Unless you're sporting both shoulders and helm, you won't be over the cap. You can easily achieve the 4pc bonus without being over the Expertise cap. Even if luck is poor for you, it is better to wear Helm + Shoulders and have both points into Weapon Expertise. You're still gaining expertise from these points (unless you have 214+ from gear alone, which is a mistake in itself), even if a portion of the expertise on gear is wasted. Your alternative is wasting many more ilvl points on expertise on gear, to pick up a talent that might help pad your trash meters.
The ability to pick up 2/2 Imp Throwing Spec, or maybe some other utility talent in Combat tree like Endurance, will not pad any trash meters. Non-combat specs don't have to worry about it much as they don't have access to Weapon Expertise.
HaT is hardly terrible. With 1CPS HaT pulls 7k+ sustained dps, is better at target switching, works very well with 4pct8, and has the added utility of cheat death, shadowstep and prep. Combat and mutilate rogues contribute more than .3CPS each in recent parses.
I would be very interested in seeing how a backstab/shadow dance spec would perform.
Ok, maybe terrible is a strong word. It's competitive in ideal circumstances, yes. But part of the problem with adding Shadowstep to the build is you lose quite a few sustained DPS talents from Combat in the process. I'm not sure it's worth it.
As for a Backstab build -- I'd have to imagine the best route for that still would be Combat. You just miss a lot of talents if you go that deep in Sub but still intend to use Backstab as your CP generator.
Ok, maybe terrible is a strong word. It's competitive in ideal circumstances, yes. But part of the problem with adding Shadowstep to the build is you lose quite a few sustained DPS talents from Combat in the process. I'm not sure it's worth it.
As for a Backstab build -- I'd have to imagine the best route for that still would be Combat. You just miss a lot of talents if you go that deep in Sub but still intend to use Backstab as your CP generator.
Isn't that the whole point of HAT, though? HAT is your CP generator. 45e Backstabs hit hard as hell and if you don't have to rely on them for your CP generation, they probably become really good "filler" between all the Eviscerates.
Also, how do you lose a lot of sustained DPS talents by picking up one (or two, even)? If you're going Backstab subtlety, you're likely going to Slaughter in the Shadows anyway, so you might as well grab Shadowstep along the way, and Shadow Dance afterwards.
I'm not saying the build will work -- just not sure I follow why you're saying what you're saying above. It might be fun to play around with it in Naxx sometime just to see how it fares before investing any real time into number-crunching or whatever.
You can't have a perfectly itemized gearset at this stage of the expansion. We still have (at least) 1 more raid instance before the next expansion, and if you have a perfectly itemized gearset before then, you aren't going to have anything left to work with in the last raid. It's still very early for this PTR, and there is lots of time for gear changes to happen. We also haven't seen any offset items, so we have no idea if we'll run 5/5 T9, or drop shoulders/chest for something else.
This. One thing you notice looking at SWP gear versus, say, Tier 6 and below, is that the T6 stuff still follows the model of having AGI/AP + 2 stats to fill out an item. Most of our stuff is Hit/Crit, Crit/Haste, Hit/ArPen, and the T9 set is throwing in a few variants, but they all follow that same model.
The Sunwell Plateau Slayer's items were _so_ good (take a look at [Slayer's Boots]) in large part because they moved up to 3 stats + Agi/AP to avoid dim. returns on stat increases, and I think we might see that in Icecrown. One large benefit of this is it's easier to add expertise in more granular chunks since you can get 4 items with ~40 expertise each instead of 2 with ~80, plus you get a lot more bang for your iLvl "buck" allocating 3 stats instead of 2. Easy to make very attractive Icecrown upgades that way (plus they'll probably swing back towards lower STA allocation on T10 + more red sockets ala Sunwell) especially relative to what we're seeing of tier 9.
Doesn't really solve the problem of overshooting the expertise cap using 5pc T9, but aren't we all pretty used to using 4/5 with an optimal offset piece anyway?
