Ah, but that can be balanced against the 1M 4pt Finisher "bonus", far from a problem at all.

You can model that cycle in Mavanas's simulation spreadsheet, and - as is the case where with changes to cycles (so long as SnD/HfB are kept up and Rupture uptime is high) - you won't see a huge difference.

But in freeing up these 3 points, you're essentially not gaining any DPS abilities (although you can debate fleet footed - I suppose it depends on your DKs, feet enchant, etc) - vigor is only a plus if you're running out of a fight AND in danger of capping energy.

I suspect you'll find it's a DPS loss. On top of that, you're still allowing the possibility of a 4pt finisher - since even with high crit%, it's possible to fail to crit two mutilates in a row, AND you're still allowing the possibility of generating 6pts - since it's fairly easy to crit two mutilates in a row.

Possibly, but with every other theory, you either go 1M (with 4CP at "best", not even slightly guaranteeing a Relentless Proc) or 2M (with 4CP at worst, "7" at best (Ruthlessness and double Crit Mutilate)).

Basically, taking the 2M theory and getting rid of it's high negative point (being 2 wasted CPs) while retaining it's predictability was my plan. In regards to what talents to take instead of Ruthlessness, i'm open for ideas Imp. EA, Quick Recovery, Imp Eviscerate are all in reach and more or less attractive.

Could this even be tested reliably using the combat dummies and working w/o raid buffs?

You don't *have* to have a fixed cycle, you know - you can do a 4+n, 4+r cycle, using a finisher as soon as you hit 4 combo points.

With rare exceptions, that's my strategy of choice - the exceptions being cases where an SnD refresh is needed (frequently just before a joust).

Once again, variations in cycles aren't likely to drastically affect your DPS, so long as your HfB and SnD stay up.

The "Wasted" cps in reaching 5 are offset somewhat by guarantee of ruthlessness proc and better ruptures, the wasted energy from 4 point finishers occasionally not proccing ruthlessness is offset by higher envenom buff uptime (generally) and more energy spent on finishers (higher DPE than mutilate). Dummy tests, even WITH full raid buffs, won't yield you an accurate enough picture - the difference between the cycles is likely less than the variability of any reasonable sample size on a test dummy.

The cycle you choose is mostly a matter of preference. The better your expertise and hit (poison) the tighter your cycles can be, etc. The biggest difference in DPS will be based on how comfortable you are with your rotation.


Quick recovery, with high expertise, does nothing for your dps, eviscerate is worse than envenom - no reason to use it, and Imp EA is highly situational - might well be worthwhile IF your guild doesn't run a prot warrior and your dps warriors are unreliable/shitty sunderers.

I know, i'm playing the 4+n/4+r cycle ever since hitting 80 and am pretty comfortable using a varying cycle. My point is, that at the high rate of Mutilate crits nowadays, a 4CP finisher happens more frequently compared to a 5CP finisher, which negatively affects RS procs, so upon reading Chalon's "Fixed 2M cycle" idea i was wondering if increasing the number of 5CP finishers while avoiding the situation of wasted CPs as good as possible could be a feasible idea.

And that's what it all boils down to, is it better to:
a) do 1M/2M based on the first Mutilate critting or not, having a high chance of doing a LOT of 4CP finishers possibly losing 25 energy in the process.
or
b) reduce the amount of finishers by going strictly 2M and increasing the possibility of 5CP finishers w/o wasting CPs, thus gaining 25 energy.

Stupid math tells me that every other finisher (really a rough guess, but simplifies my point), you're at 4CP (Ruthlessness proc + Crit Mutilate). At 20% of these finishers NOT gaining those 25 energy, that would be every 10th finisher. Over the course of a 5 minute fight, how much energy would you lose? And would that additional energy offset the reduced amount of finishers or even keep the amount of finishers the same?

Too complicated for me to calculate And if i'd try, i'd generate errors and render the result obsolete myself, so i'd like someone else to come up with the numbers.

