Possible under-performing rogue, help please.

[sean485]

We have recently picked up a rogue to replace a melee spot and I have a few questions/concerns, hoping you guys can help me out.

First of all, we have been asking him to keep up the sunder armor debuff as our hunter runs either a sporebat for spellhaste 3 healing or a ravager for 2 healing since we don't have any strength dps. It 'seems' to be a huge issue for him to keep this up, even on single target fights and he is running the expose armor glyph. He is saying it's costing him 20k dps to keep it up, and while ideally we could have a pet/warrior/druid to bring the debuff we don't have that option so I am asking you is it just him not being able to manage his debuffs or does keeping the debuff up really wrench up the rotation that badly?

Secondly is just me being curious about his dps overall, he has only 530ilvl weapons, and his rupture uptime seems decent, but it still feels like he is a bit under where he should be considering how strong assassination is. I compared some logs and it seems to me that he is not having as many autoattacks or as much energy return from his rupture as other people seem to be getting?

We also have been having him using tricks of the trade on our enh shaman to try and boost our raid dps, I assume the dps loss for him is less than the gain we get by putting it onto a person that can burst so strong, but perhaps we are wrong?

Logs: worldoflogs.com/guilds/179095/
Armory: battle.net/wow/en/character/borean-tundra/Vanishh/advanced
Sorry, can't make proper links

Any help or advice is GREATLY appreciated, both on the rogue or the group overall.
-Sean

[Fluorescent0]

You're right about tricks of the trade, and he's definitely wrong on the expose armor matter. Heck, if you don't have the debuff up it's actually beneficial for him to keep it up.
On your Malkorok kill he had rupture up to 93%. Definitely not bad, but should be closer to 100% as it's basically patchwerk. What stroke me instead was the fact that he used vendetta only once while he could have got three uses.

On multitarget fights he seems not to multidot rupture on the various mobs, it's something that should be done sa long as the damage on the secondary target is actually beneficial (e.g. protectors). Specifically on protectors as well he missed a use of both vendetta and shadowblades.

Sha of Pride, once again, one vendetta (out of 4) and 2 shadowblades (out of 3).

Overall he's not doing a bad job, but he could definitely improve, especially in cooldown usage and multitarget situations.

[sean485]

Wow that was a quick reply, thank you!

I'll ask him about vendetta and see where that gets us. Out of curiosity is it recommended for him to use the expose armor glyph if he has to keep it up or is the glyph spot better used on something else and just have a bit slower to get all 3 armor stacks up?

[Fluorescent0]

It's probably better for him to keep it. We generally have two fixed glyph slots (vendetta and smoke bomb) with a third one being redirect (switching heavy fights) or whatever suits the fights mechanics (e.g. cloak of shadows for iron juggernaut). However if switching is heavy getting expose armor up on new targets is pretty important. If switching isn't that heavy I guess he could be not taking that (e.g. iron juggernaut where the cos glyph is useful for soaking mines).

For galakras I'd recommend him running the fok-expose armor glyph instead.

[Squirl]

Out of curiosity is it recommended for him to use the expose armor glyph if he has to keep it up or is the glyph spot better used on something else and just have a bit slower to get all 3 armor stacks up?

The glyph saves 50 energy and 2 globals in a single target fight. If he's applying it to multiple targets, then it saves the number of targets multiplied by those values (though, FoK glyph is more useful in an AoE situation). I find it's usually not worthwhile to run the EA glyph as Vendetta and Feint/Sprint/Smoke Bomb/Redirect/CoS give more benefit on many fights.

[Rigapples]

Keep in mind that it might NOT be a raid DPS gain to keep expose armor up for the Rogue. If he is assassination spec than most of his personal damage is coming from Poisons which ignore armor. If you only have 1 other physicalDPS attacking the boss, keeping up that expose on one (or multiple depending on the fight) targets is probably a larger dps loss for the Rogue than it is gained for your raid combined. This is especially often the case in 10mans. The Rogue does NOT benefit from this debuff in Assassination spec (or at least, so little it's not worth mentioning.)

And as for rotation, its minimal but it does cause a decrease in Rupture and Envenom uptime maintaining that and TotT on cooldown. TotT is probably something you want to make sure he/she continues to use, but more than likely using expose is a wash at best for your raid unless you are very heavy physical DPS.

/my2cents

[Carp The Fish]

Keep in mind that it might NOT be a raid DPS gain to keep expose armor up for the Rogue. If he is assassination spec than most of his personal damage is coming from Poisons which ignore armor. If you only have 1 other physicalDPS attacking the boss, keeping up that expose on one (or multiple depending on the fight) targets is probably a larger dps loss for the Rogue than it is gained for your raid combined. This is especially often the case in 10mans. The Rogue does NOT benefit from this debuff in Assassination spec (or at least, so little it's not worth mentioning.)