Isn't that the whole point of HAT, though? HAT is your CP generator. 45e Backstabs hit hard as hell and if you don't have to rely on them for your CP generation, they probably become really good "filler" between all the Eviscerates.
Also, how do you lose a lot of sustained DPS talents by picking up one (or two, even)? If you're going Backstab subtlety, you're likely going to Slaughter in the Shadows anyway, so you might as well grab Shadowstep along the way, and Shadow Dance afterwards.
I'm not saying the build will work -- just not sure I follow why you're saying what you're saying above. It might be fun to play around with it in Naxx sometime just to see how it fares before investing any real time into number-crunching or whatever.
I believe meow was asking about a Backstab-based build that had 51 sub in the second part of his post. Not a HaT build that also backstabbed.
So, we now know the stats on the new professions - lets take a look at how they stack up.
Alchemy: 80 AP.
Blacsksmithing: 2 epic gems, at 40 AP or 20 of any other stat, meaning your choice of 80 AP or 40 of stat-of-choice (usually Agi or ArPen).
Enchanting: 80 AP.
Herbalism: More healing, handy for questing and soloing stuff, I suppose, but useless in raids.
Inscription: 80 AP
JC: New Dragon Eyes are 68 AP/34 stat of choice, an upgrade of 28/14 over epic gems; thus, the total benefit is 84 AP and/or 42 of stat of choice.
Leatherworking: 80 AP
Mining: 60 sta
Skinning: 40 crit rating
So, among the easily-valued professions, we have a pretty obvious hierarchy:
1. JC: 84, or more if there's a stat with EP > 2.
2. BS: 80, or more if there's a stat with EP > 2.
T3. Enchanting: 80
T3. Inscription: 80
T3. Leatherworking: 80
T3. Alchemy: 80
Okay, so what about the two that are a bit harder to assess? Where do they fit in?
Well, Tailoring gives Swordguard Embroidery, which has a 45 second internal cooldown and a 25% proc rate; thus, un average, it's going to proc about once every 47 seconds, giving it uptime right around 32%; thus, the average-case benefit is 400 * .32 = 128 AP or so. Compare this to the best available alternative, which would be 22 agi for most of us, which has a value right around 45 EP. So the overall benefit is right around 83 EP - give or take. In practice, it might be slightly higher than this, as the proc will tend to align pretty well with your trinket procs, leading to some degree of synergy. Note, however, that as the value of agility increases (and it probably will, with time), this margin will be eroded somewhat.
Engineering, on the other hand, gives a multitude of benefits which we're going to have to add up:
1) Hyperspeed Accelerators now give 20% uptime on 340 haste rating, or 68 average-case haste; this works out to a benefit around 91 EP for Mutilate and 101 for combat; compared to the baseline glove enchant which is 44 EP for both, the benefit is roughly 47 EP for Mutilate and 57 EP for combat.
2) Flexweave Underlay is 1 agi better than the regular cloak enchant. 2 EP for both.
3) Nitro boosts are now identical to Icewalker, with the added benefit of boost movement at need; in an ideal fight, where they can be used on every cooldown, these reduce transit time by 2.5 seconds once every 3 minutes; 1 second of DPS in in the neighborhood of 7000 damage for most of us, so we're looking at something like 17500 bonus damage every 180 seconds, which is a full 100 DPS benefit, right?
Well, no. Because in practice the number of fights on which you need to to move far enough to get the full 2.5 second benefit, and need to do so more often than you can with sprint, are few and far between. The only fight in Ulduar where I can see getting full benefit from them is Yogg phase 2; one can argue you receive partial benefit on Mim, XT Hard, and some modes of Iron Council, but it's definitely the exception and not the rule. And even in those cases, it's only during certain phases, so in reality you'll use them once a fight at most in the majority of cases. So a more realistic assessment is, perhaps, 2 seconds of movement saved across a 10 minute fight, which works out to more like 20 DPS, which is around 25 EP. And on most fights, it will be less than that. So we're looking at, average case, perhaps 10 EP, I would argue.
