Couple Combat questions for Maximizing DPS.

[Synep 0]

First off here's a link to my armory:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/thorium-brotherhood/Mìkasa/simple

 

To start off, i'm not too experienced with rogues, i know my way around the class, but i still feel like i'm missing something vital.

 

I've read many of the Simcharts, and right now rogues just really are subpar to other melee classes, and it's to be expected for me to not be doing as much as the Hunters and Windwalkers topping charts right now.

 

But as it stands, i'm a raider, and as a raider, i'm expected to know my class and doing enough DPS when encounters require it.

 

So with my current gear i'm averaging about... 18k-19k DPS fully raid buffed, Prepotting (+1000 Agility Potion), +250 Agility Flask, +100 Haste Food buff on "Patchwerk Ecounters" (I.E Kargath Bladefist and The Butcher)

 

My questions about my rotation:

 

When do YOU use your first SND? What is the most DPS optimal way to use it? Alright this really isn't an issue for me, and i don't feel like it really should affect my DPS by much, but i'm trying to clear up all the "little" mistakes i'm making and maybe correct something i may be doing wrong.

 

Here's how i open encounters. Ambush>RS>SS till 5 CB > SND > KS > Adrenaline rush start rotation.

 

Now in the rogue combat guide for Icy-veins it says "Open with ambush and immediately cast Slice and Dice" Which i want to know the reasoning behind because of.. 1) 1 ambush = first attack if opening in stealth = 2CB. Why would i use Slice and Dice with 2 combo points? Is there a strict reason for doing so?

 

Combo Point Pooling: This may be one of my bigger issues, I'm not sure really how the point pooling affects your DPS, but i normally aim to save to my first 10 combo points for Medium Insight, i proceed to cast ONE eviscerate, Spam Sinister strike twice more, and i should be in Deep insight, I then cast Eviscerate twice and proceed to use it every 5 combo points thereafter till it falls off.

 

So my rotation is something like this.. (Refer to my opener above) - Adrenaline rush>(0 Combo Points) SS till Medium insight and/or Full combo points > Eviscerate> SS till Deep Insight/Full Cb points (Refresh RS here as it will be around 2s~ till it falls off> Evis/Evis (If in deep insight) or evis once, and SS till Deep insight.

 

Now it may be hard to understand what i'm trying to get at, as i'm pretty much telling you my rotation in the full first 30 seconds. So i guess the more direct answer i'm looking for is.. When do you Pool combo points? Under what circumstances is it a good and bad idea?

 

And my last questions..

 

When do YOU refresh Revealing Strike? As soon as it falls off? 2 Seconds? When do you refresh SND? 8 seconds? Right before it falls off? How do you prioritize Ambush?

 

Any answers would be much appreciated! I love to theory craft in-game about my DPS and how i could improve it - So if you would like to talk message me and i'll be sure to send you my btag!

 

Oh and one last question.. How do you feel about Shadow Reflection Vs. Venom rush? which encounters do you think this to be viable? How does your shadow reflection rotation look?

 

Thanks!

 

 

 

[Carrn 284]

An Attack on Titan fan, I see? :D great name though, I love it. 

 

Simcharts mean next to nothing. This is really really important to understand; they are purely theoretical, and nobody can play their class to Sim-perfect quality in a real-world fight. An expert at a "weak" class will always top somebody who is rerolling because such and such class is supposed to be OP.
 
Judging yourself against the strongest classes doesn't mean you're weak - MM Hunters, WW Monks, and DKs are a little overtuned at the moment, but those latter two gain so much more from cleave that it's very difficult to judge their single target effectiveness. 
 

But as it stands, i'm a raider, and as a raider, i'm expected to know my class and doing enough DPS when encounters require it.

 

Pardon the sarcasm a moment, but I recommend not playing Combat ;) ...jk

 

That being said, Combat does to slightly weaker single target damage. It performs incredibly well for heroics and other multi-target / short duration fights, but until you get some more Haste you're going to underperform a little imo.

 

Since you have LW, I recommend making yourself a belt and trying to get some better stats on it. There's no other piece of gear that I think is easily replaceable, cause even the ones with bad stats have gem slots or something else nice. 

 

 

On to your questions!

 

1) Opner & SnD: Getting SnD up is more important than getting a longer duration on it, especially because of the higher energy cost on SS. Because of that, I cast is as soon as I get out of Stealth.

