Ticia:

I disagree. According to Mavanas' sheet, you can cap out it energy every once in a while. 20 more energy will as well give you the ability to change the ruleset for ability use a bit, to a perhaps more optimal set where you won't be forced to use lower cp eviscs, when capping in energy is less likely to happen. Not to mention fights with interrupts and movement.
In traditional specs, 20 more max energy will enable you to pool more effectively as well, so even though it might not be a very big upgrade, I think that it would be interesting to see just how big that upgrade shows up to be in the sheet.

I would imagine that speccing that way and using the vigor glyph won't be dps benificial, but I would still like to see it modelled.

This spec sounds an interesting idea. Maybe i will do it sending 1 point from Ruthlessness to bladeflurry.
Any feedback about the tests?

It's true that glyph of Vigor can have some effect on dps. I am going to say right away that if you are in a stacked group and getting 3 combo points per second, the effect of what I am about to describe will be next to nothing.

However if you are not spamming finishers on every GCD and actually have to manage your energy, it can become relevant. Main loss of dps in HaT is having to use a combo point builder or a low cp finisher when you are about to get energy capped. Extra 20 energy gives you 2 extra seconds to obtain more combo points from HaT procs and use a higher cp finisher. By replacing a 2 point eviscerate with a 5 pt eviscerate you are increasing your DPE from 100 to above 500.

So glyph of Vigor is theoretically worth trying out if your current group is not generating enough crits for a finisher spam or if a large proportion of those finishers are 3 pointers or lower.

I implemented Vigor in my latest version and gave it a quick try. The comparison was between 11/17/43 with Vigor and 10/18/43 with an extra aggression point (both specs have blood spatter). Best glyph to drop for Vigor turned out to be snd. I tried it in my typical HaT group, which has 105 HaT ppm (2 survival hunters, 1 marksman hunter + a hat rogue). So far the result was a 100 dps drop from switching to Vigor (with my gear and group I went down from 6.5k dps to 6.4k dps). I will try it in a lower HaT ppm group later to see if those people who are more combo point starved can benefit from Vigor more.

Ok I conceed the sleight of hand point and actually I'll probably shift the two points there into serrated blades. The thought behind improved ambush is two fold:
1) this is partially a pvp spec as stated in my post, I conceed that it may sacrifice some maximal DPS output on tank and spank fights
2) I've felt like a lot of raiding in WOTLK are non-static fights amenable to using vanish--> premeditation--> shadowstep--> ambush-->5 pt eviserate--> gather CP's from group crits -->eviserate, then if the CP's aren't flowing quickly hit a preperation and start over. The increased damage from shadowsteping and from master of subtelty could potentially be used to increase DPS on those high movement fights (and you would be using ambush there). This is a hard to model spec for sure and I'm certainly new to being a rogue and very clumsy still (we're talking I'm still doing Ramparts at this point and feeling very clumsy) so it's all speculation and information gathering from raiding with an arms warrior and reading this forum for the last few weeks.

Fair enough, my bad, though I'm still trying to see if people think the significant mobility of many raid fights in WOTLK lends itself to use of talents that may be dismissed out of hand as being for PVP. Earlier someone was dismissing shadowstep as a waste of a telent point, but thinking of almost any raid fight to me shadowsteping seems worth a GCD while waiting for CP's to build and then being able to hit your next 5 pt evicerate with 20% extra juice. Or for example does cheat death allow you to survive Saph's Frost breath so you could stay on him and DPS (maybe vanish when he lands for agro reasons)? Would you survive Kel's ice block with cheat death? These are "pvp" talent points that may allow for increased PVE damage output but are difficult to model and therefore I think might be dismissed out of hand?

Everyone keeps talking about HAT talent trees based on DPS output on patchwerk, but I'll tell you as an arms warrior in that static fight I usually finish top 5 on DPS in my 25 man group when on many other fights I'm near the bottom of my group (hence the arms DPS buff promised in- and I roll with a well geared group) on many other fights because there's to much moving and I can't slam very much (Grobbulus for example), so basing DPS on a Patchwerk spec doesn't seem that great. Again though I haven't raided with a rogue yet.

Shadowstep is generally not worth the point. 20% every 30 seconds compared to 2% every Evisc or a lower average Eviscerate over the whole fight (due to CPs gained from Ruth) doesn't work out. For example, for SS to be worth 1 point in Aggression you'd have to Evisc less than 10 times every 30 seconds, and if that's the case you probably shouldn't run HaT anyway.

As to Cheat Death, it's simply not a worthwhile PvE talent. If you die to Frost Blast on KT, it's a healer issue. Surviving Sapph's frost breath doesn't do anything, as when he goes airborne he has a knockback aura that pulses around him, which makes being in melee range impossible.

Finally, comparing HaT to arms is ridiculous. None of our abilities have cast times, I shouldn't have to tell you this. Get some raiding experience on a Rogue playing the spec you'd like to discuss, and discuss it.

