Heroic: Spine of Deathwing - An in-depth Rogue guide

[Deleted]

I actually disagree with a fair amount of what has been set here but i did want to clarify one specific point, the cast time on tendons is about 23 seconds, but its active to be attacked for only 19 seconds, i think the exact figure is 18.9seconds. thats how long you actually have. so you essentially have 18 gcd's to plan your rotation around.

[Armanewb]

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=5690&e=6474 for damage of abilities.

You can't say that it's a dps increase of a few hundred then not recognize that you lose proportionally more of burning wounds than Shadowcraft models for a 6 minute fight (you'd lose 2 ticks out of 182 in a 6 minute fight, whereas you'd lose 2 ticks out of 13 in a 23s burst). Your Burning Wounds is also modified by your prepot, whereas tendon damage will not be for the most part.

From Ashvael's logs again: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=5690&e=6474
Burning Wounds ticks on average for 4246 damage (a total of 197 ticks, so a good sample size) on the Burning Tendons. You have an inordinately high crit % in your logs (over 80% crit on your melee swings, 100% on backstab etc.) which will inflate the value of Burning Wounds due to RNG.

[Mastkhare]

tbh, i've already done some tries with 4 piece T13 heroic and next time i'll go with 2 Piece T12 and check the difference. Much better but my gut feelings are saying that T13 should be better choice.

[Synexlol]

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=5690&e=6474 for damage of abilities.

If you look at the damage of both Abilities to the Tendons only, Backstab crits for an average of 51k, which closes the gap from 22k to 9k. You can't take an average from that entire fight, because Ambush is used almost exclusively on the Tendons (with full buffs rolling and Find Weakness), whereas Backstab is used throughout the fight, with an average of 18% Find Weakness uptime across the whole fight and no Agi trinket etc., which will skew numbers.

You can't say that it's a dps increase of a few hundred then not recognize that you lose proportionally more of burning wounds than Shadowcraft models for a 6 minute fight (you'd lose 2 ticks out of 182 in a 6 minute fight, whereas you'd lose 2 ticks out of 13 in a 23s burst). Your Burning Wounds is also modified by your prepot, whereas tendon damage will not be for the most part.

Where are you losing 2 ticks? You will get 9 ticks in 18 seconds, assuming you Ambush as soon as possible with a 0.9s reaction time (which is quite high considering you'll be spamming a macro).

From Ashvael's logs again: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=5690&e=6474
Burning Wounds ticks on average for 4246 damage (a total of 197 ticks, so a good sample size) on the Burning Tendons. You have an inordinately high crit % in your logs (over 80% crit on your melee swings, 100% on backstab etc.) which will inflate the value of Burning Wounds due to RNG.

Their Combat Rogue is included in your figure, though. His Burning Wounds did about half the damage of any of the other Rogues, so he drags the figure down a lot. If you remove him from the figure, Burning Wounds ticked for an average of 5.1k on the Tendons, between the 3 Subtlety Rogues. Ashvael's Burning Wounds ticked for an average of 5.3k. This is done with assumed figures (where the Combat Rogue does ~10% of the Burning Wounds damage on the Tendon), but it should give a ballpark estimate. It's still slightly lower than I expected, but 6k ticks is definitely not far fetched. I'll take a look at some more logs later, I have no time now.

edit: Assuming that Ambush hits only 9k harder than Backstab (rather than 22k), the break-point where T13 4pc becomes better than T12 2pc is Burning Wounds ticking for ~4889. Ashvael's figure is already ~400 ahead of that, so it's safe to assume that 2pc T12 is still better than 4pc T13 in this case, by a similar amount to usual (it's about 200 DPS ahead in BiS gear and normal play, right?).

[eylieen]

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...=12030&e=12636
there, no more guessing. 4 rogues, 4 sets of burning wounds, all done exclusively to tendons. ambushes average 58k, burning wounds ticks for 4.9k. you can also look at http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...pes&boss=53879 which is an entire night of wipes, which pretty much confirms it (59k ambush, 4.6k burning wound ticks). do your maths from there, and you don't need to guess numbers from nowhere.

[Mastkhare]

Hi guys,

I am struggling with my dps on tendons so please feel free to guide me to the right path. Getting pwned by my SP,Mage and Pala. I know i might not have the gear level as them or the burst as them but still i sometimes don't even do more than 1million damage in each try to the tendon which i have setup a mark for myself.

Here are the logs from our last night tries http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...um/damageDone/
Here is my armory: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...hudan/advanced

I am using VP trinket instead of the haste trinket and also using legendary stage one dagger instead of MH axe. My current dps rotation is like this..

When the amalgamation is on 5% hp, i use the 5 combo points to refresh my Recup and quickly build up another 5 CP by using hemo, I use those 5 CP just before he explodes. As he starts casting explode, i use CoS and Vanish. I try to SS to the blowing amalgamation before he explodes and if not them i do it later on the tendon.

