5 energy/tick would be so overpowered, I doubt that's what it's supposed to be. I think it seems in line with what you'd expect from a 2 piece bonus. Maybe a little underpowered, but not by a huge margin.

While I truly appreciate the time you put in to your combat post, Hallagenic, there are legit questions people have about combat that are simply getting overlooked. Like the glyphs? AR, SS, and Rupture? There are some spec options for combat too... how far into assassination should we go w/ the poison changes? Are they worth giving up RS for it? I know there are more changes for Mutilate but there are still some mechanics of combat that those of us that are combat are looking at as well. I happen to play both specs and am looking forward to being able to dual spec so I can change spec per boss on the fly, so being proficient in both specs as 3.1 comes out will be a big help. (Yes I spend an outragous amount of dkp on different loots for the 2 specs.)

Apparently Blizzard thinks we are gonna use HfB in PvP when 3.1 comes out.

No, they're making sure any change they make to it will not make it attractive to pvp.

Why would we use Envenom less? Picking up Master Poisoner making reapplying a healthy stack of DP easier than ever, and Envenom will always do more damage than Eviscerate with Vile Poisons and in a raid environment.

I've done some testing on PTR already with a Murder, SR, and WD. With the typical case of IP on the MH and DP on the OH, I found I got my best results with SR/WD. Normalized IP application means you can take advantage of DP on your offhand to apply quickly after an Envenom. My average tick unbuffed on a target dummy was roughly equivalent to that of my average tick on my last Patch25 kill. That also, of course, takes into account the buffed AP coefficient on DP.

I believe the argument for TtT vs master poisoner was over pretty much as soon as the envenom glyph was removed and the massive buff effect put onto MP.

I noticed quite a large increase in damage today on the PTR, I was only able to do about half an hours testing but I noticed that with the 51/13/7 build (1 in sns) and rup/mut/HFB glyph I was about 600-700 dps higher than on live just on a training dummy with only self buffs. I also noticed that I was able to mutilate *alot* more than I used to be able to, mutilate moved from being 3rd on my dps charts to 2nd (over Instant poison). Deadly restacked to 5 stack extremely quickly and it's damage increase was noticable.

With the current incarnation of Master Poisoner, the only change we'd consider making to IDN based on the set bonus is to put DP on MH; it's unclear whether the extra DP uptime is worth the loss of MH IP procs - I suspect it's not, but it's worth checking on.

In terms of the actual value of the set bonus: well, it gives one energy every 3 seconds, and a bit less than that as Mutilate. Baseline regen is something like 12 energy per second as Mutilate and 15.5 as Combat; thus, it's around a 2 to 2.5% energy regen increase, and would thus increase all yellow damage sources by about 2%. Compare this to the 4/5 T7, which has about double the effect and has an EP value on the order of 150-200, depending on exact gear and spec. Thus, we'd expect the T8 2/5 set bonus to be worth close to 100 EP, which is a bit more than the T7 2/5, which seems about right.

As for the 4/5... depending on the exact implementation, this could very easily wind up being way too good. Right now Mutilate gets 8% of it's damage or so from Rupture, such that if the set bonus causes ticks to do double damage at one's melee crit rate, we gain some 4% damage from it. That's a *lot* for a set bonus. We're talking on the order of 300 EP - easily twice the T7 4/5 set bonus. Now, I'm certainly not one to complain about damage buffs, but 300 EP is a *lot*. That's "this set bonus may not be worth breaking until T10" type good. And that seems... a bit overpowered, frankly.

We'll have to verify the exact mechanics and interaction with our crit-multiplying effects, but, suffice it to say: right now, I'd expect T8 4/5 to wind up getting nerfed somewhat, as right now it's frankly ridiculous.

Sure. But that's the case we're in right now - there's 13 levels between T7.25 and the individually BIS legs, chest, and gloves; and, at the moment, we still chose the set bonus, and by a fair margin. So having a set bonus that's twice as good... it's going to take another set bonus to make it worth breaking, or gear options literally 40 ilvls better. Which is a lot.

I was going to quote both of the responses aimed at my thread but ill just touch on the 7/51/13 build while I am at this.

