand and deliver fight since the buffs. I only spec Mutilate when we go to Malygos/Sartharion+3, so I don't have a real Mutilate metric for myself. I'm inclined to say from what I've seen of high end Mut parses that HaT should still be better. Of course, this is going to take you getting used to playing HaT (which is why I haven't been Mut). Even with a less than ideal group, and running on a computer that got 5ish FPS in 25 man raids during BL, I pulled 5700 on Patchwerk the first week. That was with multiple mistakes in play, and significant lock up that prevented me from hitting finishers each GCD.

If you've got 2 hunters you're half way to the best group available, so don't sweat that too much. The 4th member of my group (I usually have 3 SV hunters) is an Enhancement shaman, but I've also run a Fury Warrior in that spot. Our current Fury War is undergeared, but with our old one I didn't notice much difference. If you have 2 hunters, slam a fury warr + enh shaman in the last two slots and you'll be good to go.

Lastly, the only thing you can do is try. Don't get too discouraged if you don't pick it up right away, because it's highly counter-intuitive after playing a Rogue since Vanilla. I know I found myself using Hemo way too much when I started playing it, but that's a main part of the adjustment period, getting used to not using CP builders.

Thank you for the advice. I am curious to your choice of 2x fast daggers without a poison talent build. I would assume you use wound/wound but if that is the case would slow dagger / fast dagger not be better? Like sinister revenge/WD? What about dagger or fist / sword with a spec like Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft ?


Also, I do have anarchy in the bank so I could mix it with something (depending on what drops). Does the ideal build become different if I am not using dual fast daggers?

I don't think anyone has modeled it, but my inclination is that losing 2% crit and Ruthlessness isn't worth it. As to slow dagger/fast dagger, that doesn't make any sense. Slow daggers result in less poison procs, and it's well documented that the poison procs from WD outweigh the DPS disparity of the weapons. Fast/fast is the way to go to maximize poison damage, and you use Wound/Wound.

The ideal build stays the same. In practice maximizing poisons is a minor point. The majority of your damage is going to be white swings and Eviscerate, in fact I think it was something like 86% combined in my best parse. You can definitely work with Anarchy + another drop, since weapon damage isn't going to have any effect on your Eviscerates, and DPS determines your white damage (independent of speed).

The choice between daggers and fists, as well as the exact spec depend on your group setup and your gear. If you can make sure you are always placed in a group with hunters (next choice is probably death knights and warlocks, especially destro, basically classes with pets), you should spec close to what Denic has and use two fast daggers. If you find that your group is weak at generating combo points and you have to burn energy using hemo, backstab or shiv more than you like, then you should probably spec Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft and pick up calamity's grasp and webbed death. Some people like me, also put a point in shadowstep for utility, for instance Malygos vortex or moving around Sarth fight, although you have to sacrifice a point in aggression for it.

Thanks for the info! I have a 3 hunters and a DK who are very well geared. I will pick up 2 fast daggers asap and see if I can have some fun. I think it is just a change of pace I am looking for.

I run with Calamitys grasp+WD and slightly worse gear than you. This is our latest WWS. I did 5,7k DPS on Patchwerk with blood splatter/ruthlessness and no Agression.

@Denic

I'm poison capped with 5/5 Precision. But of course you are right - if you are poison capped with 3/5 Precision putting 2 points in imp. SND is the best option.

I agree that HaT is the build that has the least stacking synergy for BF. If you do it the way I proposed you start your first BF right after the beginning of the fight and use the second BF right after the first ran out. After about 2 minutes and 35 seconds your third BF is ready. In an assumed 3 minutes fight your third BF is ready when the target has less than 35% and it perfectly fits in a good timed BL. So what you get is 15% attack speed for 45 seconds plus the stacking effects from Dirty Deeds and BL for the third BF. 45 seconds is a quarter of the whole fight length. Now take a look at your wws to figure out how many % of your damage comes from white hits and poison. On the other hand you have to sacrifice 1 point from malice and loose 3 GCDs in the worst case. But from my experience I can tell that at least the first BF starts at a time when you are not GCD locked.

I think that is the point where your assumption is wrong. You almost never been GCD locked. But don't take my word for it make a "simple" test while fighting loatheb. Ask your raid mates to help you doing the test. The key is that your group mates get every spore possible, while you get none. After the fight your DPS is significant higher than your DPS on a patchwork fight. The DPS after that Loatheb fight is what I call your HaT-DPS-Cap. The only way to get such a high DPS output is that you are really GCD locked.

