I'm pretty sure he just forgot to mention that without weapon swapping as combat Comet's Trail should be replaced with Mjolnir.

Hi Mavanas,

I just recently learned about weapon swapping and 51/18/3 so I still have the "old" conception of the mutilate spec in mind.
Some points still sound strange to me:
- You favor a fast OH, but since IP is based on ppm rogues have switched their fast MH to a slow one for bigger mutilate crits despite having less FA procs. Shouldn't it be the same for OH? I did some calculation and found that OH crits represented about ~8% of the total energy regen and I can't understand why MH mechanics don't apply to OH. (40-45% of mutilate damage still comes from OH I believe)
- According to you haste has become a much more valuable stat than before. The 51/18/3 spec trades energy regen after finisher for haste, so it means that the possibility to land more mutilates during the evenom buff (therefore more chances to proc IP?) isn't as good as the haste buff?
- After some probability checks I found that 40% crit unbuffed was enough to land at least one crit with mutilate 90% of the time. Maybe it could be wise to favor haste after that "cap"? Regarding FA, it's true that haste doesn't increase the chances of yellow hits to make it proc, but on the other hand haste converts in percentages faster than crit does (and also boosts IP... well I'm not totally aware of ppm mechanics yet)
I apologize for my poor english and my limited knowledge of the new theories.

Thanks a lot for you work.

Without weapon swapping the best gear list changes. I am explaining the changes in that post in part by saying soft armor pen cap. There are really two alternatives of top gear that I've seen: one has Beast legs offpiece with CT trinket (typical for mutilate) and the other has Calamitous Fate chestpiece as offpiece with MR trinket (typical for armor pen oriented combat setup). For soft armor pen cap, you use the chest offpiece, Mjolnir Runestone trinket and gem armor pen up to 1400 when the trinket procs. When weapon swapping is involved, combat gear list starts to look exactly like mutilate gear list by using Comet's Trail instead of Mjolnir, using the Legs offpiece, and gemming AP.

I'll try to answer your questions:
1. I favor fast offhand because for an offhand, focused attacks overpower the greater mutilate OH damage and higher IP application rate from mutilate attacks. I personally have not checked if the same is true for mainhand as well, and it's pretty easy to do using the simsheet if you want to try. However there are at least two reasons why the results could be different for the mainhand: a) MH damage from mutilate is a larger portion of total mutilate damage (as you said about 55%); b) lower IP application rate from a faster MH will apply not only to mutilate but also to IP application from rupture and envenom.
2. About the trade off between LR and RS, it's a question that is best answered via a model, such as a simulator or a calculator. As it turns out, when you engage in weapon swapping, the value of haste from LR rises and overtakes the value of relentless strikes. Without weapon swapping, 51/13/7 comes out ahead.
3. I am not sure what you mean by the "cap" in your third question, and I could not fully follow that question, sorry. But one thing you said actually reminded me about a"known issue" listed in the "How to Use Tab" of the simulator: "1. One crit roll is used for both mutilate attacks, so they either both crit or they both do not crit." This issue on average does not affect the damage of a mutilate, but it does however affect how many combo points you get from a mutilate. I am trying to work on a solution. When fixed, it will slightly increase estimated mutilate DPS.

I recently ran an Onyxia and was using Dual weapon swapping and yes, i got 4 different Berserking Procs with FoK off of the whelps. I was thinking that is a possibility for 4x any weapon Proc buff. Is this worked into the spreadsheet Mavanas? if not, could you get it to work? thanks for all the work on the Simulation spreadsheet. it has made me #1 on guild lists.

I am glad to help, and this issue has come up more than once, but it would slow down the file to model a completely several offhand for weapon swapping, with its own stats and enchants. The analytical gain from that addition is minimal compared to complexity of modeling. I'll tell you what you need to know about enchants on the swap offhand because it is common sense:
- yes you need to enchant it with the best possible enchant (mongoose or berserking depending on your gear)
- yes possibility of double procs increases the benefit from weapon swapping, that should only reinforce the decision to use it

Hey Mav, I've been messing around with Mutilate Envenom only builds and found that if I take the two points out of Quick Recovery (and put them in Vigor, for example), my dps drops about 50% (~8k to ~4k). Possible big bug?

i dont get the reason behind the proposed 3s/5r/5e rotation (standard combat spec). Wouldnt it be more efficient to use SnD at 4+ points since SnD lasts longer for the spent energy? For me it looks like that either a 4+ snd/ 4+ rupture cycle with a 4+ eviscerate here and there (depends on snd and rupture uptimes) or a 5s/5r+5evis sometimes, is the most efficient cycle, but probably i am wrong and there is a good reason behind a 3s cycle.

