What you want me do?

I realize that I haven't posted in nearly 6 weeks, but really there hasn't been anything I've wanted to say. Raiding plateaued around the same time of the last post, and no one has asked me to write anything up so I've just let it sit. Nothing has actually changed, I raided a couple weeks, then took a week off around my birthday, raid cancelled St. Patrick's Day, and I've raided the previous two weeks. We haven't done any new heroic versions, I haven't gotten an upgrade since Feb 25th, so it is difficult to break any of my previous parses, and my older ones are of course slipping. That is to be expected though with the raid buffs so that more and more people are doing deeper heroic versions, while I'm just doing 2-3. I've been out of the game for the past 6 weeks other than to login Sat (or Fri last week) to raid, I just can't find anything interesting to do.

I'm looking forward to MoP and beta, I think some of the rogue changes are really going to be fun and interesting, like this, which I got from mmo-champ.
Rogue (Forums)
Baseline
Crimson Tempest Finishing move consumes combo points on any nearby target to slash at the flesh of all enemies within 8 yards, dealing Physical damage and causing victims to bleed and suffer an additional 30% of the initial damage over 12 sec: 1 point : [445 + 2.5 + 2.8% of AP + 148 + 2.5 + 1.4% of AP] damage 2 points: [445 + 5 + 5.6% of AP + 148 + 5 + 4.2% of AP] damage 3 points: [445 + 7.5 + 16.5% of AP + 148 + 7.5 + 7% of AP] damage 4 points: [445 + 10 + 22% of AP + 148 + 10 + 22% of AP] damage 5 points: [445 + 12.5 + 27.5% of AP + 148 + 12.5 + 27.5% of AP] damage 5 yd range, 35 Energy, Instant.

For one I can see this boosting Sub aoe since you'd bleed multi-target and then could fan for +10% dmg ontop of the enhanced bleed dmg modifiers.


This was mostly just a check up and to say: If you want me to post about something, let me know and I will, otherwise I won't be writing much here until MoP. As usual, thanks for reading.

-Ochiru

2pc H t12 BiS for Sub/Combat in t13 content?

In case you need help decoding the title: Two pieces of heroic version (391 item level) tier 12 (Firelands content), Best in slot gear for Subtlety and Combat specs in tier 13 (Dragonsoul content/current content)? That is way too long.

This is pretty old news, but in case you hadn't heard, or hadn't seen...here are the explanations.

In case you're one of those people who doesn't care about the "why" of it all, I'll tell you straight up: in my opinion, based upon research and math, they are not BiS; and those people who made me think they were are rude because I put a lot of effort into farming up 391 gloves! Yeah, yeah. It's my own fault for not doing my own research and testing on it, but sometimes I just don't have the time for that and I trust other people who appear to be good at their class or are strong theorycrafters. So that you don't say the same thing of me, I try to post my math and findings, at least to the point that it is visible how I got to my conclusions.

In particular it was thought that 2pc H t12 (typically shoulders/gloves) were part of the BiS list for Sub (and Combat), but more the former than the latter. For instance the EJ Sub writer told me 2pc h t12 was ~2k DPS gain, although he didn't give me any real math or reasoning. I took him for his word and thought he had done his testing of course. His guide doesn't give any math (as I've complained about before) or even state an EP/DPS value on 2pc h t12, which is why I had to ask him in the first place. He happened to be on my server up until a few days ago when the guild he was in broke up.

Originally I questioned using a prior tier set bonus, heroic quality or not, due to the massive amount of agility loss from lesser item level/amount of sockets, especially because Sub has such high EP values on Agility, not to mention the other stat loss from using the lower level item. Like I said I didn't have time to look into it for a while, but when I started playing Sub my curiosity increased.

Example: BROKEN LINKS SADFACE

vs BROKEN LINKS SADFACE


Now this data will look even more skewed due to EJ EP values being updated within the past few days.

