And the problem magically went away. (Yes, I know I'm not done yet.) My current stats when unbuffed are as follows, since someone mentioned stats upthread: str 1420, agi 620, crit 43%, arpen 80%, ap 4600, resi 950.
You will read many people here saying that, well, even though SM is nice, you don't really have to have it, blah blah blah. I disagree: I think it makes a great amount of difference.
A question that doesn't warrant its own thread: Is Victory Rush not in the rotation? Why not?
Victory Rush is a filler ability that you should use when everything else is on cd.
That is one of the mistakes I was making. Since VR is only available for a limited time after killing someone, I put VR in my rotation before MS. I added a trigger to the MSBT addon that would show a notification on my screen whenever someone used VR and I saw that I could go entire BGs without seeing a single alert.