[Rogue] Optimising performance

I - like everyone else in 4.3, I suspect - have a rogue alt, who has the 397 daggers which form the first reward from the legendary questline. With this in mind, and the ready availability of 378 gear, I think it's about time I really tried to push the envelope a bit on him. I don't do badly on him relative to the denizens of LFR, but that's hardly a reasonable measure of success given how the low the standard is set.

The Combat rotation is very straightforward. I've already got my head around the simple tips from EJ, such as lining up Killing Spree with Bandit's Guile rather than using it on cooldown (and I have a timer telling me how long's left on the buff, so I can try to time it with Landslide procs if that's possible), correct use of Revealing Strike (rocket surgery it ain't), and as I'm becoming more familiar with the encounters I'm getting better with timing Adrenaline Rush uses.

What other bits and pieces are there to optimise around? I confess that I don't use Rupture at all, as EJ said it's only a DPS increase if there's a bleed damage debuff on the boss and even then it's only around a 1% increase; given that it's an alt and I'm not used to a DPS role I figure I probably end up ahead by simple ignoring it.

Also, any tips for Subtlety? I like the play-style much, much more than Combat but there are a few Sub-unfriendly encounters in LFR and, more to the point, "optimising" my Subtlety DPS really means "not messing up the rotation and trying to maximise Find Weakness uptime" rather than anything more advanced.

The best part of roguing as combat is when you mistime Killing Spree in the fight and it does something whacky like follow the worm as he frees himself from being pinned down and you fall in the lava behind him or it flies up to Alysrazor and you fall to your death.

Or you use it on the Burning Tendon on Spine and somehow end up at the opposite end of Deathwing to where you started.

I'm in the same boat, though I leveled it a couple weeks before 4.3 so I had time to gear up a bit in FL (ironically out of 4 391 items I got 2 were weapons, and you know where they are now) and am slowly collecting crystalls in alt raids.
Combat is really easy in the sense that you can give your entire attention to the encounter without messing up the rotation, with very little practice. And its doing great in almost all of DS encounters.

As far as rupture goes, the whole point is that it costs 25 energy as opposed to eviscerate's 35, so it ends up being slightly more effective unless you clip it or use shortly before deep insight falls off.

I tried subtlety for a change (can't try assassination because I have too little mastery on my gear), and it gave an unexpectedly high result on LFR zon'ozz, like 10k higher than I got in combat, though that's a pretty bad fight to compare numbers. Wish they made a patchwerk that could be backstabbed - if not for that, LFR ultraxion is the perfect fight for measuring your DPS, since its readily available after a 5 min queue and 5 min trash, and you don't have to do anything at all besides attacking the boss.

How is sub performing overall in raids these days? I have a rogue alt I'm levelling but combat and assassination are uninspiring to me. If sub is performing acceptably these days I reckon I might have the inspiration to play her again.

According to the interview of the Korean guild that got WF... sub is completely viable.

d07.RiV wrote:As far as rupture goes, the whole point is that it costs 25 energy as opposed to eviscerate's 35, so it ends up being slightly more effective unless you clip it or use shortly before deep insight falls off.

Do bleeds not function the same as dots, as in clipping just continues the tics instead of resetting them?

Skye1013 wrote:Do bleeds not function the same as dots, as in clipping just continues the tics instead of resetting them?

If you re-cast rupture with tics left, you don't add time to the existing rupture; you replace it with a new rupture.

That effectively reduces the total amount of damage done by the energy investment in the previous rupture. In a perfect world, you always have 5 cp available for the new rupture immediately as the old one expires, but in reality that it not the case. You either end up clipping or have rupture downtime.

Levantine wrote:How is sub performing overall in raids these days? I have a rogue alt I'm levelling but combat and assassination are uninspiring to me. If sub is performing acceptably these days I reckon I might have the inspiration to play her again.

Yeah, I kinda hate Combat a bit. It's a 2.5 button spec with 2 cooldowns for me, and I don't enjoy playing it.

Sub as a spec is definitely viable but it suffers on some fights in DS, and since it has basically no AoE capabilities it doesn't do great damage overall in 5 mans or on trash (I think the fact that Combat's great single target --> great AoE difference means toggling one ability on or off pretty much sums up the spec for me).

It's fine for the first half of LFR (where by "fine" I mean "you should top the meters in good gear unless you queue with competent people"; usual disclaimer about how low that bar is set by your competitors in LFR), terrible for Ultraxion, passable for Blackhorn, fine for Spine (but for both Blackhorn and Spine you'd probably see better numbers as Combat because of cleaveable stuffs), and I haven't tried it on Deathwing and don't know off the top of my head what you can and can't backstab in that fight.

I don't actually know why KIN took 4 Sub Rogues to Spine, but I'm guessing it's for the good burst on the Tendons. Shadowstep did funny things there for me, but then so does Killing Spree.

TL;DR Sub is good for boss fights these days, and is just about living up to the reputation of being harder to play than the other specs but performing well if you can manage it. I much prefer it to Combat, not because I have the mad skillz for it, but because it's just so much more interesting to play and gives me things to work on.

Combat feels like arcane except dumber to me. SS into Evis -> blast into missiles. Energy pooling -> mana management. Combat just doesn't have a parallel to arcane power and thus lacks the hilarious burn phase. At least assassination has vendetta to give it a power cooldown. Sub just seems that little bit more interesting.