Finally, we have bombs. A bomb does 1325 base damage, increased 13% by raid buffs, reduced by 6% due to resists, and increased by around 15% due to spell crit. Thus, we estimate the average damage in reality is around 1600; with a 60 sec cooldown, this works out to around 27 DPS, which is somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 EP if used on cooldown.
Thus, the total theoretical benefit of engineering is around 47 + 2 + 10 + 30 = 89 for Mutilate, and 99 for Combat... assuming you use everything on cooldown. If, however, you are consistently 5 seconds late on using Hyperspeed Accelerators, or don't feel like burning through a hundred bombs a night, or otherwise fail to use the profession to it's absolute fullest, it's value is somewhat lower. For instance, if you use bombs and accelerators every 65 seconds instead of every 60, the total benefit drops to 80/90; and every fight you skip using bombs entirely on drops engineering to the bottom of the heap.
So, in terms of optimal professions, what do we find? Well, if you're absolutely commited to using engineering, and use every single ability on cooldown on every fight - including going through very large numbers of bombs and putting up with a lot of extra cooldowns to keep track of - it's going to be the best profession, and thus the optimal pairing is JC/Eng.
However, for those people who aren't willing or able to put up with that level of crap on engineering, it's a weak profession; at that point, JC is the best, and either Tailoring or Blacksmithing will be second. In particular, if there's a stat who's EP value is 2.1 or higher, Blacksmithing is likely best; if not, Tailoring is probably the way to go. However, none of these professions have a significant advantage over LW, Enchanting, Inscription, or Alchemy, so I suspect a lot of rogues will not find it worthwhile to swap professions for the 2 DPS difference between professions.
Edit: Assorted updates and corrections based on comments.
compared to the baseline glove enchant which is ~41 EP for both
Also, not sure why you listed the glove enchant as "~41 EP", as crusher gives 44 AP, and therefore should be exactly 44 EP (if you're not referring to Crusher, then whatever you're referring to is lower EP than crusher anyway unless it beats 44 EP).
Other than that, thanks for running the numbers.. definitely think I'm sticking JC/LW. Wish they'd make Skinning worth a damn, but I don't think I'm going back down that path.
Consistency. It's only a virtue if you're not a screwup.
I believe meow was asking about a Backstab-based build that had 51 sub in the second part of his post. Not a HaT build that also backstabbed.
Sorry, I didn't see the difference. A 51-point Subtlety build that doesn't have HAT is like a 51-point Combat build that doesn't have Combat Potency -- you could do it, but why the hell would you?
Sorry, I didn't see the difference. A 51-point Subtlety build that doesn't have HAT is like a 51-point Combat build that doesn't have Combat Potency -- you could do it, but why the hell would you?
I think he actually meant a 51 point build including HAT compared to a standard HAT build that would simply include Backstab as well.
1) Hyperspeed Accelerators now give 20% uptime on 340 haste rating, or 68 average-case haste; this works out to a benefit around 91 EP for Mutilate and 101 for combat; compared to the baseline glove enchant which is 44 EP for both, the benefit is roughly 47 EP for Mutilate and 57 EP for combat.
Maybe I'm going off false assumptions here, but don't you also need to account for the additional advantage of Hyperspeed Accelerators used in conjunction with Heroism, Blade Flurry, and/or Haste pots?
Since Haste is multiplicative and (with the Hyperspeeds being on a 1 minute cooldown) it's usually easy to line up their activation with at least Heroism, if not other effects, without too much time spent sitting on a cooldown you could activate. Sort of hard to quantify with EP as you are trying to do above, but my anecdotal experience at least is that stacking Hyperspeeds + Blade Flurry on a Heroism burn phase is pretty ridiculous and it's worth noting at least.
You can also argue the benefit is higher than the averaged haste over a minute duration for the fights where you don't have 100% uptime on melee attacking - for those more mobile fights, you get no benefit from your Crusher enchant while running, but can often extract full usage of Hyperspeeds.