@Mavanas

Guilty as charged! I really need to apologize for that. I'm one of the greatest fans that spreadsheets ever had. I used them my whole combat and mutilate life, but from my experience HaT is something that is almost impossible to model. That is why I don't use a HaT spreadsheet and do very less math. In my opinion the only way to find out which HaT build is the strongest is to compare wws logs played with different specs. This may sound foolish but for me it worked out very well (best result was a third place in WMO some times ago). So all I have to offer is a build that based on my experience is above all other builds I have tested. I only can advertise you to give it a try.

I have no idea where you get 9% dmg from rupture and garrote? The highest percentage from rupture and garrote I found in my wws logs was 4.8%. I checked a few WMO top fight logs and rupture (if even used) is about 1-5%.

Eviscerate is more than 42% of my damage and it is more than 42% on almost every top dmg dealing HaT rogue on WMO (in fact every HaT rogue I checked). Besides nearly no top WMO HaT rogue uses rupture anymore.

So what do you guys think will happen to HAT in 3.1?
Theres been no direct changes to any sub talents and we must choose what to spec now. Can't have ruthlessness+agression+lighning reflexes. I dont know if HAT will stay competitive or not. Im kinda sad that Hemo is still a shitty combo point builder with a practically worthless debuff. I wish they remade Hemo into something that packs more of a punch and maybe adds some kind of self buff. 5 sec 5% haste buff, increased damage on next 2 specials or a self buff that increases bleed damage.

Consider a setup with CG/WD using wound/dp. CG will have a 21.43ppm/(60/2.6)=92% chance per hit to apply wound. Eviscerate away.

A change to hemo is somewhat overdue though. Its one of the last remaining target debuffs without redundancy and could very well be changed to a selfbuff similar to what they just did to Howling Blast and earlier stuff like Shadow Weaving.

Thanks for bringing up WMO, it was interesting to browse top rogue records and check their damage reports. You are absolutely right that the majority of top dps reports are of those rogues who do not use rupture at all. What's also interesting is that for some of those high dps reports, eviscerate crit rate was 65%, while white damage crit was around 45%. At least for the few top ones I've looked at. That means a lucky string of crits (unless there is something I am missing, since eviscerate glyph only gives you 10% extra crit rate). The only explanation I can think of for why rupture would not be used is when you are close to being GCD locked and eviscerate crit rate is so high that the extra combo point you get from a crit adds a lot of dps value to eviscerate spam versus using a rupture.

That string of crits also reminds of one thing you are missing when you are only looking at absolute highest dps reports. Highest average damage may not be produced by the same spec that is capable of producing highest maximum damage. When I run a simulation, out of 400 runs, damage can variate by as much as 800dps, and it's not just variation in crit rate. HaT mechanics itself introduces a lot of variation. Would be interesting to investigate which specs are capable of producing highest max dps as opposed to highest dps on average.

Every model and spreadsheet that I know of are only concerned with highest average dps. The dps calculated by Vulajin's spreadsheet, for instance, is average dps, so when you tweak your talents and gear while trying to maximize the dps number you are creating a setup for doing most damage on average. Same with Aldriana's work that I have seen. It's quite possible that if the goal were to produce absolute highest dps record on WMO, you might end up using a spec that was different from the one suggested by any these spreadsheets. Just an interesting thought.

I wonder if HaT will still be a Viable Raid-Specc in the Future.

Though i dont have any Numbers yet ....
I still think a 25person Raid will benefit more from an 2/2 Savage Combat Talent than a Single HaT Rogue's Dmg.

It triggers off Explosive Shot crits. I'm unsure about other crits, though.

It can only trigger from actual crits. Most "DoT crits" are not crits, they're just double damage ticks. Damage-wise, they are crits, but mechanics wise, they are not. For example: Wow Web Stats - UA "crits", but all of the damage is listed as plain non-crit ticks.

That was something I've read for Warlocks, yes. But now with 3.1 Priests and Druids are also receiving the ability to crit with DoTs/bleeds, is there any information about those?