In no way was my thread meant to be an end all to any of the combat questions but mainly as an informant tool for those worried about weapon specialization. Something that given current speeds/dps shown for various items still concerns me quite a bit.

On the other hand I brought up mention of testing the different specs because there is in fact a need for testing to be done to see what ends up being what. But that testing would need to be on a very large scale and would need to be constant meaning you have all your cool downs on every run. Unlike Mutilate damage which can vary widely from a combat dummy to boss, Combat is a little more progressive in the fact that what you see on combat dummy will mainly be increased on bosses not necessarily changed because of debuffs. That is in fact because of the general rotation combat uses.

On this next part ill discuss "My" opinions from what I have seen on "My" dps in live and then place that information and compare it to the three "potential" specs.

Ill start with 15/51/5 the spec I use and the spec I also consider to be basic Combat Build. I say basic because it neither accentuates poison or bleed damage. 18/51/2 and then 7/51/13 respectively. I see the 15/51/5 build being the most safe/greatest white damage spec there is. Given that Lethality is a net 30% CRT damage increase. I don't need to really go into this spec its simply emphasizes critical damage over anything else.

Now ill talk about 18/51/2. The point about this spec is this. You give up substantial amount of energy from finishers in line of 20 per finisher move or 60 energy per cycle. But the question is if the poison damage gained is enough to offset the Energy/Sinister/Combo Move damage gained from RS. It could very well be so, it can also simply fall vastly behind. The main build on this was really having to do with fast weapons and poison scaling pre 3.1 but I feel it should be tested all the same. Mainly taking into account what poisons will be best for combat in the future. ATM I find duel Wound to do the most average dps, but coming new 2 set and static increase to Deadly Poison damage in 3.1 I could see it possible for wound/deadly to outperform duel wound especially given set bonus. Which in turn would also make a 18/51/2 spec all the more likely to be viable.

In terms of the 7/51/13 Spec "Bleed" spec. This spec Accentuates bleed over everything else and gives you base armor penetration over combo CRT damage. Seeing as the new 4 piece wont stack with lethality for rupture CRTs sense its change to only combo generating abilities. It seems quite plausible that the increase 30% rupture damage may outweigh dps lost from Lethality. It may be on a larger scale with Mangle and other debuffs up. All three specs will need testing and are rather close ATM. Until 4 piece comes out nobody can be sure as to what it is though.

Now speaking of which, we honestly without testing cannot say if the 4 piece is based on our Critical Rating the wording simply says chance to CRT. What that is who knows ATM. But overall all three specs need to be compared dps wise and checked. Plz note that having the highest dps doesn't trump doing the most damage. So I will spec for whatever does the most damage and change my rotations accordingly. I am not biased to one spec or another I will simply go with whatever does the most overall.

To recap:
>After testing I have found WP/DP to do more damage than WP/WP and this will only be pushed further with new 2 piece.
All three specs will need to be tested thoroughly with new 4 piece set bonuses.
All relative data needs to be on a somewhat equal plain/stage. (meaning mainly target dummy dps for general accuracy using no food/flask)

Fixed

I feel your analysis on the 4/5 could be correct but you have to take your findings and compare it with other classes' 4piece set bonus. You can't really determine the power of a particular class unless you have something to compare it with. Just a quick glance at the other classes' set bonuses and ours seem in line. Take a look at the Hunter 4piece set bonus, as well as the mage combined 2 and 4 piece set bonus, warriors combined sets for 2 and 4, and the warlocks aren't too shabby either. So, do ours seem overpowered - in and of itself, perhaps. But when compared to our competition, I say probably not.

Since nobody has mentioned it yet, I did a rough stats comparison on the new sets compared to the current T7.25:

T8.10 gains (compared to 7.25):
76 Agi, 61 Crit, 22 Hit and 29 Expertise, while losing 44 Haste, 34 AP and 51 Stamina

T8.25 gains (compared to 7.25):
109 Agi, 82 Crit, 30 Hit, 34 Exp and 16 AP, while losing only 10 Stamina and 32 Haste.

Quite a decent improvement stats-wise I think.

On top of that Tier 8 has 5 red and 2 yellow sockets, compared to 1 red, 2 yellow and 3 blue sockets on Tier 7.
So by better socket coloring we can gain even more stats due to nice socket boni.