Quick Update IRL

Landed a new job.  More than doubled my salary and higher bonus potential.  

Went Blizcon and found that murloc toys were detained at customs.  And Blizzard still does not have a slight fucking clue on what's wrong with rogues in PvP.  Lowest mobility, low survivability, and the smallest area of attack out of all classes.

And most importantly, finally got my fucking Blogspot account working again.  Dumb fucks at Google demonstrated their incompetence at integration.  So I guess they will need to learn to swallow.

I will be casually playing WoW farming honor points and collecting data for more posts.

Weapon Specialization (de)Mystified

Over the past few weeks/months/years of rogue forum trolling at work, the question of how Fist/Dagger weapon specialization works have never been directed answered, documented, or even tested, despite the well known fact that Mace/Sword spec will work only if you ahve mace/sword equipped even in offhand only.

IMHO, the source of the confusion in Fist/Dagger spec is that, paperdoll's crit rate will increase by 5% if and only if you have the respective weapon equipped in Main-hand. Paperdoll crit rate will not receive the benefit of Fist/Dagger Spec if you only equip the respective weapon in Off-hand. Thus the 2 school of thoughts.

1. Fist/Dagger Spec will be in effect as long as you equip the respective MH, and OH will receive the benefit of +5% crit rate disregarding of the weapon type. e.g., Dagger Spec rogue with dagger in MH but sword in OH, should receive the same +5% crit chance increase for its OH sword.
   
2. Fist/Dagger Spec weapon spec will be in effect if and only if the respective weapon type is equipped, similar to Mace/Sword Spec.

My intuitation has always points to #1 as it is easier for the programmers to code the actual weapon spec mechanics, but I have not conduct any test to verify until today. In the past weekend of grinding Consortium rep (finally exalted btw), I have use recap to collect some sets of data from about 1000 melee swings with different weapons equipped.

The data collection is done using 13/41/7 combat daggers spec, with Dagger Specialization.

Set 1: Whispering Blades of Slaying (dagger) + Stormreaver Warblade (fist)

Set 2: Reflex Blade (fist) + Warp Splinter's Thorn (dagger)

My preliminary conclusion from the test data coheres to #2 argument, which argues for that fist/dagger specialization will be in effect as long as the respective weapon is equipped, ignoring actual paper doll crit rate.

I am at work right now, but the recorded numbers are at home. I will try to make an update soon.

Mutilate, Part 4: Myth on Off-hand Weapon Choices

Time to put something on this blog. IRL > WoW. I have also found a new home at Huang Long with a group of very skilled friends I have known since WoW release. Eminence, my former guild, has just started to get serious about 25men raids and shall catch up and leapfrog the likes of DnT very soon. I wish them best of luck.

In my opinion, the need of a high damage OH to maximize DPS for Mutilate build is a great misconception. My argument is that, MH weapon damage will dictate the overall Mutilate damage output and the impact of OH weapon damage is fairly muted.

In the following test, Mutilate damages are compared across a list of fast daggers with speed less or equal to 1.6 as OH and Gladiators Shanker as MH. Assuming a 22% crit rate and 1400 AP.

First, without DW SpecWith DW Spec,As the 2 graphs illustrated, the difference between using a high damage OH weapon and fast but low damage OH weapon is not all that significant. In terms of percentages, the differences in Mutilate damage between using a Warp Splinters Thorn and Gladiators Shanker are 7% and 5% for 41/x/5 and 41/20/0 respectively at the assumed case, and 11% and 8% for 0 AP 0% crit respectively.

In other words, you will be doing a whopping 7% more Mutilate DPS using a Gladiators Shanker vs. Warp Splinters Thorn, ignoring weapon stats (less than 3% of overall DPS which could very well be made up by weapon stats). The primarily explanation for this is that the +101 static damage component outweights the weapon DPS component.

The impact on poison damage depends on Envenom usage in DPS cycles. Instant Poison should add the most DPS if Envenom is used as an filler finisher between SnDs . Your DPS from OH poison procs will increase by as much as 40% (1.8/1.3 - 1 ~ 40% increase). On the other hand, benefits on Deadly Poison OH will not be as obvious.