*edit* but yeah, you're probably right, none of the talents you can take instead of ruthlessness seems to be actually worth it with raiding in mind.

This idea has been considered any number of times, and the short answer is that using 2M finishers instead of 4+ finishers is a fairly significant DPS loss, which tends to overwhelm whatever benefit you might get from the three talent points.

In short, the loss in DPS is caused by decreased Envenom/Rupture frequency and fewer Envenoms means a reduction in the Envenom buff uptime.
Placing the 3 points from Ruthlessness anywhere else in the Assassination tree will not come close to replacing that DPS.

Chalon, I am curious how 4pt8 affects these comparisons? With a "normal" cycle, you will be performing 4 or 5 CP ruptures, whereas with the "tight" cycle (one I personally prefer to use) you can be performing 2, 3 or 4 CP ruptures. Since the AP scaling of rupture increases with the number of CP in the finisher, would cycles that favor higher CP ruptures jump ahead?

It's important to bear in mind the effect of the rupture glyph on a low point rupture's DpE. Two additional rupture ticks is a larger relative increase in damage to a 2-3 point rupture than it is to 5 point rupture. You do lose some damage on a 2-3 point rupture, but you'd lose more damage using mutilate back to back.

This is obviously only mildly useful, but from my own observations comparing mutilate cycles, it seems like the general method behind mutilate post 3.1 is to maximize your envenom and rupture uptimes, which is best done by never mutilating twice without either a rupture or envenom in between.

Dropping 2 points in Ruthlesness will reduce your DPS far more than swapping Icewalker for Tuskarr's. Ruthlessness is far from useless.

I haven't even attempted to run those simulation numbers with all the 3.1 changes, so I'm not certain how big the gap is between the "normal" and a "tight" cycle with BiS T8.

5pt finishers cost you 120-130 energy including RS and the 4pt cost you maximum 85-95 energy with a ruth proc + mut crit, if RS didn't proc, if it does you are only using 60-70 energy. So it is diffidently saving energy using the 4pt finisher.

So do we have any concrete conclusions from this disscussion that would indicate a change in the current (accepted) rotation is necessary?

I don't understand why everyone tries to dissect the rogues rotation for any spec. No matter how hard you try, there's no other way because the rotation limits you to what you can use. I always try to keep my rupture at 5c and that requires me to mutilate x2 in order to get the 5c. During this time, my SnD is still high up and Rupture get's refreshed. How are you losing DPS if your job is to get rupture up as quickly as possible with a 5c? You simply Mutilate, venom, mutilate and focus on your rupture if it requires refresh for a 5c. If that's the case, you either venom or wait and follow with another mutilate. Then you can refresh your Rupture with 5c. What you guys are trying to do is find a narrow window that allows you to go beyond the games mechanics. If you can find that window to maximize your DPS, please let us know. I've tried everything and the best solution to my DPS problem was mEmmR.

Don't you find 4+ rupture to be a dps increase. I haven't checked it in a while but in the past 5+ was always a dps decrease over 4+ with respect to rupture.

That is explainable by the fact that going for 5+ Ruptures is going to lower your Envenom buff uptime quite considerably and may even cause you to miss SnD refreshes if you are not careful.

So, has anyone else here dropped rupture from their rotation on Hodir specifically?

Possibly sensible if you don't have 4/5 T8, but if you do, there's absolutely no conceivable reason to do so.

Even with 4pc tier 8, the total damage dealt by an envenom (initial + additional poison procs) when singed is fully stacked is very likely greater than a rupture.

I've obviously tried doing hodir with and without using rupture, but given the nature of the fight there's no way to have an accurate comparison.

With my gear, raid makeup, and level of skill, dropping rupture has proven to be roughly a 500 DPS boost. However, from a theory crafting sense, my personal observations are obviously worthless

[edit] On hodir only

From theorycrafting standpoint, keeping rupture in the rotation for Hodir should still be a dps increase, even if you are specced 51/13/7. All of the following calculations were done based on BiS gear for mutilate. While the exact DPE and damage values might vary in other gear sets, the conclusions are not likely to change unless you break the 4-piece t8 bonus. All calculations are done accounting for 50% spell damage buff. Because of 4-piece set binus, crit buff should affect both envenom and rupture similarly.

