Cataclysm [Guide] Combat Rogue PvE

[taralej]

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?

The MG procs are instant and thus they do not prolong until the next autoattack. The MG proc is interrupted by the calculation of the attack, not the attack itself. The attack itself can proc MG too, so if it would interrupt the previous MG proc and another MG proc would proc, we wouldn't notice.
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@his1nightmare

These are indeed good questions. Sorry for not having answered them in the guide.

1. Fury and Prot Warrs, Assassination Rogues and Feral Druids will already apply the 12% armor debuff through glyphed Collosus Smash, Devastate, talented Expose Armor or Faerie Fire(Feral). If all those are absent in your raid, you should apply it after SnD. It is a personal loss of DPS for you, but a raid-wide increase depending on the raid composition.

2. This question was answered above. Haste does hurt MG in some mystical way, but it is still a good stat and better than crit for sure.

3. Shiving would do your fast OH's damage, unable to crit. Compared with SS, this is very low. SS normally awards 1 CP, 2 if bugged with Redirect and 3 if the bugged SS procs the glyph of SS too. However, a wasted CP does in no way compensate for the low damage Shiv does, compared to SS. With DP being on your Main Hand, your DP stacks will never drop because of the MG procs, so there is no need to worry about that either. In conclusion, use SS if you have 4 CPs, not Shiv.

4. From my observations, using FoK is only good for more than 7-8 mobs.

5. 2-3 CP Evi < SS. Pop BF, position yourself, keep SnD up (possibly with those 2-3 CPs) and keep slashing the adds with BF. SS < Evi when Evi is +3 CP plus RvS. The snakes at Anhurr are quite a lot though, so I would just advise you to use FoK.

6. Stick to Haste at lower gear levels. Mastery starts to really kick in once you're over 18-20.

[Justicerr]

I'm not agreeing with the statement that DP on your MH and IP on the OH if better than the normal way - IP on MH and DP on OH. I'm not stating the opposite either.

I want to make something very very clear. Like people already said, the combat rogue style on molten is so ridiculously strange that it's extremely hard to PROVE anything. I am getting tired of spending most of my time on the training dummies testing stuff, because the results I get are making less and less sense.

From my personal experience, with IP/DP on MH/OH I'm doing almost the same damage as with DP/IP, but I still get more procs and more damage the normal way, which is IP on the MH. That does not mean that is better, and I'm not making anyone follow what I do, because others might and probably get the opposite results. It's just strange.

Another thing, I can't agree with Ea's(misams) statement that there is no luck involved in 2mil+ damage done.
All my tests are done exactly on ~3mil damage done on the dummy which is exactly 3 adrenaline rushes for me. On 2 consecutive tests, I get 210 mg procs on the first one, and 120 procs on the next. Those 2 fights are done in the space of 6 minutes, with the exact same gear and rotation, with the exact same number of Eviscerates and Sinister Strikes done. Server lag can't change that drastically in the space of 6 minutes without me noticing it.
I can even prove what I said, that there IS luck involved, well maybe not exactly prove, but explain.

So let's say with 25 mastery you got 50% chance for mg to proc. Scratch that, let's use crit since it will be clearer and easier to understand. Let's say you've got 20% crit chance. Where is stated at how much damage done the crit % of your attacks will hit 20% and stick to it no matter for how long you're fighting after that? Exactly, nowhere. You can spend half an hour fighting and get 0 crits, and for the next 10 minutes you crit with each of your attacks, after those 40 minutes your total crit % would again be 20%, it doesn't matter that it was 0% in the first 30 minutes. At the same time you can crit with all of your attack for the first 30 minutes, then not crit for the next hour and a half, and you will again be at 20% total crit.
The same thing applies to mastery.
It's like a roulette. You can spend hours on it placing bets only on Red and win on 70% of your bets if you're lucky, even though it's only 48% chance to win.