Thanks for your answers Mavanas.

1. Indeed, I forgot that the yellow hits other than mutilate were landed by the MH which have a higher IP application rate if slower. I believe you have made more precise calculation than me to find that more FA procs were greater than bigger mutilates. Now an other point comes to my mind: if OH is slower, then the chances to proc IP on mutilate are higher, which sounds optimal to make the greatest benefit from envenom buff. Again, does the FA procs outclass this benefit?
2. Understood!
3. When I used the term "cap" I thought that FA wasn't such a powerfull regen way as you present it to me. So I was looking for that "cap" were I could build 3 CP off 90% mutilates (the tendency is inverted-minus-exponential-like - hard to say in correct english!), because the new theory favors haste over crit. Then the two gemming possibilities appear to be either AP/haste or agi/haste. The first one if I could think that 40%crit unbuff was enough to maintain a solid CP building, the second one if I more energy regen from FA would outmatch the increased AP and scalling.

Thanks again.

Professor, when you put points in vigor (you can even glyph it too), your total energy changes, so you have to adjust DPS Strat page for that. Everywhere it says 100, it should say whatever your max energy is because otherwise your are restricting yourself to not do anything above 100 energy. However, that change alone is not likely to bring your dps from 8k to 4k as long as you have overrides for what happens when you reach your energy cap. I tried taking points out of Quick Recovery and adding a point in Vigor and I only see slight changes to dps, so I am not sure what's going on.

Windwalk, the rotation is actually 3+/5/5 and changing it to 4+/5/5 last I checked does not make much difference.

Moutadentube, I believe I have answered all your questions. Question 3 has the same answer as #2, it's a complicated mechanic to compare the effect of AP and AG on final DPS because it permeates your entire damage output, that's what we have models for. If you could answer everything in your head, why would we create all these tools.


On a different topic, I discovered something that you actually gave me an idea for. Remember asking why not use a fast MH? Well indeed why not? So as we know for mutilate focused attacks mitigate the effect of higher IP application rate and higher mutilate damage from a slower weapon. It's not enough normally for your main hand, but for your offhand it's enough to make you use a fast one. However, when you are weapon swapping, fast mainhand becomes optimal at least in BiS gear for mutilate. I tested it last night, and there are at least two reasons that favor fast MH while weapon swapping:
- the effect of focused attacks is higher when weapon swapping because it allows for more mutilates and each mutilate causes more damage when weapon swapping because of IP application from your offhand
- the swing reset cost depends on weapon damage range not on its dps, so faster weapon will not cause you to lose as much damage from white MH hits when weapon swapping.
In BiS gear you gain about 40 dps when swiitching from 1.8 to 1.4 MH when weapon swapping. At the same time, without weapon swapping you lose about 30 dos by doing that, soit only makes sense when weapon swapping, and probably with enough haste/crit to make focused attacks effective enough.
Lack of focused attacks makes fast MH technique not effective for combat, so yet again weapon swapping favors mutilate more.

A pair of minor corrections; T9.245 Helm should have 90 and not 80 crit rating.
Shawl of the Shattered Giant should have 40 crit rating.

Mavanas,

While piecing together a set for 51/18/2 Weapon Swapping, I'm wondering if you've determined a Haste "cap" to aim for by gemming 20AP/10haste in place of some of the 40AP until the BiS pieces fall into place.

Haste does not surpass attack power, so it only makes sense to gem 20ap/10haste in yellow sockets. You do not want to gem it instead of 40ap for mutilate.

I'm posting this about a potential bug in the simulator. I'm using a 51 13 7 mut rotation with swapping that is ruptureless. Placing a talent point in vigor results in a very large dps loss. Most of the pre averaged DPS values are around 9000, as expected, however about 25% are around 4000, which makes no sense. Note that I did not change the pooling values at all. Glyphing vigor did not help/made it worse. Did I miss something?

