Slice and Dice

What’s up with my Heroic DPS?

samueltempus — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:17:26 +0000

I’ve had a few comments and emails recently about Rogues getting destroyed on heroic bosses by Mages. I figured I’d do a quick write-up on why. Before I get into that there are some things you should know:

It’s going to happen.
It can happen often.
It doesn’t matter if you’re better geared.
There’s not a whole lot you can do about it.

A well-played Mage will destroy a Rogue on fights that last around 40 seconds every time. This happens due to our resource, Energy. Energy is a great mechanic. Even if we’re completely out of it, Energy will completely regenerate in ten seconds or less. However, it’s not Mana, and for that reason a good Mage can whip you on those short fights every time.

in 40 seconds, a Rogue can expect to have at least 500 energy. When you think about how much our abilities cost, 500 energy goes pretty quick. In fact, you can count all of the rotations you can pull off in your hands (more likely on one hand). Energy may be a blessing on longer fights, but it truly can be the bane of your DPS on a short fight.

Energy can’t compare to Mana on a short fight. It doesn’t really matter how fast a Mage’s mana regenerates if they know how to use all of it in exactly the same time it takes to kill a boss. Arcane Mages are excellent at this, and it’s incredibly fun (you can guess which spec my mage is). Arcane mages can burn through their mana pools ludicrously fast. They can trade-off massive DPS for extreme mana inefficiency. On a longer fight this would be a terrible idea, but on a short fight, you simply burn the mana as fast as you need to reach zero mana when the boss dies.

Seeing damage meters where my Mage friends pull 8-12k DPS on a short fight is not uncommon. Even Combat Spec with all of my cooldowns, there’s no way I could possibly compete with those numbers in a 5 man group. I imagine that there are few Rogues geared enough to compete with that kind of Damage output. Basically if you’re getting owned in heroics by a Mage (or any other fast burn mana class), it’s not your fault, and you may not be doing anything wrong. Don’t worry though; you should steadily catch a mage on a longer fight, and eventually overtake them.

Mana may be great for initial burst, but it has to be rationed to be used efficiently, and there’s always the time needed to evocate or use a mana gem to consider. In the end, Energy is a much better mechanic for long fights due to its steady and predictable regeneration. I don’t know about you, but in the end, it’s the raid boss DPS that I care about, and you should be in a good place there.

- Sam

Envenom & Eviscerate

samueltempus — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 03:05:41 +0000

One thing I’ve noticed traveling in Azeroth and what’s left of Draenor (that’s Outland for the lore challenged) is that a lot of Rogues don’t completely understand what’s going on when you use Envenom and Eviscerate. I’ve known more that one Rogue that had never used Envenom during Burning Crusade, and was halfway through leveling in Northrend before they used it for the first time. If you’re not a theorycrafter, you might not care what’s happening mathematically when you press a button, but that knowledge can help you decide exactly what you should be doing in your DPS rotation. Today, I’ll break both Envenom and Eviscerate down so that you can decide for yourself which one is better for you.

Eviscerate

Eviscerate is the first finisher a Rogue gets, and it’s a little easier to explain, so I’ll start with it. Eviscerate scales with one stat, Attack Power. In fact, if you’ve got a 200 DPS main hand that for some odd reason doesn’t have any Attack Power or Agility on it, Your Eviscerates would hit for the same amount as the dagger you started with back at level 1. That’s actually one really nice thing about Eviscerate; it’s not reliant on the type or speed of weapon you use. The only negative thing I can say about Eviscerate is that its damage is reduced by armor, so while it can hit for theoretically high numbers, it won’t hit as hard without Sunder / Expose Armor and Armor Penetration. Now for the math.

The enhanced tooltip with formulae looks like this:

Finishing move that causes damage per combo point:

1 point : [497 + AP * 0.03]-[751 + AP * 0.07] damage
2 points: [8,67 + AP * 0.06]-[1,121 + AP * 0.14] damage
3 points: [1,237 + AP * 0.09]-[1,491 + AP * 0.21] damage
4 points: [1,607 + AP * 0.12]-[1,861 + AP * 0.28] damage
5 points: [1,977 + AP * 0.15]-[2,231 + AP * 0.35] damage

Assuming you have a flat 4000 AP, that would read like this:

Finishing move that causes damage per combo point:

1 point : 617 – 1,031 damage
2 points: 1,107 – 1,681 damage
3 points: 1,597 – 2,331 damage
4 points: 2,087 – 2,981 damage
5 points: 2,577 – 3,631 damage

Those numbers are non critical hits, and assume that the target has 0 armor. They also don’t take into account talents that can increase Eviscerate’s DPS. We’ll look at those later.

