Tricks of the trade and specs

[Kael]

To add to what Sessh is saying, if you target the body and cleave onto the leg, you will not receive bonus damage on the leg. It would be worth attacking the leg for doubled poison damage even if this weren't the case, but it exacerbates the issue. That doesn't seem to be what's pulling him down - instead, he seems to have abysmal uptime on the legs at all (#flurry, #RevealingStrikeontheleg).

SnD is really the bread and butter of our damage though, and should never ever have a low uptime unless we're away from all targets for an extended period of time. It should never be lower on priority than applying rupture, and if your rogue is having issues with flurry/SnD usage, he can just take rupture off his bars to make things less complicated without losing much damage at all.

[Saoron]

yea dunnu maybe that fight hasn't clicked well with him yet.. he did good on vizier, had solid uptime on SnD too.. Amber shaper should die tonight.. but for shekzeer, is combat still good ? or is mut better ? we will probably 4 heal and we want every single dps to bring the best dmg they can.. Me for example, as a hunter, the chance on hit dmg buff you get from the reavers, scales with SV mastery.. which is why I will be going SV.. Is there anything similar for rogues ? Or is combat good to just cleave the adds and what not.. I mean if someone can throw out a quick list of fights with the best rogue spec for each of them respectively that'd be sweet..

[Deleted]

Solid SnD uptime? If he's not assassination for Vizier, he's consciously nerfing himself by 10%+.

Spec based on my experience with heroic modes. Not done TOES so not sure about talents there - someone who has can fill in.

Stone Guardians: Combat (Preparation)
Feng the Accursed: Assassination
Gara'jal the Spiritbinder: Assassination (Leeching Poison)
Spirit Kings: Assassination
Elegon: Assassination (Shadowstep)
Will of the Emperor: Assassination

Vizier: Assassination
Blade Lord: Assassination (Burst of Speed)
Garalon: Combat (Elusiveness)
Wind Lord: Assassination (Cheat Death)
Amber-Shaper: Combat (Preparation)
Empress: Assassination

Protectors: Assassination
Tsulong: Assassination
Lei Shi: Assassination
Sha of Anger: Assassination

[Stynger]

Although I don't raid anymore and the talents have changed, I was the sunder bitch for like 2 years.

Never complained once. I once asked one of our 3 rogues to expose armor (?) for 1 fight just so I could
See if my dps increased at all and was told no by all three.

I can't see why someone wouldn't want to gimp their dps by so little to increase the raids as a whole. Especially
If you're not getting the kill

Meters tell you how good you are....

[Ryme]

I actually quite like weaving in expose armour into my rotation if it's needed, only need to do it once every 30 seconds glyphed and it's such low energy cost and provides a cp that I can trick myself into thinking it's not a dps loss

[shadowboy]

Only need to do it once every 30 seconds unglyphed as well (after the initial 2 extra to stack to 3). thing is it's much more costly unglyphed if you let it fall off.

[Ryme]

Only need to do it once every 30 seconds unglyphed as well (after the initial 2 extra to stack to 3). thing is it's much more costly unglyphed if you let it fall off.

Well, yeah, you know what I mean.

[Deleted]

Just a mention in regard to tricks -

My napkin math says that, all things being equal, it should provide a dps boost of ~3% to the target, while costing the rogue ~1.5%. So if you and the other char were equal, say 100k dps, after using the tricks, you would be at 98.5k, while the ToT target at 103k. Your summed dps would be 201.5k , a whopping 1.5k increase by using Tricks.

Now let's imagine a full raid, 2 tanks 2 healers 6 dps. Considering dps'ers being around 100k, and with a realistic total raid dps of about 700k . Your tricks would bump that by 1.5k, in other words an epic raid increase of 0.2%.

Just to put it into context, that would be 400k on a 200mil life raid boss. I think I've had one fight where we wiped by that margin, in about two years of raiding. Boss died next attempt.

There is obviously a place for tricks - in guilds that are constantly at 100%, and an extra 0.2% is make or break (so maybe top 50 guilds in the world?) and only on progression fights. The rest is arguably just dps charting for the ToT receiver.