And as for rotation, its minimal but it does cause a decrease in Rupture and Envenom uptime maintaining that and TotT on cooldown. TotT is probably something you want to make sure he/she continues to use, but more than likely using expose is a wash at best for your raid unless you are very heavy physical DPS.

/my2cents

For Combat and Subtlety, Expose Armor should be kept up on their primary target, since most of their damage is physical. For Assassination, I'll need to use an example:

Dispatch, Mutilate, the legendary cloak proc, and the bleed from Rupture are all physical damage.
As an example, I'll use one of my guild's logs from after the nerfs, and subtract the AoE damage from my chart.
On a regular single-target fight, physical damage is a little under 4/10th's of an Assassination rogue's damage, even in a Mastery spec. For a Haste or Crit spec, it'd be a higher margin.

In my mind, if there is at least 2 melee DPS (including the Assassination rogue), then Expose Armor should be something your raid keeps up on the primary kill target. In an AoE or multi-target fight, just put it on the melee DPS's primary target.

If the rogue is concerned with juggling Tricks and Expose, FOR YOUR RAID, you should probably focus on Tricks.

[sean485]

Yea, we run a hunter, enh shammy, the rogue and both tanks so we had a fair bit of physical dmg. Not that it matters anymore as the rogue has stopped showing up for raids so I guess the problem has solved itself.

Thanks for the help, it is very much appreciated.

[Demeia]

The glyph saves 50 energy and 2 globals in a single target fight. If he's applying it to multiple targets, then it saves the number of targets multiplied by those values (though, FoK glyph is more useful in an AoE situation). I find it's usually not worthwhile to run the EA glyph as Vendetta and Feint/Sprint/Smoke Bomb/Redirect/CoS give more benefit on many fights.

OP, sorry about lost rogue. On the positive side, I had the question of whether I should FoK expose armor or use the single target glyph and this gives me my answer (I've got a DK, hunter, and 2 tanks to feed so I'm exposing). So the thread was not in vain! For me, anyway.

[shadowboy]

Dispatch, Mutilate, the legendary cloak proc, and the bleed from Rupture are all physical damage.

Bleeds ignore armor, so you should not count rupture in your list of abilties that benefit from sunder.

General comment: Keep in mind also that executes are often important and in those situations, assassination benefits pretty significantly from sunder, as dispatch is mitigated by armor.

Regardless, it will nearly always be a raid dps gain to sunder since all tanks and nearly all pets also benefit from it.

In comment to heavy target switching fights: If the target switching is heavy enough to necessitate redirect glyph, you may not (depending on the fight) get the most out of the vendetta glyph, so you may be able to use the EA glyph in the vendetta spot. If you lose more than 6 seconds of vendetta time with the glyph, the glyph is a loss (and that's strictly from a time-averaging sense, if shadow blades is used with vendetta, it reduces the value of the glyph with lost uptime).

[Kulestu]

His damage isn't all that low, to be honest. Tricks of the trade really depends. True, the damage gain is higher than his damage loss, but is' largely negligible if it's not used with his CDs. So, for example, if you had a fire mage, ToT would be a *major* DPS gain if used on CD, as it'll often line up with Combustion. Enhance shamans? It sort of depends. Should definitely be using it during his major CDs, which the rogue will just have to learn the timing of, but it should still be at least useful to use on CD. ToT is, again, largely negligible overall.

On expose armor? Umm, well, that kinda sucks for him, but he's losing damage if he doesn't have expose armor up, even if he has to lose some from his theoretical by putting it up himself.

[shadowboy]

I just ran one of my guild's assassination rogues through simcraft to see what effect it has maintaining expose armor. It is actually a personal dps gain on the order of ~1% for an assassination rogue to maintain expose armor. Given that tanks, melee dps, and most hunter/warlock pets also benefit from sunder. Given that OP's guild has an enhancement shaman, it is assuredly a raid dps gain for the rogue to maintain expose.

[Kulestu]

Bleeds ignore armor, so you should not count rupture in your list of abilties that benefit from sunder.

General comment: Keep in mind also that executes are often important and in those situations, assassination benefits pretty significantly from sunder, as dispatch is mitigated by armor.

Regardless, it will nearly always be a raid dps gain to sunder since all tanks and nearly all pets also benefit from it.

In comment to heavy target switching fights: If the target switching is heavy enough to necessitate redirect glyph, you may not (depending on the fight) get the most out of the vendetta glyph, so you may be able to use the EA glyph in the vendetta spot. If you lose more than 6 seconds of vendetta time with the glyph, the glyph is a loss (and that's strictly from a time-averaging sense, if shadow blades is used with vendetta, it reduces the value of the glyph with lost uptime).

Shouldn't really matter. There's only 1-2 fights on normal that I would drop vendetta glyph for and one on heroic, but even with the glyph you can still change the other two for redirect and FoK.