Envenom

Envenom hasn’t been around as long as Eviscerate. It was introduced in the Burning Crusade expansion and it’s tooltip is a bit lengthy (it just got longer in 3.2.2). Envenom can be used with any weaponry, but one of your weapons must have Deadly Poison applied to it for it to work. Like Eviscerate, Envenom scales with Attack Power, but it is not mitigated by armor. Here’s the wall ‘o text tooltip:

Finishing move that consumes your Deadly Poison doses on the target and deals instant poison damage. Following the Envenom attack you have an additional 15% chance to apply Deadly Poison and a 75% increased frequency of applying Instant Poison for 1 sec plus an additional 1 sec per combo point. One dose is consumed for each combo point:

1 dose: [215 + AP * 0.09] damage
2 doses: [430 + AP * 0.18] damage
3 doses: [645 + AP * 0.27] damage
4 doses: [860 + AP * 0.36] damage
5 doses: [1,075 + AP * 0.45] damage

The Equivilent damage, again assuming 4,000 AP, for each:

1 dose: 575 damage
2 doses: 1,150 damage
3 doses: 1,725 damage
4 doses: 2,300 damage
5 doses: 2,875 damage

At first glance, this ability looks to be inferior to Eviscerate, but that’s not necessarily the case. Depending on your Armor Penetration and the target’s armor, it’s entirely possible that the base damage you’re getting from envenom could be higher. There’s a few things to consider though:

Does your spec look like X/51/Y? If so, you’re likely better off using Wound Poison over using Instant Poison because of it’s proc rate. This nullifies the 15% increase in Instant Poison, and you’re dropping your deadly stacks each time you use it. Envenom almost always loses to Eviscerate in this situation.
If your spec looks like 51/X/Y, Envenom is almost always your best choice. You’re using Instant Poison, so you’re going to get extra Instant procs after using Envenom. Also, you probably picked up vile poisons, so your base damage on a five combo point Envenom is now 3,450. In addition, with Master Poisoner, you won’t be consuming your Deadly Stacks, so there’s no real downside to using Envenom.

What does this mean for you? Well, it depends on your Rogue’s gear and spec. I see my Envenoms crit for 14k on a fairly consistent basis. This is in a raid with buffs, but still, 14k is a nice number see flash on your screen often. What will you see? I don’t know. You can test on a Combat Dummy, but I’m fairly sure that dummies have no armor, so your Eviscerates would be inflated from the lack of damage mitigation via armor. For your best results, get your rotations solid on a dummy and test DPS in a group with buffs. That should give you a good idea of which finisher to use and when.

- Sam

Dagger Conundrum

samueltempus — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 23:12:28 +0000

I often get asked what weapon speed is preferred for each hand, and while that option is pretty cut and dry for Combat, sometimes the results with Assassination will surprise you. Before we get started, know that I spent an hour at the dummy last week when I did these tests, so I ran these tests multiple times and chose the results that best represented the average for each specific test.

Generally speaking, for PvE, a fast off hand weapon coupled with a heavier hitting slow main hand is the way to go. Of course there are exceptions. If you are Assassination spec and have a choice between an ilevel 200 and an ilevel 232 dagger, the 232 will probably be the better way to go regardless of weapon speed. For example, I was using two Dirk of the Night Watch , a 1.4 speed dagger. I have a plethora of ilevel 200-219 daggers that are in my bank that I don’t really use, but I’m too much of a packrat to get rid of. Many of those daggers are 1.7+ speed, but their damage range is very similar to that of my two Dirks, so the Dirk in the main hand essentially is as good at dealing damage as any other slow dagger I have, with the benefit of being a bit faster. I recently replaced that Dirk with the other ToC 10 Dagger, the Icefall Blade, which is 1.8 speed. You might think that that would be a guaranteed huge upgrade, but the results I have are different that you might expect.

Dagger Conundrum:

Why is the second setup not consistently outperforming the first?

These are 5 minute parses, with only my Flask of the North (90AP) as a buff. I’ve included my stats, the DPS and the breakdown of what I used.

Test One: Dirk of the Night Watch Dual Wield

Test Two: Icefall Blade / Dirk of the Night Watch

So what gives? Shouldn’t the slow / fast setup be noticeably better than the dual fast setup? My answer: not necessarily.

When you look at the breakdown of both, all abilities used were within 12k damage of each other, and both setups mostly excelled in the areas you’d expect. What comes across as a bit off is that Mutilate did more damage with the double fast setup; with the two Dirks the Mutilates averaged 1,885 Damage, while the Blade / Dirk setup averaged 1,848. This is of course in the margin of error, but Mutilate is the one area where you would expect a Slow main hand to clearly excel and in this case, it doesn’t.