The two above items have a 76 agility difference and 101 stat difference so based upon EJ EP values 1 agility = 5.65 EP (newly updated) for Sub that is 429.4 EP for the Agility. Taking the second lowest stat, Crit (Mastery is worse), so as not to inflate the data, Crit is worth 2 EP per point. 101 x2 = 202 EP making the EP difference between the two items 631.4. On average, and this isn't stated anywhere I've found that I can recall, I find EP is a 1:2 DPS ratio; if an item is a 200 EP upgrade, it will equate to roughly a 400 DPS increase. If anyone has better findings or formulated values on this I will be glad to check and change my information. That being said if ONE item is ~1263 DPS difference, you would expect the other to be similar in difference due to the item levels being the same, so you could say the DPS loss from using two 391s for the 2pc over the two 410s would be a ~2500 DPS loss. Assuming the ~2k DPS gain from Herioc t12 2pc is correct (and I have not found it to be) that is still a 500 DPS difference, roughly. Ideally you're not going to use the second worst stat in the 101 stat loss conversion either, so it is really more than a 500 DPS difference. Also from shoulder to shoulder comparison there is a socket loss (but less base Agility difference) so add another 30 Agility loss. 30x5.65=169.5 EP ~= 339 DPS, so being more realistic it's probably a 900+DPS difference using the ~2k value for 2pc Heroic t12.

In my recent findings (based off WoL parses with and without 2pc active, my own and others) I've found the 2pc to gain ~1400-1600 DPS in the best of situations, sometimes far less, and certainly not 2k. This may be due to the fact that everyone in the parses I used are not full BiS t13, but it was a decent test pool. I was careful to use fight durations within a few seconds of one another in length.

db.mmo-champ has been giving me a lot of issues with my java lately and the ability to have roll overs, so if they don't work, my apologies and you now know why. It gives timeout errors frequently.

-Ochiru

I'll fix those links later......it is dark phoenix gloves (391) and blackfang battleweave gloves (410) if you want to wowhead it....I've been quite sick for weeks and I just don't have the mental ability to deal with it right now.

Want to learn Subtlety? Read this post.

Did you ever want to learn Subtlety, but thought it might be too difficult or complicated?
It really isn't. Hopefully this will help you.

On paper Sub seems to be a really challenging spec to play to its potential. It is true that learning Sub might seem daunting at first, but honestly once you give it some practice, it isn't that rough at all.
Sub definitely has the most management and the most buffs and dots to watch. It is without a doubt the most difficult of the three rogue specs, but in tier 13 it is also the highest single target damage spec by a pretty strong amount, and has benefits specific to itself that are not in any other talent tree.

Here is the "standard" Sub spec, and a few variants. There are also glyph differences in the bottom two specs so don't forget to check those.

Glyphs I use when standard Sub are Hemo/SnD/BS

8/2/31 - standard
9/1/31 - standard variant
8/2/31 - Ultrax
9/1/31 - Ultrax variant

I have a preference to Coup De Grace over 2% hit, as I only lose 88 crit rating and I value 7% more dmg on Eviscerate > 88 crit rating to stay hit capped personally.

If you have the freedom (or put in the effort) the bottom two specs are much stronger for Ultraxion / frontal-based fights for fairly obvious reasons. Check the glyphs and the changes from the "standard" spec to see the real benefits of it. While using an "Ultrax" spec you will want to drop Backstab, Ambush, and Shadowstep from your rotation. Hemo is your combo point builder, you can still Shadowdance and use Premed if you can weave it in without energy-capping (and be sure your stealth/SD bar is fixed for Ultrax). The rotation is the same minus those 3 abilities, so Hemo to 4-5 (HAT for 5th sometimes) and keep SnD/Recup/Rupture up. Still use Vanish for Master of Subtlety, and Prep for the same reason.

Some things you'll want to know about "standard" Sub to make good decisions on maintaining your highest dps:

Notable abilities/talents specific to Subtlety:
Mastery of Subtlety
Serrated Blades
Sanguinary Vein
Shadowstep - ShS
Preparation - Prep
Premeditation - Premed
Hemorrhage - Hemo
Find Weakness
Honor Among Thieves - HAT
Shadow Dance - SD

That should be all of them...others are shared by other specs, like Backstab (BS), Ambush, Garrote, Eviscerate (Evi), etc.

