Blade Flurry and Adrenaline Rush

[Gandalf]

If you are performing your single target rotation and the boss has 1-2 adds near him, do you keep Blade Flurry on during AR/Shadowblades and continue to cleave the adds?

Also, during huge groups of adds(10 +) do you keep Blade Flurry on while you are FoKing?
Thanks

[Fluorescent0]

Yes on the former, no on the latter. Keep doing your single target rotation with BF on.

[shadowboy]

You do want to occasionally FoK. Not as a primary combo builder, but to spread deadly poison and sunder if you glyph sharpened knives, which I recommend for cleaving. Sunder DOES increase blade flurry damage. Just hit FoK every ~5-10 seconds to keep deadly poison and sunder applied. If 2-5 targets, hit FoK every ~25-28 seconds to keep sunder applied (although it may be useful to spread deadly here, too. That I am unsure of).

[Sesshou]

Eh, hunter pet takes care of sunder. I will swap out some evis for CT if its 10+ (and they arent going to die in like 4 seconds) to keep the dot rolling and proc some poisons though.

[shadowboy]

Sesshou: ONE hunter pet takes applies an aoe sunder. My investigation with simcraft is that it is a (very very small) single target personal dps gain for a combat rogue to sunder (iff expose armor is glyphed)--even if someone else can. In the case of my 10 man group, at one point we were missing a buff or two that the hunter(s) had to provide. I was the only other one who could sunder.

Regardless, FoK spreads deadly poison and that's a very significant dot you are not applying to additional targets if you don't use FoK.

I generally run expose armor, sharpened knives, and smoke bomb glyphs (except on some specific fights).

[Sesshou]

Yeah, 1 hunter pet applies 3 stacks AE on a 30 sec cooldown. In general for us, there are 2 useful hunter pets: single target sunder and AE sunder. The rest are garbage, and boy did I rage on this hunter at the start of MoP who was such a giant f'ing idiot he didn't have either of them. We almost always have 2 or more hunters. They can sunder for me.

[shadowboy]

A Combat rogue is a better ST sunder provider than a hunter unless you have a very good reason why you can't use the expose armor glyph. And a 4% physical damage pet (ie, ravager) might be more useful than a sunder pet. Currently on some fights we do not have a plate dps handy (as our ret paladin goes holy on 3-heal fights).

[Kael]

...and this will always vary based on your specific comp. Knowing that the armor reduction affects blade flurry, and roughly when to use it, if no other sunder is available, isn't wasted information.

If you DO have a wheefree AoE sunder, don't worry about it. If you DON'T... well, honestly probably don't worry anyway given this tier's fights, but if you find a reason to, sure, it's good to know. And for single target - if your raid comp doesn't have one, this just proves without a question you should put it up.

On the original question - I'm pretty sure the math was done a ways back showing that CT (when the bleed isn't going to get clipped either by refresh or mob death) was worthwhile as low as 3 targets (I'd like to find the thread, but I don't have time), and I'm quite sure that by 10+ targets it's still an evis replacement when you can reapply the debuff.

[Maelstrom51]

A Combat rogue is a better ST sunder provider than a hunter unless you have a very good reason why you can't use the expose armor glyph.

Why is that? 100% uptime 3 stack sunder without any resource or GCD loss makes hunter sound way better, IMO.

http://www.wowhead.com/spell=50285/dust-cloud

[Raic]

On the original question - I'm pretty sure the math was done a ways back showing that CT (when the bleed isn't going to get clipped either by refresh or mob death) was worthwhile as low as 3 targets (I'd like to find the thread, but I don't have time), and I'm quite sure that by 10+ targets it's still an evis replacement when you can reapply the debuff.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...t-AOE-rotation

[shadowboy]

Why is that? 100% uptime 3 stack sunder without any resource or GCD loss makes hunter sound way better, IMO.

http://www.wowhead.com/spell=50285/dust-cloud

Because expose armor is a 25 energy combo point and restless blades is a powerful mechanic. Sinister strike is 39 energy per combo point if you have t16 2-set, 41 energy without.

