The problem with using the 100% uptime after an Envenom to refresh DP, of course, is that that is also the time when you'd most want to have your IP weapon on, due to the similarly enhanced Instant Poison proc rate.
Also note that all this assumes you have two reasonably comparable weapons which will, as a general rule not be the case. And I confess to a bit of skepticism in the provided numbers even assuming you do have two such numbers - if weapon swapping is of marginal benefit (and only during Heroism) for Combat, what's sufficiently different between Combat and Mutilate that's going to make this not only better, but better by the hundreds of DPS being asserted? I'm not saying the analysis is wrong, but it seems like we should dig into the details of a it a little bit to verify it, as the margin of superiority seems very counterintuitive given the previous math done on the subject.
First off: no, you shouldn't go back to fast/fast. Slow/fast is still the way to go. Slow daggers proc more instant poison than fast ones, particularly in the main hand.
Second: yes, Mut poison damage is higher. But it's not *that* much higher. I'd believe it's marginally more viable, but anything over 100 DPS profit or so would surprise me.
By all means, someone should poke holes in it, that's why I have my backup file up, and I can put a new one for mutilate. However, there are a couple corrections that need to be made to my numbers above. First, I did not take into account envenom buff at all before, only the improved poisons and MP talents. That further increases the benefit of the strategy.
Second, in addition to damage lost to swing resets, there is some loss due to focused attacks missed on those lost swings. I added that to my analysis now.
Third, I do not know yet how to quantify the cost to adjusting rotation to make sure there is envenom buff up while swapping back to DP. If the buff is not up at the end, you get more benefit for IP poison, but you also have to swap earlier. So have to think about that one.
As for what's so different between this analysis and previous with combat, first of all 100% DP application rate makes a difference. Also, talented IP dps is higher than WP dps. Finally, this analysis was done in 3.2 BiS gear, which has high amounts of hit rating further increasing both chances to land DP and IP dps.
Here is the link to the current version of the calculation file. If anyone needs help understanding the math there, just let me know, I understand the file is not well documented.
EDIT: what I am getting right now is that in BiS mutilate gear, without heroism, if envenom buff occurs late enough to catch DP restacking, you can keep IP dagger for as long as 10 seconds and swap back with 1 second remaining (I allowed 1 second of reaction time at the start). This strategy yields a 490 dps increase. If you have to envenom early (for various cycle-related reasons), then you get full benefit of enevenom buff for IP poison application, but have to swap daggers at least 3 seconds before DP runs out. However this strategy yields 510 dps increase. Either way, even without heroism it looks like around 500 dps increase if you continue to switch the daggers. As soon as DP is refreshed, use IP dagger again. While heroism is up, it amounts to 750 dps increase. If I did not make a mistake in calculations, with a good mod, this strategy should be easily executable, and even if you mess up a second, you are still looking at 400+ dps increase.
Third, I do not know yet how to quantify the cost to adjusting rotation to make sure there is envenom buff up while swapping back to DP. If the buff is not up at the end, you get more benefit for IP poison, but you also have to swap earlier. So have to think about that one.
As for what's so different between this analysis and previous with combat, first of all 100% DP application rate makes a difference. Also, talented IP dps is higher than WP dps. Finally, this analysis was done in 3.2 BiS gear, which has high amounts of hit rating further increasing both chances to land DP and IP dps.
The main reason "not to" swap during envenom is the swing time reset. You can miss a main hand instant poison hit if you swap during envenom. I believe swapping to instant poison right before applying envenom is the way to go.
By all means, someone should poke holes in it, that's why I have my backup file up, and I can put a new one for mutilate. However, there are a couple corrections that need to be made to my numbers above. First, I did not take into account envenom buff at all before, only the improved poisons and MP talents. That further increases the benefit of the strategy.
Second, in addition to damage lost to swing resets, there is some loss due to focused attacks missed on those lost swings. I added that to my analysis now.
Third, I do not know yet how to quantify the cost to adjusting rotation to make sure there is envenom buff up while swapping back to DP. If the buff is not up at the end, you get more benefit for IP poison, but you also have to swap earlier. So have to think about that one.
As for what's so different between this analysis and previous with combat, first of all 100% DP application rate makes a difference. Also, talented IP dps is higher than WP dps. Finally, this analysis was done in 3.2 BiS gear, which has high amounts of hit rating further increasing both chances to land DP and IP dps.
Here is the link to the current version of the calculation file. If anyone needs help understanding the math there, just let me know, I understand the file is not well documented.
