I made a post 51/7/13 for 4pc T8 it in the questions and answers thread, and never got an answer. After testing it in this spreadsheet as well as Thaela's, I noticed this one gives me atleast a 100 dps loss when using 51/7/13, while Thaela's gives me a dps increase of 5-10.

Basically what I wanted to know is, was there originally an error in calculation that showed 51/7/13 as being better than 51/13/7? I read the mutilate compendium on MMO which sited a post in the question and answer thread about serrated blades being calculated wrong in a spreadsheet, and never really being worthwhile, but I can't find the post they referred to.

There used to be an error in Aldriana's original mutilate spreadsheet where the rupture bonus of Serrated blades was not added correctly with the other buffs (buffs were added multiplicatively), magnifying the damage done by rupture of the 51/7/13 build and pushing it ahead of 51/13/7. It's my understanding however that the rupture damage formula has since been fixed in Thaela's spreadsheet, so I am not sure what other reasons may be for his spreadsheet to show a dps increase when switching to 51/7/13. As far as my modeling is concerned, I never saw 51/7/13 ahead of 51/13/7.

Regarding weapon swaps...I have two Stygian Bladebreaker daggers. I'd like to begin practicing weapon swapping, but I'm having trouble creating a macro that will successfully swap the two daggers since they are exactly the same (other than the poison applied). Suggestions?

/equipslot 17 Stygian Bladebreaker

This macro works - but it doesnt seem to work in combat...at least it isn't while on the dummy. Do I need to incorporate /stop casting?

Also - Mavanas, any new information regarding weapon swapping in 3.2.2?

Thanks guys...

One last issue...

The Death's Choice listed on the spreadsheet is the heroic version. I have the non-heroic version - I inputted the reduced AP and the reduced AGI proc - are there any other spreadsheet mechanics I have to worry about regarding the spreadsheet and how these trinkets function (specifically the difference between the heroic and non-heroic version of this trinket)?

Just a side note: With Death's Choice (non-heroic) equipped DMC:G takes a big hit per my dps numbers...with DMC:G being out done by the Mark of Supremacy and coming out almost exactly the same as the Banner of Victory - seems strange to me considering the amount of AGI involved with both the equip and proc on the DMC:G, but i'm just a lowly troll...

Just as a note, the dagger that you have with DP on is far less important since it stays on for only about 3 seconds on average out of 12, and one of its swings is reset anyways. So if you are absolutely pressed you can use a different named dagger, just make sure it's still good enough quality and 1.4 speed. Speed is important to restack DP. Would also help a lot to find a mod that will flash your screen or does something visual on two events: a) DP is refreshed - that's when you use the dagger with WP/IP on, b) 3 seconds on DP - time to switch back to DP, and repeat.

Also I am almost done simulating weapon swaps in the simsheet.

I think your best bet is the in-built Equipment Manager. If you make 2 item sets with the same gear but have a different Stygian Bladebreaker in your OH in each of them you should be able to use them to switch in combat.

1. Non-heroic version of DC: changing the attack power and the proc value is all you need to do.
2. Using DMC:G and DC can put you over the crit cap thus reducing the value of both trinkets. Check cell C7 in the gear page, it will tell you if that's what's going on.
3. Swapping poisons: currently only makes sense with combat spec. It will be used for mutilate in 3.2.2, when they change MP. For now, it's really hard to accomplish with mutilate since envenom clears DP stacks. The point of weapon swapping is to keep DP stacks up all the time,while briefly swapping to IP or WP for extra damage.

I've only been following this weapon swapping discussion loosely, so please excuse if I am rehashing a concern brought up previously. However, if you have 2 identical daggers you'll be using to switch, different gear sets and macros using the weapon name likely won't work (as Kentucky... posted above). I'm no pro at macros (so I couldn't write this), but I remember that it is possible to reference specific bag slots, which would likely be a better way of writing a weapon swap macro. You'd just always have to carry the swappable dagger in the same slot (pretty much a non-issue).

One that note, if this weapon swapping idea really becomes a viable method, it would probably be worth opening a thread just for that (this threat certainly isn't the place!), as I can see how that mechanic alone will generate a huge amount of questions/posts.

It would look something like this:

/equipslot 17 4 1

This will attempt to swap your offhand with the item in the first slot of your leftmost bag.

For more explanation see: MACRO equipslot - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft

The upside to using that one, is you can use the same macro over and over. Need your dp weapon, hit that macro, need to swap it back out, hit that macro. It will always swap your offhand weapon with the other offhand weapon, which is sitting in that bag slot.

I added weapon swap options to the DPS Strat tab. The dps increase for mutilate are of the order of 500 dps, slightly more than what my previous analytical approach showed (due to heroism and AP/haste procs). As before I assumed it takes 1 second for a player to react to a DP refresh. The highest dps is achieved if the dagger with DP poison is swapped back 3 seconds before DP runs out.

Also as expected, the dps increase from OH swapping for combat is smaller in magnitude. Only about 180 dps, but it's still a bonus.

As combat, by speccing into Vile Poisons: 18/51/2 , will that increase the value of the weapon swapping? I am assuming the 180dps was with the 15/51/5 spec.

Is it currently, or will it ever be, possible to model the OH used to swap in for refreshing DP? As things stand the only dagger I have available to swap in is Sinister Revenge, which is obviously 1.8 speed, so it'd be great to know how using that to refresh DP stacks would effect my DPS and if I would need to switch over earlier than 3 seconds (which I assume would be the case).