Basics:
To optimize your DPS as a Sub rogue you will want to start with 5 combo points on a boss (if you can, via crit healing pre-pull for example) hit SnD then pre-pot, Stealth, Premeditation, Shadowstep, Ambush, Rupture, Hemo, Backstab, Recup (at 5 CP). At this point your rotation is stable and you work on maintaining SnD, Recup, Rupture (via Serrated Blades, Eviscerating with 5 CP), Hemo bleed, and start using your cooldowns to maximize your Find Weakness and Mastery of Subtlety + Ambush/ShS/Premed DPS increases. You will not want to spam your abilities as much as: use one, check your energy level, check your CP, then make a decision to wait on a CP from HAT (Honor Among Thieves) or use another ability. Try to not energy cap or clip abilities. I know you're thinking, "That sounds like a lot to maintain and a lot to do continuously!" and it is, but the feel of it becomes smooth once you get those initial applications up. Rupture keeps itself up unless you're not paying attention at all, just by using Eviscerate when you're not re-applying something or mid-cooldown.

Here are the cooldowns you will need to manage:

Shadow Dance - 1 minute
Vanish - 2 minutes
Shadowstep - 30 seconds
Premeditation - 20 seconds


Shadow Dance will pretend you're Stealthed so you may use abilities as if you were so, however you will not receive Master of Subtlety due to not "actually" being Stealthed. You will receive Find Weakness though since you're using Ambush/Garrote/Cheapshot as the ability stipulates. When you use Shadow Dance you typically want to have low or no combo points and high energy so you can ambush more, I often try to line up Tricks (2pc t13) to reduce cost of abilities by 20% for 6 seconds, since Shadow Dance unglyphed is the same duration and it allows me to do more. Usually I would recommend Shadowdance > Shadowstep, Ambush, Premeditation, Ambush Ambush Ambush weaving Eviscerates in as you hit 5 CP. Try to get an Ambush near immediately, and finish the dance with one so you get full Find Weakness uptime.

Vanish will get you Stealthed and allow you to use Premed and Ambush (with ShS).

Shadowstep is to be used during Shadowdance and Vanish when you Ambush.

Premeditation is to be used anytime you Shadowdance or Stealth or Vanish.

One last thing for a more advanced Sub player:

If you have any stage of the Legendary daggers, when you originally apply Rupture with 5 CP/MoS/Pre-pot it will not be as strong as if you were to Vanish and apply with Wrath of Unchaining stacks, Landslide procs, and high stacks of Shadows of the Destroyer (say 35-40 with Legendaries, 50 with grade 1-2). 40 stacks of Legendaries gives you 680 Agility, 880 Agi from WotU, and then 1100 ATP per Landslide. If you can apply Rupture with a double Landslide plus potion, it'll be 5320 ATP higher; with one Landslide it would be 4220 ATP higher than original. In addition you'll pretty much be guarenteed to proc your Legendaries during that pot as well, possibly with a couple seconds of MoS. Granted, you won't have a pot for Heroism (if you don't Hero at the pull which is a frequent occurance) but it'll be utilized well. If you do Hero on pull, with your pre-pot rolling then this is even more advantageous.

Most people I'm sure were under the impression that Rupture refreshing from Serrated Blades would not refresh to the original stat application, but it does. Back in WotlK with Locks/Shadow Priest could pre-pot with a 550 haste pot and apply Corruption/Shadow Word:Pain and refresh it to max duration while maintaining original application stats, Rupture for rogues works in that same general way. You apply with max stats and it'll refresh itself with originally applied statistics, therefore the higher your Agility/ATP are during application, the more damage you'll get out of Rupture.

This is a min/maxing thing to consider; it can vary on fight situation and gear, but on average it'd be +300 DPS gain on Rupture on a ~5min fight.

I hope this helps everyone interested in Subtlety who comes to my blog, please feel free to leave comments or in game chat me up about questions. Thanks for coming.

-Ochiru


(edit: Found an issue with "Ultrax" spec, fixed.)

Oranges taste delicious

Here they are, in all their legendary glory.

Golad, Twilight of Aspects
Tiriosh, Nightmare of Ages

The proc takes forever to build (as the stacking agi did in the previous stages) and if you don't pool energy properly in certain specs at the proper time you can waste a few seconds of an already short proc.

