Here I am again, I haven't had as much to say lately and I found myself uninterested in learning video editing just to make mostly guide videos. One of these days I might actually get into it and video the new encounters in LFR/Reg/Heroic Dragon Soul, that would be nice, but it is really tough to find time and energy.
It is week 1 of the new raid (technically) and I managed to clear 6/8 with my friends/pug fillers on 25 man on Sat night. Of course I also cleared 4/4 LFR multiple times, it is a nice feature, most of the time you can do all 4 in about an hour, occasionally less. I happened to do the legendary quest line before my raid so I began collecting gem shards on boss 1. We have two rogues (who are regular) and Schiran didn't have the pre-line done so she pickpocketed when we got to Hagara. Ended the night 6/8 and 71 gem shards, depending if we do 6/8 or more it should take me 3-4 weeks to finish tier 1 quality daggers and move onto the next.
It is tough to really evaluate the damage of each spec at the current time outside of theory. Once worldoflogs has more data I'll be able to give more sound advice on which is the best. My current thoughts lean Assassination > Combat > Subtlety. The 3 specs have advantages fight dependent this tier, but there is very little for Subtlety as usual.
Some would say Morchok (reg/LFR) is a sub fight due to being able to stay in for Corrupted Earth mechanic, and they'd be right, kind of. If your healers know you're intending to stand in it then you're also fine as any spec. You take more damage without enveloping shadows, but you can still feint once you have a few stacks, cloak mid way through and feint again when it runs off to take very very little damage. The problem arises when you get to the 2nd set of corrupted earth, you won't have cloak up so all you have is feint, what I did was feint right away, wait till my stack was high then feint again toward the tail end of the cast and pop my healthstone while I had a bunch of damage hitting me, and heals coming kept me up(thanks Spiceynugget). I was lagging pretty heavily for some odd reason, low fps, delays, but I still managed 34.5k dps and a 13th world parse (mind you it is early and parses weren't being logged very long to this point). Embarrassingly enough I realized I was -1.6% hit from the cap, which is pretty huge for Assassination...I was really low on gold and couldn't reforge, it had been days since I tried and by the time raid night came around I had clearly forgotten. Oops. Hopefully I can post some better #s this week, not that it was poor by any measure in my opinion.
There are some newer things, or changes, to Assassination building and stat priorities I'll cover next post. Some of the fights are "frontal" only and not being able to backstab hurts plenty, so do the parries (except Ultraxion who can't parry).
Anyway, thanks for reading, feel free to msg me or tell your friends to msg me in game or out if you/they have questions or something they wish to address. Here's hoping to post more and see more people stop by.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
It's about time
For Combat.
Fight dependent Combat can be the best spec there is for rogues. In current content (4.2) it is a fair amount better than any spec on Lord Ryolith and Majordomo Staghelm due to cleave. In addition to the cleave it also adds 4% physical dmg increase from Savage Combat (frost dk/ravager hunter pet/arms warrior also provide this). Combat is very competitive on all fights, it just excels at those two in particular.
Another advantage Combat has is that it prioritizes expertise more than Assassination, so those fights where you're highly frontal; like Rag and to some extent Domo it suffers less.
Stat priorities for Combat start the same as every other rogue spec, agility is king. Afterwards it goes yellow hit (5%) for specials (and you get 6% from precision) then expertise (26/26) and haste once capped. Haste is significantly better than any other stat at this point so drop all you can, your worst stat being white hit (post 17%) and crit.
The most common spec would be 7/31/3
There are quite a few "filler points" for combat so it is up to you if you want imp sprint/imp kick etc. This is the spec I typically do and I find to be the best overall.
Glyphs: Primes glyphs being Sinister Strike/Adrenaline rush, and usually Slice and Dice.
For Majors I would recommend Blade Flurry/Feint/Tricks.
Minors are up to you, I enjoy blazing speed, but I don't use it in all my specs, more of an occasional fun factor than useful from a PvE raiding perspective. Typically I have safe fall, blazing, and poison/lockpick. I would recommend poison if you're not crazy like me and reapply poisons at 30 min mark so you never run into a mid fight issue of no poisons.
Rotation for Combat can be semi-difficult to fairly easy. Here is what you need to know:
SnD: First and foremost is Slice and Dice, keep it up as close to 100% of the time as you possibly can, sacrificing other things to do so if you must.
Insights: Insights will increases your damage done by 10/20/30% depending on your level of insight. You gain insight by using SS (Sinister Strike) or RvS (Revealing Strike), after you use 4 of these consecutively on the same target you gain shallow insight, which is 10% damage increase for 15 seconds, the duration is refreshed to 15 seconds each SS/RvS you do within 4; at that point your insight will change to 20% (moderate insight) and will follow the same structure. When you get 12 abilities in and gain "deep insight" you'll be doing 30% more damage for 15 seconds, however as you SS/RvS your duration will not reset to 15 seconds like it had previously and the amount of SS/RvS you do will not contribute to ending the insight series, nor will it help you gain shallow insight again once finished with your deep duration. In the other insights your % of damage bonus will be longer, but less %, once those 15 seconds are up during your deep insight you'll be reset to 0% again. Once the deep insight is over any SS/RvS will contribute to you going back into shallow insight, but none during the duration of deep insight will effect it, for instance if you have deep insight and do 12 sinister strikes in 15 seconds you'll still be deep and once deep ends you will be at 0 and need 4 more SS/RvS to gain shallow.
One thing to mention is that if you change targets you lose your insight and of course cp (combo points), however if you redirect you do not, so if you need to swap targets less than once per minute it isn't as huge a loss as it would be otherwise. When you switch targets even with redirect though it will not move your poison stack or rupture.
Rupture: This one is kind of up in the air, personally I don't usually roll rupture while I'm combat. I think keeping rupture in my rotation overcomplicates it and is not much of a gain. On a stand still fight (or mostly a stand still) like Baleroc, sure I'd say use Rupture, otherwise it is up to the player to decide if they feel it is easy to maintain in the rotation or not. I would say try it out, if it is difficult or choppy for you, drop it for a while and see how you fare, I've ranked on Stag 10/25 and Ryo 10/25 as combat without using Rupture, iirc it is ~1% dmg loss? Which would be 20-30dps typically.
RvS: Revealing Strike increases the damage of your next finisher by 35%, it is not worth doing unless you are at 4 cp. So if you have SnD up, you SS to 4, RvS, Evi (Eviscerate). If you have SnD up, you SS to 3 then Glyph trigger to 5, Evi, do not RvS. It is fairly simple.
While you're doing your rotation I find that this spec is the easiest to tunnel vision. Tunnel vision if you don't know is ignoring everything but your damage and rotation, often ending up in you dying by missing a mechanic/standing in things. It isn't the most difficult rotation, but I think it takes the most "mashing". You're energy cap is 100 and has the highest rate of return than any other rogue spec, making it easy to cap out if you're not constantly bashing SS/RvS/or Evi, etc. I would suggest trying to make your ability usage fluid and watch your surroundings, don't worry about mashing until you're really good at not dying on certain fights. That could be said for all specs, and a strong tip overall, but it might be my massive Assassination experience talking here making Combat and Sub feel clunkier to me personally.