OH Enchant proc will be more frequent with a slower weapon, but the difference is fairly marginal IMO. Here is a rough translation/calculation for Mongoose (1ppm), assuming a +to hit is greater than 5%.

Definition:
H = 1 - Miss Rate = 1 - (25 - +to Hit), Hit
WS = Weapon Speed, second.

Proc per Hit = (1 proc / 60 second) * (WS / swing) * (swing / H) = WS / (60 * H)

Total number of OH hit per second
= Mutilate + normal
= (1 / 6 sec) + (1 swing / WS) * (H/ swing)
= 1/6 + H/WS
= (WS + 6H) / 6WS

Multiply the two equations:
Normalized Proc Per Second (PPS) = (WS + 6H)/360H

Using the derived normalize forumla, and given a 90% hit rate (+15% to hit), Mongoose procs every 48 seconds and 45 seconds for 1.3 speed and 1.8 speed weapons respectively. Not that big of a deal IMO, unless there are some 2.5 speed daggers out there, which shall proc every 41 seconds. :p

Conclusion:

• A high damage OH needed for Mutilate to do good damage is a myth.
• The difference in weapon damage is largely offset by the static +101 damage component of Mutilate.
  
• Rogues need to find the OH with the best stats, for both PvP and PvE Mutilate builds. I would suggest Blades of the Unrequited for PvP rogues (3 gem slots for +36 stamina) and Guile of Khorazzi for PvE rogues (24 agi, 50AP).

EDIT:

• Add some clarification at the last paragraph above conclusion.
• Added impact on Enchants and Poisons.

Patch 2.0: Combat Potency

Combat Potency is a 35 points combat talent that gives, at 5/5, 20% chance to regen 15 energy on successful OH attacks. It is quite easy to model the amount of energy regen.

Energy Regen as a function of Weapon Speed and Mitigation, without any speed mods.
ER (S, M)
= (1/S) * (1 - M) * 20% * 15
= 3 * (1-M) / S

Grahpically depict, ER (S, M) looks like:
To maximize ER, take partial derivative on S:
d ER / d S = -3 * (1 - M) / S^2

No minimum or maximum function can be obtained as this is an negative squared function, but the graph indicates that any weapon speed 2.0 or under offers higher marginal value than those with speed 2.0 or above. Doubling OH weapon speed will reduce the rate of energy regen by 50%.

Combat potency has proc quite often during PvE fights with my 1.8 speed Anbisath Warhammer, and I would have to adjust/micro manage my PvE cycles because of the energy regen. Instead of a steady 5/5 SnD cycles, I could actually throw in a few cp worth of rupture when I got lucky on procs.

In summary:

• ER (S, M) = 3 * (1-M) / S, without any speed mods such as BF/SnD. To factor BF into account, multiply everything by 1.2; SnD, 1.3; both, 1.5.
  
• Combat potency benefits much more from fast OH weapons than slow ones.

P.S. I am currently working through a backlog of emails, and I will be updating/reviewing every post to fix errors and fit them for expansion.

Patch 2.0: Day 1, Blade Twisting

Patch 2.0 finally arrived yesterday and I log on right after getting home from work. The spec of choice is 10/41/0 Combat Mace stun/daze build. I have tried 41/3/7 mutilate build on test servers for couple of hours, but I figures that its time for me to change. I have been in the various SF builds for majority of my time in WoW, or at least 100 days out of the 130 days played, including new and old builds like 30/0/21, 30/8/12, 31/8/12, 30/20, 31/15/5. Misplaced Servo Arm remains to be the weapon of choice as it is currently the second hardest hitting SS weapon besides Gressil. Despite I have access to Kingsfall but the chance of me getting it before expansion is very slim. :(

The focus of the build is to annoy the shit out of people in PvP with Mace Spec Stun (5% chance) and Blade Twisting (20% chance) while maintain a certain degrees of PvE/farming viability with Combat Potency (20% chance to gain 15 energy per OH attack). I also want to investigate what weapon skills have become after the nerf with my decent +8 mace skills (5 from mace spec, 3 from Anubisath).

