Deep Subtlety: Thread and Spec Necromancy - Page 93

DarthLukan · 03/31/10, 10:25 PM

So far as topHAT goes (mind you I'm lvl 79 as of this post) I'm getting TONS of procs off of my wife's resto druid, our resto shammy, and any "nuke" specced caster. SPriests seem to give me lots of free points, and all others have been tested within normal instances as well as target dummies (I have a cool guild with people that love to help me test things). I would almost say that "perfect" group makeup depends on not necessarily particular classes and/or specs, but more like specific setups. For example, my wife as a resto druid is stacking haste and crit (among other things) and so that is the best explanation that comes to mind for proccing HaT for me so often. That is, unless topHAT is not reporting properly, but I highly doubt that.

Just some food for thought is all. I will try to get some parses from heroics at least tonight when I hit 80.

Ozzmar · 04/03/10, 8:23 PM

Originally Posted by Knyghtmayre

The main failing point of the spec seems to be the fact that the application of poisons is so difficult without the poison talents from assassination. Even with some insane haste and buffs, I found my DPs falling off or very nearly falling off, on top of taking absolutely forever to stack to 5.

Have you (or, has anyone) tried a Combat subspec rather than Assn/Com split? I remember during HAT's 15 minutes of fame that many were surprised to find that Lightning Reflexes ended up adding more DPS, despite the loss of Eviscerate talents. Maybe something like 0/18/53? Perhaps that would help with your DP issue as well?

Mavanas · 04/04/10, 7:19 AM

I have stopped playing WoW, so it's hard for me to judge how playable HAT is in 3.3.3. As far as numbers are concerned, I did have a good working model of HAT for a long time and as far as I know, in the last month nothing has changed that would affect the calculations.

The last simsheet can be found here. You can use it to find the best spec for your gear. For BiS gear, I found 10/9/52 with 1 point in imp SND to work best. Filling HAT to 3/3 seemed to give best results too, not just because of the bugs some people are talking about.

The cost of weapon swapping is around 100 dps, and the difference between dagger-hemo HAT and axe-hemo HAT is around 120, so without playing it myself, my wild guess would be that I would not bother playing with a slow mainhand and then worry about weapon swapping before a shadow dance. I would just stick with a dagger.

The value of hemo is around 250-300 dps; do not forget that when comparing your dps with that of other rogues.

As for shadow dance, key is to pool energy before it and squeeze in as many ambushes as possible, if done right SD is worth around 700 dps above the regular energy use.

nat · 04/07/10, 6:07 AM

Originally Posted by Mavanas

The cost of weapon swapping is around 100 dps, and the difference between dagger-hemo HAT and axe-hemo HAT is around 120, so without playing it myself, my wild guess would be that I would not bother playing with a slow mainhand and then worry about weapon swapping before a shadow dance. I would just stick with a dagger.

have you count with -40dps decrease for poor equipped rogues- around 5000 AP buffed, because the should deadly MH and insta off hand, instead of wound MH and deadly OH?

and other way +40 and more dps increase if you are 8000 AP buffed, co the same thing (i made simple excel sheet, where i used 2,6 weapon for instant/wound , 1,4 for deadly, 20% haste, 13% off hand miss chance, can upload it if need it

plus bigger chance to keep deadly up, and raise it to full 5 stack quicker if it falls down. Ideal in fight like Sindragosa (in Sindragosa fight is shadow step -> priceless

Beeftank · 04/18/10, 12:44 AM

Assuming you do not have any daggers to mention, would only going to HaT and then specing imp poisons be the better way to go?

Is the loss in poison applications made up by your shadow step and shadow dance cooldowns for people who can make use of backstab and ambush?

Ive been thinking something like this http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?rogu...n,6dN-Oe,11685

Istaril · 04/18/10, 10:21 AM

Simply put - no.

The energy you're losing from not having Filthy Tricks (not to mention the rDPS damage boost), 5% damage from SfShadows as well as 5 energy on every Hemo. And Shadowstep is fun but at it's worst, a 1pt 20% increase to Rupture damage.

Going for the poisons won't make up that difference.

wasniahC · 04/20/10, 10:45 AM

If one was to take 2 points out of dps talents to max out cheat death, what would be the best places to take those from? What would such a spec look like?

Two points there to guarantee a "second chance" could be well worth taking. After all, while it only helps if people make mistakes, if nobody ever made a mistake, you would one-shot most bosses.

Also, has the 2/3 HAT bug been fixed yet?