With the same gear/rotation/3mil dmg done/ss and evi hits/latency/delay , on the time I normally get anything between 17k and 23k dps, depending mostly on mg procs and evi crits. There is no other explanation for it, it's just extremely random. Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you don't.

Yesterday I spend an hour comparing normal IP/DP 2.6/1.4 vs DP/IP 2.6/2.6 . To my amazement with the 2 slow weapons I did ~23k dps, and ~20k with the normal slow/fast ones. That doesn't mean 2 slow weapons are better, it's just completely random.

[taralej]

If you are doing for IP/DP, then 2.6/1.4 is the obvious choice and of that there is no doubt.

I am yet to find out whether DP/IP 2.6/2.6 is better than DP/IP 2.6/1.4. #1 means higher KS, but who cares about KS? #2 means more Combat Potency procs and potentially higher DPS, because an unsuccessful hit w/ a 1.4 is less of a DPS loss than with a 2.6.

However, one thing in my mind that I'm sure about is that DP/IP > IP/DP.

Why?
Because Main Gauche is a main-hand special attack. As such, it can proc enchants and poisons, as seen on the screenshot I've uploaded on the first page at the bottom of the guide. Now, with a high enough Mastery your Main Gauche attacks + MH attacks + special attacks are a LOT more than your OH attacks. Additionally, special attacks cannot miss after the Yellow Hitcap, so while your OH will still have anywhere between 19% (yellow cap) and 10% (spellcap) chance to miss, your specials and MG procs will NOT miss. These 2 things are what my theory rests upon.

Now I say theory, because in fact I get the same strange numbers as Soulsseeker, which make no sense.

Again, in conclusion, this is only true for Molten and is so because of the Mastery bug.

[Justicerr]

If you are doing for IP/DP, then 2.6/1.4 is the obvious choice and of that there is no doubt.

I am yet to find out whether DP/IP 2.6/2.6 is better than DP/IP 2.6/1.4. #1 means higher KS, but who cares about KS? #2 means more Combat Potency procs and potentially higher DPS, because an unsuccessful hit w/ a 1.4 is less of a DPS loss than with a 2.6.

However, one thing in my mind that I'm sure about is that DP/IP > IP/DP.

Why?
Because Main Gauche is a main-hand special attack. As such, it can proc enchants and poisons, as seen on the screenshot I've uploaded on the first page at the bottom of the guide. Now, with a high enough Mastery your Main Gauche attacks + MH attacks + special attacks are a LOT more than your OH attacks. Additionally, special attacks cannot miss after the Yellow Hitcap, so while your OH will still have anywhere between 19% (yellow cap) and 10% (spellcap) chance to miss, your specials and MG procs will NOT miss. These 2 things are what my theory rests upon.

Now I say theory, because in fact I get the same strange numbers as Soulsseeker, which make no sense.

Again, in conclusion, this is only true for Molten and is so because of the Mastery bug.

You DO realize that means Main Gauche procs can proc instant poison when you have it on the MH just like deadly, right?
I just did more tests which I'm gonna share and use simple mathematics after that.
With IP/DP MH/OH I got 170 IP procs on a normal 3mil dmg. After that I removed the DP from the OH so I could see how many procs of IP I'd get only from IP on the MH itself. I got 130. Which means only ~1/4 of the IP procs come from DP on 5 stacks. And which means only 40 OH attacks during that fight procced DP after the 5 stacks with 30% chance of applying DP.

Let's see what happens if we switch the poisons. I'm not sure if you know this, but IP does not have 20% chance to proc. The chance scales with weapon speed. It's 20% with a 1.4 speed weapon, and 37.14% with a 2.6 speed weapon. (http://www.wowwiki.com/Instant_Poison)
What this means is, you've got a higher chance of a poison proc from your MH weapon AND MG procs when that poison is Instant (37.14%) than when it is Deadly(30%). That's the main hand.
Now the off hand. If you're using DP on your MH and IP on the OH, the % chance of IP proc is 20% because of the 1.4 weapon, while in the normal way that is 30% with DP on the OH. And if you get 40 poison procs from your OH when the poison on it is deadly, you'd get maybe 30 if the poison is instant.

