Sifting through a lot of info on boards is a real pain, so here are some of the useful things I've come across as a rogue (mostly WotLK and Mutilate related).

-Mutilate kicks ass, try it out if you haven't before. Great for PvP and PvE.
-As you level get rep with the walrus ppl (Kalu'ak). You can get 2x 120dps daggers to help leveling cheap and easy.
-As soon as you can get to Storm Peaks and do the quest line to start getting rep with the Sons of Hodir. 130dps daggers here are going to be the best you can get until you start raiding or spend a lot of heroic badges.
-At level 75 do the arena quest that starts in Dalaran sewers. You get a 112dps dagger that is great until you get the above mentioned ones. Even if you don't need the dagger, the exp is fantastic for 1 long battle chain.
-Plus haste and hit are very over rated for mutilate. Skip them in favor of Agility, AP and crit.
-Put 3 points into vile poisons but 0 points in Improved poisons. This is contrary to most boards, but trust me.
-Always use wounding poison. It actually does more damage than instant and deadly because of the 50% proc with no talent points spent. This must be a blizzard oversite, but take advantage of it until it is nerfed.
-Bind pick pocket to your opening moves. This will keep your pick lock maxxed with all the lockboxes you get as well as some extra cash. For example, the following macro works:
/cast pick pocket
/cast cheap shot
-Another great macro is:
/target focus
/cast tricks of the trade
/targetlasttarget
-Use tricks of the trade right before fan of knives to send all mobs right to the tank. Really helps starting fights with multiple mobs.
-If you are a min/maxer, leatherworking adds the most sheer power (BoP type recipies). Leatherworking/enchanting is the highest possible, but not much better than LW/skinning and much more expensive to maintain.


Hope this is helpful.

Bad information.

Mut is now around the same dps as combat in pve, this is truth.

It is still easier to do the highest damage as combat though. You need to make sure hunger for blood is up at all times or this gap increases quickly.

For dps you want mainhand instant posion, offhand deadly.

Hit is still an extremely powerful stat up to the cap, saying otherwise is stupid.

For Mutilate:

stat

Stat EP
Str 1.1
Agi 2.0
Crit 1.6
Exp 1.9
Haste 1.4
ArPen 1.0

Hit is worth about 2.2 below the yellow hit cap, 1.8 below the poison hit cap, and 1.3 above both caps.

These numbers could be slightly off but are generally pretty close. See EJ for full thread info.

You do not need to go to the sewers to start the arena event, just go to the goblin at 75.

Profession damage boost are as follows

- Herbalism = 66.7AP (average, requires consumables)
- Skinning = 25 Crit rating
- Alchemy = 64 AP (Flask of Endless Rage)
- Enchanting = 64 AP
- Jewelcrafting = 42 AP or 21 AGI or 21 STR or 21 Crit Rating or 21 Haste Rating or 21 Hit Rating or 177 ArPen
--- Jewelcrafting = 62 AP or 31 AGI or 31 STR etc. (counts avoiding using a blue gem instead of a red for meta requirements)
- Blacksmithing = 80 AP or 40 AGI or 40 STR or 40 Crit Rating or 40 Haste Rating or 40 Hit Rating or 280 ArPen
- Leatherworking = 64 AP
- Inscription = 64 AP

Note: Engineering and Mining currently do not provide any DPS benefits that cannot be
substituted by any other means.

tables and information taken from EJ

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That's the kind of post that makes reading multiple boards a pain. You don't really understand mutilate specs and are just parroting what you've read. I didn't say mutilate was easier than combat for PvE dps, just that it kicks ass (as in very fun and competitive damage), and my comments on +hit are based on mutilate, not combat specs. For combat, you still can't beat +hit, but I clearly stated I was referring to mutilate.

At level 80 and mutilate spec, my white damage is accounting for only 20-25% of my overall damage. I only need +5% hit to make mutilates not miss, and guess what, even if they miss having Quick Recovery means it really isn't a big deal. I get almost all the energy back, so each % of +hit is really only affecting a small percentage of my damage. This is not how it used to be, and many rogues have a hard time changing with the game. If you are playing mutilate, +hit is just not that big a deal. Same reasoning with the +haste...white damage isn't a significant portion of your dps. They both help poisons, but even with that, AP and crit affect poisons, mutilates, finishers and white damage.

