Envenom & Eviscerate

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:

1. 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.
2. 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