Rotational tip: If you wait to use KS (Killing Spree) until you have shallow insight it will always refresh on deep/shallow so you get more out of it; instead of using it immediately and then waiting until your 2nd deep to use it. If you wait until your first shallow it'll be refreshed by that 2nd deep still and you get an extra 10% out of it consistently.
Gems: Always use Delicate Inferno Ruby unless you're matching a socket for an agi bonus, in that case use Glinting Demonseye or Deft Ember Topaz. Agi is, as for all rogue specs, your best stat by a large margin.
So for combat you want to open as near to the target as possible (stealth if you can) but you don't get anything out of opening from stealth itself, I just SS. Once you SS (or SS a couple times) get your SnD up and keep pushing SS to 4/5, when hitting 4 use RvS then Evi. If you choose to incorporate Rupture in your rotation it takes priority over an Evi.
Poisons: Poisons are the same as Assassination, except ranged, you wand IP (Instant Poison) MH (Main Hand) and DP (Deadly Poison) OH (Off hand) with WP (Wound Poison) on your ranged for fan.
BiS list links take a while so I'm going to save those until a later post, but they will be coming sooner rather than later.
Hope this post provided some insights into Combat for some, or at least helped on some basics for less experienced rogues. Feel free to post or in game mail me on Lightbringer if you have any questions or comments.
-Ochiru
edit: grammar, and forgot poison.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Back
It has been a while....since I've posted. I was intending on not posting anymore, thinking that the blog was irrelevant for being named incorrectly and having the web address being what it is. Someone smart and close to me informed me that it could be taken how I want, and I can always change the title of it / pictures / names. So I was no longer demoralized about giving it up, even though it is tough to get posts in sometimes since they generally take a good chunk of time and cover a broadish topic. Anyway, thanks Lui <3 you for lots of reasons. Oh and HB!
So, I'm back, ^is me, and I'm now on Lightbringer in the guild Eternal Reign (as a friend), I run with an alt group lead by some friends who have mains in ER. The raid is 1 night per week ~3-4 hours and it is becoming more productive weekly. The best thing about this raid other than it only taking up 1 night of my week is that I enjoy myself in it, which is more than I could say about SW. Nothing against SW, some of them are exceptional players, and some are great people, but it is tough to have fun when the raiding environment is taken so seriously and you can't seem to relax. Now I'm with some good friends, who are highly skilled, and don't make me do pointless things on fights where people can't avoid simple mechanics, ie: Shannox disarm traps the ENTIRE fight, yeah that sounds productive for your 28-32k dps rogue to do, but hey we won every week right? Fun > winning. Winning is nice, and so is recognition, but I do play to enjoy myself and spend time with people I've grown to think of as close friends.
Oh and another important note, if you didn't notice by the huge armory image, IM A GNOME. I love gnomes, always have. I started as a fem NE rogue, then rerolled Human for racials, then they got nerfed and reworked and now...well they're still good but I love gnomes. Bane, I don't care if you don't like gnomes and I don't care if worgens have a "better" parsing racial, I like gnomes, and I'll parse all I want without being worgen kthxla~.
^ 38th on Shannox and 56th on Ryo last week with 373 equipped il and 2pc/2pc.
So I have a combat post outline written up, which means in a day or two or three it'll be up. Those of you who have been wanting combat rotations/priorities etc, rejoice. I also want to say thanks for coming back (those of you who will be regularly viewing again) and I apologize for giving up so suddenly. Making videos kind of sucks, I'll still do it some, but I am not focusing on guide videos at all unless I magically get a ton more free time.
For those curious, and those who want reference, the parsing from Sat night alt 25s and other occasional alt 10 groups are logged to US-Lightbringer under "ER PuG".
-Ochiru
editing: spacing issues(had to use an image to fix it).
So, I'm back, ^is me, and I'm now on Lightbringer in the guild Eternal Reign (as a friend), I run with an alt group lead by some friends who have mains in ER. The raid is 1 night per week ~3-4 hours and it is becoming more productive weekly. The best thing about this raid other than it only taking up 1 night of my week is that I enjoy myself in it, which is more than I could say about SW. Nothing against SW, some of them are exceptional players, and some are great people, but it is tough to have fun when the raiding environment is taken so seriously and you can't seem to relax. Now I'm with some good friends, who are highly skilled, and don't make me do pointless things on fights where people can't avoid simple mechanics, ie: Shannox disarm traps the ENTIRE fight, yeah that sounds productive for your 28-32k dps rogue to do, but hey we won every week right? Fun > winning. Winning is nice, and so is recognition, but I do play to enjoy myself and spend time with people I've grown to think of as close friends.
Oh and another important note, if you didn't notice by the huge armory image, IM A GNOME. I love gnomes, always have. I started as a fem NE rogue, then rerolled Human for racials, then they got nerfed and reworked and now...well they're still good but I love gnomes. Bane, I don't care if you don't like gnomes and I don't care if worgens have a "better" parsing racial, I like gnomes, and I'll parse all I want without being worgen kthxla~.
^ 38th on Shannox and 56th on Ryo last week with 373 equipped il and 2pc/2pc.
So I have a combat post outline written up, which means in a day or two or three it'll be up. Those of you who have been wanting combat rotations/priorities etc, rejoice. I also want to say thanks for coming back (those of you who will be regularly viewing again) and I apologize for giving up so suddenly. Making videos kind of sucks, I'll still do it some, but I am not focusing on guide videos at all unless I magically get a ton more free time.
For those curious, and those who want reference, the parsing from Sat night alt 25s and other occasional alt 10 groups are logged to US-Lightbringer under "ER PuG".
-Ochiru
editing: spacing issues(had to use an image to fix it).
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Videos
Making videos, for an unlearned person such as myself, can be a long process. I'm not always happy with the video I take, or sometimes even when I re-take it. I'm working on recording separately then laying an audio track on top of it while doing some editing throughout as well. With my first Assassination guide I gave instructions as I performed them, which wasn't as fluid as I may have wanted but it turned out alright.
I have to learn the video editing and audio track laying or these long delays will continue for each video. That being said there will be a video soon, and more following it in a more timely manner. Not every post in the future will be videos mind you, but there should be more than one per month.
I recent redid my UI then scrapped it entirely (thanks Ed! hater). I ended up going back to what I had with x-perl UI, and very few other mods, then I added grid and class timers (mostly for aly, gets rough in the air to monitor everything). In the end it looks much better and I have a much higher area of visibility, which is helpful. The UI fixes are a bit of why I've been reconstructing my videos for the combat guide as well.
LUI which I got rid of a day after using can be seen here:
I'll have to show you my new/reverted (then modified) UI later on as the servers are down and I haven't taken a screenshot of it yet.
I have a large amount of requests for specific videos, and some I would like to do for myself also. The next two coming will be Combat and Subtlety guides more than likely; followed by some bosses from a zone I have not decided on yet.
Stick with me, I'll become consistent soon. Thanks for reading.
-Correct
I have to learn the video editing and audio track laying or these long delays will continue for each video. That being said there will be a video soon, and more following it in a more timely manner. Not every post in the future will be videos mind you, but there should be more than one per month.