Your comment on poisons shows you are living in the past there too. My instant poison hits for 622 damage and my wound hits for 382. Instant is 20% proc, wound is 50%. Untalented that means wound does much more damage than instant. Mutilate also needs the target to be poisoned for max damage, so getting a poison effect on the mob fast is huge, and 50% will do that faster than 20%. Spending 5 talent points will get instant to 30% proc and you still will do slightly less dps than wound, plus you wasted 5 talent points. In its current incarnation, you can’t beat wound poison as a mut rogue. This should not be the case, but it currently is.

Please don’t say things like something I post is stupid if you really don’t understand how things work. Just because something is posted on Elitist Jerks does not make it correct. Thanks.

Well, everything else aside, I would say that of course white damage is a lower percentage of your DPS if you're not using hit and (presumably, given your view of things) not using SnD.

Slice and Dice is still the most important finisher to keep up. 30% is massive DPS even with the lower percent of damage coming from white. It's not really an issue with mutilate though, as with all the combo points and Cut to the Chase it's trivial to keep up.

All we need are some Warlocks screaming to nerf Cloak of Shadows (again) and this thread will be just like the thousands of other threads on the official forums.

+hit or whatever is a non-issue. You use whatever provides the best DPS upgrade.

Looking over patchwerk WWS I doubt anyone's complaining about rogue DPS.

See what I mean?

I really didn't intend on posting something controversial. I just wanted to post a few helpful hints to people leveling up rogues that they might have missed while reading through actual guides. I also don’t want to defend every item I’ve suggested, or I’ll be stuck in theory craft for the next 100 years. That’s why I avoid posting on other boards. As an effort to show I do know a little something about the rogue class, I will address one item fully, and then people can decide for themselves if anything I've posted has any value to them.

The assertion Bupas made (and boards like Elitist Jerks) is that the highest dps poison set up is instant main hand and deadly off hand, contrary to my original point of using dual wound poisons for a mutilate spec.

My reasoning for dual wound is three fold. To make the instant/deadly combo viable, you must spend 5 talent points that do nothing but increase the chance to apply those 2 poisons by 10%. Even with that, you will only have a 30% and 40% application rate as opposed to the base 50% you get with wound poison. Since mutilate does a 50% bonus damage to targets that are poisoned, landing an initial poison faster will increase the overall dps of mutilate, as you will have fewer uses that don’t have the bonus applied.

Reason two is just base DPS. Both instant and wound poisons are modified by attack power and both can crit. The only differences are the application rate and base damage. For example, with my current AP:

Wound Poison=50% application for 382 damage
Instant Poison=30% application for 622 damage

After 10 attacks:

Wound hits 5 times for a total of 1,910 damage
Instant hits 3 times for a total of 1,866 damage

Not only does wound do slightly more damage, you have 5 extra unspent talent points using it. Those 5 freed up talent points are huge. Regarding the deadly poison, while it used to be the best damaging poison, now that poisons scale with AP and get full use of our crit, it just falls way behind in total damage.

Reason three is a convenience factor that while playing in the world both wound poisons auto proc snares while only instant will in the other set up. If you find yourself in a world pvp setting, that is very handy to have as a free added bonus. You can shiv if you really need a snare, but if you have deadly on your off hand that isn’t possible. More options are a good thing. Additionally, we haven’t even factored in the mortal strike component which makes wound poison significantly better in battlegrounds and arenas.

There is a very easy way to test all this instead of taking anyone’s word for it though. Download a simple DPS tracker like Recount and put wound on one weapon and instant on the other (use same speed weapons). Fight for a while and see which is accounting for a higher % of your damage. Repeat with wound and deadly and do another test.

I apologize if my last post was aggressive. I don’t want to get into a theoretical or personal argument. I am very familiar with mutilate for both PvE and PvP and I believe it is a great spec for people that like to do both. If you are only interested in high end PvE raiding, you will probably do better with a straight combat spec, but the hardcore PvE raider was not my target audience, and probably doesn’t need any minor tips from a guy like me. If there are any questions or open minded discussion regarding anything I posted, I will be happy to participate. Other than that, I hope something I've written is helpful to some aspiring rogues out there.