 

My opener, excluding pre-pot, is:

• Ambush
• SnD
• RvS
• SS (until really low on energy)
• KS

This gets me to as low an amount of energy as possible before using KS, cause I don't want to energy cap over those few seconds. The number of SS you're able to throw out depends on how much Haste you have, and you might even be able to push out 4 to get yourself into Shallow Insight before casting KS. I'm not playing Combat at the moment so I'm not exactly sure how many you'll be able to get off; it's something you'll have to get a feel for, but I would say that if you have to wait any less than 2 seconds you should wait and get yourself the damage boost.

 

I think you know how to do the basic rotation after that, so I won't elaborate on it any more unless you want me to.

 

2) Cp Pooling: I think you've got the right idea with what you've said, but I just want to point out probably the most difficult thing about the Combat rotation - holding off Deep Insight with RvS. You generate 1 cp with this skill, and you can refresh it much sooner than the 2 seconds you listed with the whole Pandemic thing extending debuffs for so long. So if you're 1 SS from Deep Insight but only have 3 cp, you can squish in an RvS swing for the 4th cp before activating your higher damage boost.

 

The other times that I can see cp pooling being effective are:

1. when the boss is going to take increased damage for a period of time, in which case it's a good idea to hold off Deep Insight and just stack cp until you can pop Deep and get a good few casts off.
2. When you're about to have down time - hold off your Insight, stack cp, and wait for the adds to come out. Good example of this is all the Splits on Tectus - if he's about to die, hold off until you get new targets to cleave in to
3. When your Cooldowns are about to come up - hold off on using Finishers to get better use out of the cdr from them

The only warning that I have with this is that your energy regen is stupid high with AR and Lust on at the same time, and energy capping at any time is a loss of DPS. Because of this, you might not want to pool at all, because all the bonus energy regen + the refunds from your Finishing Moves will leave you capping pretty quickly.

 

3) Refreshing RvS: As I mentioned above, I use RvS pretty frequently depending on what's going on at the time. That being said, if I haven't used it for any reason, I refresh it at a time where it will have the least impact on me moving through stages of Insight. This often means I'll recast it with a few seconds left inside Deep Insight, because that way I can push through into Medium while wasting as little time on RvS as possible

 

4) Refreshing SnD: Similar to RvS above, I refresh it as soon as it's not wasting cp or time. Under 10s will extend it back to the longest duration possible, but I will hold off on this in order to cast Evis if I'd leave Deep Insight before I'd have 5 more cp. Don't hold off on refreshing it if it will fall off before you get 5 more cp though. 

 

Ideally though, you want to try and refresh it with as low Insight as possible, because otherwise you're losing potential damage

 

5) Using Ambush: You should be casting Vanish and Ambush as soon as Vanish is off cooldown. Similar guide for this as using KS - if you'll get into a higher level of Insight within the next couple seconds, hold off on Vanishing until you get the damage boost. Remember Vanish is off the gcd, so you can just spam Ambush after your cast and not waste any time

 

6) VR vs SR: I'm not sure I'd ever change from VR to SR for Combat. I'd consider this for a very (very) quick fight, and use SR in a Deep Insight where I'm going to KS. Reasoning for this being that your clone doesn't copy white swings, so it misses a lot of your damage as Combat.

 

Try and time it some time when you have 10 cp saved (or are using MfD) and get as many Evis casts off in the first couple seconds as possible then KS in the last couple seconds of it copying moves

 

I'm happy to chat on BNet if you want, although if the discussion is going to be as in depth as the post I just made, I think that leaving a novel for the other to read is more effective :P

[Synep 0]

 

 

Pardon the sarcasm a moment, but I recommend not playing Combat

 

 

Simcharts mean next to nothing. This is really really important to understand; they are purely theoretical, and nobody can play their class to Sim-

 

 

Since you have LW, I recommend making yourself a belt and trying to get some better stats on it

 

Alright cool! You pretty much answered all of my questions, but these 3 quotes i wanted to kind of reply to.

 

Yeah i wouldn't actually be playing combat, had i not had the luck i had in the first week. Combat practically RELIES on good weapons and trinkets, and i just don't see the other specs being as good even on single target until i get better weapons than the daggers from heroics. I'm pretty sure combat will outshine them just because of having The Bladefist in both slots, Once i'm able to pick up a dagger or two from HM i'll be respectively switching to subtlety or Assassination.

 

I don't really base too much around simcharts, but they do hold true when it comes to practically HOW dps should be placed. Hunters in raids right now are always top of the charts, even in less than heroic gear sometimes they're still pulling upwards of 20-21k.

 

Windwalkers and Feral druids if played right are also way up there, but i do agree with you someone with excellent knowledge of a certain class will be doing good regardless, and i'm in a good spot, but they just have more "Latent ability" to do better than i do.