Mavanas, Have you considered modeling the weapon swapping not when there's only 3 seconds left on deadly poison, but instead, do it in conjunction with a mutilate. Of course, we should still use the 3 seconds mark on deadly poison as the latest moment to swap. What I am suggesting is do a weapon swap when you have enough energy to do a mutilate and when deadly poison has close to 3 seconds duration left. There are a few benefits to this:

#1 We are ensuring a higher uptime of deadly poison at the sacrifice of some theoretical instant poison damage since mutilate adds an additional chance to refresh deadly poison.

#2 A much stabler swapping as we can just macro mutilate with the weapon swapping instead of having to bind two additional keys to our keyboard to swap weapons.

I do not currently intend to allow the users to choose two different offhand daggers. Maybe at some point down the road if this strategy becomes practical. For now my only suggestion would be to use your best offhand dagger for IP/WP and have a "sufficiently good" dagger for DP, where sufficiently good involves high item level and 1.4 speed, where the speed is the more important criterion. Ideally, using identical daggers with different poisons and a weapon swap macro, like /equipslot 17 4 1, is the way to go.

I considered some other options regarding timing weapon swapping, such as linking it to envenoms, however, none of them seem practical. As soon as weapon swapping starts affecting your cycle, it is going to hurt your dps. The cycle is subject to RNG a lot more than the timing of weapon swaps, so it does not seem practical to tie the two in any way.

I think it's fairly obvious that Blizzard has no intention of supporting weapon swapping for rogues (GC said as much in the Rogue Q&A) so I would imagine that if this becomes popular in both Assassination and Combat it may be addressed at some point or another. I do have a question though, just how practical is it? To satisfy my own curiosity I went out and tried it on a target dummy just to see what it was like.

I gotta' be honest, I didn't have much trouble working with it on the target but I just can't see myself using it during some of the boss encounters. Something like XT-002 might be easy enough but I am fairly certain that any other use would be extremely limited outside of some long cooldown abilities.

If I was really going to make use of this for an encounter, rather than waiting for the proc of DP I might be more inclined to swap-shiv-swap just to make things simpler.

I personally have several weaponswap macros bound to M3/M4/M5, for pvp reasons,
but I think it's a similar "hassle" as HfB was in it's first incarnation, perhaps slightly more.

Since keeping up HfB wasn't particularly hard , I think weapon swapping won't be a issue either.

I think that weapon swapping is an area where the interface is very poorly displayed, Because of this it is a very reasonable area for add on design, I am not an addon designer myself but if possible the ability to see the global cooldown of the weapon swap on the action button would be very helpful, as would an area to see your currently equipped weapon, if weapon swapping was ever intended to be viable these things would certainly have been included in the interface,

I do not think the question is whether it is intended, but rather whether it is something that will be prohibited in some way in the future. I do not care if Blizzard intends certain things; as long as it is useful and is not declared an abuse, it's fair game. It's not always clear what Blizzard will prohibit. Take HaT for instance, it took Blizzard close to 10 months to realize it was not intended to be PVE viable and nerf it when it was not overly out of balance. For a long time too they acted as if it was intended by fixing bugs and tweaking HaT rules, as late as in 3.2, to make it viable in PVE.

I do find it useful to pull out OH button using itemrack. Global cooldown is easy to see in the interface in my opinion, but also the need to see the global cooldown is not as important, you can start spamming next ability as soon as you hit the weapon swap macro and it will occur right after.

I apologize if this has already been brought up, but seeing as this weaponswap method might very well be something to consider unless Blizzard takes notice, I was wondering if it might affect our cycles in more ways.

The main thought is that, as far as I know, the difference (as mutilate) between using a cycle with rupture and one without isn't massive (noticable, but not massive) when you do not have the t8 bonus.
When we then switch to using dual IP most of the time, we will make more use of the envenom buff than we previously did. That together with that we do not have to time it to DP ticks, we could chain envenom buffs with a very high uptime with less need to overlap.
Would this mean that the increased amount of IP proccs we get when weaponswapping will tip the scale over to ruptureless cycles, now that the envenom buff is worth so much more?
Also I guess this would make our cycles a bit easier and more targetswitching-friendly.

That was a very good guess. Using envenom-only rotation with weapon swapping is a dps increase of about 50. It also frees up 2 points that you can put in fleet-footed or perhaps quick recovery. On top of that, it also appears that 51/18/2 pulls ahead, and that's before I changed the Berserking proc formula based on Aldriana's and Latito's latest tests, which will put it even higher.

How tight are the 51/18/2 cycles going to be though? I assume that you're dropping the points from relentless strikes to take lightning reflexes? I mean there will be a difference between technically possible and what will be achievable in game. I'm also not sure how the spec would go in ToC with the amount of time you're not actually on a boss, the beasts/jarr/anub all have times when you're not able to attack the target directly, without rupture up it means no dps at all.

For point one, Mutilate's cycles have become pretty lenient even with using Rupture. Without Rupture, you're not going to run into issues where SnD is dropping if you're on target. As for point two, this is bad logic. If you put a Rupture up, there's a low chance that you couldn't have hit Envenom also (between 25 and 35 energy when you lose your target). If you get that Envenom up, your SnD is refreshed and you'll have less potential issues if the gap between targets is longer.