[Guide] Combat Rogue PvE

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Originally Posted by taralej

And still no one answered my question:

if Main Gauche chain procs stop on the next auto-attack, doesn't that mean that Haste becomes a bad stat for Mastery-stacking Combats? This would be correct for Combats with very high Mastery, where they get MG procs and chainprocs on around 1/3 of their hits.

This is purely theoretical, as I don't have the gear to experiment and do research. I think it's an important question however, because it will affect all Combats when more powerful gear becomes available on 4.3. Yes, I am quite confident that Molten will not fix this bug, there isn't even a Bug Report...

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Yes, it means exactly that. Back in Greymane I was in one guild with your current guildmate Ea and we were, especially he, spending most of our time on the dummies testing everything out. We came to the conclusion haste and mastery are not working well together for some reason, but back then we didn't know what that reason was. That's why haste was at the very bottom of our stat weight. I remember getting 2x Hurricane enchants on my weapons, and later the same day changed those for 2x 50 attack power because my dps suffered a lot from the haste gain.

After the transfers, I went to Frostwolf and Ea went to Neltharion so I didn't know what he was up to much. I guess he found out the reason behind that haste=bad thingy.


PS: I know Ea since the launch of Lordaeron in WotLK and he's the most dedicated to his class player I know. Listen to him, because he's one of, if not THE best rogue on molten. It's an enormous privilege as a rogue to have him in your guild, you can learn a lot from him.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by taralej

And still no one answered my question:

if Main Gauche chain procs stop on the next auto-attack, doesn't that mean that Haste becomes a bad stat for Mastery-stacking Combats? This would be correct for Combats with very high Mastery, where they get MG procs and chainprocs on around 1/3 of their hits.

This is purely theoretical, as I don't have the gear to experiment and do research. I think it's an important question however, because it will affect all Combats when more powerful gear becomes available on 4.3. Yes, I am quite confident that Molten will not fix this bug, there isn't even a Bug Report...

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you mean if crits beats haste right? well i did some tests but i was in a hurry and didin`t do proper testing and i have to do it again ,that`s why i didin`t made the results public but what i can tell you is on a 1st view is that it seems is not such a big difference between them ... that`s maybe because i reforged my items but still it was only like 3 % haste increase or decreased
if you see my armory : http://armory.molten-wow.com/charact...Btk/Frostwolf/
you will see you can`t reforge so many items and still keeping the expertise & hit cap and the usual agility > mastery stats intact

Thanks a lot Soulsseeker. I've only known him for some time now, but I quickly realized he's not just a random rogue.

@Dominitian Yes, so basically it turns out Haste hurts Mastery with the current situation of the MG chainprocs. The reason behind it, as my guildmate Ea has found out and I have pointed out, is that MG chainprocs stop on the next auto-attack. This causes Haste to drop as our last priority stat. Logic dictates that this makes Crit more powerful than Haste simply because it's the only offensive stat left after hit & exp cap and Mastery.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by taralej

And still no one answered my question:

if Main Gauche chain procs stop on the next auto-attack, doesn't that mean that Haste becomes a bad stat for Mastery-stacking Combats? This would be correct for Combats with very high Mastery, where they get MG procs and chainprocs on around 1/3 of their hits.

This is purely theoretical, as I don't have the gear to experiment and do research. I think it's an important question however, because it will affect all Combats when more powerful gear becomes available on 4.3. Yes, I am quite confident that Molten will not fix this bug, there isn't even a Bug Report...

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Sorry taralej, didn't mean to ignore your post, I just got carried away. You should add some points in the discussions from the last pages to the main post, because a lot of people contributed a lot of interesting content that could save ppl from asking a lot questions.

