Looking at Subltey PvE

[EberKain]

Just posting to get some expert rogue opinions. I know someone will be a smartass and say, dont use subltey if you want to run dungeons. I like subltey and I love doing the new heroics. What I am looking for is tips on how to bump my dps up a bit more. Thanks for checking out my thread.

Currnet Talents are (10/0/31)

When gemming/reforging I went for hit & expertise caps against level 87 mobs, and then haste > mastery > all others

My opening rotation is...

Premed -> Shadowstep -> Ambush -> Recoup -> Shadowdance -> Ambush -> Hemo -> Rupture -> Ambush -> Slice & Dice -> Ambush -> ...

What I've learned is, I need to keep Recoup and Slice and Dice on myself at all time, and Rupture and Hemo on the target at all times to be most effective.

After the opening it becomes a simple cycle of building up 5 CP with backstab, and a hemo thrown in whenever that debuff is about to fall off.

The Finishing moves cycle back and forth between Evis (to restart the rupture timer) and either Recoup or SnD to restart those timers.

[Annoying]

Your stats are a bit off mathematically. Based on the current theorycraft models, EJ has Agi>>>Yellow Hit>Haste>Expertise>Crit>Spell Hit>White Hit>Mastery.

Based on the difficulty of the rotation, I'd wonder what your SnD/Recup/Rupture uptimes are. I've used sub in a particular heroic raid (for all the lovely defensive talents, I know...) and found that 10 into combat rather than assn was much better on both survivability and damage. The hit talent and 7% BS/Evisc talents are powerful, and the SnD really keeps the rotation manageable. Other than that, you're on the same-ish idea of a rotation. Your recup>rupture>evisc priority is right, however, wasting 2 GCDs in ShD for hemo and SnD is less than desirable. I tend to get it all up and then ShD my way to glory.

[Skulldouggery]

First would just like to say thanks for posting the recount panes - I haven't attempted sub pve yet this expansion and it's interesting to see damage composition and numbers etc.

For spec, it seems like for pure dps purposes you should drop the points in Quickening and Nightstalker and put them into something directly impacting damage. Between Sprint and Step you have plenty of mobility. Taking Precision, filling up Coup de Grace, taking Prep and Elusiveness to allow for Vanish + another opener from stealth mid-fight thus putting up Find Weakness for 10 more seconds, etc. would be good options. Elitist Jerks recommends 8.2.31 for example, although I don't know that the same theorycrafting/practical testing has been put into that as the other two specs.

For glyphs, you'll have Rupture up continuously, so the rolling bleed from the Hemo glyph doesn't really help, its damage being miniscule. Shadowdance or Eviscerate would be better. Not relevant to dps so take it or leave it, but I'd ditch the Kick glyph as well - if you get into raiding there are any number of fights where you will likely be part of an interrupt rotation and some mixup leaving you with a 14 second kick cooldown could be disastrous. Replace with the Tricks glyph so you can keep Tricks off cd at no energy cost.

I won't presume to comment on your rotation - from your post you already know what buffs/debuffs to keep up, and I'm in no position to say how you should do it.

Hope that helps. Will be interested to see what other posters may say.

[EberKain]

Your stats are a bit off mathematically. Based on the current theorycraft models, EJ has Agi>>>Yellow Hit>Haste>Expertise>Crit>Spell Hit>White Hit>Mastery.

After looking closer at the numbers, I was thinking mastery would be better than they say, but finishing moves seem to be on the bottom of the list for overall damage, so yeah, mastery for sub is kinda terrible.

Based on the difficulty of the rotation, I'd wonder what your SnD/Recup/Rupture uptimes are.

For the posted numbers I very nearly had 100% uptime on everything, which is why I open the way i do, so i can get all the buffs up right at the start of the fight.

I've used sub in a particular heroic raid (for all the lovely defensive talents, I know...) and found that 10 into combat rather than assn was much better on both survivability and damage. The hit talent and 7% BS/Evisc talents are powerful, and the SnD really keeps the rotation manageable.

This what I was doing when I first started with Sub in PvE this expansion, but Lethality and Puncturing Wounds are just too good.

For spec, it seems like for pure dps purposes you should drop the points in Quickening and Nightstalker and put them into something directly impacting damage. Between Sprint and Step you have plenty of mobility. Taking Precision, filling up Coup de Grace, taking Prep and Elusiveness to allow for Vanish + another opener from stealth mid-fight thus putting up Find Weakness for 10 more seconds, etc. would be good options. Elitist Jerks recommends 8.2.31 for example, although I don't know that the same theorycrafting/practical testing has been put into that as the other two specs.