I agree wholeheartedly with Drajeck's wound poison strat. I've been using it for three levels now, and I've tried the other combos, and wound on both weapons destroys the others, hands down. I personally think it will be nerfed.

When I look at my damage spam log and see wound poison proccing like 4-5 out of every 10 attacks for almost 400 damage each proc, it blows my mind. Not to mention my very first opener usually applies it in the time it takes for me to hit mutilate, which makes my first mutilate do full damage. Plus, being on a PVP server, it helps me to sleep at night, knowing i don't have to worry about applying crippling, like... ever.

T.

Hit is still extremely worthwhile for mutilate due to poison damage + white. You add those two together and it's a very significant portion of your damage. The same reasoning applies to taking improved poisons. Instant poison goes on the fastest weapon, which should also be in your mainhand.

As far as wound poison proccing for 400 "a lot". Well, I'll refute your anecdotal evidence with my own. I routinely see "many" IP procs in the 1500-2400 range. The theory crafters at EJ, while they are not 100% perfect, are the best resource for this kind of stuff for a reason. It's been proven over time that these guys know what the fuck they are talking about. They back their theories with solid, testable math, not people "feeling" something works better than something else. If you think it works for you, super, but to claim that this is definitely the way to go and that those "other" sites are just too confusing and have it all wrong is being willfully ignorant of the facts.

EDIT: The other part you are missing is AP scaling on poison damage.

Deadly - poison damage + 0.12 * AP
Instant - poison damage + .015 * AP
Wound - poison damage + .006 * AP

Instant benefits 2.5x from you AP. As you can see, it will take a rather trivial amount of AP to scale well past wound.

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Edit: Oops, mathy error type stuff. Will retype later when I'm not at work goofing up math.

Edit #2: Best info I can find is that Instant Poison only gets 10% AP, not 15%. And Wound gets 4%. Even so, the breakpoint for Instant outperforming Wound comes out at around 2550 AP by my calculations, ignoring +% damage talents. If Instant really gets 15% of AP, the breakpoint seems to be right around 1020 AP.

Fast mainhand? What the shit did they do to rogues?

There is currently a bug with deadly poison and that deep assassin talent that adds crit to poisoned targets..I guess each individual stack adds the crit % so you get an added 15% chance to crit. Haven't tried it yet.

_________________
Larreth Wolfsong (long retired)
Lanys T'vyl, Everquest

Zinky, Lvl 60 Warlock
Thunderhorn, WoW

They made poisons scale with AP, so they are a much more significant source of your total damage now. The idea is faster weapons apply more poisons, so it helps make up for the lower mutilate damage. In my tests with 2 weapons of equal DPS, the slower weapon still did more total damage than the faster one, but by a much smaller margin than previously. For my rough weapon vs weapon analysis I currently use:

.1 speed = 3 dps on a weapon description

For example, a dagger that was 1.6 speed and 140 dps would be equal to a dagger that was 1.8 speed and 134 dps. That's just a rough estimate, but it seems to be working well enough for me right now. I haven't found anything that is close enough to bother with a more accurate formula, as I have a 2x 130dps daggers at 1.8 speed and a 143 dps dagger at 1.6 speed. The 143 dps is definately worth the .2 faster speed, so until I find something slower with higher DPS I don't need to bother as much with it.

Looks like I had some older data as far as the scaling goes.

Deadly - poison damage + 0.08 * AP
Instant - poison damage + .01 * AP
Wound - poison damage + .004 * AP

Without imp poisons, wound will always be better, but with 5/5 imp poisons I'd estimate at over 875 AP IP will beat out wound.

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There's the graph comparing them without any other damage modifiers. Adding all the damage talents and other things would only make for larger differences before and after the breakpoint.

That graph looks about right to me and is exactly my point. It takes over 3000 ap before instant starts to do better, and that's with 5 talent points spent. Even at 3500 AP the damage difference is marginal compared to what else you can do with 5 talent points. If you are a hardcore raider with no pvp, maybe it eventually makes sense at 4000+ ap (I'm already at 3600ish in most 5 man groups, I and have plenty of upgrades to go, so 4k is coming), but for casual rogues, there is no question that duel wound is the way to go. Additionally, while leveling up there is no way anything is going to outdamage duel wound +5 talent points.

