Actually I think the answer to the rupture vs no rupture debate is not as simple as you think. First, rupture costs less than eviscerate, 25 energy vs 35, or 0 energy vs 10 if you are expertise capped and have 5/5 in relentless strikes. So if you are looking at it from the stand point of best use of energy, rupture will do more damage per energy spent (infinitely more if you want to be mathematically precise).

Even if you are arguing that limited energy is not a binding constraint, and what limits you is just the number of global cooldowns or "button pushes" during the fight, let's talk about how much pure damage you can get out of your 5 point rupture vs a 5 point eviscerate. There are two common HaT specs, one is 8/20/43 and has full aggression and imp eviscerate; the other is 13/15/43 with blood spatter and maxed out malice.

I am going to use Vulajin's spreadsheet, as a well-recognized source. His calculation of rupture and eviscerate damage has long passed the tests of many rogues. The gear: 4 pc t7.25, Chestguard of Recluse chest, KT cloak, Thrusting bands, Stalk-skin belt, Footwraps of Vile deceipt, Strong-Handed and Surge Needle rings, Fotff and DMC:Greatness, Favor of the Dragon Queen, Envoy of Mortality, CG main hand and WB offhand. All red gems are agility, all yellow gems are accurate monarchs, and all blue gems are shifting opals, best enchants - one of the best setups you can get right now. Assume full raid buffs, then before buffs and talents, rupture does 4993 damage, after applying the buffs and talents, a single rupture does 9547 damage (7673 if not glyphed). Eviscerate unbuffed does 3986, and after taking into account all buffs, talents, damage reduction due to armor, and crit rate, a single eviscerate will do 6338 on average. So a single rupture keypress will do more damage than eviscerate keypress, and for 10 less energy.

For 13/15/43 spec, a rupture will do 11,593 damage compared to eviscerate 5524 average damage (when both are properly glyphed).

So you see, in order to justify using eviscerate over rupture you can't just go by the damage each of these abilities does, because rupture does up to two times more. You have to work into this equation other factors, such as the fact that you generate a combo point by using eviscerate (if it crits) for yourself and for another Hat specced rogue in your group. But to weigh all these factors, you need to model the impact of an extra combo point you get from an eviscerate (if it crits) and that it not something I can do in my head, so I am using a spreadsheet. Based on the limited findings I have so far, even with 13/15/43 spec, using rupture will increase your dps, even if you have a stacked group of 4 hunters and can spam eviscerate. Even then substituting a rupture over an eviscerate every 20 seconds, will result in a sizable increase in dps.

I am guessing reports of increases in dps from eliminating rupture from your rotation all date back to when HaT was broken and people were running with 3+ HaT rogues in the group. Under those circumstances, the effect of an extra crit from an eviscerate was magnified manifold by the broken mechanics. Given the current rate of combo point generation through HaT, I cannot justify eliminating rupture from my rotation.

After reading the last few pages of this thread I have come to the following conclusions (please correct me if I may have misunderstood):

1. CG/WD with WP/WP would be the ideal weapon set up.

2. 4pc T7 is worthless for HAT since you shouldn't be using combo generating moves.

3. Eviscerate spamming + SND seems to be what most people are doing, but reading above, how can that be true if a Rupture ends up giving more dmg/GCD or dmg/energy.

4. Gemming AP and getting Expertise cap as well as hit cap are the priority, gemming Agi is not as useful.

I have been Muti ever since I started raiding and want to start treading into the waters of HAT.

Current gear setup can be found: The World of Warcraft Armory

I don't have a non 4pc T7 setup yet, and I only have these 2 daggers to use. Is it worth trying the spec out?

My group comp will be 2x Surv Hunters, DK and a FG Warlock most likely.

There seems to be alot of hate for the HaT spec'ed rogues (reading on various forums), not sure why - but I want to try this spec for this coming fridays raid. I am currently mut and doing fairly well with it. I only switched two weeks ago so I am getting down the rotations and expectations of it, given different scenarios. But dps is like crack, you gotta get more!!

So, given my gear:
The World of Warcraft Armory

And the fact this would be a new spec, though I can't imagine the rotation would be difficult - what is an expected return on say, Patchwerk or Maexx ? etc.. I know there are so many variables in place, but I am curious if the HaT spec would show such a disparity in dps than mut. As aside, I was able to get to 5160dps on patchwerk on my last run as mut.

So in a nutshell, long winded - I know, what can I expect from HaT over mut given my gear and assuming at least reasonable control of a rotation.
(raid composition is varied and I will probably at least be able to negotiate at least 2 hunters in a group with any combo of other classes )

My new file is streamlined to increase calculation speed. I listened to Vulajin and made changes that are confirmed to be true in Rogue Spreadsheet file. If you find discrepancies, please let me know.

Some features, like vanish/garrote during combat are still work in progress.

The file is located at Rogue_Simulation_3.0.8b.xls Download File on FileFront.

I would like to appologize for posting my previous message drunk. I took out all my comments about HaT.

