For the time being, have you tried using blacksmith sockets to roughly simulate the expertise you'd gain with the food buff? I noticed that you are not a smith, so it should do the trick for now.

Just downloaded the newest spreadsheet, and i noticed something a bit peculiar, was wondering if anyone could shed some light on the subject.

First off, i play combat. In my current gear, i am sitting an even 600 hit rating. The spreadsheet recommends that i gem for hit - no big surprise there. Hit has a high EP in my current set (HnS with DV and HWT). If I switch two of my yellow gems from hit/AP to straight hit, the sheet recommends that i gem straight-up AP. Again, no big shocker generally this means i have achieved a sort of balance where the EP values are very close. I throw 2-3 red AP gems in, and the Spreadsheet again recommends gemming straight hit. Right past (what i assume is) the hard cap. And it's still recommending hit. The paper-doll dps goes down with every hit gem i put in, since obviously more hit at this point gives absolutely no value. I swap a few of the hit gems for AP gems, and i see the paper-doll DPS go up, but its still recommending hit gems. Anyone know the reason for this?

Aldriana has said something about it on some forum here, but i dont remember it...

The sheet is not a no brainer, it assumes that you know what the hitcap, expertise cap etc are. It wont tell you, if you reached or crossed the hit cap like "oh, he has just crossed the hit cap, now i'll ignore the EP of hit and reommend gemming the second highest EP stat (like ap)"

It was unclear whether this was aimed at the mutilate or combat sheet, and I have not downloaded past 1.4.1 so I don't know if the rupture values have been removed, but this prompted a question. Does anyone else find themselves in a situation where even with all 245 and above gear, low rupture is still yielding the highest dps in a combat spec?

It strikes me as strange that most of the conventional wisdom in the later parts of this thread (namely the use of ArPen and Evis only rotations) is still reducing my projected damage. Right now I'm running HWT and Scorpion with about 500 passive ArPen and no matter how I play with the gems/glyphs/spec, I still come out highest with low rupture and AP gems.

I suppose I have still not reached a high enough level of gear, but this is odd considering that the Evis only rotation was starting to overtake rupture before ICC debuted.

Also, understanding that the Lich King's loot table may change this situation, is there any consensus forming as to which 2 pieces of tier gear are the absolute staples to reach the 2 set bonus? Hopefully that would encompass both mutilate and combat, but I'm interested in combat specifically.

After searching the forums very thoroughly, and about 10 hours of theorycrafting, I am at a stump.
My main concern is why does [Death's Verdict] (from normal 25 toc) give me more dps than [Deathbringer's Will]? Is it because of the consistency of the 256 Attack power over the armor pen of Deathbringer? I was under the assumption that the extra 15 seconds and extra 150 agility (per say, of course depending on procs) would outweigh [Death's Verdict].
I thought at first that it would be because maybe the agility puts me above crit cap. According to Rogue FAQ's by Aldriana I should be fine.

On the spreadsheet it says white crit cap 68.46 - 2.37% chance to miss, and -0.50% chance of targets dodging my attack.
That would bring me down to roughly 65.59 crit cap. If I interpreted this correctly. I stand at around in raids 50% crit, and 53% with MP,ToW, or HoC. With Death's verdict proccing puts me around i believe 58%? I could be wrong. But I'm still not over the crit cap or even close to it. 80 agility = "around" 1% crit. 150/80= 1.875 crit. 58% + 1.87 = 59-60% crit give or take. Still no where near the crit cap. I have 611 hit 18.63% + draenei = 19.63% and almost expertise cap at 24 expertise. I don't understand it at all.

If I try to add more hit; I lose dps, and if I try to expertise cap; I lose dps as well. My armory is here
The World of Warcraft Armory - Shinigamix @ Firetree - Profile

Could someone tell me if I am doing something wrong. Miss interpreting the information, calculations, or even a legitimate reason why Death's Verdict is giving me more dps than Deathbringer's Will.

I assume you mean for mutilate speccs because you don't have a combat specc on your armory. It's because so much of the ilvl is for the 11% arp on DBW and arp is of course the worst stat for mutilate.

I've done exactly that. I've conferred with many other rogues and emailed exact setups for outside verification. The highest reachable number with my gear is 10003.3dps and it comes from low rupture. ArPen gemmed Evis rotation with all appropriate glyphs and spec changes is 9880ish.

Oh, you are just asking for it aren't you!?

I assume you are trying to compare the 264 DBW, but not sure because u posted a link to the 277 DBW. The reason the 264 is a loss is because it's ArP and you're mutliate simple as that. Now if you are talking about the 277 version you're missing something because I plugged all your gear into the spreadsheet and found the 277 to be a pretty significant upgrade over DV.
Also a response to your comment about not being able to socket more hit/exp without losing dps... if you change the 40ap gem in the yellow socket of your Twin Spike to a 10hit/10exp gem you should find about an 8dps upgrade.

Edit: Also dont confuse the 15sec longer proc of DBW with higher uptime... the ICD of DBW is 105sec compared to 45sec ICD for DV.

I just looked at your gear and realized you're wearing full 4pc T9 set. When you said 245 I assumed you meant badge gear as well. You may want to think about swapping in things like the Duststalker Pauldrons and the Mask of Lethal Intent to see what that gets you as well.

There may be possible upgrades to my gear from badges; that isn't really my question. It just struck me as strange that there was a gear setup of this high an ilvl which still optimizes for low rupture.

New Question: I added Seal of the Twilight Queen in lieu of Dextrous Brightstone. The 1.4.1 sheet estimates the dps of a low rupture cycle with this gear at 10048.5. I just downloaded the 1.4.4 sheet and the exact same gear is registering only 9826.2. That seems an incredibly large drop. I have triple-checked and everything is identical in terms of user input.
Going to now play with Evis only and see if 1.4.4 likes this setup better, but still, why would the new version of the sheet show such a large drop?


EDIT: I realize the answer to this question is that a nerf has occurred since the 1.4.1 sheet was created. However, I have investigated the Evis only setup and it is still a 26 dps loss.