If you run simcraft in the t16h profile, turn off sunder and add a line for expose armor, it ends up being a very slight (a couple hundred dps) loss if you don't use the glyph, and about a 1k dps gain if you use the glyph. It's a wash, but a hunter would be better off providing something that the raid needs in absence of a rogue. AoE sunder is arguably useful from a hunter, but for single target, it's a wash. If you need the glyph slot (from expose) for anything, it may be better for the hunter to sunder. I have no trouble finding room for it. I run expose glyph full time (solo/questing and in our raids).

- - - Updated - - -

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...t-AOE-rotation

There was a more extensive discussion on EJ. It's less straightforward than that. The overarching conclusion was that it's unknown how many targets you need before CT becomes worthwhile and probably varies by gear anyway. I would argue that it's probably more like 7-ish. That spreadsheet doesn't consider evis proccing main gauche, which then cleaves, or the main-gauche sourced combat potency (makes evis higher dpe), or the instant poison proc from mg. it also only assumes 1 DP-I proc per CT, regardless of number of targets.

[Raic]

There was a more extensive discussion on EJ. It's less straightforward than that. The overarching conclusion was that it's unknown how many targets you need before CT becomes worthwhile and probably varies by gear anyway. I would argue that it's probably more like 7-ish. That spreadsheet doesn't consider evis proccing main gauche, which then cleaves, or the main-gauche sourced combat potency (makes evis higher dpe), or the instant poison proc from mg. it also only assumes 1 DP-I proc per CT, regardless of number of targets.

As I continue to search for more information, I found out what you were referring to

EJ Discussion Link

Starts on page 6, specifically post 113 to about post 133

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...rive_web#gid=0

Google spreadsheet that takes into account MG (credits to the original poster)

[Sesshou]

A Combat rogue is a better ST sunder provider than a hunter unless you have a very good reason why you can't use the expose armor glyph. And a 4% physical damage pet (ie, ravager) might be more useful than a sunder pet. Currently on some fights we do not have a plate dps handy (as our ret paladin goes holy on 3-heal fights).

There is no way a rogue is better than a hunter pet... it costs me something to apply it where it costs the hunter nothing to have his pet apply it. And like I said, for us, the only useful pets are ones with sunder. Everything else is redundant.

And if you're ignoring the debuff, I don't see how you are getting it being a small loss to EA without the glyph and a small gain with it since you get the same cp per energy with or without. Either EA is a single target dps gain regardless of sunder being up 100% of the time from another source, or hitting it instead of putting the energy into something else is a dps loss. Pretty sure its the latter. So there is no reason to ever hit it when a hunter can do it for you (now sure for your case where you need another buff, I don't consider that a case where a hunter can do it for you).

[Maelstrom51]

Because expose armor is a 25 energy combo point and restless blades is a powerful mechanic. Sinister strike is 39 energy per combo point if you have t16 2-set, 41 energy without.

If you run simcraft in the t16h profile, turn off sunder and add a line for expose armor, it ends up being a very slight (a couple hundred dps) loss if you don't use the glyph, and about a 1k dps gain if you use the glyph. It's a wash, but a hunter would be better off providing something that the raid needs in absence of a rogue. AoE sunder is arguably useful from a hunter, but for single target, it's a wash. If you need the glyph slot (from expose) for anything, it may be better for the hunter to sunder. I have no trouble finding room for it. I run expose glyph full time (solo/questing and in our raids).

I still don't understand. In our raid, the only buff/debuff we have to worry about, at all, is sunder. Everything else is taken care of completely. This isn't a question of how much of a gain using the expose armor glyph is when using expose armor, its how much of a loss it is to use expose armor at all.

Unless using expose armor is a zero dps loss, or a dps gain by itself without considering the sunder debuff, having a hunter apply the debuff is the better alternative.

[shadowboy]

There is no way a rogue is better than a hunter pet... it costs me something to apply it where it costs the hunter nothing to have his pet apply it. And like I said, for us, the only useful pets are ones with sunder. Everything else is redundant.