Combat is all about coordinating your cooldowns. Our rogue is combat, when he gets it right there is a significant jump in his DPS vs when he gets it wrong.

Personally I hate daggers and prefer the swashbuckler archetype so my rogue was combat until I deleted her due to the near removal of the Agi sword.

There were such nice AGI swords in the past too, I found an excellent looking pattern drop off some Kara Trash....Felsteel Longblade I think...? Very cool too becasue its a 1Hander that sheaths on your back, so you look like a Ninja Swashbuckler Flex....mats suck but looks are to die for.

I'm combat most of the time, I go sub on H Morchok to be soaking damage, if I fail once it's OK, I have cheat death talented and enveloping shadows for 30% less damage (but lately I'm thinking getting rid of cheat death because I can take a stomp with just feint.

I've tried sub in other bosses but it just doesn't cut it, perhaps because I'm specced in heavy damage avoidance instead of DPS and I'm also not used to chasing the bosses arse... (I hate when the mob turns suddenly and I can't backstab it)..

Also most of the fights have adds that I could cleave in combat with not much effort, I could go lock-style in sub and hemorrage every mob or something.. but being melee is a bit too much work.. LOL.

Do bleeds not function the same as dots, as in clipping just continues the tics instead of resetting them?

Dots only add on the last tick. Bleeds work the same way.

e.g.
Rip ticks every 2 seconds and lasts 16 secs base. If you refresh Rip at 3 seconds left, you'll lose the last tick. If you refresh Rip at 1 second left (before the last tick), you'll get a 17 second Rip, and the last tick will be carried over.
Rupture should work the same way - if you actually CLIP Rupture, you're refreshing it 3 or more seconds before it falls over, so you lose the last tick of damage completely.

Sub's better than Combat for Morchok and around equal on Hagara. The other fights either have too much target switching or allow skillCleaving.

"Lose" from an energy per damage standpoint, but it shouldn't reset the tic timer like it used to, which could potentially be a larger loss of damage. Kind of like how you can refresh Devouring Plague early (Imp. DP makes up for the "lost" tic damage, but it still gives continuous uptime without resetting.)

That being said, with any dot/bleed, you usually want to wait until the last possible second to refresh it to get as much Damage per Energy/Rage/Mana without actually letting it fall off.


***Disclaimer: This is how I've come to understand the mechanics, if you have better information, please enlighten everyone.***

Thing is the difference between a ruptureless rotation and using rupture is extremely small for combat, to the extent that if you're going to be consistently reducing the dpe/dpcp of your ruptures by clipping them you should probably not be bothering with a rupture rotation in the first place.

Rhiannon wrote:Thing is the difference between a ruptureless rotation and using rupture is extremely small for combat, to the extent that if you're going to be consistently reducing the dpe/dpcp of your ruptures by clipping them you should probably not be bothering with a rupture rotation in the first place.

This.

So, what you're saying is, bleeds follow the same coding, but consistant uptime isn't required for max dps (unlike a priest/lock.)

If you have the right settings, and you can keep Bleeds up consistently, you will get a tiny amount more dps with good Bleed uptime.

But if you're cutting into your efficiency by clipping Bleeds, or you're losing out on the right settings (say for example, the Feral is off doing something on the other side of the room and you don't have Mangle), you shouldn't bother with Rupture because you're either getting nothing for bothering about Rupture, or losing out dps because of your inefficienc, so just Eviscerate all the things.

im honestly thinking about just switching to pure evis combat
according to EJ its only about 1% dps loss

I think I actually increased my DPS by dropping Rupture from my rotation as Combat.



As such, I'm looking for any tips on a Sub rotation. According to sims, it's about a 1200 dps increase over combat with my current gear.

it depends on the fight
if you are one a single target fight, 100% uptime and are able to backstab, yes it is a big increase
but i dont know of any fights like that in DS

as far as rupture, it depends on your raid comp and time on target
if you have an arms warrior or a feral druid (either spec) then rupture will add some dps
if you dont have the bleed dam+ debuff...stick with SnD+Evis
(it is a different spec as well, i dont remember exactly what changes but it is only like 2-3 points)

Doesn't Hemo provide the same debuff as Blood Frenzy/Mangle? Or do pve sub rogues not take Hemo?

Cogglamp wrote:Doesn't Hemo provide the same debuff as Blood Frenzy/Mangle? Or do pve sub rogues not take Hemo?

Sub rogues take hemo, and sub rogues keep rupture up. Not using rupture as sub is doing it wrong with the exception of a valiona/theralion add killing spec from t11, given that evis automatically refreshes it and you get a 16% damage buff for attacking a mob with a bleed on it. I think bldavis was talking about rupture usage as combat.

Sub's only particularly decent on Morchok, Hagara and Spine though.

Ah, I see. My bad.

Rhiannon wrote:

Cogglamp wrote:Doesn't Hemo provide the same debuff as Blood Frenzy/Mangle? Or do pve sub rogues not take Hemo?

Sub rogues take hemo, and sub rogues keep rupture up. Not using rupture as sub is doing it wrong with the exception of a valiona/theralion add killing spec from t11, given that evis automatically refreshes it and you get a 16% damage buff for attacking a mob with a bleed on it. I think bldavis was talking about rupture usage as combat.

Sub's only particularly decent on Morchok, Hagara and Spine though.

yeah i was, sorry bout not making it clearer