I haven't PvP'd much since season 5, which was during WotLK, but I do find the occasional battleground fun. PvP is particularly fun when it resembles vanilla WoW where you could gear people to death and 3 shot them; or stunlock them to death with or without mace specialization.

After the 25 man last night I hearthed to Hinterlands, flew for 15 seconds and turned in. Ravenholdt manner was in flames! I won't ruin the ending for anyone else doing the line though. So I turned in, got my goodies, used my landslide scrolls and pre-cut queen's garnets, and invited a few people from guild to do an AB (BG weekend). I of course hadn't PvP'd in a while, as I mentioned, so I solo queued (oops), got in, and no one else did, and all was ruined. Afterwards I did an AB with Levik and Skone and we destroyed everyone but still lost 1550/1600 or round about.

If you haven't seen the video of Eclipsy-Darkspear (he has since xferred) it is quite hilarious pvping with the legendaries. I would kill most anyone within 3 seconds if they didn't burn their trinket quickly. I should note it is considerably more fun to kill clothies who are rolling around in Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest form.

I'm quite curious what kind of damage increase it is going to be in a raid since I am PvE focused typically, I might hop in an LFR or two before next week's raid and see how everything is rolling.

As always thanks for reading, please leave comments or questions below!

-Ochiru

Edit: Fixed html coloring for legendaries, can't get the TGS java roll-over to work for some reason. Removed introduction.

Clarity

Just to quickly explain in case there was any confusion in the previous post; I would only recommend using the Deadened Nerves spec in Zon'ozz heroic and Ultraxion reg/heroic, due to the inability to backstab throughout the entire fight on Ultraxion, and due to the inability to stay behind Zon'ozz during black (for group heals and survivability). That spec will however help greatly if you are staying Assassination since it gives you an extra 10% damage reduction and +20% healing recieved, the other option would be of course to have one of your specs be Combat. If you have a second set of gear with forging to haste/expertise (if not capped or close) Combat dual would be smart to use.

-Ochiru

Dual Assassination

Other than the obviousness of the title there is good reason for being dual Assassination spec in my opinion, especially if you're main spec is Assassination anyway. There is a less obvious difference in my main spec from most traditional Assassination specs, but I'm sure if you looked for a minute you'd see it.

I was browsing Elitist Jerks a while back and checking some work of mine with their Assassination guide, and it turns out they have very little math actually shown on their reasoning for choosing certain aspects to a spec or BiS list. I've said before and I'll say again I appreciate Aldriana and Antiarc's theorycrafting and I think they're very good, and great with mods and math. As for other people who post guides on Ej, I find them less credible and less reliable. An IRL friend of mine who is a highly skilled rogue (in both theory and execution) also used to do some major theorycrafting with his own spreadsheets and math told me that one of the guide writers was not very good and to not really trust his word without my own testing. Most of the time I do my own testing, but since Cataclysm I've had/put in less time doing my own testing. I do still test a decent amount, but nothing like I once did. My friend hasn't been playing in t13 so I can't really bounce anything off of him anymore either. With that, I'll get back into my Assassination dual speccing with reasoning you will probably not find elsewhere.

There are two fairly common Assassination specs, one is 31/2/8 the other is 31/3/7. For my "main" raiding spec I do the 31/2/8. The adjustment in my main spec is that I use the Vendetta Glyph ever since I obtained 4pc t13, and I drop the Backstab Glyph in its place since it is the least valuable. For those who don't know, the Vendetta glyph's 20% bonus is factored after the 4pc so you may think it is 30 (base) x1.2 = 36 + 9 (4pc bonus) = 45 seconds, however it is 30 (base) + 9 = 39 x 1.2 = 47.8s; so roughly a 20% damage bonus for 48 seconds.