RDaneel · 04/21/10, 3:50 AM

MoS would be the safest bet.

Raoulduke · 05/01/10, 12:33 PM

My first time posting here, hopefully I won't cock it up too badly.

I have had mutilate as my main spec throughout WotLK and will probably not be switching to combat or sub any time soon. However, reading this thread did arouse my interest in sub as an offspec, mostly for fights that require a lot of movement or where the shorter CDs on vanish and Cloak as well as Cheat Death would come in handy (Sindragosa in particular).

So I first tested various versions of the deep sub spec, ending up with a 10/10/51 version (meaning only 2 points in HaT). I did a dummy test of this with another (muti) rogue and a retpala beating the dummy with me, just to get an idea of the proc rate on HaT and to see if it even worked with 2 points, as I had seem some people mentioning a bug. The result of the dummy test of approximately 10 minutes was not as bad as I had expected. HaT procced enough that it was hard to keep up with the CP generation while trying to get the unfamiliar rotation right and my dps was approximately 5300, the other rogue whose gear is almost identical to mine approximately 6000.

Considering that ...

-I did mess up the rotation numerous times and CD management was very poor
-I was in muti gear (i.e. AP/haste gems, very little armor pen)
-I had only 2 other people in my group

... this simple test convinced me that it was at least worth experimenting with it some more in an actual raid, so I decided to try it out in a normal ICC10.

However, when I got inside the instance, HaT would no longer proc. I tried leaving the raid group and getting reinvited, I tried relogging, I tried a combination of both, and I tried speccing back to my mutilate main spec and then reactivating the sub spec, but nothing worked. Finally I went back and did a complete respec, losing 1 point in slice and dice to pick up the final point in HaT. After this respec, HaT was again working properly.

So, unless I missed something, it seems that

-HaT 2/3 is still bugged
-The bug only occurs in raid groups

As far as raiding with a deep sub spec, it was very evident that I would need a lot more practice before it would be worthwhile. I was simply struggling too much with the rotation and CD management. I do believe, however, that it *can* be really good for certain fights. At Sindragosa I got numbers that were quite close to what I normally get on that particular fight, so with practice and a more suitable gear set, I could see sub becoming very viable for Sindra and some of the other fights in ICC, not to mention that it is quite fun (read: challenging) to play.

StoicRoivaS · 05/02/10, 6:14 AM

The numbers I recall seeing (I think Mavanas posted?) were about 1500 dps below combat/mut in a pure tank and spank fight. This number, however, had some "adjusted" dps estimates, if you will, to reflect the hemo debuff and the rdps increase via talents, at least as I recall the post. So in a perfect patchwork play, it will seem even farther behind on something like recount, because a bit of your "damage" goes to other people. For fights like Sind that you mentioned, we can only assume that gap shrinks even more. So if 1500 dps isn't too big a number to scare you off the spec, or if the fun/challenge is just worth that much to you, then yeah it's definitely worth playing.

Edrielle · 05/06/10, 5:05 AM

I'm still curious whether or not Backstab should be used. When I gave HaT a try in a HoR heroic, I stuck to Hemorrhage (in this spec), mainly because I assumed for Backstab to work (as) well (as Hemo) you would have to spec into Puncturing Wounds and maybe even get the Glyph. Is there merit to this? Are there other reasons to favour Hemo (the higher value for the raid it has aside) - or is Backstab in fact superior?
Another thought - In PvP playing Sub I use hemo mainly for its debuff and backstab otherwise - I reckon this would be useful at least in 5 man groups.

Then I was curious if the two points I used in Ruthlessness in my spec might not be better spent in Precision. I have found that at times I cap on combo points sooner than I have energy, and I imagine that sometimes not having Ruthlessness might help that problem. Else maybe Blood Splatter, if indeed I should be using Rupture.

Finally, I was curious whether I should use both Rupture and Eviscerate or use all 5 CPs for Eviscerate at all times. This is what I did in the HoR I did, mainly though because I forgot all about rupture.

Rahdik · 05/07/10, 3:33 AM

Should be using a 5 CP Rupture in conjunction with Shadowstep, and Eviscerate when Rupture is still up. You should also have points in Blood Spatter.

I'm 99% certain that you never use Backstab.

Ruthlessness isn't really what's causing you to not have enough energy. That's just one of the flaws of the spec: Not enough energy regeneration.

