Aldriana's sheet uses the Alliance names for items. What horde players know as the Blackhorn Bludgeon, alliance players know as [The Grinder]

small note: I found a slight input error for Cuirass of Calamatious Fate in Combat 1.3 (beta 4)

In the gear stats, 90 was under ArmPen, rather than Haste.

^

mine comes up with 90 under haste.

Is Ruptureless something that you forsee coming to the mutilate cycle? I find myself having significant DPS gains when using a 5PT envenom even when rupture has fallen off. So i guess i would call my cycle "low rupture cycle". Is there any data you would need from me or anyone else that could help you model this faster?

So looking at the sheet, the highest DPS I can yield currently is with 2pc T9 245 in a low rupture cycle with blood spatter and 5/5 lethality. I respecced back to this and equipped the T9 shoulders for the bonus but am running into a dilema.

Do I keep rupture up as much as possible to get use of the T9 bonus for max dps or do I respec back to evisc only and ignore the T9 set bonus. The only gear item that really matters here is the shoulders (emblem shoulders, T9 or Heroic Snow Bandit) Seems to me that the ruptureless cycle will be better overall due to the burst damage needed from melee and not really having rupture up enough to get use of the set bonus. Just wanted to get some thoughts.

The T9 2pc bonus has an incredibly low proc rate (something to the tune of 2%). It is not worthwhile to keep rupture in your cycle just to benefit from that bonus. That having been said, use the spreadsheets. If they tell you to keep rupture in your cycle even without t8 4pc, that's probably what you should be doing.

Exactly, thats the problem. Although I yield a higher dps total with the rupture glyph and blood spatter, is the spreadsheet dps loss worth moving away from ruptureless since the ToC fights are mainly burst damage based. If you check out my current gear, the only reason that I equipped the 2 piece T9 was to get the use of the proc but if its that low, im better off going with the Silver Assassin gloves and going back ruptureless (even though I have never seen the spreadsheet say Evisc only even when runestone ArP capped with improved evisc)

I think what Im going to end up doing is going back to a ruptureless cycle since its easier to maintain and I will continue to see the larger crits from Evisc in a burst environment. From what ive learned from the spreadsheet numbers, its never the end all tell all when it comes to rotation but it gives you a really great starting point.

Lastly, what is incorporated into the spreadsheet as far as a proc rate on the 2 piece T9? If the math is solid, then even throwing in rupture for the proc (even a 1 point rupture) will theoretically yield higher overall dps. Consider Jaraxxus when switching to the portal. Throw in a quick rupture and get the proc while bursting the portal or the volcano.

Edited for further discussion.

I ran into a really strange recommendation from this spreadsheet tonight. I just got a piece of i258 gear from ToC and the spreadsheet started recommending I do really really really strange things that I've never seen anyone recommend before. First Its telling me that I should replace *all* my gems with 10Agil/10Haste, including red gems. Secondly its telling me to change zerking for mongoose. And it's also telling me to use Wound/Wound instead of Wound/Deadly. I checked the roguecraft spreadsheet and it's also telling me very similar things. Here is a copy of the spreadsheet with the gear I currently have configured as well as my current spec.

http://www.happy-toast.com/ss/Combat_1.3_(beta_4).rar

Has anyone else ever seen anything like this? Also if you change the legs to the i245 T9 legs, everything changes back to recommending normal things.

Darkcube, it's likely because you're using the 18/52/2 spec and all your AP gems. It's recommending you change everything to AGi/Haste for more poison procs.

With your setup right now I was getting 8165 DPS, by gemming AGI in all red and blue sockets (10 stats in the helm) and yellow with AGI/Haste, I'm showing you as 8175 DPS. Wound/Wound, High Rupture cycle.

Also, holy hit rating Batman. >.<

With your spec (improved poisons, hack and slash), high AP, and ridiculously high (too high really - there are much better trinket options available) hit rating; poison and hack and slash procs are making up a significant enough portion of your damage that haste has overtaken crit by a fair margin.

At a certain level of AP, haste, and particularly with swords/axes; mongoose catches and in some cases surpasses berserking even with a more conventional 15/51/5 spec, so it's not really strange at all to see that recommendation for you given your gear/spec.

Yeah I do need to lose some hit but I haven't even seen better trinkets drop, except blood of the old god which doesn't exactly help my case . Been clearing ToC every week and still no death's verdict, and we basically stopped running ulduar and have never killed algalon, and the greatness card is a decrease so there's not much more than death's verdict I could get with what my guild runs.