I recent redid my UI then scrapped it entirely (thanks Ed! hater). I ended up going back to what I had with x-perl UI, and very few other mods, then I added grid and class timers (mostly for aly, gets rough in the air to monitor everything). In the end it looks much better and I have a much higher area of visibility, which is helpful. The UI fixes are a bit of why I've been reconstructing my videos for the combat guide as well.
LUI which I got rid of a day after using can be seen here:
I'll have to show you my new/reverted (then modified) UI later on as the servers are down and I haven't taken a screenshot of it yet.
I have a large amount of requests for specific videos, and some I would like to do for myself also. The next two coming will be Combat and Subtlety guides more than likely; followed by some bosses from a zone I have not decided on yet.
Stick with me, I'll become consistent soon. Thanks for reading.
-Correct
Friday, July 15, 2011
Mastering the two step
Well I might be on the ground dead, but so is Ryolith. Got him on heroic finally last night. The previous night of work on him we had an attempt at 5% but just couldn't finish. Definitely a combat fight, and while we're on the topic of combat...I'm making a video for intro and rotation, I just need to verify a few things.
Sorry there has been a gap in posting, I'm going to try to keep this blog posting at least once every 2-3 days it has just been crazy busy irl and in game.
Thanks for reading.
Friday, July 8, 2011
wthaste?!
I was fumbling through my screenshots recently and saw I had taken one of a haste bug with the chicken and windfury. It didn't apply the actual haste, or it wasn't noticeable anyway. The buff, or bug, what have you. It didn't last very long and it reset my haste rating on the character sheet properly back to ~23% at the time.
I did find it funny though.
I will be doing intro vids to comb and sub soon. I will also be trying to discuss some raid strats for rogues specifically on reg/heroic for FL and otherwise. Old content is only old to those of us who don't do it anymore :)
I did find it funny though.
I will be doing intro vids to comb and sub soon. I will also be trying to discuss some raid strats for rogues specifically on reg/heroic for FL and otherwise. Old content is only old to those of us who don't do it anymore :)
Monday, July 4, 2011
Rag down!
Well this isn't as much an informational rogue post as it is for the guild I'm in. Don't fret! There are rogue tidbits in here.
Something Wicked US-Whisperwind dropped Rag on Sunday night making them the first 25 man on the server to do so, and currently ranks US 235 on Wow Progress. Quite impressive for a 3 night a week guild whose last raid day is Sunday, it was very enjoyable. Good job all.
I didn't FRAPS the kill unfortunately and we'll be working on heroics in the upcoming week so I'm not sure what regs I'll get the chance to fraps in the near future from a rogue PoV.
Rag is pretty simple as a rogue, there aren't as many things you need to watch for. Casters have a slightly tougher job with more movement needed and more abilities to be careful of (lava walls and traps for instance). Even though casters have a bit more to be wary of, depending on how your RL sets you up location wise, rogues are primarily attacking from the front, which as you know is unfun, especially as an assassination rogue. If you're lucky (or as your group gains experience in the fight) you may be setup so that you are behind the boss enough to not be constantly parried/dodged and can backstab -35%. When that happens, go you.
I sat for day 2 (alysrazor/bale & some work on stag). I had a friend coming over to consult on my deck structure stability so I had to be afk a bit, and couldn't be trouble by slowing the raid so I sat. I was there for 5 of the 7 kills this week though. Even though I wasn't there for the actual kill I think my favorite so far would be Alysrazor. If you execute that fight correctly it is super fun and easy to churn out some amazing dps. Personally I fell a bunch our first night (once we were allowed in the air that is) but I started to get the hang of it and it became quite fun.
It is a bit early in FL to judge, and these are only reg fights, but so far on logs it seems Assassination and Combat are rotating on peak performance per fight. Generally the two specs are fairly close.
Edit: Links fixed.
Friday, July 1, 2011
Email Feed
I added an email feed for those of you who would prefer to follow my blog that way. Enjoy!
-Correct
-Correct
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
FL!
4.2 is live, first raids are tonight for us so I'll keep you posted on how it goes. I'll step by step some bosses and/or video some in the near future as well.
WHERE AM I UGH!?
If you know where I am, you are more than likely making massive amounts of gold.
Talk to you soon.
-Correct
WHERE AM I UGH!?
If you know where I am, you are more than likely making massive amounts of gold.
Talk to you soon.
-Correct
Monday, June 27, 2011
Quick intro on Assassination
Testing out FRAPS and Video editing in Windows Live Movie Maker. Here is a short guide on how to intro as an Assassination rogue for PvE, and how to maintain the rotation. Pretty simple, feel free to comment or msg/mail me if you have any questions about Assassination this did not address.
-Correct
Updated
Since MMO is back up and functional I was able to finish the previous post with the actual item list for Assassination. Enjoy. I'll be doing combat and sub hopefully sometime soon. Right now I'm working on learning to FRAPS and video edit. Should be a video of a firelands boss or two from rogue PoV a bit down the road unless I run into too many complications.
Friday, June 24, 2011
Best in Slot. Firelands.
MMO-Champ is down and they have the most comprehensive loot list I've seen so I'll edit this up with the proper items and links as soon as curse stops having issues.
I need to do this for myself anyway so I might as well post on it and share. I'll start with Assassination because it is what I hope to be playing in FL, however I might play combat if it is better. Though I'll do that one another time. Non-base stat priorities are still the same as far as I know; yellow hit > spell hit > mastery > haste > expertise > crit > white hit.
Recently Rectangle (SW rogue) told me that Combat is currently outperforming Assassination on Patchwerk. I don't know what tools whoever is using to test that. It seems to me it would be hard to have all of the BiS gear even on PTR and do that kind of testing? Anyway he said they're quite close still, and it will of course be fight dependent. If there are adds or cleave ability, target swaps etc. We'll see when we get there I imagine, I'll build all 3 sets and test all 3 specs eventually as I always do.
4pc is going to be quite incredible so I would recommend getting that as quickly as you are able.
Helm - Dark Phoenix Helmet
Neck - Choker of the Vanquished Lord
Shoulders - Dark Phoenix Spaulders
Back - Dreadfire Drape
Chest - Breastplate of the Incendiary Soul
Bracer - Flamebinder Bracers
Gloves - Dark Phoenix Gloves
Belt - Flamebinding Girdle
Legs - Dark Phoenix Legguards
Boots - Treads of the Craft
Ring1 - Viridian Signet of the Avengers
Ring2 - Splintered Brimstone Seal
Trinket1 The Hungerer
Trinket2 - Matrix Restabilizer
Weapon1 - Feeding Frenzy>
Weapon2 - Entrail Disgorger
Ranged - Morningstar Shard
I find it odd that The Hungerer says equip proc, but also says 2 minute cooldown, was that a mistake or are they coming out and telling us the ICD for once? I'm going with the former.
For thrown, if you don't need to fan there is a FL trash bow that is considerably better.
If you have the Sinestra belt it is largely better than the new one from trash in FL one. At least until you get the item to upgrade it to its heroic version.
I'm also not sure what "random enchantment" the wrists off Alysrazor will be, so those may be added into the list over the current. I really hope these are for us since our other option is crit and expertise, vomit.
