No, you're mistaken. Deadly Poison isn't normalized to a PPM - it will always proc more often on a faster weapon. Since there are a number of good reasons to want a slower weapon in the MH and a faster OH, we'll still want DP on the OH.

The only thing i'm a little worried about here (not a maths genius so this may not be the smartest post) is the chance of a fairly retarded shiv build coming back to the fore. Could anyone with slightly better maths please reassure us that shiv builds are still dead?

Does this do anything to combats preference for wound/instant i'd guess not but again, without the maths to know for sure (going to attempt to work it out though).

As long as Deadly is a 30% proc chance, and not PPM, you probably aren't going to want it on your mainhand over Instant/Wound. 30% chance to proc Deadly on an instant attack versus 93% chance to proc Wound on an instant attack isn't a win by any means.

I'm wondering if Combat rogues are going to end up going 20/51, with 3/3 Vile Poisons and 2/5 Improved Poisons. I'll let the people smarter than me run the math, but I'm thinking that a 38% chance to proc your mainhand poison on each offhand swing might outweigh the loss of DPS from Relentless Strikes.

We don't have an arms warrior in our raid, so I'll be stuck as Combat for Savage Combat. My gut says that this is going to make Mutilate pull further ahead, but it's an overall buff for the class, so I can't complain too much.

This has no effect on which hand DP is on. All it says is the poison on the other hand, so if DP gets re-applied via the OH weapon, the MH weapon poison would proc. We'd want DP on a fast weapon to increase the amount of chances it has to re-apply, and this probably makes the Envenom buff even more important than it is in a Weapon-swap build, with more IP procs.

I would assume that we would still go with a 51/18/2 build with Lightning Reflexes, and 2x fast daggers in order to maximize MH swings during the envenom buff while continually re-applying DP.

Latest poison change will also rise a question about when and how to use Shiv ...

So far it was usually considered not worth to use Shiv to keep DP stack from dropping off,
now it might be good idea to put Shiv back action bar again, at least for combat spec?

Mutilate probably won't have DP stack dropping problems, DP proc chance will be sky high
with "linked envenoms" and new Improved Poison talent boost. But combat 18/51/2... hmm...

IF we do go with a 20/51/0 build, the value of hit would go up. And since there's so few hit rating gears in ICC tier 10 content, I would support the idea that a normal 15/51/5 would still work out the best because we will be going with a 1400 passive hard-cap armor pen with high crit and low hit ratings. This massively benefit the value of more sinister strikes and more finishers over more poison damage.

But of course, the simulation and spreadsheet could show that the improved poison damage will out-weight the additional physical damage despite the passive 1400 armor pen.

One thing I do wonder is if mutilate rogue could in fact go with double 1.8 speed dagger and have their MH deadly and OH instant? Just off finishers, Instant have a 38.57 percent chance to proc instant poison off a finisher and if we put deadly poison on the MH, we would effectively have 50 percent chance to proc deadly poison off our finisher and therefore 50 percent chance to proc instant poison.

This same idea can be applied to instant poison proc off mutilate. So do you think it's correct to say that with the new change it's now better off to use deadly MH and instant OH, with 1.8 speed daggers on both hands?

A 20/51 spec would also bring out the viability of using Envenom and IP while Combat spec'd which would further increase the benefit.

Now done the maths

It looks like combat rogues will switch to instant on the mainhand at certain gear levels:


This based on 4200AP:

Instant poison = 300+(0.1*AP)= 720 @ 7ppm
Wound poison = 231+(0.04*AP)= 399 @ 20ppm

Taking a 1.5speed weapon in the offhand:

60/1.5=40 hits a minute

at a 30% proc rate on deadly:

40*0.30 = 12ppm (OH deadly)

Without the change:
Instant: 720*7=5040 damage per minute
Wound: 399*20=7980 damage per minute

With the change:
Instant: 720*(7+12)=13680 damage per minute
Wound: 399*(20+12)=12768 damage per minute

And the relevant breakpoints (accurate to within ~10AP):

With a 1.6 speed weapon in the OH the breakpoint is 3030AP (after this IP pulls ahead)
With a 1.5 speed weapon in the OH the breakpoint is 2730AP (after this IP pulls ahead)
With a 1.4 speed weapon in the OH the breakpoint is 2435AP (after this IP pulls ahead)

Edit: Assuming of course it goes live.

Correct me if I'm wrong but with weapon swapping, provided we wear a 1,5 offhand, we get 53,57% to proc WP on the offhand.
Do you think that 30% extra with DP and not losing some swings will outweigh that 23,57% extra WP procs you get with weapon swapping ?

