So, I've been spending some time the last day or two poking at the Combat spreadsheet and working through the implications of the new gear and set bonuses. While I don't have everything modeled at this point (notable omissions at this points are Needle-Encrusted Scorpion, Black Bruise, and Deathbringer's Will), I can make some early comments on what we're going to see moving into Icecrown.

The first important thing to note is that all Icecrown gear to date is *incredibly* hit starved. Literally none of the new gear has hit on it. The best gear set I've found out of the known gear only has 108 hit on it, meaning that every single yellow socket is using either Rigid or Accurate gems, and Precision is used as a glove enchant, just to get (almost) up to the spell hit cap.

The first implication of this is that, well, we'll need to be using a lot more hit gems and stuff - Glinting, Rigid, and Accurate. Which, honestly, isn't that big a deal.

The somewhat larger implication is in terms of the crit cap. With so little hit on gear - and so much crit and agility - the crit cap starts to be a very serious concern. Almost every gear setup I've entered is flirting with the crit softcap just due to Death's Verdict, and some of them are even pushing the crit hardcap. So that's something we're going to have to watch as we're gearing through Icecrown.

The *major* consequence of this is as follows: when I say "near the crit hardcap" - that's with a Hack and Slash setup. Which means that CQC builds are going to be, frankly, crippled. With all Hack and Slash builds softcapping - and some hardcapping - there simply isn't room to get another 5% crit from talents and have it be useful. I'm not going to say that CQC-based combat builds are dead, but they definitely have some major issues.

The second interesting piece of the puzzle is what happens to our EP values. With BIS gear and my usual settings, I get the following EP values:

Agi: 2.2
Crit: 1.99
White Hit: 1.93
Expertise: 2.33
Haste: 1.94
ArPen: 2.73

So what does this mean? Well, almost all our gear has Agi, AP, Sta, and 2 of the remaining 5 stats (Crit/Hit/Exp/Haste/ArPen). Of these "discretionary" stats, Expertise is capped which limits the number of Expertise pieces we can use. And of the other stats, Crit/Hit/Haste are all very very close in value, with ArPen significantly higher (and not particularly close to capping - 969 in the gear I have entered right now). Thus, the principal arbiter of the desirability of an item appears to be whether it has ArPen on it or not. That is, an item will seem "well itemized" if it has ArPen on it, and "poorly itemized" if it doesn't. When comparing two items of equal ilvl, the one with ArPen on it will almost always be better.

The other significant thing to look at is our set bonuses. Now, the 2/5 is pretty straightforward. It's a strong set bonus (227 EP in the BIS-so-far gear setup), and only takes two pieces, so everyone will be wanting to get it. Simple, really. The 4/5, however, is a bit more interesting.

The 4/5, as the moment, is scoring 112 EP with the best gearset I've put together. Which, while certainly not a *bad* set bonus, isn't precisely a *good* one either - it's not too uncommon for offset gear to eclipse set pieces by 50+ EP, which would result in a 2/5 + 3 offset setup. Thus the question: is it likely that such items will exist in T10?

Well, let's assume for the moment that Icecrown will work like ToC in this respect - that is, there will exist set items of the highest possible ilvl. As opposed to Ulduar and Naxx where offset pieces could be a full tier higher than their set counterparts, the existance of the Heroic Sanctified Shadowblade set implies that there will be both set and offset pieces of heroic ilvl (277). Thus, whether there exists a superior offset option appears to be a function of how well each is itemized. And looking at what's been released, we can make some conjectures on that point. The helm, chest, and shoulders all have ArPen, which, as previously noted, means they're likely to be good. Which means that the only two slots where it's likely that there will be a significantly superior offset item are legs and gloves.

However, we've *seen* the offset legs in nonheroic version. And comparing nonheroic T10 legs to nonheroic Gangrenous Leggings, we see that neither has ArPen. The major difference between the two is that the set piece has more Agility and Expertise in place of AP and Hit. And these are, in general, better stats. Thus, unless we're already expertise capped from other gear, it is likely that the set legs will likely either be BIS or close. Meanwhile, the gloves lack in ArPen, and there's a viable alternative which *does* have ArPen - notably, Aldriana's Gloves of Secrecy. Hence, our preliminary indication is that 4 of the 5 set pieces will be BIS or close, such that we'll wind up wearing Ald's Gloves + 4/5 T10.

Thus, we now have to consider what the 4/5 T10 does to our stat and cycle priorities. Well, fundamentally, the 4/5 T10 is making finishers cost less combo points - you still spend the CP, but you get more CP back on average than you did before, meaning that in effect you get more finishers off the same baseline CP generation. Thus, our damage is going to be coming more from finishers and less from other sources than it currently is. The major implication of which is that Relentless Strikes is going to become relatively stronger as a talent option; and, due to lowered hit rates, poison talents are somewhat weaker. As such, preliminary indications are that the move to Icecrown gear is going to favor 15/51/5 over 18/51/2 - and indeed, I show 15/51/5 to be about 100 DPS ahead of 18/51/2 is best known gear.