Edit: I'm also partial to the Electromagnetic Pulse Generator but it has no real EP value However, I find it invaluable for skipping Mimiron trash on our 10 man every week and for an emergency save on XT if the repair bots get through (which somehow almost happened to us this week after activating hardmode.. leftovers I suppose)
Whenever you delay the use of them, you're also incurring a loss of potential uptime as well - if you say "oh, I'll wait 15s because BF is going to be up", then you just reduced their effectiveness by 25% for this cooldown. (Yes, I realize that sometimes it works out that those 15s don't cause you to lose the final activation on a boss fight, but on average you will lose some effectivness).
There's postivies and negatives, but they largely balance eachother out.
Consistency. It's only a virtue if you're not a screwup.
Whenever you delay the use of them, you're also incurring a loss of potential uptime as well - if you say "oh, I'll wait 15s because BF is going to be up", then you just reduced their effectiveness by 25% for this cooldown. (Yes, I realize that sometimes it works out that those 15s don't cause you to lose the final activation on a boss fight, but on average you will lose some effectivness).
There's postivies and negatives, but they largely balance eachother out.
Right, I tried to account for that - my overall point was that using them intelligently and not necessarily waiting for BF, but that you can generally use them on-cooldown AND in-conjunction with Heroism given knowledge of the fights and your group. Given that usage model you're going to see a net benefit above the averaged out haste rating.
Plus, used correctly, BF and the Hyperspeeds are on the same cooldown cycle so there's no real reason you'd be waiting on Flurry to activate them. My most common use case actually is one where Heroism gets blown and I'm waiting on my Hyperspeed cooldown (and, sometimes, the coinciding Blade Flurry cooldown). Since Hero lasts 40s I find it pretty rare I'm not able to get full usage out of the overlap, and I don't ever really sit on the glove cooldown, especially not for 15s.
I have a macro which uses Hyper Speed + Bladeflurry at the same time (as HSA are not on the GCD). I'll basically have them up as BF comes [back] up, and yeah, I feel the potential of the accelerators, in terms of synergy was not really mentioned there.
I have a feeling they will be slightly more favorable with sword specialisation too. Would be cool to see what the upcoming weapon itemisation is like.
You can also argue the benefit is higher than the averaged haste over a minute duration for the fights where you don't have 100% uptime on melee attacking - for those more mobile fights, you get no benefit from your Crusher enchant while running, but can often extract full usage of Hyperspeeds.
I'm a little confused as to how you get no benefit from your Crusher enchant while running but you somehow do when you have hyperspeed glove enchants. I'd imagine static stats are always better for fights with sporadic target contact unless it magically aligns with the 15 seconds on the enchant.
I'm a little confused as to how you get no benefit from your Crusher enchant while running but you somehow do when you have hyperspeed glove enchants. I'd imagine static stats are always better for fights with sporadic target contact unless it magically aligns with the 15 seconds on the enchant.
While moving, the crusher enchant has lost "uptime" equivalent to your lost DPS time. While the glove enchant still has the same 15s uptime from the non movement part of the fight.
The past day or so I have been doing some testing on the PTR using the 245 T9 set, running a 4+ Mutilate cycle. I've been watching my energy closely and also my buffs and so far have not seen a single case of the 2 set functioning as the tooltip states, reducing the energy cost of my next ability by 40. I'm interested to know if anyone else has experienced the same, as its hard to really get a good idea of the numbers without correct functionality. That being said however, after extensive testing, i did find (on average) an increase in DPS of about 150 just from the stat values alone over the T8 set.
Thus, the total theoretical benefit of engineering is around 47 + 2 + 10 + 30 = 89 for Mutilate, and 99 for Combat... assuming you use everything on cooldown. If, however, you are consistently 5 seconds late on using Hyperspeed Accelerators, or don't feel like burning through a hundred bombs a night, or otherwise fail to use the profession to it's absolute fullest, it's value is somewhat lower. For instance, if you use bombs and accelerators every 65 seconds instead of every 60, the total benefit drops to 80/90; and every fight you skip using bombs entirely on drops engineering to the bottom of the heap.