As soon as the tendon is exposed. I spam the macro by Ashvael to target the tendon. Before moving in for dps i cast my Tricks. I open with ambush, then i do one Hemo (don't have any warriors/feral druids and the hunter is using 8% spell dmg pet). After hemo i cast SD which is macroed with my trinket. Until i do 3-4 Ambush within SD everything is ok but then it starts falling apart. I lose my recup and in a few secs i also lose my SnD and also am really low at energy. I still try to build enough combo points to cast last few ambushs and i ignore refreshing SnD or Recup. If i havent cast the SS to blowing amalgamation then i cast it as soon as i have done SD and i back paddle a bit to avoid being teleported but sometimes i can't do it in time and end up being teleported thus more loss in dps.

Its getting really frustrated seeing myself all the time so low on tendon dps, i know i am doing something wrong somewhere but can't seem to pinpoint it. Can you guys please help me out and see if its my rotation, my reforge or what. Thanks in advance.

[Deleted]

Good guide overall, very clean and easy to understand. However, i must disagree with the specc.

I'm currently running 9/1/31 with 0/2 Initiative, 1/3 Envelopping Shadows and 2/2 Serrated Blades. I found that ditching Initiative smoothed out my rotation, while also making you get the max damage you can out of SDance. 0/2 Initiative for me goes (With a full stacked Recup) Pretricks > Vanish > Ambush > Trinket + Dance > Ambush > Evis > Ambush x2 > Evis > Ambush x2 > Evis > Ambush (This last ambush gives you FW for the full tendon duration, but relies heavily on MS and having Recup ticking for the whole duration).

This was running 2x T12 2x T13. I've since gotten 4 piece (Extra agility <3), so with the added Dance duration, you MIGHT get an extra Ambush and Eviscerate in (Again, very dependant on MS). 2/2 Initiative was literally Ambush > Evis. Assuming 3 GCD's, 0/2 gives you 2 100% crit Ambushes and a 5 Cp Evis. 2/2 gives you 2 100% crit Ambushes, and a 4 CP Evis. 4 GCD's, 0/2 gives you 3 Ambushes and one 5 CP Evis, whereas 2/2 gives you 2 Ambushes and 2 Eviscerates. A small loss, but a loss nontheless.

0/2 also gives you Rupture for the Amalgamation, which, quite frankly, is not a HUGE DPS gain, but it's still a gain. It also guarantees a bleed if you play 10 mans, and then you can replace GoHemorrage with GoBackstab, which is...quite frankly amazing.

Just a personal opinion.

---------- Post added 2012-01-16 at 07:46 PM ----------

Hi guys,

I am struggling with my dps on tendons so please feel free to guide me to the right path. Getting pwned by my SP,Mage and Pala. I know i might not have the gear level as them or the burst as them but still i sometimes don't even do more than 1million damage in each try to the tendon which i have setup a mark for myself.

Here are the logs from our last night tries http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...um/damageDone/
Here is my armory: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...hudan/advanced

I am using VP trinket instead of the haste trinket and also using legendary stage one dagger instead of MH axe. My current dps rotation is like this..

When the amalgamation is on 5% hp, i use the 5 combo points to refresh my Recup and quickly build up another 5 CP by using hemo, I use those 5 CP just before he explodes. As he starts casting explode, i use CoS and Vanish. I try to SS to the blowing amalgamation before he explodes and if not them i do it later on the tendon.

As soon as the tendon is exposed. I spam the macro by Ashvael to target the tendon. Before moving in for dps i cast my Tricks. I open with ambush, then i do one Hemo (don't have any warriors/feral druids and the hunter is using 8% spell dmg pet). After hemo i cast SD which is macroed with my trinket. Until i do 3-4 Ambush within SD everything is ok but then it starts falling apart. I lose my recup and in a few secs i also lose my SnD and also am really low at energy. I still try to build enough combo points to cast last few ambushs and i ignore refreshing SnD or Recup. If i havent cast the SS to blowing amalgamation then i cast it as soon as i have done SD and i back paddle a bit to avoid being teleported but sometimes i can't do it in time and end up being teleported thus more loss in dps.

Its getting really frustrated seeing myself all the time so low on tendon dps, i know i am doing something wrong somewhere but can't seem to pinpoint it. Can you guys please help me out and see if its my rotation, my reforge or what. Thanks in advance.

Hello there, fellow Maelstromer. Feel free to ask me any questions you have regarding Spine gameplay (Fórtuna's the name, AFK'ing in SW's my game).

[Deleted]

i think i would stil rather step to the amalganation with cloak up to have the buff present ready to be used as this would allow for a 2nd step useage before tendon finishes.
and alows a period of time to be spirit linking to friendlies ( although doesn't cloak make you immune to the link as it does nature damg to you when attempting to lower your health so it doesn't give it to someone else)

with your current setup wouldn't 10% evis crit beat snd? as your mostly geting of double cping abilities (ambush's) your evis ration is higher so the value of the glyph goes up?

also your not doing 4pc evis's in the time it takes to get 2 ambushes off your gona get a HaT proc so it's a 5pt evis.

[Dembeli]

Hey there guys.

So, before some minutes I was on my first time on Spine HC.

