Completed my first night in 25 mans as sHaT, so I will share some stuff I learned about the spec tonight:


Rotation: In 10 man, I was concerned with my rotation because the CPs were not coming in too often. However, in 25 man that was not the case. I more or less had a good constant flow of CPs coming in throughout the night, and never seemed to have an issue with my CP generation. I had to Hemo every now and again, but it was pretty much just used to bridge a point or two. Other then that, the rotation was simply SnD and Evis till you need to refresh SnD.

Group Composition:

2 Survival Hunters
1 Ret Paladin
1 Fury (TG) Warrior
Myself

Like I said above, the CP generation was healthy, but I wasn't "flooded" with CPs to the point were I just sat there and clicked Evis. Still, I did not feel CP starved.

My Spec: 6/21/44. I did not take Ruthlessness, and instead opted into BF and ShS.

The WWS: WWS Loading...

The DPS isn't huge on bosses such as Patchwerk and Thaddius, however this was my first night that I have ever ran as sHaT. Also, the WWS parse linked above seems to be off a little. For example, it shows that our Patchwerk kill was 3 minutes and 5 seconds, which is off by about 40 seconds. Seems a little odd, especially since the DPS numbers themselves seem to match recount data for the night. Anyway, I'll try and fetch a more accurate WWS, but for now this is what I have.

Also, my weapons were Murder/Webbed Death and poison setup was dual Wound. My gear setup is 5/5 T7.5, and the rest can simply be armoried.

On a final note; our guild took a free transfer, so our next raid day (this Thursday) will be without the raid ID from tonight, so I'll look into posting up another Naxx WWS parse from that run, and that one should be smoother and we shouldn't be hammered to shit by lag. I am expecting to see a bit of an increase in total DPS.

Combat most certainly does not surpass Mutilate (particularly with both a Combat and an Assassination rogue in the raid) and various WWS aren't really proof of anything. So a few combat rogues got lucky with the RNG. That's about all it tells me. There's a reason spreadsheets exist.

HaT is highly dependent on external variables, which means, yes, you are correct, it's only viable in 25-man when you can have a close-to-perfect group setup.

Mutilate is better than Combat for single-target DPS during sustained fights, without a doubt. However, as fights get faster, Combat gains DPS, whereas Mutilate stays basically the same. Combat is helped even further if the fight duration is something like 2m30s, which means they're getting maximum uptime for BF. Now, add in if the fight is a fast one plus has adds, and Combat really takes the cake because of the amount of burst AE damage you can output while still maintaining your cycle. So it's not that surprising that Combat ends up on top for some of those fights.

As for HaT, it seems implied they will be changing the way pets interact with HaT, but I'd suspect even that won't push HaT under Mutilate, given how ahead it seems to be at the moment. But it's hard to say for sure.

EDIT: One other note, it does seem like the BiS spreadsheet gap between Mutilate and Combat might not exactly be as big as people initially thought, but you'll still probably see it trailing by 1-2%.

Chalon: Pets right now seem to be the biggest contributing factor to a HaT Rogue's ability to surpass the other specs. With pets working as they are right now, the CP generation with multiple Hunters in the group is perfect. Personally, I think HaT should stay as it is now, and the other two trees just need to see the buffs they need. I.E.: Damage increase for both, Armor Pen becoming useful in Combat again, Murder getting fixed, and HfB becomming less of an annoying talent. Buffing Sub ever-so-slightly to compensate for the Combat and Assassination buffs should keep HaT competative with the other specs.

A 5s internal cooldown per 25 man raid would still be too slow. Combat is better for quicker fights as Chalon stated. Spreadsheets are not always the best way to judge DPS, they just give you a ball park figure. Some mechanics are too sporadic to calculate in a spreadsheet and can throw a spec on top or bottom in terms of DPS. So throwing out the "luck" factor is not ideal when your talking about what does more dps, because "luck" can and will occur - so it needs to be averaged.

The problem with this, is that you are now completely non-viable in 10man, and downright useless in a 5man. The common feeling I notice is that putting pets alongside their owners on the same 1sec cooldown would properly reduce CP generation.
The spec is unlike any other class/spec in the game. It's new, it's fresh, it's on-your-toes esp since the fix.

The main thing I've noticed about it is that it's entirely reactive. I react to my combo point generation (which is out of my hands) and hit Eviscerate when necessary, keeping SnD up.

Other builds, I'm actively building the combo points towards the "goals" of finishers.

Watching your combo bar and spamming one button doesn't really feel much more "on your toes" than watching RPB to make sure HfB doesn't drop though. I'm just glad to push ahead of the ranged dps on certain Naxx fights now.

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

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.