I know this is not how it is supposed to be. I know instant should do more damage than wound. I don't expect this to last, either instant will get buffed or wound will get nerfed, but for the moment at least, this is how it actually is.

Nah, I doubt it'll change. Wound can stay more powerful for leveling, it's not such a big deal.

Once you're 80, where you'll spend most of your characters "life", instant just keeps getting better. The difference between the two only grows from 2550 AP on (Instant overtakes Wound at around 2550.) and while it looks marginal on the graph, taking talents and all damage modifiers into account will significantly widen that gap. Further upward scaling in the future will widen it even further.

I may make another graph that takes other damage modifers into account and extends up to 5000 AP to show how wide the gap will be.

In short, from the point when you ding level 80 onward, instant will be better than wound. Unless there's a really good place to put those 5 extra talent points.

My current AP is 2995 self buffed.

Wound damage = 397
Instant damage = 660

With 5 talent points spent and a 30% proc for instant:
10 attacks
Wound:
397x5=1985
Instant:
660x3=1980

That's with 2995 AP. Costing 5 talent points and 3k AP Instant finally breaks even with wound poison. That's not theorycraft...those are the actual numbers. I think I value 5 talent points more than some of the posters here. I can do a lot of wonderful things with those points, and you need to show a marked improvement in damage to make spending them worth my while.

Also, why do you think talents that further improve poison damage will help instant more? Extra crit and higher poison damage affect both wound and instant. Extra general damage modifiers will affect both also. We'll see how things play out when rogues have 5k AP, but for right now wound is where it's at.

I hope this poison stuff makes it clear why I'm not addressing the other items though. I just don't have the stamina to discuss each item in this much depth.

Seems I had a significant error then in my calculations. Even so, I'm running around in one piece of Naxx 10 gear, 1 rep dagger and 1 epic smithing dagger and have right about 2400 AP unbuffed. I don't know how average this is or not, but the 2475AP that seems to be the target breakpoint seems pretty easy to hit.

For leveling up, wound would probably be the way to go though since it would satisfy the mutilate poisoned target requirement and do very good damage at the same time. Almost nothing really lives long enough to properly apply a good stack of DP and envenom.

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Are any of you maxing hit/expertise at all? I see a lot of people ignoring it bigtime this expansion, and they are settling on 1600-1800 DPS and calling it "good".

I also notice, at least with dps plate that you either get haste, or a mixed bag of jumbled shit. Hit is pretty much gemmed for. It exists, but not like we're used to.

I roll with a Titansteel Destroyer so that takes care of a pretty big chunk of what I need. Rest I just gem for pretty much.

Using two lolbarian cutters. Just hit 80 yesterday. HfB is annoying as shit to maintain. It feels like rampage but worse because if I let it fall I gotta spend 90 energy to get it back up.

I agree that HfB is annoying as fuck to maintain. I'll probably switch back to swords once I find two good ones. Mutilate was a fun experiment though, and I liked only having to use slice and dice once.

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This thread brought to you by a tremendous dickhead!

I'm not even trying to get more hit gear per se, but just grabbing upgrades along the way my went went from 200 something to over 300. Hit is still a good stat, as is expertise, it's just not as good as it was in BC.

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Over 300 is a good start, but the cap is pretty damn stupid-retarded-high now.

I'm just going to try and hit the poison hit cap, also switched to combat fist. PvE mut is nice single target damage, but anything else screws up your rotation. Combat achieves roughly the same damage without sacrificing much when you change targets. Naxx mobs also don't fall under Murder, which I believe they were saying is where Mut can pull ahead.

http://elitistjerks.com/1007001-post177.html

latest infoz on IP vs WP.

Cool, I guess my original calcualtions were pretty close. I was using the average damage from IP instead of the low end that others were basing their numbers off of. Just over 1k AP was where my calc was coming up with at 5/5 imp poisons.

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sorry if this was discussed already, 1:30am and my eyes are bleeding

Any of your guys seeing signigant dps increases taking 2 rogues, speccing down into HAT and getting double CP's from the talent?