Quick comparison:

1.8 MH / 1.4 OH

Current IP/IP:
38.6% chance to proc IP in the MH (67.5% during Envenom)
30% chance to proc IP in the OH (52.5% during Envenom)

Future IP/DP
38.6% chance to proc IP in the MH (67.5% during Envenom)
50% chance to proc IP in the OH (65% during Envenom)

So they basically not only give us the weapon swap dps for free, but also a substantial increase ontop of it. Anyone else thinking they will move DP to PPM soon as well, or find some other counter-measure to not let mutilate dps get out of hand. I guess they can always mess arround with the "idiot button to fix dps", aka Hunger For Blood.

You won't be using WP mainhand if this goes live. You'll be running Instant/Deadly, even as combat. You can math it out pretty easily, but only changing the poisons up and assuming a 30% proc chance on Deadly Poison, Instant pulls ahead pretty fast.

They're going to have to tinker with HFB if they don't want Mutilate to pull waaaay ahead. Master Poisoner + the Envenom buff is going to add up to a LOT of DPS. They could fix that by making Master Poisoner replace the Deadly application rate bonus on Envenom, but if they leave it as-is, I wouldn't be surprised to see Mutilate pull so far ahead of combat that they have to dial down HFB or revert the Murder buff.

I've updated SimulationCraft with the latest Rogue changes (SampleOutputPTR pages is not yet updated).

I didn't bother playing around with the profile so it's still using the default BiS T9 profile with IP on MH and DP on OH.
DPS went from around 10900 DPS in 3.3.0 to 12320 DPS.

In the sim my average off-hand swing was every 0.71 seconds and my average time between DP procs was every 1.1 seconds which is a 64.5% proc rate which matches the base 30% + Improved Poison's +20% and the Envenom +15%.

On top of that : (Very basic calculation here, take it carefully)
Take 60 swings a minute, you win 12 IP procs, let's say 25% crit and 1k7/2k6 dmg, you win more than 23k damage a minute, so basically at least 400 dps (I'd say 600/700, but I'm too lazy to do the exact math right now).

I'd have to agree, this is the first thing that came to mind. From what I understand (and please correct me if I'm wrong) Assassination was already a little superior to Combat if all you had to do was DPS a "Patchwerk" boss, just not by a great amount. I think they realized all along the situational superiority of Combat (the fact that Assassination lacks any powerful cooldowns is not an accident I'm sure) and were counting on its theoretical higher single-target DPS to balance the two, but just didn't go far enough since as you said the exact line where sustained DPS usurps situational burst is a hazy one.

can't say this for sure tbh, but read it on wowhead (I know... wowhead comments...)

running heroics on the ptr every day tho, so i'll check as soon it drops.
besides, i think all these 10 sec proc on _crit_ trinkets had a 30 sec internal cd, correct me if this is wrong!


Just saw the deadly poison change, looks really nice. I guess as the dp change is basically a perfect "weaponswap", two fast weapons will be the way to go for mutilate?

No, this has no impact on MH weapon choices. We will still use Slow/Fast, IP/DP because there is no change to the IP proc chance or mechanic on the MH weapon. If anything, using a fast OH will surpass a slow OH even more now since DP is not on PPM, perhaps even throwing the current semi-viability of a slow OH out of the window.

I just hope the math to come on the subject of OH weapon speeds won't make me wish I hadn't vendored my 1.4 speed Webbed Death.

While this isn't what the wording of the change says, my guess is that DP will act as the poison on your OH. So, instead of applying WP (or instant...) every time DP would be applied it has a 50% chance to apply WP.

How does this affect mutilate specs? I would guess that the extra effect of deadly on the offhand will make haste more valuable, perhaps encouraging 51/18/2 at an earlier gear level. Does this strike anyone else as reasonable?

Also, would this make Mongoose yet closer to surpassing Berserking?

I'd assume since we will already be skating the line on being crit capped, the added crit chance effect from the agility on mongoose would be taken out of the equation, giving berserking that extra leg up again.

Besides poison damage will go much higher than it is even now with weapon swapping (because you no longer lose swings that may potentially proc poisons and because of new improved poisons buff for DP). So despite the 2% haste buff from mongoose, I suspect berserking to pull ahead at least for mutilate.

I am also wondering if improved poisons buff is so strong that it will make turn the tables a viable option again. I guess it's time to plug all these changes in the simsheet.

Aldriana, concerning your observations regarding the lack of hit on IC gear will it be impossible even to reach the 238hit cap which any raiding rogue should be going for now?

Mavanas, keep in mind that every time envenom is used and deadly is dropped, you will lose out on five hits of instant poison as well as the lost damage from deadly. I see where you're coming from, deadly will be much easier to re-stack post-envenom; however, the stack itself is now much more valuable than before and in turn losing it is more of a detriment. That being said, I eagerly await your conclusions!