Hi, im somewhat new to the EJ and theorycrafting community and was just wanting to clear some things up. From what I see with a HaT build the weapons would be MH-Fist OH- Dagger and using (6/21/47) as the talent build. And both weapons with dual wound poison correct? I am thinking of switching to this build ocne I get the correct weapons because I can see my dual sword PVE Combat spec starting to level out in dps even with gear improvements.

As I have been looking through this thread, it appears that we have the following issues to resolve to maximizing DPS

1. Hard Hitting MH/Fast OH vs. Fast MH/Fast OH
2. Blade Flurry vs. Shadowstep vs. Neither

This first is solved by the spreadsheet as it is merely a comparison of white + poison damage. It is almost certainly pure gear based, and I will look at this as I have time today.

The 2nd is a little tougher due mostly to modelling Shadowstep, however, it too can be modelled reasonably easily its primary contribution is to increase the damage of one Evicerate by 20% every 30seconds. Another issue is that Blade Flurry comes at a cost of of Blood Splatter and and/or Ruthlessness, but has one or two additional points in Aggression depending on the build. Going with neither would almost certainly have to be based around Blood Splatter, but could also max out Aggression. This solution to this problem will be found by comparing the damage done over 2 minutes in each build. My gut tells me that going with neither will maximize DPS, but Shadowstep and Blade Flurry can be great situationally, and it would come down to playing style.

My question is this, obviously we want to 5-point Eviscerate every time. However, at 35 Energy, a one or two point Evicerate can be as much as a Sinister Strike, Hemorrhage, or Backstab, and almost certainly is top Damage per Energy. Assuming your group has great crit generation, isn't Eviscerate still the best to use during the dry spells?

I copied my priest over to the PTR to test this, and it looks like shadow priest dots do count as crits: http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/1949/dotcrit.jpg . It's probably safe to assume that it's the same for the change to feral druid bleeds, but I don't have a character to test it with. I'll try and find a HaT rogue to help me test whether these crits proc combo points or not.


Edit: Got on my rogue and found a shadow priest to test with and can confirm that, sadly enough, the DoT crits do not proc HaT.

Sorry if this has been asked and answered, or if this is just some simple math that is escaping me, but I didn't see it anywhere. I've been reading through and I've noticed that with most of the builds people have posted there's only 3 points put into precision. I saw in the "Pocket Guide" thread it lists the hit cap for poisons at 315 with 5/5 precision. What does the hit cap become with only 3/5 precision?

You should not have 3/5 Precision, as you do not need Imp SnD as HaT.

However it becomes 315+65.58.

Here's an update on my experimentation with dual fast dagger shiv HAT.

Patchwerk

5857 is a significant increase over last weeks 5641.

I can attribute my improvement to some gear and spec tweaking. I regemmed to agility and went 13/15/43 with 3/5 precision, 5/5 cqc, 5/5 malice, full ruth and blood spatter. Seems to work pretty well for me.

My gear was pretty much the same as last week, but this run i picked up 2 armor pen pieces which i think will help quite a bit (saph quest neck and Aged Winter Cloak) next week.



On loatheb my dps went up to 6723 from 5977 last week. Maexxna was 5522 from 4975.

These seem like pretty crazy dps increases to me which I can't really account for aside from the already mentioned changes i made this week to my gear/spec. My group set up was virtually the same. I could just attribute this to lucky strings of crits from myself and my group, but the increase seems pretty consistent across the board.

My conclusion here is that maxing crit as much as possible via talents and stacking agil is the way to go. This may seem obvious, but I see many specs out there that only take 2/5 malice or less than 5/5 cqc.

As far as the shiv/poison aspect of my build, I think its the ideal path when using fast daggers which has already been determined in one of Mavanas' previous posts.

I'd be interested in anyone using a slow mh/ hemo variant of the ruth/blood spatter spec posting some WWS links for comparison.

I'd like to summarize some findings about HaT so far:
1. It's highest dps spec before next patch at least.
2. It's highly dependant on group composition, which can change not only your optimal cycle but also your weapons.
3. Relenetless and ruthlessness are two highest dps per point talents.
4. In an optimal group, two fast daggers with shiv or backstab are best setup. If done right, this build requires almost no combo builder moves. 2 point eviscerates are totally legitimate when compared to a combo point builder.
5. Biggest mistery, in my eyes at least, is the fact that top dps records do not involve rupture, just eviscerate spam.