I don't claim to remember everything I've ever said about what setups are BIS for who, but my personal BIS wishlist for combat is 2/5+3 offset. This is, admittedly, partly because I don't think 4/5 is going to be practical to get while it's still in any way relevant, but it's also because I personally believe there's a legitimate case to be made that it's better.

I apologize Leaf, looking back at it I felt your response was directed at me (and specifically calling me lazy or cheap) so I may have been more aggressive than was warranted.

As I stated above (to Aldriana) I based my assumptions (faultily) off the assumption that the lack of off-set 277 ArP pieces combined with his not mentioning the option in his post on BiS meant that it was so. There are certainly the same upgrades available, they just aren't optimally itemized for combat (lacking ArP).

And I thought we'd somewhat covered the dps differential that's being seen in top end guilds (or I thought that was covered). Combat loves fights that allow multiple cooldowns usuage, or are so short that AR occurs during a significant portion of the fight. On WoLogs, my guild's combat rogue tops 19k during AR, so of course as we shorten the fight he moves up the meter. So I was speaking more of a situation wherein I am looking at my guild meters and explaining to the combat rogue why I'm ahead of him (drop rates, not being DW dependent etc) when I said "until the farming is enough to get those tokens").

I have to admit to being really disappointed in Blizz deciding to only drop one 277 token per boss. It just seems to make building 4T10 (277) kind of pointless before the xpac launches.

Ok, not to beat a dead horse, but I have made some claims and haven't put any numbers behind them. Which is contrary to the point of these forums in general.

Also in case it is important, I'm not all that invested in this topic, it's just a slow work day. :-)

So I plugged in BiS for combat and Mutilate following these rules:

1) 11/12 heroic. LK is down for so few guilds that to build this gearset assuming access to his drops seems pointless. That being said, they're all BiS, so go nuts.

2) Built using Aldriana's newest spreadsheets (with corrected values on LK weapons and heroic heartseeker)

3) Built using standard 20/51 (see: no rupture) for combat and 51/18/2 for Mutilate.

4) Built in about 40 minutes, so I could probably tweak gem placement for some tiny gains...maybe

The setups I came up with are as follows (all heroic):

Combat (4T10):

Tier Helmet (34 Arp)
Sindragosa's Claw (nightmare tear)
Tier shoulders (20 ArP)
Shadowvault Slayer's cloak (20 ArP)
Tier chest (2x20 Arp)
Toskk's Wrists (20 hit)
Aldriana's Gloves (34 ArP, 20 hit)
Astrulian's belt (3x20 ArP)
Tier pants (34 ArP, 20 ArP)
Frostbitten Fur boots (2x 20 ArP)
Frostbrood Sapphire Ring (20 ArP)
Ashen Band (20 ArP)
Deathbringer's Will
Whispering Fanged Totem
Bloodvenom Blade (20 ArP)
Scourgeborne Waraxe (20 ArP)
Stakethrower (20 ArP)

Project dps: 13352.9

Change out the chest and pants for the Gangrenous leggings (34 Arp, 2x20 Arp) and the Sack of wonder (3x 20 ArP) and change the hit gems for ArP, and you go to 13325.4 dps.

So 4T10 is worth about 27.5 dps.


Mutilate:
Tier hat (20ap/10 haste)
Sin's neck (20 haste)
Tier shoulders (20ap/10 haste)
Shadowvault slayer's cloak (20 haste)
Sack of Wonder (20ap/10 haste, 20 haste, nightmare tear)
Toskk's (20 haste)
Tier gloves (20ap/10 haste)
Astrylian's belt (3x20 haste)
Tier pants (20 ap/10haste, 34 haste)
Frostbitten boots (2x 20 haste)
Band of the bone collusus (20 haste)
Ashen band (20 haste)
TAiaJ
Whispering Fanged Skull
2x Lungbreaker (34 haste in each)
Njold. Bone Bow (20ap/10 haste)

Dps: 13405.6

Replace Tier shoulders and hat with the cultist and Geistlord Punishment sack (and add a 20 haste gem to the shoulder and turn the 20 haste into a 20ap/10 haste in the hat).