For glyphs, you'll have Rupture up continuously, so the rolling bleed from the Hemo glyph doesn't really help, its damage being miniscule. Shadowdance or Eviscerate would be better. Not relevant to dps so take it or leave it, but I'd ditch the Kick glyph as well - if you get into raiding there are any number of fights where you will likely be part of an interrupt rotation and some mixup leaving you with a 14 second kick cooldown could be disastrous. Replace with the Tricks glyph so you can keep Tricks off cd at no energy cost.

I won't presume to comment on your rotation - from your post you already know what buffs/debuffs to keep up, and I'm in no position to say how you should do it.

Hope that helps. Will be interested to see what other posters may say.

Thanks, yeah tweaking my talents and glyphs as you suggest, visiting the reforger and going to go at it again. Will post results when I get them.

But I agree, there seems to be little research done in Sub PvE, so im not too sure about following the EJ suggestions without questioning them a bit.

Thanks for the positive responses guys.

[Elementist]

I've always been interested in the viability of Sub in pve but never really tried it. How difficult is it to keep the rotation going while paying attention to fire/debuffs/kicks or what have you. Keeping all those finishers up is a little worrisome to me at the moment.

[Synexlol]

Firstly, you open with Garotte, not Ambush. If you open with Ambush, you waste a HaT Combo Point and don't have Sanguinary Vein up until you pop Rupture (Which is about 3-4 seconds later, even more if, for some reason, you don't put up Rupture first).

I've copy pasted this from where I posted it on the official forums, but this is the best rotation I can see and some added details:

Premed->ShS->Garotte->Hemo (+ HaT CP)->Rupture->Backstab to 5->SnD->Pool energy and ShD->Premed/ShS/Ambush->Recup->Ambush to 5->Evis->Backstab to 5->SnD (It should be low at this point)->When Hemo debuff is low refresh->Vanish/ShS/Premed->Ambush->When ShS and Premed are up, Preperation/Vanish/ShS/Premed->Ambush. I've considered swapping Vanish and ShD to maximize GCDs during ShD, but it's nigh on impossible to keep my timers up if I do that. It might be slightly easier in raids, but I don't think it can work.

Continue this way, keeping the priority as Rupture>SnD>Recup. If you do not get Rupture up during Master of Subtlety buff (You get a flat 10% damage increase as long as you never let it drop), then prioritize SnD over Rupture. Backstab is your Combo Point builder. You will pool energy a lot to make best use of HaT and always pool to 80+ before ShD.

Glyphs are Shadow Dance // Backstab // Eviscerate. You may want to use Slice and Dice in place of Eviscerate until you get the hand of the rotation, but it's not worth more DPS than Eviscerate.

As I've said before, Subtlety is not practical for most fights, and is extremely hard to play perfectly, especially given how Anti-Melee this Tier is. But if you are adamant on playing Sub, I hope I've helped.

[shadowboy]

Rupture accounted for 75k of his damage, that means using Master of Subtlety for a rolling rupture was responsible for 6.4k extra damage over the course of 2.25 minutes. Do you really think backstabbing to 5 points after rupture with no SnD is gonna be less damage lost than 6.4k? At 15% haste (not an unreasonable amount), that's about 3.5 seconds per backstab, and even if you get a HaT proc every 2 seconds, we're talking at least 6-8 seconds of lost SnD time, and the only MoS uptime that will benefit from SnD is that from the MoS buff gained from vanish. Even a 1-point SnD when glyphed is 15 seconds, which should be enough to get the rotation rolling. You get up to 7 combo points from HaT alone during that time.

Keep in mind that sanguinary vein only requires "a bleed" on the target. It doesn't have to be yours. If you have a druid tank the boss may already have lacerate and mangle up (lacerate may not yet be on the boss before you open up, so take that with a grain of salt). If so, you can replace garrote with ambush and remove hemo from your rotation entirely. Druid tanks are a sub rogue's best friend.

Still, that's a LOT of work for 8.7k dps on a heroics boss (more or less exactly Aldriana's point for not recommending the spec). For reference, earlier today I did 14.1k on beauty as combat, even with the fears and getting stuck on architecture (from the fears).

[Improvedlol]

Sub is only good for Valiona heroic, other then that it really suck. The changes they are making on the ptr won't make sub viable for pve.
Sub is 9k behind assassination right now..