None of the other abilities used are based on Weapon Damage, so what is the advantage for using a Slow / Fast setup? It seems that there really isn’t a whole lot of difference between the two. Is this the case for all weaponry, probably not; however, these are the two most likely daggers for a rogue that’s doing current 10 man content, so it’s possible that this setup is used my a fair number of Rogues. I figured I’d post my findings.

To be completely honest, I’m currently sporting the Blade / Dirk, and the only reason I initially did the test was to discover the DPS gain I’d get from using the that combo over my dual Dirk setup. The results caught me off guard, but I’ve got some good ideas as to why I came to these results. But hey, that’s another post.

- Sam

The Hallowed

samueltempus — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:20:04 +0000

I know that some of this title was based on luck. I also know that I saw 3 Hallowed Helms yesterday, the third coming in a treat bag after I finished the Achievement. I’ve also already received multiple sets of toothpicks from treat bags. Lucky or not, I finished all of the achievements this year in less than 2 days. Check my Armory if you don’t believe it. It is possible, and it really doesn’t require that much work. Just make sure you’re running with a consistent group for the drops off HH and trick or treat whenever possible. You’ll get there, you still have almost 2 weeks.

Good Luck,

- Sam

From Zero to Hero

samueltempus — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:30:47 +0000

There are some truly terrible players in this game. If you read this blog with any consistency, you’ll know how foreign a statement that is coming from me. I’m of the belief that anyone can be a decent player if the can find the right information, and to that end, I try and point people in the right direction. But, I have to admit that I wasn’t always like this, and at one point I thought the person I’ll be discussing today had no hope of ever becoming a better player. Not only was I wrong, but this particular player is now a well respected guild member, and a good friend. This is his story…

Back in the day, when I was but a mere low-level rogue I came across a guild name that I, as a young Alliance player, thought was incredibly cool: Sword Through The Horde. I mentioned in vent just how cool I thought that this name was, and was promptly told how terrible this guild was by the members of my own guild. Looking back, they were right; STTH was probably one of the worst guilds on the server. From my perspective, at least as much of it as I can remember, they tried to be semi-serious about some semblance of progression, but never could seem to retain enough good members to be successful at it.

Anyway, I was informed that of all the players in their guild, the leader was by far the worst. iharrypotter (not kidding) the priest was known to be one of the worst and potentially hated players on the entire server. He had a bizarre half Holy / half Shadow spec that was beyond terribad for both healing and DPS. In fact, beyond terribad might be giving it too much credit.

I found myself mentioning it in Vent every time I’d bump into him. One day I thought hat I hadn’t seen him in a while and armories STTH. I found a skeleton of a guild with a different Priest as its leader. Upon further inspection, I realized that the leader hadn’t changed, just his name. I put the new name in the back of my head and all but forgot abou th Preist formally know as iharrypotter.

Fast forward a few months to just before the 3.1 patch, and Bucklers (my guild) is experiencing a recruiting surge. We ended up picking up quite a few new people. We generally run a heroic with every one who applies to our guild, but sometimes the other officers run them instead of me. The player is pretty much in if they:

weren’t terrible
show potential
show interest in learning to improve

I didn’t personally go on the run, and no one knew it at the time, but the Priest formally known as iharrypotter was officially invited into he guild.

One night while I was raiding Ulduar, a month or so later, a Priest mentioned in guild chat that he used to be named iharrypotter. A few Bucklers left guild (as a joke) which ne’er my skin a bit, and I’m sure upset Chmelyk (as he’s known now). But the whole drama issue died fast, as Chmelyk wasn’t playing at the time.

Eventually he started to ask what it would take for him to get into our Ulduar raids, and we told him what we told everyone else: bring flasks, do x DPS unbuffed, and have y iLevel gear. Well, he worked out some spec and rotation changes, got his gear in line and basically passed all of the usual tests we throw someone’s way before letting them raid in the current tier with one of our main raid groups. He was invited into our progression Ulduar 10 raid and not only played competently, but not once did he endanger the group. We cleared to Mimiron in that raid attempt, which was as far as we had gone up to that point.

Don’t ask me when and where but at some point while being in Bucklers, he became motivated to improve. He ceased being iharrypotter, the worst player we knew, and became Chmelyk, our friend and very capable shadowpriest. He’s a great guy to laugh with in vent, and has taken our plethora of iharrypotter jokes (to this day there are many) in stride. I raid with him weekly, and while he may have been a player that needed to be carried before, now he’s someone that can help carry others if needed. Oh yeah, that cheesy title at the top; his idea. I always ask people before I post about them. He jokingly suggested the title and I ran with it.