RDaneel · 05/07/10, 5:29 AM

Backstab spec (assuming puncturing wounds, glyphed backstab etc) has been tested by few people and the conclusion is that its a bit more personal dps while Hemo spec is more raid dps.
Backstab spec for looking better on dmg metters, Hemo spec for a larger benefit to your raid/guild.

Like Rahdik said, use Rupture with Shadowstep and try not to spam your combo builders (Backstab, Hemo) and just pool energy for finishers. Best practice i found so far is just to sit arround 60-80 energy most of the time.
If you don't have 5 combos when you pass 80 energy use your preferred combo builder then.

Mastering shadowdance to get max damage from it is also important.
I try to dance when i have 2 combo points on my target so when i ambush the first time i get a 5 combo finisher for a guaranteed Relentless strikes proc.
Before the second ambush i use Premeditation which is crucial to do in order to have enough energy for a third ambush during the dance.
So, Premeditation, second ambush to 5 combo points, use the preferred 5 combo point finisher for a guaranteed Relentless Strike proc and ambush for the third time at which point Shadowdance should be almost over.

This is works for me but you can search trough this thread for different shadowdance rotations.

Edrielle · 05/07/10, 11:21 AM

Originally Posted by Rahdik

Should be using a 5 CP Rupture in conjunction with Shadowstep, and Eviscerate when Rupture is still up. You should also have points in Blood Spatter.

I'm 99% certain that you never use Backstab.

Ruthlessness isn't really what's causing you to not have enough energy. That's just one of the flaws of the spec: Not enough energy regeneration.

... which is why HaT wouldn't work well against trash either, as I deduced. Anyway I'm not saying Ruthlessness is to blame but dropping it might help me ease that pain a little.

I've been testing using Backstab in Mavanas' simsheet and without puncturing wounds it fell about 1,25% behind (forgot the exact number, did a number of tests and only noted the numbers for different combinations of gems). I forgot all about using Puncturing wounds, stupidly. I'll test that too and see the figures on that. I'm wondering what to drop though, I'm guessing Ruthlessness? Blood Splatter, I think, in light of recent comments and my own tests with a ruptureless cycle, will be more valuable. This is also up for testing soon though of course.

Edit: I did a few tests on backstab with Mavanas' latest simsheet. My baseline was (what I think is) standard HaT:

Baseline: 9783 DPS using:
-Rupture, Eviscerate, and TotT glyphs;
-Hemo as CP-generator;
-This is in my own gear, by no means BiS, but fairly averagelevel ICC10/25 gear, iLevel 245 weapons (average iLevel 255), with 2/5 T10;
-Gemming: 7 ArPen gems (1 JC-only), 8 AP gems (1 JC-only), 1 JC-only Exp gem, 1 Hit/Exp gem. The difference between gemming pure ArPen, pure AP or a mix was rather small (always well under 1%, but I went for the mix, it had the highest DPS, albeit not much - about 0,25%).
-ArPen food.

Test 1: Puncturing Wounds instead of Ruthlessness, Rupture Glyph, Eviscerate Glyph and TotT Glyph: -0.7% DPS.
Test 2: Puncturing Wounds instead of Ruthlessness, Rupture Glyph, Backstab Glyph and TotT Glyph: -1.18% DPS.
Test 3: Puncturing Wounds instead of Ruthlessness (2/3) and Blood Splatter, Rupture Glyph, Backstab Glyph and TotT Glyph: -2.47% DPS.
Test 4: Puncturing Wounds instead of Ruthlessness (2/3) and Blood Splatter, Rupture Glyph, Eviscerate Glyph and TotT Glyph: -1.97% DPS.

It seem Combo#1 is best but all my tests with backstab have turned out inferior to using Hemorrhage thereby disproving the notion made two posts up - that Backstab is better personal DPS. I could have missed something, however, naturally, and I leave my findings open to falsification of course.

Also I tested gemming agility, which, when gemmed exclusively, is 0,5% ahead of the above stated gemming.

Originally Posted by Ozzmar

Have you (or, has anyone) tried a Combat subspec rather than Assn/Com split? I remember during HAT's 15 minutes of fame that many were surprised to find that Lightning Reflexes ended up adding more DPS, despite the loss of Eviscerate talents. Maybe something like 0/18/53? Perhaps that would help with your DP issue as well?

Been wondering about this too, in fact, but I'm concerned Blood Splatter and Imp. Eviscerate might be better still. I'll give the spec a shot.