.
I use about 30 bombs per night, upwards of 50 on really bad nights. I use them instantly on cooldown, as with Hyperspeed Accelerators and in all honesty not using them on cooldown is just being lazy, all it takes is a simple macro /cast Sinister Strike /use Saronite Bomb /use Conqueror's Terrorblade Gauntlets. My mouse generally hovers over the boss because I watch my threat via tooltip so while I'm mashing my Sinister Strike all it takes is a simple mouse click.
I like bombs because I can throw them on the move (it's not a huge benefit but it helps a little bit) and despite what people say about managing the targetting of bombs and such it's really less work than it sounds like.
Well, it depends on what you're doing, I imagine - on farm nights, I imagine you don't use that many. But, like, when learning Vezax hard, we'd do 30+ attempts in a night, many of which would last 3-4 minutes; one has to imagine that this winds up burning through 100 or more bombs. Some fights will be different - like, Yogg I imagine you only use them in the mind (and phase 3) which severely cuts down the number you need; but on some nights, I can imagine going through an awful lot of them if you use them on cooldown.
I would be very interested in seeing how a backstab/shadow dance spec would perform.
I used to play with a 15/5/51 spec in naxx sometimes (when i stopped respeccing for pve ). When i arranged the group so that i had the best possible cp/sec i barely got to use backstab at all. The cp just come in too fast so that if you use backstab as filler you'd sooner or later not have enough energy to use eviscerate. Backstab will be a really small portion of your damage (10-15%), so i do not think it will outperform a spec where you just dont use backstab and instead get 3% hit, 50% longer snd, 5% crit and 10% haste.
Backstab hat could be good if there was a finishing move that turned excess cp into an energy over time selfbuff.
The past day or so I have been doing some testing on the PTR using the 245 T9 set, running a 4+ Mutilate cycle. I've been watching my energy closely and also my buffs and so far have not seen a single case of the 2 set functioning as the tooltip states, reducing the energy cost of my next ability by 40. I'm interested to know if anyone else has experienced the same, as its hard to really get a good idea of the numbers without correct functionality. That being said however, after extensive testing, i did find (on average) an increase in DPS of about 150 just from the stat values alone over the T8 set.
Last testing i did was right as servers went live and the two piece was proccing a buff called Unholy Strength. And it was on a very very low proc as well.
I believe we will need to see another build for any real testing to start, maybe it will be working properly then or even be a completely different bonus.
Last edited by Valyrra : 06/28/09 at 2:52 AM.
Reason: Corrected late night spelling.
Blizz says:
-The Spynocular belt attachment has been changed to a Frag Belt. The Frag Belt periodically produces a Cobalt Frag Bomb that can be used from the belt every 10 minutes (never runs out!).
If the belt bomb doesn't trigger the saronite bomb cooldown, then it should give another 3ish DPS during a 5 minute fight. Not a huge benefit, but it might work out to another EP or 2 for engineering.
If the belt bomb doesn't trigger the saronite bomb cooldown, then it should give another 3ish DPS during a 5 minute fight. Not a huge benefit, but it might work out to another EP or 2 for engineering.
Cobalt Frag Bombs have a cast time though, and are, I believe, on the GCD, unlike Saronite bombs. So probably not worth it if the belt works like the casted Cobalt Bombs. (which are mainly useful for the AE stun they cause)
For those that haven't seen, all (or nearly all) the 4pc T9 bonuses that used to be "+5% crit to X" have been changed to something more useful except for the rogue bonus (it remains 5% crit to combo builders). Clearly they were all placeholders and I would expect the rogue 4pc bonus to be updated within a build or two.
06/25/09, 2:25 PM
Wish they'd make Skinning worth a damn, but I don't think I'm going back down that path.
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