Is Denic the only one not understanding my point? Your first paragraph implys that you are on the boss 100% of the time....many fights you are not. VOA, Saph, Sarth, Four Horseman, Grobbulus (after you get the debuff), all obvious examples of spending time not on the boss. Which is exactly why I was talking about arms warriors, not to compare arms to hat (and yes I realize rogue talents don't have cast times), but to simply illustrate that there's a big difference to the training dummy DPS output (of Patchwerk as an example) compared to having to move around, getting knocked back, getting stunned, getting MC'ed, getting Hatefulled, etc which makes the actual DPS theory more complicated to calculate. Surviving a Hateful because of Cheat Death would certainly make those three points well spent on your over-all damage output on that fight.

Your next response will certainly be "if you are getting hatefulled that's the OT"s fault" which is to assume that everything works perfectly on the pull, there's no lag, there's no....[insert variable that's hard to account for on the spread sheet here], etc.

I agree with Denic in spirit and I would argue any day that cheat death is not worth losing a single dps talent. However it's true that even from pure dps theory stand point you could argue that some not obviously dps related stats and talents could be preferred. Consider for instance 2 BC enchants, one 12 agility and another 6 ag and minor speed increase. Many people chose the second one and I could theorycraft how much time spent running during an encounter would outweigh the 6 agility loss.

I chose shadowstep in my own build not because I like to blink around and find it fun. I chose it because I consider it a dps increase on average across Naxx, OS, and EOE. Some fights, like patchwerk you lose out by skipping 1 point in aggression for a point in shadowstep. Some fights like Malygos, you gain a lot from it.

Here are some examples of where I use it and it gives me more dps time on a mob: Anub (travelling from an add to the boss, shadowstep back when impaled), maexxna (shadowstep back from caccoon and have it broken by whirlwinds/aoe faster + save travel time from caccoon), gothik (save travel time), 4horsemen (save a lot of travel time), Noth (save some travel time), grobbulus (save travel time), sarth (save travel time), and malygos (get out of vortex and gain a lot of damage time).

Now I am just gonna do some real crude napkin math. In a recent Naxx run + Malygos, I did 15 mln damage. I did a calculation somewhere that 1 point in aggression increases my damage by 1.2%. So by speccing into shadowstep I forgone 180,000 damage that night. My DPS including all traveling around, dying, etc over the entire run was 4600. It would take 39 seconds of extra dps time over the course of the entire night to cover the difference of 180,000 damage. I think it was a lot more than that if you account for Malygos, I can most likely cover that much even within Naxx. On top of that, every time I shadowstepped back in from a distance, it was normally a 5 point rupture, of which I gained 20% more damage. so that's 1500 more damage every time shadowstep was used to engage next target faster. 20 shadowsteps which I most definitely did that way cover 30,000 of the 180,000 gap. Together with the running time, and dps through vortex, shadowstep is definitely worth a lot more than 1 point in aggression.

I have to concede though that on a fight that's normally used as the best measure of single target dps, Patchwerk, I am losing 1.2% dps, which is a lot of epeen value. But I guess it makes it worth even more to me when I can beat others even with shadowstep in my spec.

Actually it seems quite clear that you are.



I know how to play the game and control threat, thanks. I need to move to your server where there's never lag, everything works perfectly, no one ever DC's in the middle of the fight, Kel never MC's someone into the melee and then iceblocks two groups, etc. There's a lot of variables and to paint the game as if every fight is like a target dummy with 100 latency is silly.

Thank you for the analysis Mavanas, that was the kind of analysis I was looking for. If anyone else has "I use x spec even knowing it lowers my DPS sligthly on paper but in reality I think it's good" anecdote, that would be appreciated.

Has anyone taken a look at the new LR for HAT? Would it be something worth taking?
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?rogu...0&version=9637

Yes and no. There's always a situation where spec X outperforms spec Y, even while it's basically farther from optimal. We've had those discussions here ages ago already, in a thread called "Hemorrhage: the point of infliction" or something like that. And trust me, I was on your shoes in that situation, and advice you not to push it too far.

If you can give a fair calculation on how much time on and off target you need to get an X percentage of DPS out of that one talent, like was done, for example, for the shoe-enchants in TBC where the agi vs running speed buff was disected, then you'll have a very strong case. Without it, it will be no more than napkin math. And HaT is already an irregular enough build to make us run short of napkins.

Hard numbers and WWS's are what we require, not anecdotes.
The occasional advice on when to use certain abilities, or when NOT to use them would be welcome too, if the advice is not too obvious or posted 20 times before.
For example, claiming how Shadowstep increases uptime, and at the same time telling people to use it on every cooldown for the damage increase (not saying that you did though) would be nonsense, since using it on every cooldown will mean it generally won't be available when you're away from target.
Something awesome you might've pulled off on boss X because of for example Shadowstep isn't really helpful either. Grats on pulling it off, but what is the general benefit to raids? What is the chance for the situation to ever ocure again?