I had 2 of my rogues try it out like last second before 25 man patchwork tonight and didn't get the results I was hoping for.....was just curious if it was them (it apprears to obviously provide largely increasing benifits with higher crit rates & a better geared 5 man crit group) or if some of the research I read wasn't as spot on as I was hoping.

Seeing dps of 6k got me all excited but they weren't putting out for shit on PW. 3 hunters obliterated them on the charts.

Keep in mind im still learning the mechanics of the game for other classes so try and avoid to make too much fun of any retarded comments above

Rogues suck, bring in some competent Fury warriors instead.

http://i36.tinypic.com/2m29zyv.jpg

That's a pug VoA. I only have about 3.5k AP 29% crit, 184 hr, 23 expertise. The other rogues are HAT as well.

Make up was 3x HAT rogue, hunter, and enhancement shammy. You get points based off group crits. There's also been reports of people not getting extra combo points. That might be your problem. I had no issues though.

The spec is super easy mode. All you do is SnD around 3 seconds left, spam evis. Can throw in vanishes for MoS/Blade Flurry as per the HAT thread on EJ says. On a static fight like PW I could've probably done 5k easily. I know I did 5.4k on Loatheb 10 man with just two HAT rogues, though that's not surprising with the crit buff.

Realistically though this spec is gonna get kicked in the balls and we'll be back down to 2000-2500 DPS in 10 man and busting ass for 4k in 25 man.

I miss the days when you just stabbed shit until it stopped screaming.

I can't STAND HfB....what a horrible freaking mechanic. I'm stuck as mutilate for the time being until I can get a fist weapon to drop. Fist/Dagger combat is pretty damn good these days.

These folks on the WoW forums boasting about how amazing their Mutilate spec is are geared in what is pretty much the best available for the time being. The sheer amount of micro management required to DO that dps in that spec is mind numbing. For the spec to even work properly you have to be past the poison hit cap, whatever that happens to be, and hit rating..much like crit seems to be non existant on most of the gear in the expac..Haste? Fucktons of haste.

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Larreth Wolfsong (long retired)
Lanys T'vyl, Everquest

Zinky, Lvl 60 Warlock
Thunderhorn, WoW

Yah, the info about the tooltip puts your original estimate pretty much spot on, Sagard. If you apply the new info to my little chart, it also reflects the expected values pretty accurately.

Yeah, HaT is pretty broken right now heh. 2+ HaT rogues plus a hunter is just flat out ridiculous. I expect that to get curb stomped soon.

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Will you rogue geniuses take a look at my armory profile (on my sig) re: talents and let me know what you think? (It may have a mace equipped right now, ignore it, I have two of those swords. Just trying to get mace skilled up for the achievement.)

Not sure what to think of those talents. Why do you have Dirty Tricks and MoD? PVP? Serrated Blades? I'd get Ruthlessness & Lethality over those.

What IS the poison hit cap anyway?

_________________
Larreth Wolfsong (long retired)
Lanys T'vyl, Everquest

Zinky, Lvl 60 Warlock
Thunderhorn, WoW

315

Neesha:
I am trying to keep my DoT damage as high as possible, as I usually start a fight with Slice & Dice, then because it lasts >30 seconds with my Glyph, I throw on the DoT if I'm with a warrior or the armor debuff when with anyone else. I usually still have time to reload for a full Eviscerate before it's time to renew S&D. I'll look at the numbers for your suggestion. I prefer Combat Swords, if anyone else has input. I'm not a subtlety sorta guy.

Looks pretty standard to me. Though I would take unfair advantage just for farming/daily purposes. Would throw a perfect green gem onto that neck though.

http://elitistjerks.com/956961-post3931.html

Poison hit cap is lower than melee because the amount of rating needed for spell hit is lower than the amount of rating needed for the same percentage of melee hit.

At level 80, 26.232 hit rating is equivalent to 1% hit for spells.
You need 32.79 hit rating at level 80 to equal 1% for melee.