Now the 4pc + chest can easily be subbed with 4pc + Cinderweb Leggings if you can't manage the chest and happen upon the legs rather easily. The tier legs are better for Assassination than the chest however. Tier chest has expertise where as the tier legs have hit, that is the only difference really. Both "off" set pieces have mastery haste and red/red, red/yellow with +20agi bonuses. Depending how lucky you are it might be easiest to get the tier chest to make your 4pc fastest so just aim for 4pc however you can. After 4pc fit in your off piece choice once it is convenient to optimize. Another suitable substitute for your off set piece could be the crafted gloves, Clutches of Evil, but those take mats to craft, and a raid pattern drop perhaps. The gloves are mastery + haste with an agi bonus on a red socket so they are quite nice as well. Once you get into the heroic loot though the gloves don't have a heroic version since they are crafted.
I didn't take the item choices from anywhere, I used referencing from wowhead and mmmo-champ for the item stats and did my own evaluations.
-Correct
Edit: grammar, added items names in, removed roll over comment, added roll over links, thx Lega. Found a 2nd ring. Added trash bow for "thrown".
Coming soon!
Hopefully I'll manage to post tomorrow, sorry for the delay in new posting, it has been really busy here.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Something Wicked + Assassination in upcoming 4.2
I am happy to report today I was accepted into the guild Something Wicked. I look forward to many enjoyable raids. During my application process they downed their final 25 man boss on heroic mode, Al'akir. Congratulations to them for finishing all current content. Moshne, thanks for taking care of the application, I know how busy you must be.
Here is their Wowprogress and guild site.
Wow progress Something Wicked
Something Wicked Home
Recently I was trying to math out upcoming changes to Assassination for 4.2.
Assassin's Resolve damage bonus has been increased to 20%, up from 15%.
Vile Poisons now increases poison damage by 12/24/36%, up from 7/14/20%.
This looks quite massive on first glance, but then you need to take into consideration Vile Poison only effects Instant Poison, and Deadly Poison. Not Envenom, or Venomous wounds even though they are nature based damage. Envenom even says "Poison Damage" on it. Envenom is actually melee classified but nature damage, and Venomous wounds gets neither bonus, confusing isn't it? Anyway the change would actually apply 16% damage increase to your IP+DP damage. So I did some wowlog browsing (my own records and others), did the math and came up with roughly 7.4% damage increase (that includes the Assassin's Resolve math). Then as usual I read on EJ to see if any other results were around to confirm or deny my findings. What I found was that, like Antiarc, my calculations were based on Vile Poisons being multiplicative, not additive. Prior to his post on the calculations Aldriana pointed out that Vile Poisons are calculated additively. So instead of just multiplying the upcoming bonuses to your % of damage done by the applicable abilities you need to do this:
Aldriana said "Vile Poisons stacks additively with Mastery so (assuming you have ~20 mastery, which is typical for near-BIS) its a 2.06/1.9 = 8.4% boost to your IP/DP damage," - EJ
For those who don't read his math exactly well, he's assuming 20 mastery = .7 (70% poison dmg bonus increase) so 1.7+.2(current modifier for VP, 20%) so 1.9 and then add another .16 (16% VP dmg increase) for 2.06. Take the upcoming # (2.06) divide by the current # (1.9) and it is 1.0842 which is 8.42% increase. So I take that 8.42% and multiply it to my records for IP+DP % to find how much of a % increase it is with the poison change. For me it is ~3% for poisons and ~2% for melee giving Assassination a rough 5% dmg increase from now to 4.2.
I was less excited once I found out my math wasn't correct. My original findings make me happier :(
Here is their Wowprogress and guild site.
Wow progress Something Wicked
Something Wicked Home
Recently I was trying to math out upcoming changes to Assassination for 4.2.
Assassin's Resolve damage bonus has been increased to 20%, up from 15%.
Vile Poisons now increases poison damage by 12/24/36%, up from 7/14/20%.
This looks quite massive on first glance, but then you need to take into consideration Vile Poison only effects Instant Poison, and Deadly Poison. Not Envenom, or Venomous wounds even though they are nature based damage. Envenom even says "Poison Damage" on it. Envenom is actually melee classified but nature damage, and Venomous wounds gets neither bonus, confusing isn't it? Anyway the change would actually apply 16% damage increase to your IP+DP damage. So I did some wowlog browsing (my own records and others), did the math and came up with roughly 7.4% damage increase (that includes the Assassin's Resolve math). Then as usual I read on EJ to see if any other results were around to confirm or deny my findings. What I found was that, like Antiarc, my calculations were based on Vile Poisons being multiplicative, not additive. Prior to his post on the calculations Aldriana pointed out that Vile Poisons are calculated additively. So instead of just multiplying the upcoming bonuses to your % of damage done by the applicable abilities you need to do this:
Aldriana said "Vile Poisons stacks additively with Mastery so (assuming you have ~20 mastery, which is typical for near-BIS) its a 2.06/1.9 = 8.4% boost to your IP/DP damage," - EJ
For those who don't read his math exactly well, he's assuming 20 mastery = .7 (70% poison dmg bonus increase) so 1.7+.2(current modifier for VP, 20%) so 1.9 and then add another .16 (16% VP dmg increase) for 2.06. Take the upcoming # (2.06) divide by the current # (1.9) and it is 1.0842 which is 8.42% increase. So I take that 8.42% and multiply it to my records for IP+DP % to find how much of a % increase it is with the poison change. For me it is ~3% for poisons and ~2% for melee giving Assassination a rough 5% dmg increase from now to 4.2.
I was less excited once I found out my math wasn't correct. My original findings make me happier :(
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Sub Raiding PvE
The epic duel between 2pc PvP and 4pc PvE!
Happy Fathers Day those of you who are fathers and read this blog. As usual thanks for stopping by I appreciate the views. Please leave any feedback or questions in the comments section at the end.
I want to point out I don't have endless time to do all calculations possible and the data available is pretty low for Sub, especially when it comes to 4pc. The data I gather may not be perfect but should be reasonably close.
Recently I was examining the Vicious PvP gear for Rogues and noticed the 2pc bonus was 70 agility. The item level of the PvP set pieces (365) are higher than that of regular PvE pieces (359) therefore giving it more base agility as well. Since Sub has the highest agility stat weight of all rogue specs I started to math out the EP values to see what the difference was between using 2pc PvP set instead of 2pc(4pc bonus) PvE. I also calculated the PvE non-set agi leather items. This of course being an attempt to better your PvE quality in a raid situation. There are also 365 il leather boots which essentially is the same comparison, however they take 2200 rating, where as the set just takes Conquest points and are much easier to acquire.
Here is what I found when comparing:
I will be linking these items via Wowhead.com, however I'll list out the main stat comps and differences so you don't have to view each one and/or open a bajillion windows to confirm. If the socket bonus isn't a positive PvE stat I'm not going to list it. Unless the socket bonus is 20 or more agi I'm also not going to list it. You won't want to match the socket even for yellow (haste agi/hit agi) even though they are your best non agi stats, as even 20 more of either of those vs 10 agi is a loss (28 v 36 best case).