Answers underlined

I'd disagree about Sinister Revenge and Rupture. Dual WD is optimal for HaT because of poison procs since you aren't using Deadly Poison (should be using Wound/Wound), and it makes total sense because with the SnD buff dual IP + Evisc is at worst on par with IP/DP + Envenom for Mutilate. Same concept, different spec.

So far the strongest HaT spec for me has been 8/20/43 with 3/3 Ruthlessness (the rest being standard). The big thing I like about Ruthlessness is it helps curb any unlucky CP droughts. Sure, you may waste some crits because Ruthlessness proc'd and you went immediately back to 5 CPs, however I noticed roughly an equal amount of times where a proc has turned what may have been a 2-3 pointer into a 3-4 pointer, which is a definite DPS increase when you're basically trying to use every GCD as it comes up.

Of course, what this has to do with Rupture is the fact that you don't pick up Blood Spatter, which at the high end I'm inclined to say pushes your Evisc ahead of Rupture. This is all purely based on my experience with trying builds that incorporate Rupture, and using a build that simply spams Evisc.

@Mavanas

I just tried the new spreadsheet and it seems that the DPS simulation is not working. At first, I thought it might have been me changing a variable that wasn't supposed to be changed. Then I decided to just try to run the DPS simulation without making any changes and it still doesn't run.

I noticed quite a few #name? on the Combat tab and #div/0! in the dps output tab. Am I overlooking something obvious? Thanks for your work on the spreadsheet so far.

Re-downloaded the file and using Excel 2007. When I hit run DPS simulation, excel seems to be attempting to perform the calculations, but nothing happens. The progress percentage doesn't change. After a few minutes it stops and nothing changes.

I'm seeing #name? in the following for combat tab:

Each of the subsequent rows contain the same errors, I just pasted the initial row.

Blizi,

if this is the very first spot where #name appears, it looks like your excel does not recognize the mround function. The function comes with Analysis Toolpak, which should come with every version of Excel. To install the function, go to Tools Menu ->Add-ins -> Analysis Toolpak and install the add-in.

Let me know if that did not work.

I did not realize this function only comes with the toolpak, I will try to find a workaround using regular excel functions for later versions.

I've been really intrigued by Mavanas' homework on HAT and his variant on the spec that skips aggression for ruthlessness, blood spatter, and shadowstep.

After following the Art of Poisons thread as well, I got to thinking that shiv could potentially be a better supplementary builder for HAT with 2 fast daggers than backstab or hemo... so i decided to test it out.

WWS for Patchwerk this week: http://wowwebstats.com/5gorgdf6hkr6o?s=179573-210896&a=x1d9130

Spec: 13/15/43 with full malice, 3/3 ruthlessness, 2/2 blood spatter, 5/5 precision, and 3/5cqc.

Gear/stats: murder/webbed death, expertise/poisons hit capped, 4k AP and 35% crit unbuffed.

Group: 2 hunters, 2 DK's

My reasoning for 5/5 precision over 5/5 cqc was to keep poisons capped with my gear focusing on making poisons a larger portion of my dps in addition to using shiv as a back up cp generator.

My gear is certainly not optimal with 4pc 7.5 and I was mistakenly gemmed for AP for this parse.

Anyway, despite any shortcomings I was pretty happy with the results. I love HAT, but it does lack some versatility as it only really shines on single target, stand still fights. I think shiv is likely the best supplementary builder for dual fast dagger HAT spec as it is much cheaper/efficient than backstab or hemo.

238 wound poison hits in 2m, 40s is pretty crazy for HAT.

For next time I am shuffling some gear and gems around to stack agility and maintain the poison hit cap while speccing 3/5 precision and 5/5 cqc. I am also hoping to pick up leggings of the honored and/or fast adroit handguards to optimize my gear.

Thanks to Mavanas for answering some of my questions. He suggested that I maybe try instant poison and/or speccing vile poisons which i may do in the future although I'm skeptical about instant poison without the imp. poisons talent and I think only slight variants of his spec are ideal.

More discussion/testing on shiv and poisons damage in relation to HAT please.

Shiv is, assuming webbed death oh, 1 energy cheaper than hemo. Using wound poison, you're only gaining 50% of the poison's damage in exchange for the loss of the debuff (which alone is more raid dps than the wound poison proc at any currently reachable level of ap) and the damage difference between hemo and shiv.

Even from just a purely selfish level ignoring the debuff, you need .5*poison damage to exceed the difference between hemo's damage and shiv's. This won't happen with wound; it can with instant poison (where it's the much greater amount of ip damage minus half of wound damage), but you'll lose damage from autoattack procs by using untalented instant with no envenom. Still, if you're going to do this, it has to be using instant poison if you want to have hope to see improvement. Shiving with wound is just a direct downgrade from hemo.

On a data note, my parse using my envenom build, and with an amazingly dumb group including a prot warrior and a resto druid for this fight because I just completely forgot until after patch: Wow Web Stats