EDIT: what I am getting right now is that in BiS mutilate gear, without heroism, if envenom buff occurs late enough to catch DP restacking, you can keep IP dagger for as long as 10 seconds and swap back with 1 second remaining (I allowed 1 second of reaction time at the start). This strategy yields a 490 dps increase. If you have to envenom early (for various cycle-related reasons), then you get full benefit of enevenom buff for IP poison application, but have to swap daggers at least 3 seconds before DP runs out. However this strategy yields 510 dps increase. Either way, even without heroism it looks like around 500 dps increase if you continue to switch the daggers. As soon as DP is refreshed, use IP dagger again. While heroism is up, it amounts to 750 dps increase. If I did not make a mistake in calculations, with a good mod, this strategy should be easily executable, and even if you mess up a second, you are still looking at 400+ dps increase.
This sounds great , but for for all the weapon swithing macros every 8-10 seconds, and assumming 3 BIS Daggers (a large assumption for most rogues), plus still large penalties for Time off target (because of lack of burst dmg) call me a sceptic but 400-500 dps increase seems a little underwhelming considring that doesnt even bring us even with BIS combat.
According to current theorycrafting, mutilate is about 500 dps behind, so a change of 400 dps matters. Particularly if you fight a murderable target and this strategy works, mutilate will do significantly more damage than combat. Also, I do not think anyone tried to quantify yet the effect of increased AP multiplier of envenom and where it puts mutilate relative to combat. Either way it was not my intention to prove mutilate with this trick will be a viable spec, I did this analysis back when mutilate did as much damage as combat in 3.1, so this is just a recomputation for 3.2.
However, I can already forsee that the envenom and MP changes will allow traditional envenom-based mutilate pull ahead of Arpen/eviscerate based mutilate.
The arguments about having 3 BiS daggers are valid, but up to a point. The dagger with deadly poison is going to be used on average for 1-2 seconds, with one of its swings being delayed.
P.S. I added two counterbalancing effects to the analysis, one is gain from the IP poison from offhand mutilate attack, and the other is loss of IP damage from swing reset of the mainhand. Altogether the gain from strategy is still between 550 and 600 dps depending on when you land an envenom. The difference between the two cases is relatively small, which allows you not to worry much about trying to time envenom in any particular way. You just have to watch two timers: envenom buff and DP time remaining, if the first one ends earlier, you have to swap daggers earlier.
I think my real issue with weapon swapping for poison damage is the principle behind it. While weapon swapping isn't particularly difficult or confusing to do, in the current state of the game it just really isn't intended. There's a reason why there is a swing timer reset and GCD attached to it, as well as why they don't allow other equipment changes while in combat. This issue was addressed in our Rogue Q and A regarding using macros to swap weapons for poison utility, to which Blizzard replied "We agree it’s clunky to swap weapons and that’s because we don’t want it to be a major feature of the game...Until we can make weapon swapping feel less clunky for more classes we aren’t going to push it as an important feature."
If Blizzard's standpoint is that they don't really want us weapon swapping right now, then a Mutilate Rogue must be pretty hard-pressed if they must resort to it to catch up with Combat. The purported theorycrafting so far has given some pretty high numbers toward swapping poisons, but we'll have to wait to see if its still quote unquote "necessary" once calculations have been made regarding the buff to Envenom and a Ruptureless Mutilate cycle. If such a weapon rotation does in fact become required to remain competitive, then I can see even less players continuing to champion the spec, myself included.
I also agree that it is not intended, and it seems unnatural. Just as it is unnatural, it also requires a lot more attention than simple mutilate/envenom cycle, and over time Blizzard has shown a tendency to simplify the game play of mutilate (think back to find weakness becoming passive, and increasing the duration of HfB). I highly doubt Blizzard created this loophole as a way to balance combat and mutilate. However, instead of thinking of it as "necessary" to catch up to combat, all I am thinking of is there is this strategy that gives me 500 dps and it requires me to swap my offhand every 8-10 seconds and watch two more timers. Is 500 dps worth the trouble? Most likely. I do not like the fact that I have to work for it, but if it's going to be highest single target dps for a significant number of encounters, I am going to use this clunky mechanics.
But before that we need to wait for someone else confirming or denying the theorycrafting I did, and even then Blizzard still has plenty of time to make a change that would render this strategy worthless and hopefully at the same time change something else to balance the two specs.
