Mavanas, are you taking into account the Starlight buff? Seems the envenom buff would benefit from the added 50% haste uptime.
Also, could you clarify what you mean by stacks of storm cloud? Are you just referring to storm power?
Yes storm power is the name of the buff that stacks up to four times. Also you are right about Starlight, it should increase the value of the envenom buff. The haste is increased by 50%, so roughly, the value of the extra instant poison damage during the envenom buff should be 1.5 times higher or 2.5k more damage. That reduces the gap, but rupture still comes out ahead by a fair margin. So I'd still say keep rupture up at all times on Hodir as long as you have 4-piece T8.
Chalon, I noticed you run a 51/13/7 build with 4p t8.5. I recently got my 4 piece and switched to 51/7/13 and I run with about 400 hit so I figured I wouldn't miss precision all that much. In the spreadsheet 51/7/13 comes out on top in DPS.
The only explanation I could think of is 51/7/13 requires an ideal rotation in most "stand still" fights where as 51/13/7 would give more room for adjusting in movement fight, any thoughts?
I switched back to 51/13/7 a couple weeks ago, but it has nothing to do with the rotation. It simply was that in my current gear setup, if I were to run 51/7/13 I would be under the poison hit cap when raid buffed, which I wasn't that happy about. Also, Aldriana's Mutilate sheet showed 51/7/13 only a little ahead (maybe 50-60 DPS last time I checked), and it's a given that it slightly overestimates the value of Serrated Blades because it's computing the Rupture bonus multiplicatively instead of additively. Mavanas' sim sheet suggested that 51/13/7 would be slightly better for me as well, so I just ended up going 51/13/7.
I think you are right, there was some misunderstanding on Tankspot, where I was reading about this buff and there was talk of 540% increase (4*135%). However, it seems like people confused the charges and stacks. In fact the only crit buff you can get is 135% extra crit damage. This will not change the comparison between Rupture and Envenom though.
3.2 Mutilate Cycles should probably be discussed. There are many dynamics to the rotation with the Master Poisoner changes that raise the question of what cycle to use to maximize Envenom buff uptime, as well as eliminating Rupture from the cycle completely.
Comparing an old parse with a current one (WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay, WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay), there's a significant change in numbers in switching to a Rupture-less rotation. Envenom gets bumped up by 5%, Instant Poison moves up by roughly 3%, while Deadly sees a small ~2% increase from the talent change. When I broke my 4pc T8.5, Rupture saw a significant decrease in damage, falling down to around 4-6% on the majority of encounters. With some napkin math and a few parses, the difference seems to favor the Ruptureless rotation, but a stronger analysis is needed to confirm which is in fact better.
Also, a comment in another thread pointed toward an alternate spec with Mutilate once one reaches the BiS threshold that includes Lightning Reflexes. The loss of Relentless Strikes would have a significant change to the rotation that I don't believe is modeled in the spreadsheet properly to compensate for the loss of Envenom uptime due to a lack of energy gains via the talent. However, on paper it looks like it could be better - we just need to know what rotation is needed to maximize Envenom without Relentless Strikes.
In essence, the 3+ cycle must once again be tested against the 4+ cycle to determine which finisher will have the best effect on your Envenom and Instant Poison damage.
Most of the rogues I've seen using ruptureless mutilate are replacing their rupture glyph with Tricks of the Trade. Any indication that the Fan of Knives glyph would be a viable alternative in a raid instance with trash? I can't imagine it being very useful in ToC but moving to Icecrown Citadel FoK might trump ToTT.
Yes, FoK glyph is probably better for big trash packs. TotT glyph is mainly for boss fights because it's better for raid dps on most fights with no aoe requirements because of better boost to other dps you are (or should be) tricksing while agro ain't issue. It's totally up to you if you are willing to or if it's beneficial to switch glyphs for trash.
Ofc FoK glyph is also better on Anub'arak hard mode and on similar encounters. I know many don't do that as mutilate but I've now done it as mutilate couple times and I must say that properly played it works aswell as combat in this fight.