I guess my point is, try not to judge too harshly the people you run into, because you just never know who the might grow to become, especially if you’re willing to lend a hand.

- Sam

We Conquered and Now We Triumph

samueltempus — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:08:56 +0000

I’m sure most of us saw this coming, but in 3.3 everything that’s currently dropping Conqueror’s badges will now drop Triumph badges. Recked has a good analysis of the change, along with his thoughts. I won’t retool his thoughts here (you should read his post, imo), but I will answer the question he wrote at the end of the post: “What do YOU think?”

Overall, I think this change is both expected and good for the game. It’s expected, as Blizzard has been making the mainstream gear more accessible, while still reserving the best gear for those who can down the hardest content. I think it’s good for the game, especially raiding guilds, because it makes it easier to find an appropriately geared individual to fill any holes you have in your group.

Before I get nailed for that last comment, let me expand that thought. I’m not talking about taking a person out of LFG for your raid; I’m talking about guildies on and Alt, or newer recruits that you’ve help gear out to fill a spot. Basically, I’m talking about people whose capabilities you already know. A word of advice though, it is possible to find good people in LFG if you check both Achievements and gear. There’s an Acheivement section called statistics that will show you which bosses the player has downed, and how many times they’ve done it.

In his post, Recked makes a valid point that you can obtain a full tiered set via badges, in addition to some other items, meaning that Triumph badges offer an unprecedented amount of high quality gear. To this end I completely agree with him. Where we have a slight disconnect is when he says the following:

Rewards should be EARNED. Great gear comes from working at it; knowing your class/role, looking up and learning tactics, downing the bosses and clearing raids. NOT from over-geared players farming Heroic Dungeons every day. What kind of achievement is that?

Note carefully the wording I used. I said there was a disconnect, not that I disagreed with him. While I agree that players should earn their gear, the issue I take here, though minor, is the fact that a player running the heroic daily every day could possibly earn most of the Triumph gear before 3.3 anyway. Anyone that has run the heroic daily every time since patch 3.2 hit (8/4/08) has already received about 150 Emblems of Triumph (almost enough for 4 pieces of Tier 9). That’s not that far from the amount I’ve earned mainly from raiding.

I doubt the change will have much of an effect on me personally as far as my Rogue is concerned. I’ve already earned 200+ triumph badges already, and I anticipate buying most of the gear I’d want from the badges before the month is out, which I assume, is long before 3.3 hits. Where I do see this helping me out is for the numerous alts I have that I can fit a heroic in ever now and then, but don’t have the time to do any extensive raiding. It will be nice to get their gear caught up so I can fill in for our other raid groups when needed.

Basically, I think we all expected that this would happen with the hit of patch 3.3. Since the base tier was only available through badges anyway, it’s kinda hard to get upset about people having access to something that they already have access to. You still have to raid or excel at PvP to get really good weaponry and many other gear slots that the badges won’t get you, so again, this is probably good for the game. Your thoughts as always are welcome, but please back them up with some logic.

- Sam

Dehydration and the Missing Gnome

samueltempus — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:10:27 +0000

I was never much of an achievement freak (excepting Holiday Events), but a few weeks ago, I decided to start knocking out the 20 or so Heroic achieves that I had left for Glory of the Hero. You would think that after getting Watch Him Die, Less-Rabi and the full scope of Occulus acheives that I’d probably be done, right?

Of course not. I need 1 more achievement, and it’s not even difficult, it’s just luck based. I need Dehydration, and I can’t seem to get Ichiron to spawn in the Violet Hold. I’m almost positive that I have the acheivement on every other 80 character that I play, but for some reason, the game is flaunting that one grey achievement in the Glory for the Hero list…

Anyway, I’m sure that some of you have noticed that the posts are coming less frequently these days. It’s mainly RL that’s getting in the way, but don’t worry, it’s nothing exciting or troublesome, just multiple things keeping me busy. I hope to be back on a regular schedule by the end of the week. If I can find a second, maybe I can update my guides. Maybe.

Oh yeah, check out Recked’s Rogue blog. It’s new, but it’s a good read. I recently got the pleasure of throwing out the first comment there. Maybe a few of you can follow that lead.

- Sam

Assassination; Pro’s and Cons

samueltempus — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 13:50:01 +0000

After a week and a half of playing Assassination again, I’ve developed a love-hate relationship with it. When I can stand and wail on something, I’m in love with the huge numbers that I see, but I’m really missing Combat in just about every other scenario.