If Blizzard's standpoint is that they don't really want us weapon swapping right now, then a Mutilate Rogue must be pretty hard-pressed if they must resort to it to catch up with Combat. The purported theorycrafting so far has given some pretty high numbers toward swapping poisons, but we'll have to wait to see if its still quote unquote "necessary" once calculations have been made regarding the buff to Envenom and a Ruptureless Mutilate cycle. If such a weapon rotation does in fact become required to remain competitive, then I can see even less players continuing to champion the spec, myself included.
It would also seem to imply that it will go away, much like shiv specs and other 'creative' dps solutions rogues have come up with.
If Blizzard doesn't want weapon swapping in a rotation, they will correct for it. It goes further to assume that since weapon swapping is less intuitive to the general rogue population, weapon swapping actions would become a less frequent thing and I could never see Blizzard allowing it as part of a rotation.
Perhaps a better solution would have been to make Master Poisoneer to allow envenom to work if there is another rogues deadly stack on the rogue, without consuming it. That way mut rogues can go ruptureless IP/IP while the combat rogue keeps up the bleed/deadly stack. Does have the annoyance of requiring another rogue, but would allow for a single combat rogue for debuffs with multiple assassination rogues in the other positions, much like it was during Naxx.
According to current theorycrafting, mutilate is about 500 dps behind, so a change of 400 dps matters. Particularly if you fight a murderable target and this strategy works, mutilate will do significantly more damage than combat....
I am assuming you mean BIS. If this is the case, how would the latest changes scale with less than BIS? From what I have read, its not until a rogue reaches BIS that combat obviously pulls ahead, Well, given that most rogues will not have access to BIS gear, Won't the latest buffs create a large disparity (in non-murderable fights and a much greater degree in murderable fights) in Mut being > combat?
Less than BiS works both ways. Combat does not reach its full potential because you can't get arpen hard-capped, and mutilate weapon swapping is not as effective because of lower hit and crit rating that make IP dps so high. So for anything less than BiS, you need a separate analysis.
Currently, at BiS according to simsheet combat stands around 9870, while envenom-mutilate is around 9500. With envenom AP multiplier change alone, mutilate becomes 9680 dps. If envenom no longer drops DP stacks with full MP, mutilate dps becomes 9790, close to combat. On murderable targets mutilate will be almost 300 dps ahead. If you put weapon swapping to use, mutilate on regular targets is expected to be around 400 dps ahead.
The largest diffciculty I anticipate in weapon swapping is the fact that the interface for weapon swapping is so clunky, The GCD on weapon swapping is not very clearly displayed for example, I think this might be able to be repaired though an addon, which could make the whole procedure much more reasonable.
Still, from the perspective that we are all actually human, swapping weapons every 5-10 seconds while focusing on the rotation while also focusing on complex fight mechanics (think firefighter) is going to be close to impossible for all but the most skilled players. Add in the fact that any unplanned down time on the target can cause deadly poison to drop and it will be very difficult to get extra dps out of weapon swapping on a movement intense fight.
In short, while the weapon swapping technique may indeed give mutilate an edge on stationary single target fights, this is going to further solidify mutilate as a spec that can really only be optimal in a fight with very little movement and close to 100% up time on a single target.
Unfortunately this will nerf our ability to quickly get full DP stacks on a new target by Envenoming a dying mob right at the end in order to get the buff before moving to the new target. It also moderately hurts our ability to get/keep DP stacks going by FoKing AoE packs.
Unfortunately this will nerf our ability to quickly get full DP stacks on a new target by Envenoming a dying mob right at the end in order to get the buff before moving to the new target. It also moderately hurts our ability to get/keep DP stacks going by FoKing AoE packs.
I believe the point of the change is to make weapon swapping much less desirable. This change will make it much harder to swap to another weapon with IP on it and maintain five stacks of DP.
I believe the point of the change is to make weapon swapping much less desirable. This change will make it much harder to swap to another weapon with IP on it and maintain five stacks of DP.
I think the reason for the change is because MP had 4 different effects, and the increased deadly poison application rate was somewhat redundant with the new change.
But Gaviin is right. This will make building Deadly stacks much slower when switching to a new target, like on Kologarn for example.
Are you talking about rupture-less envenom cycles or simply cycles that include rupture and envenom? And I assume this is on a non murderable target? I am just curious because it's so much more than any other Multilate BiS nun murderable DPS I've seen before.
I believe the point of the change is to make weapon swapping much less desirable. This change will make it much harder to swap to another weapon with IP on it and maintain five stacks of DP.