[Shalcker]

Simcraft shows ptr-sub as viable to me. After adjusting my rotation on live too, it definitely got better. Not great, but better.

To the OP:
You number of ambushes is bit low. Even with no Glyph of Shadow Dance, you should be able to ambush at least three times each shadow dance, sometimes four, four to five with glyph. Don't forget to pool your energy and have recuperate up before you shadowdance, you'll run out of energy for 4th ambush otherwise.
Then you get ambush from vanish (and then prep-vanish), which is three more ambushes for given fight duration. Overall you should get about 2-4 more ambushes there.

Sanguinary Vein rolls rupture, so if you got agi-on-use trinkets, try to use them so that your initial rupture gets their benefits (and Master of Subtlety). If you use stacking agi trinkets, use it after they stack (and perhaps reapply MoS with vanish if it already expired there).

Opening with Garotte is dps loss. Even with no bleed up. Always open with ambush (ambush has better damage up front non-crit, costs less energy, and has ~95-100% crit rate vs ~25% crit rate on garotte). If you don't want to waste HaT point, don't use premeditation, save it for next shadowdance/vanish, or use it for early recuperate/snd.

You got 11 hemo there, that number must be lowered. Using Hemo is strictly dps loss. At most you can use it once per minute for debuff, and even that is debatable.
In your recount you're getting 10363 average damage per backstab, and 4477 average damage with hemo... While on energy cost 3 hemo > 2 backstabs, with 12k damage loss, and you also get 5 energy returned from glyph on backstab crits (with >50% crit rate), making it even cheaper.

Mastery is garbage (even on ptr). General order is agi >>>>>>> special hit > haste (it's quite close to special hit though) > expertise > spellhit > ap > crit > mastery.

For gems you gem agi everywhere. Non-agi socket bonuses should be ignored. 20/30 agi bonuses can be taken if they use red slot out of two or just one gem.

[Synexlol]

Rupture accounted for 75k of his damage, that means using Master of Subtlety for a rolling rupture was responsible for 6.4k extra damage over the course of 2.25 minutes. Do you really think backstabbing to 5 points after rupture with no SnD is gonna be less damage lost than 6.4k?

Over the course of a raid boss, it will be worth it. The OP's example fight lasted about 40-60 seconds, at a guess. A raid boss lasts 5-8 minutes. You are going to end up with 50k+ lost Rupture damage over the course of a 8 minute fight.

Edit: Garotte does 18-20k unbuffed for me. Ambush crits for 22k but I'm not crit capped for Ambush. Garotte is definitely worth using to open, especially if you are using Hemo glyph.

[EberKain]

I posted a response showing my talent glyph tweaks from your suggestions, but it says a moderator must approve my post...

[Shalcker]

Here is example of Subtlety damage without any hemo on Anraphet (though it's shorter fight judging by amount of melee hits, and it also has heroism), at ~13k dps

http: //i.imgur.com/kGnUP.png (cannot post it as link or image due to not enough posts)

100% uptime on SnD starting with 5pt SnD before pull (it's great to be in group with druid healers for HaT pre-pull, and healing being always required before Anraphet helps too)
Putting up trinketed rupture after first ambush (100% uptime too), then recuperate (not always up, but with fairly short downtime)
34% uptime on find weakness (no prep-ambush, just one extra ambush from vanish, two shadow dances (glyphed))

[Synexlol]

http://i.imgur.com/kGnUP.png

Linked for convenience.

[shadowboy]

Over the course of a raid boss, it will be worth it. The OP's example fight lasted about 40-60 seconds, at a guess. A raid boss lasts 5-8 minutes. You are going to end up with 50k+ lost Rupture damage over the course of a 8 minute fight.

Edit: Garotte does 18-20k unbuffed for me. Ambush crits for 22k but I'm not crit capped for Ambush. Garotte is definitely worth using to open, especially if you are using Hemo glyph.

The second picture showed the duration as 6:51:05 to 6:53:20, which is 2min, 15 seconds. 6.4k damage in a 5 man over 2.25 minutes does NOT translate to 50k over 5 mins in a raid, maybe 20-25k tops. Still, we don't know his group comp for this dungeon run so we don't know what buffs/debuffs were present. Was sunder present? 8% spell damage debuff? both of these debuffs favor SnD uptime over rupture. Every minute of MoS buffed rupture is worth about 5 seconds of SnD time.