When burning tendons burst phase came, I just did what I am supposed to do:

Cloak > Shadow Step to the exploding Amalgamation 1 sec before it went (at the bust phase I was with +20sec on my SnD and Recup) Shadow Dance and using my macro for faster targeting the Burning Tendon, Ambush and VP trinket, Evisc at 4 pc(or at least I was supposed to do this last part, since I didnt had the chance to do it).

macro

#showtooltpip Ambush
/car[target=boss2] Ambush
/tar boss2

The strange thing here is that instead of normally DPSing the tendon, seemed like it wouldn't want to dps it. Was hitting my ambush macro while being in melee range (as much as u can be) to the tendon, and normally I started to dps only after like, 10 seconds. Calculated the time with my running off SnD and Recup. Can somebody please help me understand this? Maybe there is a special place where you need to stand to dps it or was my macro not effective?

[Tekloth]

macro

#showtooltpip Ambush
/car[target=boss2] Ambush
/tar boss2

The strange thing here is that instead of normally DPSing the tendon, seemed like it wouldn't want to dps it. Was hitting my ambush macro while being in melee range (as much as u can be) to the tendon, and normally I started to dps only after like, 10 seconds. Calculated the time with my running off SnD and Recup. Can somebody please help me understand this? Maybe there is a special place where you need to stand to dps it or was my macro not effective?

The macro you're looking for is in the first post of this thread;

#showtooltip Ambush
/targetexact Burning Tendons
/cast [target=target, exists] Premeditation <-- this line is optional, use only if you have Premed.
/cast [target=target, exists] Ambush

[elapadrinar]

Hey there guys.

So, before some minutes I was on my first time on Spine HC.

When burning tendons burst phase came, I just did what I am supposed to do:

Cloak > Shadow Step to the exploding Amalgamation 1 sec before it went (at the bust phase I was with +20sec on my SnD and Recup) Shadow Dance and using my macro for faster targeting the Burning Tendon, Ambush and VP trinket, Evisc at 4 pc(or at least I was supposed to do this last part, since I didnt had the chance to do it).

macro

#showtooltpip Ambush
/car[target=boss2] Ambush
/tar boss2

The strange thing here is that instead of normally DPSing the tendon, seemed like it wouldn't want to dps it. Was hitting my ambush macro while being in melee range (as much as u can be) to the tendon, and normally I started to dps only after like, 10 seconds. Calculated the time with my running off SnD and Recup. Can somebody please help me understand this? Maybe there is a special place where you need to stand to dps it or was my macro not effective?

The 2nd line should be '/cast' not '/car'

[Kaytemoss]

I don't have any version of the spine stacking trinket or Vial.

Which of heroic Hungerer (433 AGI + haste proc that may never pop at the right time....) or the 359 vendor trinket (static hit + stacking agility) should I choose to go with the Valor points trinket?

[Deleted]

I don't have any version of the spine stacking trinket or Vial.

Which of heroic Hungerer (433 AGI + haste proc that may never pop at the right time....) or the 359 vendor trinket (static hit + stacking agility) should I choose to go with the Valor points trinket?

HC Hungerer is a better trinket than Fluid Death, so go with that.

[Rolard]

So I'm curious. I'm an ENG, which as everyone knows, the gloves share a soft cd with the on-use trinket. The gloves will be up for every pop, whereas the trinket will only be up for every other pop. What do you guys think would be the most optimal thing to do? (Other than getting a new profession of course :P)

[Zephasaurus]

Use the zappers that you can put on your gloves and the on use trinket.

[Rolard]

Use the zappers that you can put on your gloves and the on use trinket.

They don't share the same soft cd like the agility boost?

[Dorfie]

They don't share the same soft cd like the agility boost?

Nopeeeeeeee

[Mastkhare]

Nopeeeeeeee

What engineering tinker are we talking about here?

[Zephasaurus]

http://www.wowhead.com/spell=82180

[Verain]

I'm pretty sure the gloves put the trinket on cooldown and vice versa, but you would be able to trinket -> gloves on one tendon I think (we haven't pulled this boss yet, but will be working on him all day thursday).

However, if you are going into phases enough that it looks like this:

Phase with trinket
Phase with gloves

Phase with trinket
Phase with gloves

(repeat)

Then the compare for another profession is:
Phase with trinket + 80 agility from the profession
Phase with +80 agility from the profession

Versus:
Phase with trinket
Phase with +400 agility from gloves for 12 seconds. How long are tendons up for? if 18 seconds, this is like having +267 agi. If 21 seconds, it is like having 228.

I honestly don't know how long they are open for and can't access much of the internet at the moment, but the point is, being 80 agility behind on the phase where you have the trinket is more than made up for by being over 100 agility ahead minimum on the other burn phases. I strongly suspect you are doing just fine with gloves, better than a static bonus.

If you have trinket up EVERY time, so you have it blazing for 15 seconds, you only need 3.75 seconds of active gloves to break even with your averages. It's probably a bit longer than that, but in any event, even if the tendons are 18 seconds, the 3 seconds of gloves on the trinket ones is damned close right there to the +80 static over the full duration- but if you have trinket up every time, you'll probably do better with the tazik right as the trinket ends, as discussed above.