Assassination: Pros

Great Single Target DPS. In a Patchwerk style fight with everyone being equally geared, you should be on the top of the DPS
Relatively Simple Rotation. After you get started, the rotation really consists of 3 moves, in a simple pattern. Mastering the rotation by knowing when to throw in extra envenoms or when to hold off on a finisher for some energy regen does take time though.
Big Numbers. In addition to having great sustained DPS, the largest numbers you can see as a Rogue come from Envenoms while being Assassination. It’s not uncommon to top 10k on a single hit, and depending on the fight and your buffs, 20k+ in a 10 man isn’t out of the question.

Assassination: Cons

Lack of Cooldowns. I’ve touched on this before, but Assassination doesn’t have the calibre of cooldowns that Combat has. Cold Blood guarantees a crit, but in this day of 50%+ chance to crit on your Finishers, you almost feel like you’re wasting it every time you cast it, as it’s likely you didn’t need to use it to achieve the same effect. The beauty of Combat is in the cooldown management, which allows the Rogue to pump out extra DPS on demand. Assassination would likely need nerfs to key abilities to get something similar.
Target Switching. Having to switch mid fight to another target to burst it down is much harder Assassination than it is Combat. Fighting the twins in 10 man ToC really illustrates this point. Having to switch to the other target hampers your DPS as you re-establish your poison stacks. If you’re unlucky it can take what seems like an eternity for that first poison stack to proc. While you can substitute an Eviscerate to keep using up your combo points, you’ll likely drop Slice and Dice in the process your overall DPS will take a bit of a dip while you re-establish your DPS on the new target.
Multi Target DPS is Low. Your only real option for multi target DPS is Fan of Knives, which just received a significant nerf. The problem with the FoK nerf is that it affects Assassination far more than it does Combat. Combat has both Blade Flurry and Killing Spree in addition to FoK. Don’t get me wrong, FoK needed a nerf for Combat, and to a smaller degree Assassination. That being said, the loss of DPS is really hurts and is quite evident in a heroic group, especially when Assassination.

All things considered, I’m generally in favor of Assassination over Combat. I love the big numbers and the high single target DPS, but I loathe Heroics and my significantly lower trash DPS. Assassination could use better cooldowns, but I think as long as Mutilate / Prep is the dominant PvP spec, that it’s not likely to happen.

- Sam

Assassination in 3.2.2

samueltempus — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:19:25 +0000

Assassination got some pretty significant buffs in 3.2.2 to make sure that it could continue to scale as well as Combat has. In short, your Envenoms no longer consume your Deadly Poison (when talented via Master Poisoner), and Envenom gets an extra 2% boost from attack power per combo point. I knew this change was coming since they announced it just after 3.2 hit, and I’ve been trying to acquire Daggers of equal or better quality to my Swords. As luck would have it, I reached that goal on Thursday and I have been testing Assassination since then.

I think that the best way to summarize the differences between the current Combat and Assassination specs is that Combat has controlled burst, whereas Assassination does not. There are the three major DPS boosting cooldowns for Combat: Adrenaline Rush, Blade Flurry, and Killing Spree. I can blow them all whenever they’re available, or save them for when I need solid burst damage. Assassination only has 1 true cooldown, Cold Blood, which really isn’t all that great, as most Rogues aren’t hurting for crit chance these days. Your only other option is to fake another cooldown by using vanish offensively to activate Overkill.

You might assume that I’m not thrilled about Assassination, but that’s a false assumption. While it lacks in on demand burst damage, Assassination, It makes up for with BIG numbers. In a collection of 219-232 ilevel gear, I’ve seen Envenom crit for 14k, and that was in a 5 man. So while I can control the spikes in Combat damage, I’ve no real control over the spikey nature of Assassination’s damage.

I have yet to raid with the 3.2.2 Assassination yet, but from what I’ve seen so far, Assassination seems to be producing more DPS than Combat at the moment. I went from pulling 3-3.2k unbuffed on a dummy while Combat to 3.2-3.5k unbuffed after I switched back to Assassination. If my schedule permits it, I’ll be testing this out in earnest this evening in a TOC10.

Finally

samueltempus — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:47:23 +0000

Until yesterday, I’d never seen one of these drop, and I ran Coren on 4 toons daily last year, and as many as 6 every day this year. In the hundreds of times I’ve killed him before the kodo dropped, I’d seen 1 remote, and 1 ram. I’m just thankful that I won the roll. Hopefully my good luck will rub off on any of you that are still trying to get it.

- Sam