The last thing nobody has addressed is the fact that it recommended I switch to wound/wound. Is this something that's viable? I've just never heard of a point where you should drop your deadly poison for wound in a combat spec.

Why? The difference between continuous and discoutinuous combat is relevant for DP vs. wound/instant because DP has a build up time that reduces DPS when interupted. For rupture and eviscerate cycles the effects of time off target are roughly the same, lost CP and cycle interuption. What reason is there for these effects to be more pronounced when using rupture as a finisher? Sure, in a fight with a burst window where the target is either less vulnerable or completely immune to damage outside of a specific window would favor instants but in fights with just a lot of taget switches the effects should be roughly the same.

Well, consider that your secondary target might die before rupture finishes.

Eviscerate gets more pronounced burst damage, which is at times useful. Basically, to get full DPS benefit with rupture cycles, your target has to live at least 20 seconds, and there's a couple notable cases - Jaraxxus portals/volcanos, Twins shields, and Gormok Snobolds - where that's simply not the case. For these targets, you're just going to do a couple SnDs into an evis *anyway*, so speccing for eviscerate will result in a damage increase on those targets if not the overall fight.

Similarly, Icehowl while stunned favors damage that doesn't take 20 seconds to resolve, as the damage buff drops when he gets unstunned.

Basically, eviscerate is getting all the damage in a bursty fashion - there's no ramp up time, it's doing maximal DPS on any target that survives more than a couple of seconds. Rupture, on the other hand, needs time to ramp up to generate equal damage output. Hence, it stands to reason that on short lived targets, eviscerate-based DPS will be superior; hence, if you can spec for it with minimal steady-state DPS loss, the practical effect will be a DPS gain on many fights.

I've noticed a somewhat strange inconsistency in the cycle reccomendations. In my current gear low rupture is being suggested. If I add the eviscerate glyph and talent before removing the rupture talents, it will show an evis cycle as ~40DPS higher. However, if I subtract the rupture talents/glyphs BEFORE adding the evis talents/glyphs, it indicates the evis only cycle is ~20DPS worse... I make no alterations to gear or buffs.

This is just a guess to why there is a drop. Are you choosing 3/3 Imp Evisc and 2/3 Ruthlessness? When you took away your rupture talent/glyphs, did you take away that one point from Ruthlessness as well?

If you are doing 2/3 Imp Evisc and 3/3 Ruthlessness, I'm not sure then.

For most gear setups, 2/3 Imp. Evisc and 3/3 Ruthlessness will deliver better sustained damage. The reverse will deliver better on demand burst. Consult the spreadsheet to be sure. Another option for some gear setups is to go 3/3 in each and drop the point from Lethality (going 4/5).

I've noticed that Skinning isn't selectable as a Profession in this spreadsheet. Is this deliberate?

Surely the 40+ Crit bonus would have a significant effect on dps, especially for T8 (4/5) Combat Rogues with AGI gems. Granted, there are other professions that give a slightly better dps boost... but lesser gems, enchants and talents are still selectable in the spreadsheet. Why include them and not Skinning?

Most serious raiding rogues don't have any gathering professions. You can mimic the profession by just adding 40crit rating in a gem or to a gear piece somewhere.

When you mentioned the Twins' shields I had a more general question about shields. I was under the impression that the shield was as it were part of the boss, rather than a separate mob with its own health pool. If you have rupture running on the boss before they put up the shield does that rupture then contribute to taking down the shield? or does it continue to damage the boss under the shield? Similarly, if you put a rupture on the boss while the shield is up, would it not damage the shield while the shield is there and then continue to damage the boss afterwards? I know that that is not going to get the shield down faster, but on normal mode getting the shield down in time isn't an issue, so the increased total damage might make the fight shorter, possibly have one less special ability.

Skinning isn't modelled in the spreadsheet for the same reason that TBC gems aren't - there are far better options available.

The shield is indeed just an effect on the mob and not a target in it's own right; so if you know which one to ramp up on, you can indeed get your cycle going ahead of time. If you prerupture the boss, the shield will absorb that damage as well and break that much faster. Of course, depending on your strat, this may result in less overall DPS, depending on whether you switch colors to burn the other target's shield. Plus you don't always know which one you need to be burning. So it still feels to me that the near-instantaneous ramp-up on an eviscerate cycle has fairly profound advantages on the fight.