Let me say this again. The combat rogue does more dps if HE sunders than if someone ELSE sunders, provided he is glyphing expose armor. If the ROGUE sunders, he does more dps than if the HUNTER sunders, whereas the hunter loses nothing if the rogue sunders. Therefore the raid dps is higher if the ROGUE sunders, not if the hunter sunders. This is only true for combat and only true if expose armor is glyphed, though.

[Sesshou]

Let me say this again. The combat rogue does more dps if HE sunders than if someone ELSE sunders, provided he is glyphing expose armor. If the ROGUE sunders, he does more dps than if the HUNTER sunders, whereas the hunter loses nothing if the rogue sunders. Therefore the raid dps is higher if the ROGUE sunders, not if the hunter sunders. This is only true for combat and only true if expose armor is glyphed, though.

That makes no sense. If that was the case, then every combat rogue should always put EA in their rotation regardless of who is putting the debuff up and the glyph is irrelevant because the glyph only has to do with the debuff. And btw, the hunter loses nothing if the hunter sunders as well... so no matter what, the hunter loses nothing.

Sounds to me like you got your numbers from a completely different situation where the combat rogue is gaining dps by using EA with the glyph because doing so allows his other damaging abilities to benefit from the armor debuff. That is still less dps than that rogue would be doing if a GM came in and put the debuff up for you 100% of the time and you didn't hit EA.

[shadowboy]

That makes no sense. If that was the case, then every combat rogue should always put EA in their rotation regardless of who is putting the debuff up and the glyph is irrelevant because the glyph only has to do with the debuff. And btw, the hunter loses nothing if the hunter sunders as well... so no matter what, the hunter loses nothing.

Restless blades is why. Expose armor offers more combo points per energy spent than sinister strike or revealing strike and that's if you factor in the RvS AND T16 2-set for sinister strike

RvS: 40e per cp
SS: 39e per cp with t16 2-set. 41e per cp without.
EA: 25e per cp

Since EA does no damage on its own it's only a gain if you apply it a MINIMAL number of times (that is, enough to keep the debuff rolling). If you glyph EA, you save 50 energy that can be used on sinister strike. It's a tradeoff of efficient cp per energy for inefficient damage per energy.

The glyph's value, however, does depend on how long the target is going to live, tending to worthlessness on an infinitely long fight. On anything surviving shorter than 30 seconds, EA is infinitely better because the cd on the hunter aoe sunder starts to become limiting--the raptor needs 12 seconds to 3-stack (assuming first stack at time 0) and the tallstrider needs up to 25 seconds to apply it on a new target in the first place--depending on where in the cd cycle the last target died.

[Sesshou]

Since EA does no damage on its own it's only a gain if you apply it a MINIMAL number of times (that is, enough to keep the debuff rolling). If you glyph EA, you save 50 energy that can be used on sinister strike. It's a tradeoff of efficient cp per energy for inefficient damage per energy.

The glyph's value, however, does depend on how long the target is going to live, tending to worthlessness on an infinitely long fight. On anything surviving shorter than 30 seconds, EA is infinitely better because the cd on the hunter aoe sunder starts to become limiting--the raptor needs 12 seconds to 3-stack and the tallstrider needs up to 25 seconds to apply it on a new target in the first place--depending on where in the cd cycle the last target died.

So what you're saying is that if we run 3 combat rogues, all 3 should always hit EA around once every 30 seconds because doing so is a dps gain even if a full stack of sunder is on the target and is never going to fall off?

If thats actually true, why is no one doing it? Can you find me any top rogue who is doing that?

[Kael]

EA Discussion moved here: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...-Combat-(SimC)

If we've got more to talk about specifically around blade flurry, it can continue here.

[shadowboy]

EA Discussion moved here: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...-Combat-(SimC)

If we've got more to talk about specifically around blade flurry, it can continue here.

Thank you for moving that for me, it got a little offtopic but that's where the thread of discussion went.