Wind Dancer's set
Vicious Gladiator's set
PvE stats v Agility PvP stats:
HELM - PvE set helm, 281 agi, blue 30 agi bonus, 168 hit, 228 crit vs PvP set helm. 301 agi, 181 mastery PvE helm with socket bonus is -10 agi overall, gain 168 hit 228 crit vs PvP helm, 10 agi gain 181 mastery. 2pc bonus consideration (70agi) for 1pc would be 35 agi. 45agi and 181 mastery gain EP is 325. Compared to 168 hit 228 crit (assuming you're already yellow hit capped since it is so easily attainable elsewhere) is worth 427.2 EP. This is pre-reforge, which in this case the PvE item would reforge higher since 40% of 228 is more than 40% of 181. This is one of the worst examples since the PvP item has the worst stat (mastery) for Sub as its non resilience stat.
In the doc posted (ss and link) it shows you that the PvP item can be better than both or at least 1 of the PvE items as for EP value. You may lose the 4pc (if you have and are using it) for the 359 set, and this is factoring the 2pc PvP bonus gain already.
As you can see using legs and shoulders 2pc PvP perhaps would gain you a considerable amount of EP value. These statistics are all pre-reforging however so the statistical EP gain would be somewhat smaller in most instances.
It comes down to marginal amounts depending on your gear availability, and goes away once you get heroic quality gear. It may be easier for you to obtain 2pc PvP than the PvE loot depending on your luck and availability to raid/grind heroics. I felt it was worth mentioning so as a community we can keep our eyes out for something like this in the future (post 4.2 and further).
There is a much smaller pool of data available out there for Subtlety specced rogues so I had to rely on my own calculations via high end Sub raiding rogues (25 man data gathered mostly) while using Worldoflogs.com. I was doing this to try to get a gauge on the value of 4pc for Sub raiding PvE rogues, since you may or may not be choosing to not use it or lose it and use 2pc PvP instead. There would be an EP loss from whatever 4pc value is, and it may or may not be greater than the gain from your EP stats on the PvP gear.
What I found after analyzing and doing calculations on what I thought would be the most "stand still" bosses (Magmaw, Chimaeron, etc.) is that Sub rogues have very few Eviscerates during a boss fight, and a low amount of white hits comparatively. I chose stand still fight data since it would have the cleanest rotation, Sub PvE rotation is quite challenging to execute perfectly, or even properly. The average amount of Eviscerates per fight is roughly 25. From the data I was referencing about 40% of those are actually crits, even though the players crit rating is a bit lower than that. The 4pc PvE set bonus is Deadly Scheme. The average amount of "white hits" a Subtle rogue was landing on any given fight was ~300, give or take about 30. So on average 1% proc rate on 300 hits means 3 procs right? When 40% of those Eviscerates are already critting that means 60% of the 3 procs you gain a benefit from the actual proc (a 100% crit), so roughly 2 Eviscerates (rounding up). So you know, Eviscerate is ~10% of the Sub rogues damage. So you gain 2 auto crit Eviscerates on any given fight, those land for an average of 24k (above a typical hit from evi). You are therefor given ~48k dmg gain, say over a 5 minute duration fight (varrying). 5 minutes x 60 seconds = 300 seconds. 48,000/300 = ~160 dps gain from the 4pc. Unfortunately I don't know the relation between EP to DPS. The gain from 2pc PvP depending on your slot choices can be near that value in EP. You can use your personal preferences when choosing to use 2/2 or 4pc when Sub. I find it interesting and different to be using 2/2.
Credit Luisiuil for Chart Formulas.
Edited: Added chart and description of it. Removed chart w/incorrect data.
Happy Fathers Day those of you who are fathers and read this blog. As usual thanks for stopping by I appreciate the views. Please leave any feedback or questions in the comments section at the end.
I want to point out I don't have endless time to do all calculations possible and the data available is pretty low for Sub, especially when it comes to 4pc. The data I gather may not be perfect but should be reasonably close.
Recently I was examining the Vicious PvP gear for Rogues and noticed the 2pc bonus was 70 agility. The item level of the PvP set pieces (365) are higher than that of regular PvE pieces (359) therefore giving it more base agility as well. Since Sub has the highest agility stat weight of all rogue specs I started to math out the EP values to see what the difference was between using 2pc PvP set instead of 2pc(4pc bonus) PvE. I also calculated the PvE non-set agi leather items. This of course being an attempt to better your PvE quality in a raid situation. There are also 365 il leather boots which essentially is the same comparison, however they take 2200 rating, where as the set just takes Conquest points and are much easier to acquire.
Here is what I found when comparing:
I will be linking these items via Wowhead.com, however I'll list out the main stat comps and differences so you don't have to view each one and/or open a bajillion windows to confirm. If the socket bonus isn't a positive PvE stat I'm not going to list it. Unless the socket bonus is 20 or more agi I'm also not going to list it. You won't want to match the socket even for yellow (haste agi/hit agi) even though they are your best non agi stats, as even 20 more of either of those vs 10 agi is a loss (28 v 36 best case).
Wind Dancer's set
Vicious Gladiator's set
PvE stats v Agility PvP stats:
HELM - PvE set helm, 281 agi, blue 30 agi bonus, 168 hit, 228 crit vs PvP set helm. 301 agi, 181 mastery PvE helm with socket bonus is -10 agi overall, gain 168 hit 228 crit vs PvP helm, 10 agi gain 181 mastery. 2pc bonus consideration (70agi) for 1pc would be 35 agi. 45agi and 181 mastery gain EP is 325. Compared to 168 hit 228 crit (assuming you're already yellow hit capped since it is so easily attainable elsewhere) is worth 427.2 EP. This is pre-reforge, which in this case the PvE item would reforge higher since 40% of 228 is more than 40% of 181. This is one of the worst examples since the PvP item has the worst stat (mastery) for Sub as its non resilience stat.
In the doc posted (ss and link) it shows you that the PvP item can be better than both or at least 1 of the PvE items as for EP value. You may lose the 4pc (if you have and are using it) for the 359 set, and this is factoring the 2pc PvP bonus gain already.
As you can see using legs and shoulders 2pc PvP perhaps would gain you a considerable amount of EP value. These statistics are all pre-reforging however so the statistical EP gain would be somewhat smaller in most instances.
It comes down to marginal amounts depending on your gear availability, and goes away once you get heroic quality gear. It may be easier for you to obtain 2pc PvP than the PvE loot depending on your luck and availability to raid/grind heroics. I felt it was worth mentioning so as a community we can keep our eyes out for something like this in the future (post 4.2 and further).
There is a much smaller pool of data available out there for Subtlety specced rogues so I had to rely on my own calculations via high end Sub raiding rogues (25 man data gathered mostly) while using Worldoflogs.com. I was doing this to try to get a gauge on the value of 4pc for Sub raiding PvE rogues, since you may or may not be choosing to not use it or lose it and use 2pc PvP instead. There would be an EP loss from whatever 4pc value is, and it may or may not be greater than the gain from your EP stats on the PvP gear.
