Energy pooling?

[Badterri 0]

New poster here, please be gentle =)

I've been using the Icy Veins guide to level up a new Assassination rogue (post-5.0.4), which states as follows:

"To benefit from the Envenom buff as much as possible, you will want to pool Energy before casting Envenom. The idea is to be able to cast Mutilate at least twice while the buff is active."

Since Deadly Poison has a chance to be applied by any strike (including auto-attacks), could anyone explain why pooling energy before Envenom is beneficial in order to cast (specifically) Mutilate as stated above? Is a poison proc damage somehow increased if Mutilate is used? Apologies if I've missed something very obvious, but at the moment I can't see the point of having 2 Mutilates ready post-envenom, rather than just waiting on energy regen in the usual way.

[Damien 1,514]

Hello new poster

What I think you are missing is that when Deadly Poison is already applied on the target, subsequent applications will instantly deal damage (in addition to also refreshing the DoT).

If you cast Mutilate while the buff from Envenom is active, the chance that it will apply Deadly Poison is increased by 15%, which means that you have an increased chance to deal extra damage.

[Badterri 0]

Thank you for the reply - but I'm afraid I'm still struggling...

I do realise that subsequent applications of Deadly Poison deal instant damage, but as far as I can tell, the amount of that damage is in a fixed range (per the tooltip), meaning that it will add the same amount whether it procs from a Mutilate or an Auto-attack (or anything in between).

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it seems to me that the buff triggered by Envenom provides the same amount of bonus poison damage whether or not energy is pooled to enable the casting of two Mutilates during the buff.

Any further thoughts?

[Enzo90910 0]

Any further thoughts?

If you pool energy before Envenom, you get the chance at autoattack poison procs *and* (usually up to two) Mutilate poison procs during the Envenom buff. If you don't, you only get the autoattack procs.

[Badterri 0]

Ah yes of course that makes perfect sense. And thinking about it more, there is the added bonus that Mutilate will have no chance to miss at spell-hit cap.

Thank you - this has been bugging me!

[Damien 1,514]

Mutilate hits or misses depend on whether you reached the melee hit cap at 7.5%. It is a special (or yellow) melee attack, not a spell :)

[Skroo 3]

Mut also strikes with both weapons at the same time, so assuming DP has an even chance to apply with both weapons in the new world of poisons (pretty sure it does), you are getting two buffed chances to apply DP in each envenom if you pool first.

If your SnD is going to fall off it is probably better to envenom early to refresh it. We are energy starved beyond belief right now, so getting two muts in an envenom isn't always going to happen. It's a good thing to try for though. If you spec Anticipation, you can blindside at 5cp while pooling and not worry about losing the extra CP.

Get a good buff/debuff timer (I use Rogue Power Bars) and get a feel for watching them. Sometimes it feels like I'm healing again and I get tunnel vision on my timers ... try to put them somewhere on your screen where you can glance quick and see them, but not so central that you'll completely focus on them and start Standing In Bad Things.

Edited October 23, 2012 by Skroo

[Psionicheadtrip 0]

Or if your going to tunnel on your timers at least get GTFO so you minimize the standing in the fire/goo/purple stuff/assorted colours of gas damage :) (i will admit to being guilty of this very thing however which is why i use it, reduced my deaths heaps)

[iRepo 1]

New Icy-Veins member here also,

When i do my rotation, i pool energy to about 50 then use envenom, that will allow a mutilate shortly after and another mutilate before envenom falls off

I think its safer to pool some energy for a envenom instead of clipping the envenom buff

Example:

5cp envenom > mutilate x2 and you get lucky with crits and have the 5cp again from seal fate + anticipation and still have the envenom buff, wait till it goes away then envenom again, while waiting you pool energy for another mutilate right after you envenom

[Dac 0]

GJ

Edited May 16, 2013 by Dac

[Dreamrogue 2]

With high amounts of haste (I prefer mastery>haste>crit after obtaining t15 2pc, waiting for my meta gem to switch completely to haste), and probably t15 2pc you should pretty much spam all your energy during envenoms so that you end up with 9 or 10 combo points, then you use envenom and again gather those anticipation stacks. The pure gold in this thing is it allows you to refresh rupture and still almost instantly use envenom. It makes envenom uptime (which is really important) much much much higher.

As a sidenote, never ever ever ever clip envenom. Unless dreaded 5 combo points and 5 stacks of anticipation and 90 energy. Then you are free to clip. Of course heroism and such increase energy regen so much that you have to clip, and it's preferred then.

And, if any Icy-Veins pro would tell me what's a good envenom uptime? At my current haste (around 8k) I tend to have 70-80% uptime minimum if full time on boss. Depending on the fight of course. I'm working on it

Edited May 18, 2013 by Dreamrogue