Also, I wouldn't trust PTR version of simcraft. It puts mastery ahead of both expertise and haste for combat (in my gear), and a mastery that uses a "chance on hit" type mechanic will never scale better than haste because the mastery ALSO benefits from haste, but doesn't offer the OTHER benefits that haste does (increased base energy regen, increased autoattack damage, etc). The current modeling of combat for simcraft (PTR AND live) has some wonky stats scalings that make me feel ill-at-ease to trust its results.

[Shalcker]

Also, I wouldn't trust PTR version of simcraft. It puts mastery ahead of both expertise and haste for combat (in my gear), and a mastery that uses a "chance on hit" type mechanic will never scale better than haste because the mastery ALSO benefits from haste, but doesn't offer the OTHER benefits that haste does (increased base energy regen, increased autoattack damage, etc). The current modeling of combat for simcraft (PTR AND live) has some wonky stats scalings that make me feel ill-at-ease to trust its results.

Combat mastery on PTR does offer other benefits, Main Gauche is supposed to proc Combat Potency leading to increased energy regen, and more mainhand poison procs (at expense of offhand poison procs though).

But it is definitely below hit and expertise on scaling, and about equal to haste for simcraft BiS combat profile.
It had bug with main gauche proccing from itself a few releases before (that one definitely inflated mastery), it should be fixed with current version.

If your character still shows different scaling with current version, can you give me link so that i can check what might be wrong?

[shadowboy]

Combat mastery on PTR does offer other benefits, Main Gauche is supposed to proc Combat Potency leading to increased energy regen, and more mainhand poison procs (at expense of offhand poison procs though), as well as higher proc chance overall.

But it is definitely below hit and expertise on scaling, and about equal to haste for simcraft BiS combat profile.
It had bug with main gauche proccing from itself a few releases before (that one definitely inflated mastery), it should be fixed with current version.

If your character still shows different scaling with current version, can you give me link so that i can check what might be wrong?

My point is that haste offers all the benefits of mastery, and then some.

[Shalcker]

My point is that haste offers all the benefits of mastery, and then some.

Relative benefit of haste vs mastery is debatable. Which scales do you consider "right" for combat?

[Bobbojonno]

Your stats are a bit off mathematically. Based on the current theorycraft models, EJ has Agi>>>Yellow Hit>Haste>Expertise>Crit>Spell Hit>White Hit>Mastery.

Based on the difficulty of the rotation, I'd wonder what your SnD/Recup/Rupture uptimes are. I've used sub in a particular heroic raid (for all the lovely defensive talents, I know...) and found that 10 into combat rather than assn was much better on both survivability and damage. The hit talent and 7% BS/Evisc talents are powerful, and the SnD really keeps the rotation manageable. Other than that, you're on the same-ish idea of a rotation. Your recup>rupture>evisc priority is right, however, wasting 2 GCDs in ShD for hemo and SnD is less than desirable. I tend to get it all up and then ShD my way to glory.

This... you cant do without the hit rating and you need 3/3 precision because your white hit is so much of your overall dmg.

[Shalcker]

This... you cant do without the hit rating and you need 3/3 precision because your white hit is so much of your overall dmg.

You can also say "You cannot go without Lethality and Puncturing Wounds since backstab is such huge part of your overall damage."

Your backstab with Puncturing Wounds costs less energy overall due to synergy with glyph, and produces HaT combo points for you at 50%+ rate instead of 25%+, making rotation align much better to your actions (backstab+HaT from 3cp, finisher, HaT CD up for next backstab) and wasting less combo points.

[Bobbojonno]

You can also say "You cannot go without Lethality and Puncturing Wounds since backstab is such huge part of your overall damage."

Your backstab with Puncturing Wounds costs less energy overall due to synergy with glyph, and produces HaT combo points for you at 50%+ rate instead of 25%+, making rotation align much better to your actions (backstab+HaT from 3cp, finisher, HaT CD up for next backstab) and wasting less combo points.

you will notice that you get 20% overall dmg increase to your backstab and eviserate with aggression and the extra hitrating from pricision will increase the hit chance of your backstab... as i doubt he has 0/3 precision and is spell hit capped.

This isnt a solo spec so there will be enough critting in 5man, 10man or 25man to proc your HaT every 3 secs im very sure.

OP: looking at your top graph... it shows that there are only 2 places in that fight that you dealt and recieved healing.... this means that your recouperate was not up for a large part of the fight. You had 1x5pnt Recup and wot looks like a 1x3pnt Recup. Thats not enough over a 2.5 minute fight. this is also going to make the readings incorrect because they are based on you being energy starved.