What I found after analyzing and doing calculations on what I thought would be the most "stand still" bosses (Magmaw, Chimaeron, etc.) is that Sub rogues have very few Eviscerates during a boss fight, and a low amount of white hits comparatively. I chose stand still fight data since it would have the cleanest rotation, Sub PvE rotation is quite challenging to execute perfectly, or even properly. The average amount of Eviscerates per fight is roughly 25. From the data I was referencing about 40% of those are actually crits, even though the players crit rating is a bit lower than that. The 4pc PvE set bonus is Deadly Scheme. The average amount of "white hits" a Subtle rogue was landing on any given fight was ~300, give or take about 30. So on average 1% proc rate on 300 hits means 3 procs right? When 40% of those Eviscerates are already critting that means 60% of the 3 procs you gain a benefit from the actual proc (a 100% crit), so roughly 2 Eviscerates (rounding up). So you know, Eviscerate is ~10% of the Sub rogues damage. So you gain 2 auto crit Eviscerates on any given fight, those land for an average of 24k (above a typical hit from evi). You are therefor given ~48k dmg gain, say over a 5 minute duration fight (varrying). 5 minutes x 60 seconds = 300 seconds. 48,000/300 = ~160 dps gain from the 4pc. Unfortunately I don't know the relation between EP to DPS. The gain from 2pc PvP depending on your slot choices can be near that value in EP. You can use your personal preferences when choosing to use 2/2 or 4pc when Sub. I find it interesting and different to be using 2/2.
Credit Luisiuil for Chart Formulas.
Edited: Added chart and description of it. Removed chart w/incorrect data.
Friday, June 17, 2011
Battle Chicken!
Engineering
Gnomish Battle Chicken
This post will not only be about the poor misunderstood mechanical creature that is the Gnomish Battle Chicken, but how raid worthy Engineering is. Lets get started.
Firstly, there is some wildly inaccurate data out there on this lovely beast known as the battle chicken. Most of it is unimportant to the actual usage it has, however some actually does matter. Before we get too deep into what this does, I'll tell you a bit about it. Gnomish Battle Chicken is an engineering trinket that can be used once every 20 minutes and has a 1m 30s duration. You may swap trinkets and it stays active. While it is out it will attack the target you are engaged on, or once you engage it. It will hit for ~1-4 damage, really low I know, unless it is berserking, in which it will do a moderate amount more for ~10 seconds (still sub 100 per hit). While it is berserking it has a roughly 40% chance (I believe it to be higher but I remember 40%) to Squawk. Battle Squawk. This buff is melee only; it does not effect casting speed. It is a group wide buff so stacking other melee haste beneficial classes in a group with 1 or 2 engineers is highly advantageous to your raid dps as a whole.
The chicken itself is quite fragile and dies on nearly all encounters, especially with AoE. In addition to its fragile state, it can also attack targets you would not expect it to. If there is an engageable aggressive target, even docile ones or ones that don't have proximity aggro, the chicken will try to attack it for some strange reason. Take care and don't try to use the chicken on those fights.
The Gnomish Battle Chicken in name may be somewhat misleading as well. You may train the schematic from a Gnomish Engineering trainer, which means you need to be specified to Gnomish Engineering. What you may not know though is you can have a Gnomish Engineer craft one for you if you're Goblin, or unspecified, and you may still use it even though it says Bind on Pickup. (Note: I'm not sure if it is still tradeable, credit to Nored if it still works.) Or you could level Engineering, specify Gnomish, make a chicken, and respecify Goblin.
The chicken is Power Word Shieldable but cannot be healed. It is useful to raid dps if you have a priest macro /target Battle Chicken /cast Power Word: Sheild to increase its surviveability and increase the chance you'll gain the buff. The chicken has a 20 minute cooldown so you can use it on most fights depending on how much trash or how long the actual boss fight is. The raid dps increase depends on what classes are in the group with the Squawk buff and the duration of the fight, but it is always quite a large raid dps boost and is seldom, if ever, talked about anywhere.
So, now for a few things that are incorrectly written in some places. The chicken buff DOES stack with windfury (retest credit to Putin) and survival hunters buffs. It has always stacked with other buff since vanilla, and I tested it within the past week to confirm this is still the case (it is). The buff given also used to be multi-stackable, which would mean you could get a group buff of 25% melee haste (in vanilla we had 3 or 4 engineers who used them frequently) however I also recently tested that and it no longer multi-stacks. What happens now is this: if the first chicken squawks and then the second squawks, the second chicken to squawk refreshes the buff of the personal user of that chicken. If my chicken squawks it'll buff us all, then if your chicken squawks it will only refresh your battle chicken squawk buff to full duration, but not mine.
The chicken only takes 230 engineering skill to use, but it is very beneficial to max out engineering for other reasons such as Synapse Springs, bombs, and the Goggles (unless you're clearing heroic Nef or other heroic non-tier helm dropping bosses). You can customize them to be perfectly itemized for BiS pre-heroic. For most classes it would be best to have goblin engineering, especially since shrink ray no longer works on bosses in 4.2 (I think). I'll tell you why goblin is better in a while here. Also in case you were wondering, the chicken is not a one time use; it is permanent.
Synapse Springs
Synapse Springs : These are valued at ~80agi. I value them much higher due to the customized usage. It has no random use proc which could be largely wasted like other proc based profession gains, ie: Tailoring. For example, Magmaw typically has ~2 minutes until his first exposed head slam. As you gain experience and you notice these things you can hold your synapse springs and use them during a more beneficial moment in an encounter, like this. Use them immediately on engage and then again on first cooldown, then hold until exposed (or it'll be up a few seconds into expose) therefore giving you maximum benefit compared to certain other higher valued professions which have random procs.
Bombs!
Big Daddy
There are many types of bombs you have to choose from. The reason why I said I would recommend Goblin specific is because of Big Daddy bombs. These bombs are 440 engi skill; unlike the Chicken you must be Goblin specific to use them. There is no extra utility gained by being Gnomish other than the Chicken, which once you have made you may switch specializations (or have someone else make the Chicken for you in the first place). If you scroll down in the comments for Big Daddy someone says, "Before you throw it, ask your target 'would you kindly stand still?'" Now that isn't entirely true as you will read further on.
When I leveled engineering on my alt I picked Gob just because it was a caster and I didn't expect to high-end raid so a chicken wouldn't be very useful and I wanted to use different "toys". When I discovered the Big Daddy bomb I read the text and started testing it on "unsuspecting" targets. Bane (aka Starboard-Lightbringer and soon to be IBanel, I believe) helped me test originally. He is an exceptional Deathknight and if you want to be pro DK model yourself after him. Moving on, Bane would go out to Stormwind gates and duel me, then he'd sit still, we tested throwing from behind, throwing from the front, using army, throwing in combat, out of combat, and having him mobile, etc. The bombs did 40k DPS, yes 40k dps, on him + his army when they were not targeting me. The bombs do ~5k, but are enhanced when the target(s) are "unsuspecting". The bombs do around 4 times as much when the target(s) are "unsuspecting". Oh did I mention they can crit? For 25-30k dmg, yes, yes they can. The main issue with these is that you cannot throw them while moving; where as saronite bombs (addressed later) can be thrown while moving (in case you need to not stand in fire).