In all likelihood, Blizzard isn't privy to weapon-swapping discussions; rather, with the primary function of the increased DP proc rate component of Master Poisoner now handled by the non-removal component of the talent (that is, since DP won't need to be restacked when it's not being removed), having DP stack faster serves no purpose once you've achieved a five-stack of Deadly Poison. Yes, this change does hurt weapon-swapping builds, but the increased DP proc rate no longer served a purpose to begin with. At most, it would seem Blizzard is simply clearing out extraneous functionality.
While this certainly reduces any DPS increase yielded by a weapon-swapping setup, a bit of additional analysis is needed before the idea is discarded completely: namely, the impact of the Energy spent on Shiv.
Assuming a 1.40 speed Off Hand is in use, Shiv costs 34 Energy. Also assuming the cycle is Rupture-free, Envenom would consequently be the only finisher put to use. Over 12 seconds, given all Envenoms take place at 4 combo points and are followed by a Ruthlessness proc, 164 Energy would be consumed, of which only 120 would regenerate naturally - meaning 22 critical strikes would have to take place over the duration. Note that in this hypothetical situation, the weapon swap would take place at the second 10, the shiv at roughly 11.5 seconds.
Disregarding the fact 5-second Envenom buff durations would inevitably conflict with the weapon swap portion of the cycle, and paying no attention to the dismally small amount of time between Shivving and the Deadly Poison expiring, the amount of Energy alone needed to Shiv at the end of the twelve-second period while simultaneously maintaining the Envenom buff seems to make such a cycle unfeasible.
That said, throwing your DPS to the RNG wind, as it were, is yet a possibility: swapping at about 8 seconds would afford about three hits one a 1.40 speed weapon when considering Haste. A 55% proc rate is respectable enough to consider, though I understand any concerns regarding the randomness inherent in such an act. Still, the Deadly Poison stack falling off would likely result in an unacceptable loss of DPS, considering the twofold loss of both Envenom damage and Envenom buff uptime.
I lack the understanding to model this myself, but am very curious as to whether weapon swapping will still be the slightest bit viable after this change.
Are you talking about rupture-less envenom cycles or simply cycles that include rupture and envenom? And I assume this is on a non murderable target? I am just curious because it's so much more than any other Multilate BiS nun murderable DPS I've seen before.
9490 is my current BiS estimate for traditional mutilate with rupture and envenom. It's for a non-murderable target. Ruptureless, eviscerate-based mutilate with dual IP and arpen-based gear does about same dps.
Regarding weapon swapping, the latest change does reduce its effectiveness by about 100 dps, but it's still a good 400 dps increase roughly. The strategy is to swap out after 8-9 seconds, regardless of when envenom happens. If Blizzard does not further nerf it, I will model it in the simulation to get a better estimate of its dps value.
Ruptureless, eviscerate-based mutilate with dual IP and arpen-based gear does about same dps.
I would assume that this requires another player to be applying a poison to the target for maximized Mutilate damage? I just still have a hard time taking a build seriously that requires so much from another player. In 25man I can totally understand never having to worry at all, but especially in 10 man, if you do not have a hunter to keep up stings, or another rogue to keep up deadly (and if he wants to run the same spec then you are in trouble), your damage hits the floor.
Also this is not a build that you can just turn around and decide you want to roll regular mutilate with, considering the pure ArP gemming. So is this build primarily for a dual spec build that is used on murderable bosses when there is at least one other poisoner (when you have a fully ArP gemmed combat gearset (of course you would have to carry extra gear to change to for the mutilate that is ArP considering the lack of Weap Expertise in the Assassination Tree)).
I guess I just don't understand a spec that is SOO pigeonholed into a niche that you require someone else to maintain poisons to compete on DPS.
(If this is just primarily a theoretical build for testing and comparing... well then... disregard this entire post :P)
I believe hunter stings count for poison debuff. So it's not just theoretical, and the fact that it has same gear, except for MH weapon, as combat, makes it very convenient.
It's another case of Whatever Works Best™.
There's a myriad of that kind of specs especially amoung the pure dps classes who have alot more talent options to play around with. TTW fireball, HAT just to name a few. We're optimizing for 25 man content because that's area of raiding that remains most challenging. As such it's reasonable to assume there's always another poison up.
Besides, Mutilate is already somewhat depending on someone to have a bleed on your target for HfB or atleast the first HfB.
08/27/09, 6:00 AM
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