In summary: it appears that Combat rogues will be moving towards 15/51/5 Sword/Axe builds, with 4/5 T10, offset gloves, and lots of hit gems.

P.S.: Before anyone asks: no, I don't know when I'll have an updated Combat sheet for people. Nor do I know when I'll have similar estimates for Mutilate. While it's true that I'm between raiding guilds right now and thus have somewhat more time to work on this sort of thing than usual, it's also true that it's still subject to the usual constraints of "when I feel like working on it" so I will make no commitment as to when things will be ready.

Awesome post, thanks for sharing Also gratz for the named item, especially when it appears to be valuable piece of gear of every rogue.

And I am quite happy becase the presumed T10 raid build matches the way how I like to play my rogue.

By the way: Is it possible that we will be enchanting weapons with Accuracy?

Short answer: no.

Long answer: Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

To be a little more helpful: Even assuming you're far enough below the spell hit cap that you're not reshuffling gemming to use it, such that you get to count all 25 points as spell hit in terms of assessing it's EP value, you wind up with a total enchant valuation around 112 (as the EP value of hit below the spell hit cap is ~2.5). Compare to OH Berserking, which is around 150. Basically, until crit EP + hit EP gets up around 6, Accuracy just won't compete with Berserking. And I just don't see that happening - I suspect Crit won't past 2.1 in Icecrown, and even if Spell Hit cracks 3 that still comes up short. Thus, I don't see that Accuracy is going to catch Berserking - and by the time it does, Mongoose will have outscaled Berserking anyway, moving the bar that much further along in terms of making Accuracy viable.

Hmm, that seems to make Deathbringer's Will even more useless. If it is just a random proc, I really don't see us gearing/gemming for a possible 600 crit or a possible 600 ArP. If we're capping on crit just from other gear a crit proc is worthless and an agi proc is not so great. If we're going to go over the ArP cap from the trinket proc, some of it is wasted.

Obviously this is just speculation but, It's possible that the lack of hit on Rogue t10 and gear obviously aimed at Rogues could be Blizzard's answer to the new weapon/poison switching craze. Just giving us enough hit to be safely over the yellow hit cap but well under the spell hit cap would significantly diminish the DPS gained from this practice, correct?

I highly doubt blizzard would intentionally itemise our latest tier set with a lack of hit to make a nerf to a "broken" mechanic. They don't intentionally itemise gear poorly to nerf a class, they just nerf the class itself instead.

It's pretty clear that ditching ArPen proc trinkets is the way to go at this stage. The principal reason we don't do so in 3.2 is the difficult of obtaining two sufficiently good trinkets to replace them; however, with the advent of Herkuml War Totem, that problem becomes much easier; for me, it shows as a direct upgrade over Mjolnir even when sitting at the ArPen softcap.

This does, of course, presuppose to some extent that one has a strong trinket (notably Verdict) to use with Herkuml. If you don't, it's entirely possible you wind up using Mjolnir/Herkuml, in which case you're still in a softcap situation. And in that event, while it's true that ArPen on gear is still good (in that it lets you socket more towards Agility and other stats you may need), the margin of superiority does diminish. So one will still likely find that ArPen items are better at equal ilvl, but not by nearly the same margin.

While I tend to agree about the ArPen trinkets ( toll & runestone ) , I'm not sure the Herkuml will represent for us a good replacement , as in a lot of fights a reasonable amount of movement will cause them to drop the stack before it reaches the maximum (20/20) , plus the entire effect only lasts 10 seconds ( the Blackened Naaru Sliver trinket had the same mechanics but the buff used to last 20 seconds ). I am sure you have your reasons to consider it a direct upgrade , but at the moment im failing to see them , expecially for Combat rogues who do have less benefit from weapon swapping.

The trinket is very different from [Blackened Naaru Sliver]. It has the same mechanics as [Fury of the Five Flights]. Note the lack of an expiration timer on the buff. As long as you can get 1 hit in every 10 seconds it is a constant 340ap once fully stacked.

You know that the two trinkets have completely different mechanics right? One is a proc with an internal cooldown and needs to be ramped up during that 20 seconds, the other is like FotFF and should have close to 100% uptime on the 20 stack provided that an encounter doesn't have long phase switches with nothing else to attack.

Edit: Beaten, should've refreshed.

Looking at the T9 content for when the stack may drop (hardmodes only):
Beasts - probably will drop between each phase, when worms submerge, and during the stun/charge on Icehowl
Jaraxxus - May drop if you take a run with the fire debuff - this isn't terribly common
Faction Champs - May drop, but well, DPS isn't really king for this fight. :P
Twins - May drop for various reasons depending on your strategy, most likely if you have to take a longish run to swap colors
Anub - Will most likely drop in P2 but will be up pretty much 100% of the time that you really need it.