I'm sorry if I've over looked the discussion of this somewhere, but I've seen a number of references to a ruptureless mut rotation, and I haven't seen any discussion of it. I saw a mention of one that used eviscerate rather than envenom and stacked Arp, but I thought Aldriana did the math and it isn't viable with current gear levels. So, if anyone could point me in the right direction it'd be appreciated.
No, arp and eviscerate ain't way to go for mutilate.
Optimal will be:
Agi & agi/crit gems and envenom 51/13/7 spec if you don't want to weapon swap
or
if you want to weapon swap (which provides bit more dps but is a bit tricky at the beginning) with ap & ap/haste gems (note that this is calculated with best in slot gear so can't say for sure if that is the case for lower gear levels too) and envenom 51/18/2 spec. You can learn more about weapon swapping by reading various threads on these rogue forums.
I was looking at a ruptureless cycle for when I move to 4T9, and I thought that the glyph of FoK might be a good way to go. It doesn't look like ruptureless is going to be a dps increase for now though.
could someone please explain how this ruptureless mutilate cycle with weapon swapping should work?
I tried on a target dummy with basically swapping off-hand and shiv when there's 4 sec left on the DP. Then swap back and try to Mut+Env. It seemed very awkward and I'm wondering if swap+shiv+swap is the way it is done. I'd hate to attempt maintaining that rotation on a moving target and swap targets regularly...
Shiving makes it a lot harder and even probably leads to a dps decrease, at least the way you are doing it with 4 seconds remaining. Instead you need to swap back to DP poison with 3 seconds remaining and let it restack itself. If it drops, it drops and gets restacked. If you observe DP dropping more than 10% of the time consistently, you can do one of the three things: a) try to time envenoms to happen right before the swap, b) mutilate right after the swap thus adding an extra chance to apply DP, c) move the swap back time to 4 seconds. The last option is probably easiest to execute. Besides, saving the envenom and mutilate for the IP phase also increases IP damage, so as long as you can ensure DP restacking by giving it enough time to restack on its own, it should be an overall dps increase to save your special moves for the IP phase. Just make sure if you are doing that to burn your energy before the DP swap back not to cap it while waiting for DP to restack.
Even if you want to complicate your rotation by using Shiv, you still swap to DP with 3 seconds remaining, wait for as long as you can letting DP restack on its own and when it is about to drop, only then use Shiv. So basically avoid shiving as much as possible.
P.S. there are scripts and macros that can help you swap with 3 or 4 seconds remaining on DP automatically. Read the incoming rogue changes thread for more information.
I found the scripts for swapping between your IP weapon and your DP weapon to be incredibly tedious, especially since you needed to remember to switch back to your DP weapon after swapping target or whatever, anyway.
Single line macro: /equipslot 17 Stygian Bladebreaker with DebuffFilter set to show DP stacks and Sunder/expose/whatever, and only your stack on DP works much better than that 50 line Outfitter scripts. That is, if you have a 196 and a 216 Stygian Bladebreaker, or two 216's, which at this point in TOC, most rogues should have.
Jesus don't want me in a sunbeam
Sunbeams are always made on me
Don't expect me to cry, for all the reasons I'm gonna die
Don't ever ask your kick of me.
Could someone link or explin the talents for 51/18/2 for a ruptureless weapon swapping build?
I was looking at how to addapt from the standard 51/13/7 with rupture build. I'm thinking that the 5 points from Relentless strikes go to filling up CQC and getting lightning reflexes, but where do the 2 points from Blood Splatter go? Thanks for the help.
The Blood Splatter points go to Fleet Footed. Also the 5 points you grab from Subtlety tree are not all from RS.. you take 2 from Opportunity and 3 from RS.
Agi & agi/crit gems and envenom 51/13/7 spec if you don't want to weapon swap
or
if you want to weapon swap (which provides bit more dps but is a bit tricky at the beginning) with ap & ap/haste gems (note that this is calculated with best in slot gear so can't say for sure if that is the case for lower gear levels too) and envenom 51/18/2 spec. You can learn more about weapon swapping by reading various threads on these rogue forums.