With the stats the same as for the four above tests, Rupture, Eviscerate and TotT Glyphs:

Test 1: 4 Precision, 4 CQC, 4 Aggression, result: -2.91% DPS. 2nd test: -2.88%
Test 2: 5 Precision, 3 CQC, 4 Aggression, result: -2.90% DPS. 2nd test: -2.75%.
Test 3: Imp Eviscerate, 5 Precision, 5 CQC, result: -1,79% DPS. 2nd test: -0,90%
Test 4: 4 Precision, 5 CQC, 3 Lightning Reflexes, result: +2.35% (!) DPS. 2nd test: 2.06%.

Did no further tests with Aggression in different combinations with CQC and Precision, since the ones I did were quite clearly inferior. The following test is without using Rupture, and using the Hemorrhage glyph:

Test 5: spec, result: -8.51% DPS.
I wanted to run this test in light of the fact that combat and mutilate have over the course of WotLK foregone using Rupture and I thought that Shadowstep might benefit from a cycle spamming exclusively Eviscerate as well. The results indicate that clearly I was wrong, though I'm by no means an expert on Excel and I might have made some mistake. I'd love to see if anyone can reproduce my findings.

What intrigued me was that the grabbing of Lightning Reflexes upped the DPS by so much, which leads me to wanting to test gemming haste, AP/haste or, in light of my test with agility (see above) agi/haste.

Edrielle · 05/25/10, 2:07 PM

I made a guide for my old guild regarding Subtlety PvE, not so much to be nice and make a guide for my old guild but also to organise my own ideas about Subtlety. It's absolutely my own brain theory on the basis of what people had already worked out, but I thought it'd be nice to put this together.

Subtlety

Short and quick:

- Spec.

Weapons and poisons Slow mainhand with [Instant Poison], fast offhand with [Deadly Poison]. Daggers are ideal.

Gemming is agility, or agi/hit or hit, and of course one tear.

Glyphs:
- [Glyph of Tricks of the Trade]
- [Glyph of Rupture]
- [Glyph of Eviscerate]

Rotation

* Open with Ambush, use those Combo points to run SnD.
* Hemorrhage to 4 CP, then pool energy and let HaT (Honour Among Thieves) apply the last combo point. When it arrives, instantly Shadowstep and Rupture.
* Eviscerate according to that same rule (4CP and pool) in between Ruptures.
* Use Shadowstep exclusively for Ruptures.

* Shadow Dance:
- Pool energy prior and
- Make sure you have enough time left on SnD prior to dance
- Try and have enough time left on Rupture, also
- Try to have as little combo points of your own on the target prior to dance, lest you waste them when ambushing.

- Ambush until your combo points hits 5
- If Slice and Dice isn't on, Slice and Dice
- If Rupture isn't on, Shadowstep and Rupture
- Else Eviscerate.

Theory

From my own theorycrafting, the best spec I arrived at was this. Surprisingly, the 2nd tier was Combat, not Assassination, I found no combination of assassination talents superior to this. This is in gear with an average itemlevel of 255 and TotC weapons, and a mix of ArPen and AP gems (about 50-50).

Though Hemorrhage hits harder with fists/swords etc, swapping wastes a GCD and gives extra effort. Hence daggers seem ideal, though I don't have theory to back this up yet (no time yet). The fast offhand slow mainhand logic is fairly self-exemplary.

The best kind of gemming I've found has so far been Agility, purely and only - but not by much. Pure ArPen and pure AP pull slightly behind, and the difference between the two has been fairly marginal (~0,25%). I'll be going to test fitting in haste as well when I have time.

Regarding glyphs, I tried [Glyph of Backstab] instead of Eviscerate, and while not a large loss, it pulled behind by about 2%. [Glyph of Hemorrhage] is a viable option - while yielding lower DPS it buffs raid DPS. I've not tried Dance but I doubt it's any good. One more Ambush every minute is pretty marginal.

As far as Rotation and dance goes, pretty much the same applies as early WotLK Combat. This isn't taken from EJ, this is my own brain theory. You keep SnD up, and Rupture, and Eviscerate when those are up. Dance whenever ready, and Shadowstep on rupture (highest DPE still).

During Dance you'll want as many as possible of your "elapsing" abilities (that is, SnD, Rupture) up with enough time not to expire during dance.
Basically, what you do is continue your normal rotation except you replace Hemorrhage with Ambush. Ideally you have Rupture still up and running during your whole Dance, for the simple reason that you have to make your already stressy and complicated Dance more complicated by fitting in a Shadowstep as well, wasting valuable time.