The alternate spec I use is specifically for Ultraxion, and it would be great for heroic Ultraxion if I were doing that in my 1-night-a-week semi-pug group. Since you cannot Backstab on Ultraxion anyway, there is no point to have the Backstab Glyph or Murderous Intent. When you drop the 2 talent points you need to typically put into Murderous Intent you can also drop the 1 point in Deadly Brew (a typical filler talent people take), and use all 3 of those now available talent points into Deadened Nerves x3 which reduces all damage you take by 10%. Now you might be thinking, "Well Sub gets Enveloping Shadows alternatively which is 30% reduction in AoE + feint and that is 80% reduction every third Hour." True, except you get the debuff each time you stay out on an Hour in heroic so you have to Heroic Will two of every three anyway. Sub also loses FAR more damage with the inability to Ambush during Shadowdance, and losing Backstab in their main rotation, so that isn't a positive at all for a fight with such a severe DPS requirement and enrage timer.

While you're alternating Cloak/Feint and staying out every third hour you take 135k instead of 150k each Feint and of course nothing when you Cloak. I was hoping the incoming damage would only be 120k instead of 135k, however the damage reduction is of course of the original value of 300k making it 270k/2, 135k. The frontal damage of Assassination is quite high due to the current value weight on Expertise; and most rogues of all specs shouldn't have trouble getting close to the Expertise cap. Additionally having Vendetta glyph instead of the "normal" Backstab glyph improves the frontal/single target damage by even more. Something less-experienced Assassination rogues also might not know is that once you're 2pc t13 and a boss is below 35% you need to weave Mutilates with Backstabs depending on your energy generation. When you have Heroism, or Overkill, or Tricks of the Trade active (6s every 30s) you will need to weave, drastically lowering the bonus you get from Murderous Intent anyway. As as side note: fights like Zon'ozz where you need to be in "front" during black phase for AoE heals and damage reduction it also helps possibly dropping Murderous Intent for the damage reduction, since you need to be in frontal below 35% quite a bit anyway, and of course....the weaving issues.

Quick Recovery is something that a lot of people forget about. When you're pushing heroics or in a progression oriented guild it helps quite a bit to have some of these things that are standard in Assassination, but unavailable in other specs. People often, especially lately, think Assassination is a poor quality spec, hopefully this post will change some peoples minds about the benefits it has.

Now I'm only 396 item level (as of tonight) and I hadn't put my Synapse Springs on my newly turned in 397 vanq gloves, but for people who think Assassination damage is low...this is for you.

Now in fairness World of Logs has Combat and Sub still parsing higher, even on Ultrax, but those guys are all 400il+ and 4-5 item levels can make a pretty massive difference.

Edit: changed link colors.

Well!

Clearly my judgement was off on my first post of 4.3. My "guess" for which specs would be most successful was completely opposite of what is true. According to Simcraft, and most logs, it goes Sub > Comb > Assass for single target, Comb > Sub > Assass (probably) for a 2-3 target fight, and I would expect Assass > Comb > Sub for a frequent 5+ target encounter since it has the best aoe but not the best "cleave".

I still value Assassination much higher than Simcraft does since I feel you get more benefit out of 2pc/4pc than other specs might, I think sub benefits immensely as well, but combat I would anticipate nothing but more energy capping issues, especially as the gear progresses.

Sub has a large dps drop if you can't backstab / ambush on an encounter, which currently Ultraxion you cannot do either at any point in the fight, but most others you can. It is more difficult to do so on Zon'ozz during black phase when he faces the raid and you are "supposed" to be grouped up, but with feint and perma recup you can probably stay out and not get yourself killed, but you may irritate your healers. Someone told me you can't backstab on spine originally and I guess they meant tendons specifically, but I vanish garrote and I tested backstabbing and it works so that wasn't accurate.

If Sim is correct, and it typically is, about single target fights then Sub in full t13 heroic will be topping the others, minus Ultraxion, and possibly Zon'ozz depending on your raid and what you're required to do.

I am strongly considering going back to Sub for a couple weeks to see how much better I parse, but currently I'm still nearly always the top of my 1 night raid and I rank quite well on worldoflogs.com. I have many top 10 parses.

Sub is considerably harder than Assass and Comb, I used to be able to do it successfully so I'm sure I'd be fine after a bit of practice in LFR or w/e. I'll keep you posted!

As usual if you ever have any questions for me or anything to say feel free to mail me/msg me in game on Lightbringer if you can find me or commenting here would be even better.