Is this calculation limited by time during Shadowdance, or just energy? Would a Blood Elf be able to throw an arcane torrent in during ShadowDance for another additional nudge on energy?

It's limited by energy, so Arcane Torrent, thistle tea, invigoration, and revitalize can all increase your chances of landing a 4 ambushes within the time frame of a glyphed shadow dance, making it a third more powerful.

Is there any reason why you would not be Eviscerating inbetween Ambushes? Ambush crits will generate 4 cps if my memory as PVP Shadowdance serves me well, and dropping a 35 energy Eviscerate can return 25 of that energy + a CP depending on the spec.

-- edited for nonsense -- sorry

As far as shadow dance goes, would it be worth is to possibly garrote once instead of spamming ambush?

Discussed a bit already in the HAT thread: see napkin math here.

If ArP stacking is optimal (which it almost certainly is in all cases for HaT), then Ambush overtakes garrote.

My question is in regards to the 4 ambush scenario, because if you eviscerate even once, 4 ambushes are impossible due to GCD constraints. And if you are eviscerating to use your combo points, 3 ambushes is out of the question as well.

GCD is 1 second, so energy permitting, you get 8 actions. Energy is the throttle here, along with the GCD for things like Tricks or Arcane Torrent to keep the rotation going.

Just to clarify, Arcane Torrent is not on the GCD since 3.0.2 I believe so yes energy being the throttle, BE rogues can utilize their racial to maximize dmg during the SD.

I've been pondering this for a while thinking about combat builds from a two-objective optimization prespective (single target sustained dps vs. interrupted combat). Since Mavanas' sim sheet does have a model for interrupted combat, I deceided to investigate some combinations of talents and glyphs.

I used my own gear in the sim-sheet, and tried to get ball-point-accurate estimate of what the the dps would be like with the rupture-critting in 3.3.3 by extracting the percentage of dps done by rupture then multiplying that by a crit modifier (assuming my average raid-buffed crit of ~52%)

In the tests I ran with the sheet, all interrupted combat dps values used only Evis as a finisher. All sustained combat dps values (except a baseline using ccurrent Evis build) used rupture as a higher priority finisher. I've also tested with and without a mangle debuff on the target (the 10man I run with doesn't have a provider of mangle/trauma).


The main scenarios/observations of interest I could see are:

1- Current Evis-centric build [Glyphs: KS, SS, Evis, Talents: 3/3 impEvis, 2/3 Ruthlessness] is the highest in interrupted combat -- not surprisingly

2- Current Evis-centric build in (1) gains 0.4% in sustained dps by including rupture in the rotation if the target is mangled, otherwise using rupture for that build is a loss in sustained dps

3- Top sustained dps build was for [Glyphs: KS, SnD, Rupture, Talents: 2/2 Bloodsplatter, 3/3 Ruthlessness], about 2% more sustained dps than current Evis-centric build in (1) when the target is mangled, only 0.7% ahead when the target is not mangled. And about 1.5% less in interrupted combat dps -- this seems to agree with findings posted here

4- A "middle ground" kind of build [Glyphs: KS, SS, SnD, Talents: 2/2 Bloodsplatter, 3/3 impEvis] had 1.5% more sustained dps than the build in (1) when the target is mangled, only 0.5% ahead when the target is not mangled, and only 0.4% less dps in interrupted combat.

I'm finding #4 to be quite attractive, espceially for my 10man

Did you take glyph of TotT into consideration when determinating the glyphs?

This might be more speculation than anything, but I highly doubt the rupture change was an effort to increase rogue DPS or even to bring rupture into DPS rotation. It looks instead to be a slow going change over to all dots in game benefiting from haste and crit (Haste specific to more Dot based specs like affliction and Shadow)

The reason most classes have not seen this change yet is because to many classes this change would institute a buff which they would have to nerf the class in another way to introduce.

Instead of making this change global all at once and Nerfing multiple classes and specs then having to clean up after the changes when certain specs after a good deal of theory crafting become OP, the dev team instead seems to be applying the changes where it can be *afforded (Classes that are not really effected by the change or need a buff anyway.)

Source: Ghost Crawler

Keep in mind that the rupture buff *is* a straight up/big buff to Subtlety, which they are clearly trying to make somewhat viable again, while only minimally affecting combat (and leaving mutilate alone entirely). As a balance move, it's not bad.

So I guess with serrated blades going to % it will deduct 9% off of a boss base armor, making it 10643x9/100=984.87armor on lvl 83 target wich is quite a nice boost from 640 armor it used to ignore?

No that was more of a 10man focussed study. I suppose I should try some of combinations with TotT glyph as well.

Although tooltips are notorious for not working like they are worded, Serrated Blades is worded just like Mace Spec. So one would assume that SB works the same way.

There's a new change to Feint in the change-notes on the PTR.

Am I the only one interested in this change ?
I love Feint. I think it was the best change to the rogue class in WLK. I think the difference between an average rogue and a good rogue is not whether the good rogue can squeeze out a few percent more dps. I think the difference is that a good rogue knows how to survive in dangerous fights. That is the best way to increase dps too. The hard fights are the fights where the whole raid is taking a lot of damage. Reducing incoming AoE will help your healers, and make more of a difference for overall success than increasing raid damage by 0.1%.