Offset dps: 13392 even

So losing 4T10 is a 13.6 dps loss.

Now given that the spreadsheet values the 4 pc bonus as worth 88.5 EP for Mut and 40.1 EP for Combat.

My conclusion is that the offset piece option for Mutilate is stronger for Mutilate than the offset options for combat are for for combat.

So I was sort of right. But characterizing it as "a lot better" was wildly off the mark. However given that Mut favours the 4 pc bonus, but sees the lowest dps loss in not using it, the pieces are better.

Yay numbers!


The other conclusion I would extrapolate from this is that, at that gear level, Mut is ahead by 0.5%. Which is meaningless. So given that the fights will be short enough that combat's cooldowns will have significant impact on dps overall, combat will pull ahead on the meters. Assuming your guild can get Deathbringer's Will to drop, cause mine can't...

EDIT: in the interests of completeness, if you hack in the 4T8 bonus and change to the rupture spec, combat pulls ahead of Mutilate in a high rupture rotation with projected dps of:
Tier: 13,547.9
Non-tier: 13,537.1

So non-tier offset is a 10dps loss and the value of 4T10 drops to 24.1

What about 51/13/7 with BS and rupture glyph using agi/haste gems?

Brother bear am I mistaken or are the two almost identical in your results? In which case, the previously discussed problem with Mutilate is taking hold.

As the fights get shorter (ICC buff and Overall Raid gear progression) combat's condensed DPS is giving it a strong competitive edge, which is as Adriana said likely the reason that combat is represented 400-1000 dps on every fight in ICC. This was the inherit problem with Mutilate whose cool downs are basically non-existant and entire damage load can be broken down to Ramp up -> Sustained.

Combat instead endures Ramp up -> Cool Down Burst -> Lesser Sustained.

Where the sustained is less than Mutilate's, but that part of the fight is being eliminated.

Take this very crude illustration.



Where blue is Mutilate's static DPS and Red is Combat's Cool Down based Burst then sustained. In this crude chart, the red sustained DPS is lower than blue's static DPS. If they were to finish their durations the two would be almost identical in DPS.

However imagine the gray lines as the varying combat durations, where the furthest gray line is where their dps would sync up, but as the combat durations shortens combat suffers least as sustained DPS was a lesser part (relatively) of combat DPS.

Exactly!

My point (which is heavily skewed by my guild's terrible luck on Deathbringer's Will and every other combat-centric drop) is that I felt Mutilate would get to that level sooner by not being as Tier 277 dependent. Now that I've run the numbers, I'm more than happy to concede that I was wrong and that both specs are probably better off using 2T10 +offset and that the offset in question is off the relatively easy bosses in heroic.

The problem we're seeing now is that, in BiS, if the fight falls in the magic number (just under 4 mins) then combat is getting to use Adrenaline Rush twice, which is skewing the results so it looks like combat is considerably stronger than Mutilate. But, on the other hand, if you get to 2:59 or so, combat is down to one use of AR, and suddenly they "lose" ground. Point in fact the combat rogue in my guild and I had a good talk about this very incidence on Saurfang when he was frustrated because it appeared he'd suddenly dropped about 600dps over night, despite his gear improving, when really the guild is killing Saurfang in 2min or so these days. So which spec is superior can actually depend on how the raid is performing.

As I said, I like Mutilate for ICC due to the sustained higher dps being, for me, more useful for times when dps matters but my cooldowns might not be up (Put P3, Valky'rs) and for the 15% movement speed boost. But I do run both specs and, being completely honest here, I'm going to end up going combat as soon as the loot drops my way. As I mentioned, I find the Mutilate play style kind of boring and, at this point, too easy to be interesting.

And I'm really glad you pushed me to back my theory up with tests. Because I hadn't realized just how trivial the 4T10 bonus is, and given the extreme scarcity of Tier tokens (most guilds are only getting 2 a week, if that many) as well as the questionable nature of the 4T10 bonus, I may just let that ride for now.

On the other hand I think 4T10 will be the bomb for leveling in Cataclysm with redirect and the self-heal and SnD not needing a live target. But that's not really the point in the here and now.