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We've been talking about the hit cap for white damage over on Tankspot and we've come to the conclusion the reason it's absent on alot of gear for Fury Warriors and Rogues is when you close that gap with white swings to get it down to a no miss rate you're damage goes up dramatically, as we saw with TBC, hence the high conversion rate of 32.79 to 1%

I had both a Fury Warrior and a Rogue gem for hit and they couldn't miss, and you couldn't touch their dps, no matter how good at your class you were.

It's just another part of the making it easier for everyone in the end, low hit caps for specials, easy to obtain obviously since both melee classes have a +hit talent in their trees. Working as intended, and I doubt we'll see it change.

BTW, I just saw a blue post stating that HAT builds SHOULD be doing the most PVE damage on most fights, so I doubt it's bugged. There's a WWS floating around from a Patchwerk fight that shows a HAT rogue doing 6k+ dps.

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"I'm the best there is at what i do, bub, and what i do isn't very pretty"

What do you even do with HAT? You get a free combo and what, just spam eviscerate?

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Larreth Wolfsong (long retired)
Lanys T'vyl, Everquest

Zinky, Lvl 60 Warlock
Thunderhorn, WoW

Pretty much. You use your combo points to keep rupture and SnD running and the rest of the time you just hit eviscerate as fast as possible.

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Best rogue tip: Don't join a guild where a rogue in half blues/rep epics, no flasks/consumables, sub-2k DPS, and dies on nearly every boss fight can pass on massive upgrades to save DKP and get KT weapon.

DKP in WoW is a joke anyway.

HaT may be intended to do the most DPS, but there's no way its supposed to do anything close to what it currently does.

Loatheb is hilarious. A rogue in my 10-man guild posted 8k DPS. He had 246 white hits during the fight and 154 eviscerates. Stupid.

1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2-win

In other news, shadow dance is awesome for PvP. Highly unnecessary in most cases, but triple ambushes drop any class about. Two shot a non-frost DK with berserking. One-shot a berserk mage while berserking. 13.8k Ambush.

I would like to add a bit of obvious information:

Mutilate is indeed a bucket full of ass whooping.

DPS numbers are skewed right now. Mutilate is making the offhand weapon proc x2 poison, and we have no idea if it's intended or not, and with HAT bugged it's inflating DPS numbers so really we have no idea what we're suppose to be doing.

However, I agree, Mutilate is a can of whoopass

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"I'm the best there is at what i do, bub, and what i do isn't very pretty"

Mutilate is so much more relaxing than backstab. No longer must I be behind a mob to press my 3 buttons. Woot.

80 DK down to my 72 Mut rogue last night, lawl. He kept chasing me around on his bronze drake and bothering me, don't think he really expected me to suddenly go off on him, so he probably wasn't really prepared.

Though he turned into a ghoul and killed me right after. I had like 50 hp left...yes I know to kite it...he got one whack in after a leap though.

Hate to roll back the clock on this one, but can someone enlighten me on this HAT build that Jeka's talking about on the first page here:

"The spec is super easy mode. All you do is SnD around 3 seconds left, spam evis. Can throw in vanishes for MoS/Blade Flurry as per the HAT thread on EJ says. On a static fight like PW I could've probably done 5k easily. I know I did 5.4k on Loatheb 10 man with just two HAT rogues, though that's not surprising with the crit buff. "

I'm at work so I can't bounce ElitistJerks on my breaks.

The HAT spec is utilizing a bug where you stack HAT rogues in a group, and every time someone crit's, you do not gain just 1 combo point, you gain combo points equal to the number of rogues with HAT in the group, therefor skewing DPS numbers really badly. As of yesterday I've seen HAT rogue's doing 9k on some fights, completely stationary of course but...this is a confirmed bug but right now have no intentions of addressing it which is a big problem

You mix that in with the Mutilate making the offhand poison proc twice, which has not been confirmed working as intended or bug, and you get all 3 specs not knowing just exactly how good or bad their DPS is.

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"I'm the best there is at what i do, bub, and what i do isn't very pretty"

HAT fixed in 3.0.8 apparently!

It is, so is Mutilate procing the offhand poison twice, bitch and ye shall receive. Now once we patch we'll see a baseline dps finally.

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"I'm the best there is at what i do, bub, and what i do isn't very pretty"

And I'll tell you right where rogues will be!

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This thread brought to you by a tremendous dickhead!