So in conclusion I can actually say with certainty - no, DP/IP MH/OH is NOT better.

[dominitian]

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.

it`s all very confusing, you may be right ofc but you need proove it ... i don`t mean to critic but any scientist when he want his theory to be taken serious and approved by the scientific community he tries to prove it until he doesn`t it`s pure speculation and that theory is dismiss
you said you reforged haste in to hit rating and your dps have increased right? for me is the other way around, maybe you should give us a link to your armory or a SS where we can see the stats that you have so we can make some point in all of this ... indeed maybe at a certain level more hit rating would be better than haste

[taralej]

Strange results. Correct numbers though. Exactly because DP % is higher on slower weps is why I said it makes sense for it to be on the MH. It doesn't make sense for a PPM like IP to proc that much from MG though...

[Justicerr]

Dp's % chance to proc is not higher on slower weapons, it's a constant 30%, it does not change.

poison proc chances are:
IP/DP 37%/30%
DP/IP 30%/20%

what logic do you see so you still think the second way is better that I didn't talk about in my previous post?

[misams]

Lol guys. There is absolutely no difference in IP/DP vs DP/IP except that with DP/IP your DP stacks to 5 faster at start of fight. NO OTHER GAIN NO OTHER LOSS
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Armory bugs out like hell. Not even once I saw my real stats there

[hurricanet]

I thought the whole bugging melee attack for testing purposes was implied I didn't think people would try it for real in terms of dps.

The whole point of it was to see if 2.6/2.6 was better than 2.6/1.4 since IF your next melee swing indeed stops mg procs chains. If it does then yeah its pretty viable to go double slows and be just as competitive if not better. Ofc all of this is implied that MG proc chains happens often and far out weights the other damages.

as for poisons after 5 stacks of DP it procs the poison on your other dagger so imagine every dp proc on your fast hand is procing IP on your slow hand it is one of the reason why ip damage is so high.

[taralej]

what logic do you see so you still think the second way is better that I didn't talk about in my previous post?

Main Gauche procs

[misams]

What I would really want to debate about is t11 2-piece set VS almost a point of mastery you can get from non-tiered pieces.

[taralej]

What I would really want to debate about is t11 2-piece set VS almost a point of mastery you can get from non-tiered pieces.

check page1

crit - 0.9
mastery (high) - 1.6

compare 5% crit for SS vs mastery rating equalling 1 point

[Silenuos]

Is the yellow (special attacks) hit is the only one that should be capped? How about the white ones?

[taralej]

Is the yellow (special attacks) hit is the only one that should be capped? How about the white ones?

The white ones' cap is 27%, which is impossible and not worth trying to get, because you sacrifice too much from other stats.

However we've been arguing for quite some time now whether or not going for over the yellow hitcap up to at least the spell hit cap (17%) is more worth it, considering how Mastery works. Namely increased hit chance with your attacks will also further increase your chance to get a Mastery proc. However this increase should not come at the price of Mastery, Expertise or maybe even Haste. It's a complex topic, which we're still discussing, since Combat Rogues on Molten are completely different from retail...

TL;DR This is what you need to know

As Combat, the yellow hit cap is enough.

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@Soulsseeker

This is what made me think about DP/IP

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?

[Justicerr]

I really don't see a valid point in the post that made you think. I've stated twice already logical and mathematical explanation to why IP/DP is better when the poison proc chance is 37%/30% compared to 30%/20% with DP/IP. HOW is it gonna even itself out??? What you said about MG procs tilts the argument even more in my favor since MG procs will proc IP more often than they would DP.

The last thing I want to do is start another fight here but I think you're being too impatient and rash with editing your guide with controversial information like you did at the beginning when we had that haste/mastery argument. Just... don't be so fast with changing aspects of the guide with something that is quite bizarre and imo illogical.

edit: I see you already removed the part I was talking about, okay.