So either I've missed something here or you need to do some more reading. Last I heard, unless you have 4p t8 you strictly gem ap, not agi or crit(?!). Since a large part of Assassinations dps comes from poisons, which is based off ap, ap is the better stat to stack. Also, haste does not affect IP procs so I have absolutely no idea why you'd gem for haste when using daggers. Maybe a slight increase in FA procs but I can't see that being worth it.
Now since the Master Poisoner change, I've noticed not only is the 3+ Envenom a dps loss compared to 4+, but weapon swap really only seems to be worth while if you have 2 of the same OH. The extra ap bonus to Envenom makes its instant damage quite ridiculous. I don't have very good gear (not quite even 2600 gear score) and last night on XT hard mode I was getting 28k+ crits with envenom on the heart (avg Envenom crits overall seem to be doing 2-3k+ more damage than before the change). This instant damage seems to outweigh the slight loss in the buff uptime.
Now as for weapon swapping, there's a few things you need to take into consideration, primarily stat differences on the 2 daggers your switching. For example, if one OH has exp and the other has hit, you could be losing hit or exp and end up missing more just from weapon swapping. Obviously, you also have to look at weapon dps and speed too. If you switch to a 1.8, realistically it will proc IP less because its hitting less in this small time frame. Now I haven't tested weapon swapping in great depth but I've found what works best for me is doing a 4+ envenom (5 preferably) swap weapons right after so even while the GCD is going, you're still getting those increased IP procs, then mut, and depending on how much time is left on DP you can squeeze in another Envenom (remember finishers can apply IP) or another mut if need be. With my gear, weapon swapping is actually a dps loss (I switch from Golem Shard Sticker to Webbed Death :-\ ), so make sure if you're going to swap weapons that it's actually benefiting you.
*sidenote-My guilds raid comp is pretty much whoever is on raids so we don't have any real raid/buff structure so that might produce different results as well.
You probably want to check spreadsheet if there is case where ap is better than agi, but usual case is that agi is better without weapon swapping. Ap is better for weapon swapping because instant poison benefits more from it.
Haste does increase the amount of poison procs. More hits = more procs. Now that instant poison procs are frequency based, proc chance is calculated from weapon base speed.
Also offhand that applies dp doesn't matter that much (for weapon swapping) because you use your ip offhand majority off the time. Ofc you want best possible offhands and also fast offhands.
I agree that with lower level gear weapon swapping probably ain't beneficial but when you start getting better gear it will boost your dps if played properly and if there ain't too much target switching on the encounter.
If you have questions about wep swapping (Mutilate or Combat), your answers can probably be found by reading through posts starting around Mavanas' Rogue DPS Simulation Spreadsheet post #302 where results started solidifying. Being informed will help all of us to progress in the topic, instead of repeating ourselves and others.
How important is expertise, REALLY? If I'm mutilate and I run with the quick recovery talent, and I'm running a very easy rotation without weapon swap envenom only, and most of the times I'm behind the boss, is it viable to ignore expertise and hence get better stats on AGI/AP/CRIT etc?
Expertise might be useful to ensure SnD doesnt drop and stuff. However, do I need 'cycle stability' if I'm running such an easy rotation? Or is the some misses on mutilate, and some misses on envenom (+28energy because of QR) a significant deal?
We all know our only expertise piece is t9 head/shoulders so thinking if i should pick those up.
There are several strong items that have expertise on them, such as T9 helm and shoulders. You should not pick up some subpar item just to increase your expertise. As far as gemming goes, gemming agility or AP depending on your gear is a better option than gemming for expertise. Even with rupture cycles, agility has been stronger than expertise, even if marginally, as the cost of occasional loss of snd is lower than the gain from the extra stats. With envenom only cycles the chance of dropping snd is significantly lower, which again makes expertise a lower value stat to gem for.
07/07/09, 6:24 PM
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