I wish things were different, but sadly, in 99.99% of the cases, the person giving you crap for not using tricks isn't concerned about the raid dps, but about his own numbers.

So yeah, I agree with Ryme (which is on the same realm as me, lol), tricks needs to be re-done or removed.


Besides, I haven't rolled a rogue for the selfless vibe the class has.

[Sesshou]

So yeah, I agree with Ryme (which is on the same realm as me, lol), tricks needs to be re-done or removed.

Yeah it needs to be self cast like the feral druid version or it needs to be raid wide with whatever cooldown is appropriate like the warrior banner.

[Ryme]

Heh, so many posters on this sub-forum seem to be from Draenor EU, we should make a club.

[Coldkil]

Maybe it's the only realm left who has pve rogues still playing XD

[Zinulz]

Anyone who complains about giving your raid more dps should not be raiding. Just saying

[celinamuna]

lots of math

Speaking from a personal experience, your napkin math is waaay off.

I'm generally tricking one of the warriors in our raid and i've often seen 600k+ of bonus dmg from individual tricks (granted garalon), but even on normal fights i very often see 200k+ bonus from tricking (above 20%) with the average hovering around 120k+

And personally i have no problem with using tricks since doing 120k-250k dmg for 15 energy makes it by far best dmg/energy ability we have.

[Deleted]

Anyone who complains about giving your raid more dps should not be raiding. Just saying

On progression fights, I'm fine with gimping my dps for the greater good, even when the boost is that ridicously small. I am not fine with losing personal dps everytime so that another person can get ranked on farm bosses. Not when we can have a better mechanic than the current version of Tricks.

Speaking from a personal experience, your napkin math is waaay off.

I'm generally tricking one of the warriors in our raid and i've often seen 600k+ of bonus dmg from individual tricks (granted garalon), but even on normal fights i very often see 200k+ bonus from tricking (above 20%) with the average hovering around 120k+

And personally i have no problem with using tricks since doing 120k-250k dmg for 15 energy makes it by far best dmg/energy ability we have.

I'd assume Vendetta or AR would be the best ability we have, and I think it contributes more to raid dps too Shadowcraft simulates pretty well the effect of tricks using/receiving on individual dps, although granted, it's just for rogues. Even so, I wouldn't expect a massive (triple or more) difference for other classes receiving tricks.

Even using the numbers you've mentioned, 120k average would translate into 4k additional dps. Using the previously mentioned value of 700k, that'd translate into a 0.57% raid dps increase. Better than nothing or 0.2%? Sure. Calling it a proper raid cd? I don't know about that.


Random thoughts: Tricks' usefulness varies inversely proportional with the size of the dps group, so it should be reasonably powerful in dungeon challenge-mode groups, and nearly useless in a 25 man raid containing only one rogue (contributing less than 0.1%).

[Kael]

Even using the numbers you've mentioned, 120k average would translate into 4k additional dps. Using the previously mentioned value of 700k, that'd translate into a 0.57% raid dps increase. Better than nothing or 0.2%? Sure. Calling it a proper raid cd? I don't know about that.


Random thoughts: Tricks' usefulness varies inversely proportional with the size of the dps group, so it should be reasonably powerful in dungeon challenge-mode groups, and nearly useless in a 25 man raid containing only one rogue (contributing less than 0.1%).

I don't think tricks is a "proper raid CD" either, but I'd rework my entire UI to squeeze out another 4k DPS. Looking at 1 rogue's tricks' effect as a percent of group's total damage is misleading; instead, compare doing 110k with doing 113.5k (counting a loss for that energy, probably overestimating the loss). That's huge for pushing progression or hard berserk kills on repeat kills. I don't have an addon for tracking tricks damage - and I suspect the "average" is somewhat less than 120-200k - but even at 2k DPS, for a button every 30s, that's a "big" gain.

To call the tricks' usefulness inversely proportional to raid size, you could argue the same thing about the rogue being alive. If your rogue is 15% of your damage in a 10man and goes to 0% when dead, he's obviously less important to keep alive on 25 . While true, it doesn't change that you still care about the rogue being alive and adding those 4k DPS - or don't! - regardless of size.