With the new glyph, Feint will cost 0 energy. That means you can spam it every cooldown (every 10 seconds) without an impact on your dps. I don't think losing a GCD is much of an issue for rogues. So the only downside it the lost opportunity of using another glyph.

One direct benefit on dps will be that if you already were using Feint once in a while, you won't spend energy. Suppose you used Feint once a minute. Normally you gain 600 energy per minute. With 3/3 in the Vitality talent, you will gain 750 energy per second. If you use Feint once per minute, that would equal to a netto 730 energy/sec incoming. How does the extra 20 energy/min we get with the Feint glyph increase dps ?

I am not a spreadsheet wizard. (I am a programmer, but coding in Excel makes my eyes bleed). A simple trick would be to decrease the number of points in Vitality to simulate a loss of energy. (Note, the following numbers are without full raid buffs. Because my focus is on 10man raiding now).
My dps with 750 energy/min, 3/3 Vitality: 1097
My dps with 696 energy/min, 2/3 Vitality: 9948
My dps with 648 energy/min, 1/3 Vitality: 9800
My dps with 600 energy/min, 0/3 Vitality: 9651

That is a pretty stable dps loss of 150 dps per loss of 50 energy/minute. Or 3 dps per loss of 1 energy/minute. So suppose we used Feint once a minute on average, using the Feint Glyph would regain us 60 dps total !

What is the opportunity loss ? My least valuable Glyph atm is the Eviscerate glyph. According to the spreadsheet, it gives me 48 extra dps.

Conclusion: with today's Eviscerate-only cycle, when you use Feint once a minute on average, replacing Glyph of Eviscerate with Glyph of Feint will already give you a (small) overall dps increase. But more important, it will allow you to use Feint every cooldown. Which can give you an average AoE reduction of 30%. Or, if you do better timing of your Feints, an AoE reduction of up to 50%.

The new glyph will (or might) be available in the next patch. That patch might also change our cycles from Evis-only to High-Rupture. How does that change things ? I have another copy of the spreadsheet, with the single change of the cell that forces the T8 setbonus. Doing the same calculations there gives the following result:

Losing 50 energy/minute gives a 145 dps loss. Almost the same. Losing the Rupture glyph gives a 110 dps loss. So switching Glyph of Rupture to Glyph of Feint will give an overall 50 dps loss. However, the numbers from the spreadsheet are from simulating long single-target fights. I always assumed that with a Rupture-rotation it is harder to achieve the theoretical numbers than with an Eviscerate-only build. So in the real world, that 110 dps loss might be lower.

If you use Feint more often than once a minute already, or if you decide that the ability to use Feint every cooldown is worth switching, then it might also be worthwhile to keep using Evis-only over Rupture. The difference between an Eviscerate-cycle with 3/3 talents and no Evis-glyph is only 100 dps lower than a High-Rupture-cycle with 2/2 Blood Splatter and no Rupture glyph. Is that 1% in increased dps worth the added complexity of going rupture ? I am low on Armpen, so maybe if I get higher Armpen, Eviscerate-cycles come out more favorably again ?

I think I will switch to the Feint Glyph. Not sure if I will stay Eviscerate or go Rupture.

Glyph of Tricks of the Trade is a superior glyph for raid dps. Used on cooldown it will increase your tricks target's dps by 5% (a 2% increase over the unglyphed version). In other words cast it on a person doing more then 2400 dps and you will see a net raid dps gain over your evi glyph.

Feint is a useful tool, you get no argument from me. But as it has only a 60% uptime I can't see the justification of spamming it full time. I find it more useful to use it pre-emptively as needed.

That said this makes the glyph a no brainer for Sindragosa, where tricks uptime is sporadic due to the mechanics of the fight and I find myself spamming it on cooldown.

There's no question they're making it more useful but I don't see it replacing glyph of tricks of the trade anytime soon.

With the Expose Armor change, is there a difference between spending 3 CPs for a 30 sec duration or 5 CPs for a 42 sec duration?

Elaborating a bit on this, with the latest version of the rogue java app I got the following results with my current gear (standard mutilate gemming AP/AP+HASTE), spec'd for blood spatter and glyphed for rupture:

51/18/2 's max dps was without rupture at 10.835 dps.

51/13/7 's max dps was with rupture at 10.894 dps. (without rupture it falls below the first spec)

So there's a difference of almost 60 dps by just switching specs and a bit more if you regem for agility. It may sound good but the difference is cut down to 30 dps if you switch your boots' enchant to cat's swiftness and if you don't have a 30% bleed dmg debuff (which may very well happen in 10 mans) 51/18/2 will pull ahead again, plus you get to keep your ToT glyph and have 15% speed instead of 8%.

So yes, rupture will likely not be present in mutilate rotations outside of patchwerk cenarios in which 51/13/7 might pull ahead.

Do you rly find yourself needing feint? as muti using trick on every cd and vanish i find that the only time i need feint is to reduce aoe damage on certain fights.

His point is the use of fient as a defensive ability, not a threat reducer.