One thing I do want to mention since I'm pretty sure this is not intended: Fire spec Mages get 25% bonus to bomb dmg, which can be incredibly significant. If you look at a normal Big Daddy it will say Big Daddy does 3750-6250 fire damage. If you look at it on a fire mage it says ~4087-8047 fire damage. Every other bomb pales in comparison to this one. The bombs on my fire mage do 20k self buffed non crit and 40k on a crit. This is on a target who is not targeting me, that is what "unsuspecting" means. They can be in combat, or out. They can target someone else, but just not you, they can also be mobile or immobile (credit to Ledranos for letting me bomb him a bunch). They have a 2 second cast time and a 1 minute cooldown. The damage can also be modified by a dps DK or a Boomkin (mushrooms are supposed to put earth and moon up in 4.2? They don't right now, I checked). So add on another 8% if you have that making it 21.5k reg and 43k crit respectively. I believe the crit ability of the bombs is spell based since the bomb itself is, meaning it would be less damage for a melee vs a caster, especially those who stack crit like Fire spec Mages. Big Daddy bombs also incapacitate the targets it hits for 5 seconds or until they take additional damage. Extremely helpful on Magmaw adds, Cho'gall adds, Maloriak adds, Halfus whelps, and so on.
This is another example of how engineering is undervalued as a profession and can far exceed all other professions as for dps gains and raid utility.
Saronite Bombs
Saronite Bomb only do around 1150-1500 dmg, but the radius is pretty high (10 yrds) and you can use them while moving. As a rogue you can use them while you are energy pooling. This used to be incredibly effective during LK and is far, far less beneficial now, but I still occasionally do it.
Just so you don't think I've forgotten about this: High-powered bolt gun does 6800-10200 damage, does not specify fire (it looks nature-based but specifies no modifier). It has a 2 minute cooldown, a tiny radius, and it takes a reagent. I don't use it.
Hope this information was beneficial and I look forward to hearing how many of you become engineers!
Edit: My editor corrected some grammatical errors, and generally made it easier to read. The actual content has not changed. I had an issue recently in ZA on lynx trash where the bombs hit a pack of lynx but only did ~5k to each. They were not targetting me and I've never had this happen. There were no resists and I retested on multi-target and single target over all situations I previously stipulated with the normal results of 17-21k non crit bombs. I will be trying to reproduce this in time or find the error.
Gnomish Battle Chicken
This post will not only be about the poor misunderstood mechanical creature that is the Gnomish Battle Chicken, but how raid worthy Engineering is. Lets get started.
Firstly, there is some wildly inaccurate data out there on this lovely beast known as the battle chicken. Most of it is unimportant to the actual usage it has, however some actually does matter. Before we get too deep into what this does, I'll tell you a bit about it. Gnomish Battle Chicken is an engineering trinket that can be used once every 20 minutes and has a 1m 30s duration. You may swap trinkets and it stays active. While it is out it will attack the target you are engaged on, or once you engage it. It will hit for ~1-4 damage, really low I know, unless it is berserking, in which it will do a moderate amount more for ~10 seconds (still sub 100 per hit). While it is berserking it has a roughly 40% chance (I believe it to be higher but I remember 40%) to Squawk. Battle Squawk. This buff is melee only; it does not effect casting speed. It is a group wide buff so stacking other melee haste beneficial classes in a group with 1 or 2 engineers is highly advantageous to your raid dps as a whole.
The chicken itself is quite fragile and dies on nearly all encounters, especially with AoE. In addition to its fragile state, it can also attack targets you would not expect it to. If there is an engageable aggressive target, even docile ones or ones that don't have proximity aggro, the chicken will try to attack it for some strange reason. Take care and don't try to use the chicken on those fights.
The Gnomish Battle Chicken in name may be somewhat misleading as well. You may train the schematic from a Gnomish Engineering trainer, which means you need to be specified to Gnomish Engineering. What you may not know though is you can have a Gnomish Engineer craft one for you if you're Goblin, or unspecified, and you may still use it even though it says Bind on Pickup. (Note: I'm not sure if it is still tradeable, credit to Nored if it still works.) Or you could level Engineering, specify Gnomish, make a chicken, and respecify Goblin.
The chicken is Power Word Shieldable but cannot be healed. It is useful to raid dps if you have a priest macro /target Battle Chicken /cast Power Word: Sheild to increase its surviveability and increase the chance you'll gain the buff. The chicken has a 20 minute cooldown so you can use it on most fights depending on how much trash or how long the actual boss fight is. The raid dps increase depends on what classes are in the group with the Squawk buff and the duration of the fight, but it is always quite a large raid dps boost and is seldom, if ever, talked about anywhere.
So, now for a few things that are incorrectly written in some places. The chicken buff DOES stack with windfury (retest credit to Putin) and survival hunters buffs. It has always stacked with other buff since vanilla, and I tested it within the past week to confirm this is still the case (it is). The buff given also used to be multi-stackable, which would mean you could get a group buff of 25% melee haste (in vanilla we had 3 or 4 engineers who used them frequently) however I also recently tested that and it no longer multi-stacks. What happens now is this: if the first chicken squawks and then the second squawks, the second chicken to squawk refreshes the buff of the personal user of that chicken. If my chicken squawks it'll buff us all, then if your chicken squawks it will only refresh your battle chicken squawk buff to full duration, but not mine.
The chicken only takes 230 engineering skill to use, but it is very beneficial to max out engineering for other reasons such as Synapse Springs, bombs, and the Goggles (unless you're clearing heroic Nef or other heroic non-tier helm dropping bosses). You can customize them to be perfectly itemized for BiS pre-heroic. For most classes it would be best to have goblin engineering, especially since shrink ray no longer works on bosses in 4.2 (I think). I'll tell you why goblin is better in a while here. Also in case you were wondering, the chicken is not a one time use; it is permanent.
Synapse Springs
Synapse Springs : These are valued at ~80agi. I value them much higher due to the customized usage. It has no random use proc which could be largely wasted like other proc based profession gains, ie: Tailoring. For example, Magmaw typically has ~2 minutes until his first exposed head slam. As you gain experience and you notice these things you can hold your synapse springs and use them during a more beneficial moment in an encounter, like this. Use them immediately on engage and then again on first cooldown, then hold until exposed (or it'll be up a few seconds into expose) therefore giving you maximum benefit compared to certain other higher valued professions which have random procs.
Bombs!
Big Daddy
There are many types of bombs you have to choose from. The reason why I said I would recommend Goblin specific is because of Big Daddy bombs. These bombs are 440 engi skill; unlike the Chicken you must be Goblin specific to use them. There is no extra utility gained by being Gnomish other than the Chicken, which once you have made you may switch specializations (or have someone else make the Chicken for you in the first place). If you scroll down in the comments for Big Daddy someone says, "Before you throw it, ask your target 'would you kindly stand still?'" Now that isn't entirely true as you will read further on.
When I leveled engineering on my alt I picked Gob just because it was a caster and I didn't expect to high-end raid so a chicken wouldn't be very useful and I wanted to use different "toys". When I discovered the Big Daddy bomb I read the text and started testing it on "unsuspecting" targets. Bane (aka Starboard-Lightbringer and soon to be IBanel, I believe) helped me test originally. He is an exceptional Deathknight and if you want to be pro DK model yourself after him. Moving on, Bane would go out to Stormwind gates and duel me, then he'd sit still, we tested throwing from behind, throwing from the front, using army, throwing in combat, out of combat, and having him mobile, etc. The bombs did 40k DPS, yes 40k dps, on him + his army when they were not targeting me. The bombs do ~5k, but are enhanced when the target(s) are "unsuspecting". The bombs do around 4 times as much when the target(s) are "unsuspecting". Oh did I mention they can crit? For 25-30k dmg, yes, yes they can. The main issue with these is that you cannot throw them while moving; where as saronite bombs (addressed later) can be thrown while moving (in case you need to not stand in fire).