This doesn't change that it feels COMPLETELY wrong to me, though.

[Verain]

I suspect the "average" is somewhat less than 120-200k

You should get the addon, because then you start to game it. If I tricks someone who is distracted or moving or at a lull, I can see as low as 60k. That same character during a burst phase, I can clear 220 easily. I have a handful of macros, and if I know someone is doing good damage, I'll hit them with it.

But tricks is definitely not a "raid buff". A raid buff is, expose armor. I don't think it's a "raid cooldown" either, as it doesn't affect the raid. Smokebomb will be a raid buff!

Anyway, the benefit of tricksing people who are bursting versus just tricksing the highest non-you on the meters is not much. The move is not "worth gaming" from that perspective. But, it's definitely still fun to find out the best tricks rotation for a fight, given your current crew. When we had enrage problems on Ultrax, I figured out where each tricks should go based on the WoL dps over time thing, which I'm pretty sure helped us.

[celinamuna]

I'd assume Vendetta or AR would be the best ability we have, and I think it contributes more to raid dps too Shadowcraft simulates pretty well the effect of tricks using/receiving on individual dps, although granted, it's just for rogues. Even so, I wouldn't expect a massive (triple or more) difference for other classes receiving tricks.
Even using the numbers you've mentioned, 120k average would translate into 4k additional dps. Using the previously mentioned value of 700k, that'd translate into a 0.57% raid dps increase. Better than nothing or 0.2%? Sure. Calling it a proper raid cd? I don't know about that.
Random thoughts: Tricks' usefulness varies inversely proportional with the size of the dps group, so it should be reasonably powerful in dungeon challenge-mode groups, and nearly useless in a 25 man raid containing only one rogue (contributing less than 0.1%).

When i said dmg/energy ability i mean it as abilities that we spend energy on : Sinister / Muti / Backstab , etc..
Compared to all of them it blows it out of the water, and if i communicate well with the raid dps who's getting tricks when, that number goes to ~220k average, which at that point is somewhere around 7k dps (which afaik is worth more than all of my reforges + gems combined)

[Deleted]

When i said dmg/energy ability i mean it as abilities that we spend energy on : Sinister / Muti / Backstab , etc..
Compared to all of them it blows it out of the water, and if i communicate well with the raid dps who's getting tricks when, that number goes to ~220k average, which at that point is somewhere around 7k dps (which afaik is worth more than all of my reforges + gems combined)

That would mean that someone is doing 244k dps for at least 6 seconds, every 30 seconds. Feng being as close as you can get to a Patchwerk fight, and even that becomes a bit sketchy with moving in and out of shields, epicenters, flame sparks etc, it would mean you can't really use ToT on CD, but actually have to time it. Which implies an even higher burst than 244k for 6 seconds to maintain that average.

All in all, I'm not inclined to call 220k a realistic TOT average gain, and the value probably is somewhere around or south of 100k, but happy to be proven wrong with logs. Either way, I wasn't disputing the fact that every little helps when it comes to progression fights or hard beserk timers on farm bosses, but rather the clunkiness of ToT, as it currently stands, and it's irrelevance on regular farm bosses with no hard enrage issues.

To bottom line it, I don't think that 220k average is a realistic number, unless the ToT receiver has like 250k dps. I'd speculate the overall gain is probably around 3-4% dps, while costing you around 1%, which is somewhat in line with what Shadowcraft suggests.

Happy to be proven wrong via logs though, and I can share my own logs.

Merged; one post was eaten by the spam filter, sorry for the slight redundancy - Mugajak

Cheers for adding it back, was a bit pissed I lost it so just re-posted a 2 line reply

[Mazius]

I don't think that 220k average is a realistic number, unless the ToT receiver has like 250k dps.

Hard to pull such numbers during trivial single-target fight (without extra damage buffs or debuffs), but pretty common during AoE encounters and single-target execution phase (heroism, extra DPS cooldowns).

[Deleted]

Heh, so many posters on this sub-forum seem to be from Draenor EU, we should make a club.

/join draenorchopchop

Rogues unite!