First, because rogues are not a GCD capped class, energy is a binding constraint and instead of talking in terms of damage done by each ability, one should think in terms of damage per energy. As a first step, you could say that if you are expertise capped, as many mutilate rogues are, 5 point rupture has infinite damage per energy, compared to 1373 dpe for 5-pt envenom. However, combo points is also a limited damage-generating resource, so instead it makes sense to compare the DPE of a combination of a mutilate + rupture and mutilate + envenom. More than half of all finishers are four-pointers done after one mutilate. The DPE of such combo with rupture is 319 vs 241 for envenom. Similarly the DPE of 2M+5-pt finisher is 253 for rupture and 212 for envenom. So rupture comes out ahead in terms of DPE comparison.

Second, even in terms of raw damage, as long as you have four-piece t8 set bonus, rupture will do more damage. 16k average rupture damage, without Hodir crit buff, versus 13.7k for envenom after accounting for the spell power buff. Again the crit buff, should impact the same way.

The only missing piece is the value of the envenom buff. Instant poison normally does about 1200 dps, 1800 with fully stacked Singe, 4500 dps with 4 stacks of storm cloud. After an envenom, for 6 seconds instant poison application chance is increased from 38.57% to 57.86%, a 19.29% increase. Which translates into a 855 dps increase for 6 seconds or 5.1k damage. With 4 stacks and full Singe debuff, you then have 5-pt envenom, including the effect on instant poison, do 52.8k + 5.1k = 57.9k damage versus 61.7k damage from 5-pt rupture. So again, rupture comes ahead.

To reproduce these calculations, you can use the AvDamage tab of the simulation spreadsheet, or you can hack into Aldriana's spreadsheet and back out the damage done by mutilate, envenom and rupture.

As mutilate, though, 5pt rupture is not entirely predictable, right?

If we say "4+" instead, with a "guess" of 50% of each (I really don't want to go through a full breakdown of "OK, ruthlessness procs, but then we crit, so that's 4 so we rupture vs. ruthless not proc but it crits, vs. ruthless procs, but no crit so we mutilate again then we have 5 points regardless", but it strikes me that it'd be more appropriate to compare a dividend of 2.5 (for a 50% at 80%, which costs "5" energy, and a 50% chance at 100% which costs none) vs. Mutilate as a 50% to cost 10, and 50% chance to cost 15, or 12.5

So 13760/12.5 vs. your 16,000/2.5 without stormpower (using just overall wipe data for our attempts at Hod-Hard last night, i find an "average" rupture tick to be 1791 with 31% storm power uptime, average envenom is 10872.9.

So, figure again that half of those ruptures are 4pt, half are 5pt. So that's 18 seconds for 4pt, 20 seconds for 5pt.

1791*9 = 16119, 1791*10 = 17910, with an average of 17014.5.

Rupture:
17, 014.5 / 2.5 = 6805 DpE.

Envenom: 10872.9/12.5 = 870DpE.

Doesn't affect the net result though.

Regarding singed- I didn't apply a single instance of Singed through 22 attempts last night, as mutilate, with normal poisons. Neither did our combat Rogue. Any idea why that might be the case? I know that we had a couple of toasty fires dropped on melee, at the very least, and our D(PS)K applied at least a few.

Tooltip:
Toasty Fire - Spell - World of Warcraft

Err yeah... I was actually misunderstanding the singed debuff moreso than toasty fire.

I was mistaken- 1500 non-crit average instant poison on a non-Hodir fight, 2043 average non-crit instant poison on Hodir.

2043/1483 = 1.37 I guess, so we do get benefit from Singed even if we don't apply it. Mea culpa,.