One thing I do want to mention since I'm pretty sure this is not intended: Fire spec Mages get 25% bonus to bomb dmg, which can be incredibly significant. If you look at a normal Big Daddy it will say Big Daddy does 3750-6250 fire damage. If you look at it on a fire mage it says ~4087-8047 fire damage. Every other bomb pales in comparison to this one. The bombs on my fire mage do 20k self buffed non crit and 40k on a crit. This is on a target who is not targeting me, that is what "unsuspecting" means. They can be in combat, or out. They can target someone else, but just not you, they can also be mobile or immobile (credit to Ledranos for letting me bomb him a bunch). They have a 2 second cast time and a 1 minute cooldown. The damage can also be modified by a dps DK or a Boomkin (mushrooms are supposed to put earth and moon up in 4.2? They don't right now, I checked). So add on another 8% if you have that making it 21.5k reg and 43k crit respectively. I believe the crit ability of the bombs is spell based since the bomb itself is, meaning it would be less damage for a melee vs a caster, especially those who stack crit like Fire spec Mages. Big Daddy bombs also incapacitate the targets it hits for 5 seconds or until they take additional damage. Extremely helpful on Magmaw adds, Cho'gall adds, Maloriak adds, Halfus whelps, and so on.
This is another example of how engineering is undervalued as a profession and can far exceed all other professions as for dps gains and raid utility.
Saronite Bombs
Saronite Bomb only do around 1150-1500 dmg, but the radius is pretty high (10 yrds) and you can use them while moving. As a rogue you can use them while you are energy pooling. This used to be incredibly effective during LK and is far, far less beneficial now, but I still occasionally do it.
Just so you don't think I've forgotten about this: High-powered bolt gun does 6800-10200 damage, does not specify fire (it looks nature-based but specifies no modifier). It has a 2 minute cooldown, a tiny radius, and it takes a reagent. I don't use it.
Hope this information was beneficial and I look forward to hearing how many of you become engineers!
Edit: My editor corrected some grammatical errors, and generally made it easier to read. The actual content has not changed. I had an issue recently in ZA on lynx trash where the bombs hit a pack of lynx but only did ~5k to each. They were not targetting me and I've never had this happen. There were no resists and I retested on multi-target and single target over all situations I previously stipulated with the normal results of 17-21k non crit bombs. I will be trying to reproduce this in time or find the error.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Hello!
After 6 years and frequent requests I have finally decided to write a rogue blog for the game World of Warcraft. Here is some quick rough background on me. I've been playing (with 2 short breaks) since closed beta, I've always played a rogue, however that is not the only class I play. I started hardcore high end raiding in vanilla around the time of ZG and early AQ40. I was in the guild <Surreal> (world 3rd) after a short stint in <Risen> (world 1st). I raided with <Surreal> until into BC when my irl took up more of my time so I lightened my raiding schedule. Partially into BC <Surreal> and <TITAN> merged into <Premonition> (still ~world 5th?) who now reside on Sen'jin. I am currently applying to <Something Wicked> a 12/13 PvE Alliance guild on Whisperwind, coming from my own 10 man guild <Parody> on Alleria, which I ran since early LK expansion.
This blog will be mostly to inform people about how to play a rogue, primarily in PvE, but perhaps expanding to PvP or occasionally discussing strategies and roles at least.
I would like to state right away that I feel http://www.elitistjerks.com is an incredible site, especially for rogues if you need to confirm some data or I don't go over something you need to know. They do, however, exclude or don't cover 100% of what you may want to know, and I may have it here so please have a look periodically.
For example, it was never mentioned (as far as I know) that Reign of the Unliving , which is typically a caster trinket, was top 2 BiS (best in slot) during that expansion until 4.0 when melee spell crit and melee haste values were nerfed into the ground. Instant poison counts as a spell, and as Assassination, while rolling envenoms, you had a very high proc rate of poisons. How it worked was when you crit with your instant poison proc, which was incredibly often, it would give you a mote of flame charge and upon the 3rd charge you would expunge your charges to do a spell based direct damage nuke. On paper it looked very small regardless of how quickly you could generate charges (limited to one per 2 seconds so 6 seconds per 3 stack). You could proc more frequently than nearly any caster, if not all, and the 3 stack nuke would stack with boss debuffs to make the nuke a reasonable amount of dmg even though rogues have no spell power. As usual I did self testing and used some of my own and other rogue parses from http://www.worldoflogs.com checking proc rates of instant poison versus duration of fight and # of crits vs # of non crits to determine the DPS value of the trinket. The passive effect on the trinket was worthless as a rogue but due to the frequency of stack generation and expelled charges it made the actual DPS gain quite significant. It was fight dependent, as to say less useful on fights that had high mobility and lower uptime on damage, but in general it was quite impressive to those who knew of it. That is just one example of something that wasn't addressed via ej forums, at least as I can recall.
Please feel free to let me know if any of my recalled data is incorrect, I haven't actually taken time to double check my memory versus actual patch #s and so forth.
UP NEXT: Engineering raid utility and personal dps boost, and how it is largely undervalued. Sub in upcoming tier/heroic. 2pc PvP + 2pc PvE for Sub in current content and future.
This blog will be mostly to inform people about how to play a rogue, primarily in PvE, but perhaps expanding to PvP or occasionally discussing strategies and roles at least.
I would like to state right away that I feel http://www.elitistjerks.com is an incredible site, especially for rogues if you need to confirm some data or I don't go over something you need to know. They do, however, exclude or don't cover 100% of what you may want to know, and I may have it here so please have a look periodically.
For example, it was never mentioned (as far as I know) that Reign of the Unliving , which is typically a caster trinket, was top 2 BiS (best in slot) during that expansion until 4.0 when melee spell crit and melee haste values were nerfed into the ground. Instant poison counts as a spell, and as Assassination, while rolling envenoms, you had a very high proc rate of poisons. How it worked was when you crit with your instant poison proc, which was incredibly often, it would give you a mote of flame charge and upon the 3rd charge you would expunge your charges to do a spell based direct damage nuke. On paper it looked very small regardless of how quickly you could generate charges (limited to one per 2 seconds so 6 seconds per 3 stack). You could proc more frequently than nearly any caster, if not all, and the 3 stack nuke would stack with boss debuffs to make the nuke a reasonable amount of dmg even though rogues have no spell power. As usual I did self testing and used some of my own and other rogue parses from http://www.worldoflogs.com checking proc rates of instant poison versus duration of fight and # of crits vs # of non crits to determine the DPS value of the trinket. The passive effect on the trinket was worthless as a rogue but due to the frequency of stack generation and expelled charges it made the actual DPS gain quite significant. It was fight dependent, as to say less useful on fights that had high mobility and lower uptime on damage, but in general it was quite impressive to those who knew of it. That is just one example of something that wasn't addressed via ej forums, at least as I can recall.
Please feel free to let me know if any of my recalled data is incorrect, I haven't actually taken time to double check my memory versus actual patch #s and so forth.
UP NEXT: Engineering raid utility and personal dps boost, and how it is largely undervalued. Sub in upcoming tier/heroic. 2pc PvP + 2pc PvE for Sub in current content and future.
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