Getting back on topic let's look at it objectively, 1st of all we don't have stat weights like those people on retail do but, if i had to guess, mastery is close to agility at high end full available gear lvls(http://elitistjerks.com/f78/t111329-..._12_01_2011_a/) but we can speculate mastery is somewhere between 1.5 and 2(since we don't have a function on how mastery works and the closest thing we can use are probabilities at which i am not good, we can only assume). That given however SS is still our top dmg contributor, even at my current 22 mastery, followed by melee attacks. This could be the result of too much haste doing what you describe. You could test this with low gear however, you don't need high end gear to do it(your best pick you probably be crafted or epic pvp gear since it only has one type of stat on).

Now since SS is still our main contributor, haste remains strong, even if we lose mastery procs as you predict we should be getting new ones anyway, in total averaging out the number of procs/sec to something consistent to our mastery proc %. And also energy means we can use our support abilities more freely, Feint, Recuperate should be used as needed to stay alive, otherwise you're just playing a warrior w/o the plate. I am not even go on about how haste is a very important asset in aoe dpsing.

Then there is also the way chain procs work, as far as i've noticed they proc instantly off each other, and did not seem to go on past the millisecond mark, however there are so many things that proc mastery that it is very hard to tell if something like you predict happens or not, truly. As i said it needs to be tested.

You should post this bug report, tbh this thread is evidence the bug exists and it's been discussed vigorously, not to mention every rogue on molten pretty much rolls combat and stacks mastery.

Do you have the numbers at which 4.3 gear would bring our mastery to? What about haste? Depending on that we could try to deduce what could happen. There is also the reverse of the medal, we could see a fix in 4.3 since I bet molten would be picking up a more complete 4.3 engine that could have already fixed the bug.

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Originally Posted by Griefel

Sorry taralej, didn't mean to ignore your post, I just got carried away. You should add some points in the discussions from the last pages to the main post, because a lot of people contributed a lot of interesting content that could save ppl from asking a lot questions.

Getting back on topic let's look at it objectively, 1st of all we don't have stat weights like those people on retail do but, if i had to guess, mastery is close to agility at high end full available gear lvls(http://elitistjerks.com/f78/t111329-..._12_01_2011_a/) but we can speculate mastery is somewhere between 1.5 and 2(since we don't have a function on how mastery works and the closest thing we can use are probabilities at which i am not good, we can only assume). That given however SS is still our top dmg contributor, even at my current 22 mastery, followed by melee attacks. This could be the result of too much haste doing what you describe. You could test this with low gear however, you don't need high end gear to do it(your best pick you probably be crafted or epic pvp gear since it only has one type of stat on).

Now since SS is still our main contributor, haste remains strong, even if we lose mastery procs as you predict we should be getting new ones anyway, in total averaging out the number of procs/sec to something consistent to our mastery proc %. And also energy means we can use our support abilities more freely, Feint, Recuperate should be used as needed to stay alive, otherwise you're just playing a warrior w/o the plate. I am not even go on about how haste is a very important asset in aoe dpsing.

Then there is also the way chain procs work, as far as i've noticed they proc instantly off each other, and did not seem to go on past the millisecond mark, however there are so many things that proc mastery that it is very hard to tell if something like you predict happens or not, truly. As i said it needs to be tested.

You should post this bug report, tbh this thread is evidence the bug exists and it's been discussed vigorously, not to mention every rogue on molten pretty much rolls combat and stacks mastery.

Do you have the numbers at which 4.3 gear would bring our mastery to? What about haste? Depending on that we could try to deduce what could happen. There is also the reverse of the medal, we could see a fix in 4.3 since I bet molten would be picking up a more complete 4.3 engine that could have already fixed the bug.

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this you can easilly check if you replace all your agility gems with mastery ones, i tryid it but is a dps decrease
if mastery won`t be fixed in the next patch the difference on dps charts between us and others could be even higher once you get 4/5 T12 set http://www.wowhead.com/itemset=1006#comments

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Originally Posted by dominitian

this you can easilly check if you replace all your agility gems with mastery ones, i tryid it but is a dps decrease

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I'm not sure you will get any relevant testing done like that. :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dominitian

if mastery won`t be fixed in the next patch the difference on dps charts between us and others could be even higher once you get 4/5 T12 set http://www.wowhead.com/itemset=1006#comments

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T12 and T13 bonuses look nice,if they will work, but the stats on them are abysmal.