That being said, any of those could happen right after a Mjolnir/Greatness proc too, though they both have the benefit of sometimes you getting lucky and your off-target time being during the ICD.

All in all it's probably a wash - I know for a fact that if I'm still using Greatness in 3.3 it's gone as soon as possible. :P

@Carsonlees, if you read just a bit up on this post, Aldriana states from his modeling it seems that because you want to stack more ArP on your gear as it improves past-ToC, trinkets like Grim Toll and Mjolnir's Runestone will become less desirable as one surpasses the soft-ArP cap.

@Ruqas, I think his point is purely MR vs GT, considering:

a) GT's softcap is a tad higher then MR's, allowing for more permanent ArP.
b) GT carries hit instead of crit. Given the T10 hit void and critcapping issues GT's hit might be superior to MR's crit.

Given those two GT could possibly end up superior to MR. A likely scenario is that while we gather more ICC gear we first swap MR back to GT and then eventually drop GT for a non ArP proc trinket.

edit: I completely disregarded the option of socketing hit there as well as underestimating the cost that the extra ArP you'd need to softcap GT vs softcap MR brings to other stats. As Aldriana noted, it's not impossible but it needs such a specific stat allocation that it is quite unlikely.

To say that Grim Toll's ArPen cap is higher is, uh, rather deceptive. It's worth noting that at the crit softcap for Grim Toll, it and Mjolnir do exactly the same thing - take you to 100% ArPen. So: if you're below the Grim Toll softcap, you have the same amount of passive ArPen either way, but less during the proc (so the Mjolnir proc is better), and if you're above the Grim Toll softcap the two trinkets have identical ArPen properties. So, in short: the Grim Toll proc is never superior to the Mjolnir proc. Using Grim Toll and socketing up to the new softcap is equivalent, in terms of procs, to using Mjolnir and socketing 53 ArPen past the softcap - which is clearly suboptimal.

Thus, the only possible way that Grim Toll is better is if the 81 hit is not just as good as 102 crit, but enough better that you make up the difference in DPS you get from having to socket "inferior" gems. Which, in rough terms, means you replace 102 crit (~200 EP) and 53 agility (~116 EP) with 53 points of post-softcap ArPen (~96 EP). Thus, the 81 hit must be worth at least 200+116-96 ~= 220 EP, or about 2.7 EP per point of hit. Which is something of a rare situation... it would likely need to involve gear that's otherwise almost completely devoid of hit, such that one is still below the spell hit cap even socketed full hit, *and* you're soft crit capped. I won't say it's *impossible*, but it would certainly be an unusual situation.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't the new ICC gear that's stupidly devoid of hit benefit from the 81 hit?

I think the more likely scenario will be a NES softcap (until you get passive arp trinkets).

Also, NES has a 30 sec internal cd (452 arp proc with ~33% uptime)
Should be better then GT/MR softcap, and the 948arp softcap gives you more space for all the ICC Arp gear.

I haven't seen any testing on NES uptime - could you link where you found that information?

Additionally, I suspect that while NES-Softcap setups might be popular for a while at the beginning of Icecrown, I rather suspect that once we start getting access to appreciable hardmode loot we'll find that going for hardcap is superior - there will likely be enough available ArPen and open sockets that - assuming you have other good trinket options - stopping at the softcap just won't make a lot of sense. But of course, final determination will have to wait for the hardmode loot tables to be revealed.

Both a nice buff, and one less mod I have to maintain!

If I understand Imp Poisons correct, that now means that for all intents and purposes, Mut rogues will have a 50% chance on offhand swing to proc instant poison. I haven't done any math on it, but my gut feeling is that this is going to leave Combat in the dust so badly that unless they buff it substantially, Mutilate is going to be the only way to go.

It really doesn't matter how much they buff Mutilate - they always have the HfB knob they can turn up or down to compensate. Well, unless it's more than 15% ahead, I guess.

This change will buff Combat as well, but not nearly as much - but it's probably enough to push 18/51/2 over 15/51/5, unless there's other changes.

At least blizzard addressed swapping in a fair way without breaking the mechanic or nerfing poisons in some way. Also arguably the fastest they've responded to a mod/exploit of this type.

So if I'm not mistaken this puts our poisons backwards now, Dp main Ip/Wp oh. [Edit corrected below]

Also this is a sizable little dps benefit for mid to longer aoe outweighing the previous nerf (for aoe long enough to get 5stack up).

Also with this large inc in poison damage. I wonder if ArP is still the way to go.

Dp is (currently) not a PPM, so you should put it on a fast offhand.