I had the same issue but as Mav pointed out, it's due to not updating your total energy on the DPS Strat tab. I was mislead by the heading on that row, which reads "Do not use if energy is above (HaT only)", but in reality it applies to all specs. So, adjust the appropriate values and try again.

Hey Mavanas... I do have some weird issues. Last night I got the new 2.2b version of the sheet, plugged my gear to test how good weapon swapping will be for t9 evisc-only setup. I did a run, saved dps, and decided to just run simulation again to see if I will get same dps. The difference was 230 dps down. Tried 4 times in total and 2 of the tries got over 200 dps difference, the other 2 - barely 5. Calculation is looking strange too - it is random at the start, the current dps, then, about 60% and up it starts going towards some number. For example it is floating about 8900 dps, then at 60% starts going towards 9200 with exactly 1 dps on each iteration. Have seen the other case too - from 9300 to go to almost 9000 with exactly 1 dps down each try after 60%. Have you seen such thing?

The only thing this reminds me of is the 2003 bug with RAND function in excel. See if this post helps you.

If you are using 500+ iterations, your dps from try to try should not change by more than 20. More likely it will be within 10. So if you are seeing 230 dps changes, there is definitely something going wrong with either your version of Excel or your version of the spreadsheet. If reading that post does not help, I can try to download your version of the spreadsheet and see for myself. You'd need to share it somewhere.

Thanks a lot Mavanas (hehe, when the spreadsheet is working, all kinds of strange numbers are in clipboard, so could not copy your nic), 4 tries now, all within 22dps difference! Buggy excel

I am having a hard time understanding why -Deaths Verdict/Mark of Supremacy- is coming out 41DPS higher than running -Deaths Verdict/Darkmoon Greatness-
Is it the massive amount of hit on M.O.S that outwieghs DMC's stats and proc? But with the 2min cooldown on M.O.S I would think DMC would come out ahead.
I ran into this prob before getting Deaths Verdict also---Why does M.O.S come out ahead of Pyrite Infusor? Is it the hit again outwieghing the AP and uptime that P.I. has?

I would really appricate any light you can shine on this. And keep up the Awsome work!!!

--Also all these numbers are using your spreadsheet uding a ruptureless Muti weapon swap cycle.

The World of Warcraft Armory

Depending on your gear, it's easily possible that MOS is better than DCG. Not accounting for synergies, DCG is about 190 agility. MOS is 129 hit and 174 AP. If you have weapon swapping and you are in BiS gear, 129 hit is worth 220 dps, and 174 AP is 173 dps, for a total of 393 dps. DCG's 190 AG is worth 372 dps. So there is an example where DCG is easily behind MOS. Plus, if you are mutilate and gem for agility, then you will probably hit the crit cap if you wear both DV and DCG, so that's a reason number 2 why DCG is a worse option.

Hello Mavans, read through the last 4~ pages and been testing the whole weapon swapping thing and finding it working out quite well. One question though, when do you swap them exactly? I've been doing it at 4-5 seconds remaining on DP, if I wait till 3 I end up loosing it roughly 1/6 of the time. Do you suggest having the IP OH equiped during the Envenom buff? Say I have 5-6 seconds left on DP, and 2-3 seconds left on SnD, I would envenom with IP OH untill 3-4 seconds DP correct, at which point I would switch to DP untill it applies, then back to IP?

Also the following items are missing off your spreadsheet,
Orcish Deathblade and the alliance version, Dirk of the Night watch. Drops from Lord Jaraxxus in toc10 (as well as heroic versions)
Vest of Shifting Shadows/Armor of Shifting Shadows. Twins toc10 (as well as heroic versions)

If you looked through the last few pages, you should have seen a post on optimal switching time. For both mutilate and combat the optimal time is between 3 and 4 seconds. But that's with all buffs and in BiS gear. If you lose some haste from buffs and gear, your DP will drop more often. There is a way to find what's optimal for you by running the simulation and changing the swap back time.

About DP dropping, if your envenom buff lands during IP phase and you keep IP on till 3 seconds, even in BiS gear and all buffs you are running a chance of losing DP 15% of the time. However, the extra IP time together with envenom buff is making it worth it.

Another scenario is when your envenom lands right before the switch time, then by waiting till 3 seconds left, you are running only about 5% chance to drop your DP, and that scenario gives about the same dps as the one above.

So higher chance to drop DP is fine as long as envenom buff during IP phase is compesating for it.