Here's a good example of how mastery procs work.

http://i50.tinypic.com/dxxvnl.jpg

On a funny note, high mastery rogues could be a reason why we could see server crashes in the future, since there can probably be alot more procs than that and the server has to calculate all of them individually. xD

There is a simple way to test this if your MG indeed stops because of your next melee attack why not just attack bug yourself via drinking a potion and see whats the average procs strings of MG. Also if this is true then wont it mean we now should be using 2 super slow weapons?

Very good guide,thanks alot.

If auto attacks do stop MG procs I agree with hurricanet that we should auto attack bug ourself if MG is better. I will test this when I get online and post results.

Under no circumstances should you ever bug auto attack unless you want to do some tests.

http://img827.imageshack.us/img827/9...1513132931.jpg

Here's a DPS test, that I just did with my Rogue on Neltharion. As you can see, my Mastery is not very high and I have PvP gear too. The helm gives Mastery and the Shoulders give needed Expertise, which combined with the set2 is the reason why I'm still sticking to them before I get raid epics.

So, deriving from the Recount, let's answer people's question:

1) Melee is a Combat's #1 dmg source and will remain a very strong source of damage even when you reach high Mastery ratings. Combat is all about melee and the Mastery bug is just Molten-wise and is in no way a reason to ignore your autoattacks. This is why you should never bug your autoattacks!

2) Instant Poison is a very strong source of damage for Combat. It's not a main source and sometimes DP can even fade during the fight, especially if you're not spell hit-capped, but it is not to be ignored. This is the reason why you need a fast OH, together with the Combat Potency talent. This is also another reason why you should not bug your autoattacks.

3) I cannot conduct a test whether or not MG procs stop on the next autoattack via autoattack bug, because my Mastery isn't high enough. I tried, but I simply do not get more than 3-4-hit chainprocs. I'd like to ask someone geared from you - Stellar, Soulsseeker or Griefel - to do this. What I can contribute is that pots of Tol'vir do NOT cause autoattack bug and neither does Pigmy Oil (yeah, whatever).

@Griefel I'm updating the guide.

@taralej

1/3. As Grefel showed on his SS, MG procs are probably calculated instantly, ie. there's no valid reason for ignoring haste, especially if you consider potential SnD bug someone reported (energy regen bonus from SnD's haste), not that it's stronger than mastery, but I'm fairly sure it beats crit easily in value. Also, bugging auto is plain bad, as it will drop MG procs to abysmal levels, since they occur mostly from mh attacks, not to mention ~15%+ dps drom from attacks alone and crippled CP procs.
2. That one doesn't matter much, only real reason behind fast oh is CP (naturally with current mastery status), since going DP on mh works magic, giving as much as full 5 stacks in gcd. After that DP will proc oh poison, ie. IP, and IP itself doesn't have fixed proc chance, with being PPM, it has 20% chance for 1.4 weapon, and 37.14% for 2.6, which is 85.7% more in favor of 2.6, the same amount it's slower, so proc amount from oh will eventually even out. What I noticed after switching poisons, IP amount remained pretty much the same (or at least similar), while DP portion went slightly up, beating RvS by a fair amount. Fun fact, or rather question, some tests on dummies the other day (DP/IP configuration) gave me slight stutter and crippled responsivness, which I believe reason from unusual poison applications, can anyone confirm it's universal, or is it just my pc and addon choice?

@ PuzzleManiak

I confirmed in my previous post that bugging autoattack is bad and explained why, so I agree with you on that. Indeed MG procs are calculated instantly. A post regarding this will be put here soon by my fellow guildmate Ea. Haste should not be ignored, but there are more powerful stats than it with the current situation of Mastery.

After a thorough discussion with Ea, we came to the conclusion that Hit is actually better than Haste. The reason behind it is because it increases your chance to hit with MH (and proc Main Gauche), OH (and proc Combat Potency) and poisons (and increase Instant Poison's contribution, 10-15% atm). Again, this is only relevant here, on Molten, and is a result of the Mastery bug.

