I don't quite understand what it is, first off.
Secondly, how does it increase/decrease DPS?
I'm sure somebody has asked this before, but I don't quite understand...
I don't quite understand what it is, first off.
Secondly, how does it increase/decrease DPS?
I'm sure somebody has asked this before, but I don't quite understand...
It basically means refreshing Envenom before the buff falls off.
But how does that help/not help?
Last edited by Space Troll; 2013-02-25 at 07:37 AM.
Originally Posted by Surreal
So should I be "clipping" it, or not clipping it?
Envenom is all about the buff that it gives you with an increased poison proc rate, not the direct damage.
You could replace a 5 sec buff with a 1 sec buff by accident, wasting potentially 4 seconds of buff time. You don't want that. If you wait until the buff drops, you can use two Envenoms both with the maximum buff duration.
Oh, it has nothing to do with the amount of damage the skill does, but rather the fact that it procs the poisons more often?
Envenom gives you an buff which during you apply more poisons. Now, if you envenom too quickly after your 5-cp envenom, you will lose the excess time from your previous buff which results in a DPS-loss.
What you want to do is to refresh the buff at ~1 second because that 1 second will be added to the duration of the new buff and you don't lose uptime. You definately do not need to wait for the buff to drop completely. There's an exception to "DONT CLIP" rule though and that's during shadow blades and/or bloodlust. Whenever you gain too much energy and combopoints, you should dump the points by envenom clipping if you're about to cap on energy and anticipation points at the same time.
I suggest you to take a look at priority guides either at elitistjerks or from several youtube videos. Hopefully I were able to help you out at all.
Last edited by Jiigeri; 2013-02-25 at 07:48 AM.
Envenom gives a buff that makes your poisons happen more often.
you want to use all of that buff before you try to replace any of it with any other duration. even replacing 1 sec with 1 sec is a loss.
wait for it to fall before you reapply any kind of envenom baring some crazy capped energy everything refreshed max combo points.
its a good idea to wait for your energy bar to fill up a bit anyway (but never let it hit the full bar, loss of potential dps), that way after pooling for energy while waiting for the envenom buff, you can cast another envenom and then perform 1-2 mutilates/dispatches, which will take even more advantage of the buff.
The last two posts really explain it pretty well. See "the nitty gritty" assassination FAQ at the top of the forum for an in-depth explanation of when to clip and when not to (not to being 90% of the time).
The one phrase that hasn't been used here, is maximum buff uptime. Note, that like other buffs - and as Jigeri points out, envenom is considered to have a "tick" at 1 second intervals, and if renewed after the next-to-last tick will add the remaining time onto the new buff.
If you cast envenom at 5 CP, you get 6 seconds of the envenom buff. If you were magically able to use 30 combo points in a row, you *could* use all 5 envenoms available to you in the first 5 GCD's of your pull, but over the first minute, you'd only have 5+6(+1) seconds of the envenom buff, for 12/60 seconds! Instead, using envenom with <1s remaining on the buff (0 being <1 as well, of course), you extend out to 5+5+5+5+5 = 30s of envenom uptime over those 60 seconds. In reality, your "clipping options" are usually ~3 seconds, but pooling energy/CP/anticipation always comes out ahead until you're capping those.
Rogue Forum Moderator (formerly Mugajak)
Former Electric Sheep Recruitment Officer (They're Great!) - Kaeldraens
What addon are you all using to keep track of this? I have tried various ones with limited success.
Any buff tracker. ElvUI, powerauras, weakauras, TellMeWhen, NTK, Satrina's Buff Frames, Elkano's Buff Bars, Slice Admiral, and any other number of rogue-specific addons or buff-specific addons.
You want to see a second counter. When it's at 1 or 0, depending on the image behavior (or 0.X if you show decimals in your buff tracker), you're safe to renew without clipping.
Rogue Forum Moderator (formerly Mugajak)
Former Electric Sheep Recruitment Officer (They're Great!) - Kaeldraens
Isn't clipping removed from like beginning of cataclysm?
AFAIK, they added clipping at around 1 second, anything beyond that and you lose the duration.