 

On the crafting agenda, i already have all 3 crafted items, (Although this necklace about to get disenchanted because i've rerolled it 30+ times and still no "of the deft" !!"

 

Thanks for the answers and the reasoning behind them, I've been watching Mythic raiding guilds (particularly in the world's top 100) rogues and they seem to be running Sub/Combat, with Shadow Reflection for both specs. That's why i was wondering why someone would Take SR in combat, i'm still going to mess around with it more and see how my numbers change with the talents.

 

How are you feeling about weapon enchants this expansion? When do you think the buff enchants will become more viable than a second MOTSH? (Seeing as how the offhand MOTSH enchant is only about 60-70% of its main hand value, depending on haste this number will increase/decrease between 60-70%) What iLevels are we looking at it becoming a valid option? I think the static haste from MOTWS is 149~ Roughly, which is only 1.49% Haste. 

 

Thanks again, i'll send you a message of my Bnet tag, as maybe we can theorycraft a bit here and there, i find it quite useful to have knowledgeable players of the same class on my bnet for these purposes =).

 

P.s - FINALLY GOT OF THE DEFT ON MY NECKLACE YUSSSSSS.

Edited December 6, 2014 by Synep

[Carrn 284]

Hunters are overboard I think, yes. WW Monks and DKs benefit a TON from cleave, but don't do that great single-target so it's difficult to judge them. Overall, I don't think that there's too much of an issue with class balance - Hunters are the main offender at the moment.

 

Good call on the weapons, I assumed you played Combat as your first choice. It's a boring spec anyways, and one I flatly refused to play even when it was so strong at the end of MoP. It's better now with micro-managing Insight and RvS, but still too spam happy and carpal tunnel inducing imo

 

I also didn't realize that the DMF Trinket counted as crafted, unless I'm missing something obvious on your Armory (totally possible, as I'm really sleep deprived at the moment).

 

I honestly don't know about the weapon enchants. The flat damage from MOTSH is really strong right now, but the gear from Mythic is so much better than everything else that I really have no idea what to expect in terms of enchants. All I know is that the proc from is is anywhere from 5-7% of my damage done for a fight right now, which I find pretty insane. 

[Synep 0]

 

 

 but still too spam happy and carpal tunnel inducing imo

Yeah.. I was in highmaul on release day for around 8 hours after release, bloodlust+AR stacking makes your fingers blister after awhile haha.

 

 

 

I honestly don't know about the weapon enchants. The flat damage from MOTSH is really strong right now, but the gear from Mythic is so much better than everything else that I really have no idea what to expect in terms of enchants

Cool, yeah i didn't expect them to really be too savvy until probably heroic or mythic BRF. - Although it should be thoroughly tested in my opinion because of MOTSH proccing from Crits and Multistrike, aswell as scaling with haste.

 

A part of me wants to believe that off-hand Multistrike/Haste enchants will be viable in full heroic Highmaul gear, but we'll have to see later when people actually get some testing with the enchants done.

[CYREX 0]

Hi All,

 

My question is what what DPS range should I be as a combat Rogue I635. I have 2 AXES from Iron Dock I635.

 

On a Training Dummy un-buffed just poisons I am getting 12.7K.

 

I had a look at Noxxis and it states that I should be pushing about 16.8K - I take it that's fully Buffed with I level 635.

 

In HM I couldn't believe it as I was only Pushing 12.4K on Tectus and a Combat rogue with I630 was doing 17.6k DPS. Our Up time was very similar with a few seconds. 

 

My rotation and build is as per Icy Veins guide. Am i missing something? This DPS was recorded before tectus split so pretty much a training dummy. RL was questioning me re the low dps and I was lost for words. I told him My Rotation is as per Icy Veins but I cant argue with the figures from the other rogue.

 

Is recount glitched?

[Carrn 284]

Hi All,

 

My question is what what DPS range should I be as a combat Rogue I635. I have 2 AXES from Iron Dock I635.

 

On a Training Dummy un-buffed just poisons I am getting 12.7K.

 

I had a look at Noxxis and it states that I should be pushing about 16.8K - I take it that's fully Buffed with I level 635.

 

In HM I couldn't believe it as I was only Pushing 12.4K on Tectus and a Combat rogue with I630 was doing 17.6k DPS. Our Up time was very similar with a few seconds. 

 

My rotation and build is as per Icy Veins guide. Am i missing something? This DPS was recorded before tectus split so pretty much a training dummy. RL was questioning me re the low dps and I was lost for words. I told him My Rotation is as per Icy Veins but I cant argue with the figures from the other rogue.

 

Is recount glitched?

 

Do you have a log you can post? I can't tell you if you're doing something wrong without a log from the fight