Oh, and Fredrogue...I'm not going to bother doing 51/7/13 with agility gems. In ICC 25man (let alone heroic 25man) the gear just doesn't support that spec. If you're really curious, Aldriana's spread sheets are incredibly intuitive to use (I can't figure out how to properly quote a post, but I can use the sheets) and don't have macros...so there is no reason what so ever to not have them downloaded and be using them.

That being said, my spreadsheet is recommending agility/haste gems for my combat set until I get to the point where ArP is just better in all slots (about 1100 ArP).

EDIT: And the reason I call it a "problem" is that it goes to core issues such as "how do you balance around cooldowns without just making the specs act the same way.

Agi gems have been abandoned a while ago because of crit capping. In your case, you are 0.97% over your crit cap. You are receiving 2.25% from your Agi Gems (not including nightmare tear.)

Aldrianna's Sheet says:
MH Base Crit Rate 58.51%
White Crit Cap 64.92%

with 51/13/7 with agi/haste gems
I dont see me over crit cap like you said

I would like to see a solid argument against 51/13/7. Since aldrianna's sheet says opposite for me, I may doing something wrong.

It was calculated a long time ago LR outweighed 2 points in Opp and 3 points in RS with BiS gear. Your gear is far from best in slot, in which case you can work out for yourself what the best spec is, especially since you seem to have a grasp on how the sheets work.

So have we figured out that Rupture under perfect conditions (Blood Spatter, Mangle, etc) is definitely a DPS loss for Mutilate? Simcraft seems to think otherwise (but it also has Agi with the highest EP for me right now).

The reason you're not crit capping and the reason you gem Agi/Haste for 51/13/7 is the 2% less crit from CQC and the use of Rupture.

51/13/7 (with Blood Spatter) will show up as higher dps for some gear sets, primarily gear sets that use 4-piece, which you're using. The reason for this is very situational. You'll find that your 4-piece and Ruthlessness proc at the same time after Envenoming occasionally, giving you 4CP to spend with a full 4-5s left on your Envenom buff. If you're using 51/18/2, you'll also have an 8% chance to restore 25 energy after your Envenom, meaning you'll want to use a finisher again or risk energy capping. I found that without Blood Spatter, Envenom's damage will outperform all other finishers (including Rupture with Mangle up), meaning your best option is clipping your Envenom by as much as 4s. However, if you spec into 2/2 BS and Mangle is up, a full-duration, 4-point Rupture will out-damage a 4-point Envenom. The basic idea is that you can occasionally Rupture without sacrificing Envenom uptime when you have 4-piece. Blood Spatter makes it worth Rupturing in a world of critting Ruptures, and those occasions where you can Rupture without losing Envenom uptime happen more often with 5/5 Relentless Strikes (not to mention returning 25 energy after your Rupture makes it more or less free).

My argument against this is the rng of it and the marginal difference in dps that you'll actually see even if everything goes right. Alrianna's spreadsheet models a sustained dps fight with no target-switching or variation in combat, which is the only situation where this spec will consistently out-perform 51/18/2. Anecdotally, I can tell you that I found it to be terribly bothersome to make work the way you want it to work (I tested it about 2 months ago when I was using 4-piece). Sometimes I would get no convenient situations where I could Rupture, sometimes I would get multiple in close succession, forcing me to either overwrite my Rupture or overwrite my Envenom buff. All-in-all, I found that I could usually sustain anywhere from 40% to 80% Rupture uptime with it on most fights, but the difference in my dps varied so much based on factors that I couldn't control I decided it wasn't worth it. There's also the fact that Fleet Footed is incredibly useful on the few fights that actually present any kind of challenge in ICC, which also feature adds that (should) die before Rupture can run its full duration.

4+ Envenom cycles do more damage than 3+ Envenom cycles that have higher buff uptime. Basically, the extra damage from the higher CP Envenom outpaces the DPS gained by having higher buff uptime. Mavanas proved this, I believe, quite some time ago. I don't remember the post but I believe it's either in this thread or in his simsheet thread.