I tested DP on MH and here are the results:

http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/4355/...1513150937.jpg

You are right. Putting DP on your MH is better, because MG are MH attacks and can proc the poison from the MH. Thus the MG bug contributes for increased DP (IP) procs when DP is applied on the MH.

Editing my guide...

Edit: Ea = misams

OKay I am here now.

The reason being - people misunderstand - haste itself has nothing to do with the mastery procs itself.
The ONLY reason why haste DOES affect mg procs is the MG bug by itself:
MG that procs of MG is done INSTANTLY, at the same time.
But, on the server side, nothing can be done instantly, every thing takes time.

If, for whatever reason, server is trying to calculate the 9 procs at the same time from one attack for too long, it will be interrupted when next attack should be calculated.

This brings us to TWO things:
1 - an easily observed one - server load (server delays, lags etc) WILL greatly reduce the amount of mg procs.
For that sole reason my dps on dummy can be anywhere from 18 to 28k. There is no luck involved at 2kk+ damage done.
2 - harder to observe - haste in SOME amounts (impossible to really say for sure in what amount for every specific situation) will CHOP off some of the procs. It is hard to explain, but think of it as matching two rulers (measurement tools) with different scales.
If you know how much more measures of one scale you need to add to match one (or any other specific amount) more measures on other scale, you can find amounts when they will match perfectly, and none will be lost. But, if you don't match them perfectly, some amount will be lost, unmatched. This is what happens to haste. Big amounts of haste (yet to determine minimum amount that benefits) will obviously raise the dps. But small amounts of haste within those big amounts will not. Think of it as caps, that depend largerly on unreliable things like server load.
And this is the conclusion. UNLESS the haste you just took gives you OBVIOUS (on recount or the like) benefit to dps all that haste is a waste of stats.
I reforge haste i cannot reforge into mastery, into hit. On my current gear, it is about 450 in stat points. If I reforge that hit back into haste, I will still be over hit cap. But my dps WILL suffer.
When I said that haste is bad, I never meant to say that it is bad because it always hinders procs or whatever. I think it is bad because it bring more uncertainty into an already strange build. Unlike hit. Hit is obvious and plane. That is why I take it instead. I never said you can't overdps me taking haste instead of hit or taking haste/mastery gear instead of crit/hit/mastery. It is just there is noone yet to prove it.

And please, people. I do not like writing guides but I don't mind giving advice or sharing knowledge.
So please do not think I feel obliged to prove any point I make. I may be wrong somewhere, but I will consider myself to be right even without any foundation until I am proven wrong.

Thanks for reading this wall of text.

So should we assume that MG chains are interrupted if by any chance a melee occurs while the server is calculating the MG chain procs as different attacks? In essence it doesn't allow an attack to occur during an attack so it cancels the MG instead of stopping melee?

Hello, I have couple of questions regarding combat

1. Do I use the reduce armor debuff with 5 cp once per minute? You do not mention it in the guide so I gotta ask. Or is it enoough to just keep SnD up, and then spam 5CP Evi.

2. As discussed in the thread, if mastery actually is better then haste and getting haste hurts MG procs, then shouldn't the priority of secondary stat be mastery > hit > crit > haste?

3. Do I ever use shiv in my rotation? I mean I personally use it because often, RvS+2 SS give me 4 CP, and then I shiv to get one Cp. Is it wrong?

4. Is there any add situation at all where FoK is useful? I mean if there are more then certain number of adds.

5. What can I do in situation where adds will die before I get 5 cp up on them, but not till I use atleast 2 SS? I mean situation like snakes in temple guardian anhuur etc., what do I do there, how do I dps? I basically want to know what to do with those 2-3 CP that I can generate before my current snake dies, and there are more targets to kill.

6. About the mastery MG proc bug thing, is it still relevant at lower gears to stack mastery? Or does it only become apparent and decidedly better at higher gear levels?

All answers are appreciated, thanks :)