Here's some thoughts:

Blade Twisting - 20% chance per SS/BS/Shiv/Gouge to daze target for 8 seconds; targets will have a daze debuff when it procs. Sounds perfect on paper but it doesnt deliever. Assumes all SS lands, it should proc:

(SS / 40 energy) * (20 energy / 2 second) * (60 second / minute) * (1 proc / 5 SS) = 3 ppm.

Compare to my Crusader MH (1 ppm):

(1 proc / min) * (min / 60 sec) * (2.8 sec / swing) * (swing / 0.80 hit) = 5.8% proc / hit

which translate into (0.058 * (60/4 + 60/(2.8/0.8))) = 1.86 ppm.

Compare to Mace Spec stun (5% proc/hit)
(5% proc/hit ) * (2.8/0.8 + 1.8/0.8 + 4 hit/s) * (60s / m) = 2.94 ppm

So theoritically, Blade Twisting should proc as much as Mace Spec and a lot more than Crusader. However, from 4 hours of PvP and PvE, it's proc rate is definitely less than either of them. The problem with it is it proc only off special attacks, which has a 4 second cooldown, so the larger interval offsets some of the proc chances.

So in summary:

• With 2.8s MH, 1.8s OH, SS, +5% hit, Blade Twisting will proc roughly 3.00 ppm, compare to Crusader's of 1.86 ppm and Mace Spec Stun of 2.94ppm.
• Despite similar theoratical proc rates to Mace Spec, Blade Twisting will proc less than Mace Spec and even Crusader due to the large time intervals between special attacks (4 second cooldown for SS, 6 second cooldown for BS).
• My feeling is that Blade Twisting procs less than Crusader after 4 hours of PvP/PvE.
• Blade Twisting needs to be buffed, to roughly 30% proc chance to offset the large time interval between specials.

EDIT: Oh and btw, the Crit Scaling post is still TBC...

TBC & Crit Scaling

In TBC, Blizzard introduced one additional stats called Resillience Rating (RR) of which decrease your crit rate by 1% and crit damage by 2% per every 39.4 RR @ level 70. Here is the list of damage calculations:

Assuming a crit rate of C, resillience of R, mainhand damage of MH, offhand damage of OH, respective damage modifier of Mod, then Backstab(BS), Hemorrhage(Hemo), Mutilate(Mut), Sinister Strike (SS) damage will be:

BS(C, MH, R, Mod) = 1.2 * (1.5MH + Mod) * {[1 - (C + 0.3 - R)] + 2.3 * ( 1 - R) * (C + 0.3 - R)}
Hemo(C, MH, R, Mod) = (MH + Mod) * {[1 - (C - R)] + 2.3 * ( 1 - R) * (C - R)}
Mut(C, MH, OH, R, Mod) = 1.2 * 1.5 * (MH + OH + 2Mod) * {[1 - (C - R)] + 2.3 * ( 1 - R) * (C - R)}
SS(C, MH, R, Mod) = 1.06 * (MH + Mod) * {[1 - (C - R)] + 2.3 * ( 1 - R) * (C - R)}

After some simplification, the respective formula becomes:

BS(C, MH, R, Md) = (1.8 MH + 1.2Mod) * [(1.39 + 1.3C) + (4.6R^2 - 4.6RC - 2.68R)]
Hemo(C, MH, R, Mod) = (MH + Mod) * [(1 + 1.3C) + (4.6R^2 - 4.6RC - 1.3R)]
Mut(C, MH, OH, R, Md) = 1.8 * (MH + OH + 2Mod) * [(1 + 1.3C) + (4.6R^2 - 4.6RC - 1.3R)]
SS(C, MH, R, Mod) = 1.06 * (MH + Mod) * [(1 + 1.3C) + (4.6R^2 - 4.6RC - 1.3R)]

Taking partial derivative on RR,

dBS/dR = (1.8 MH + 1.2Mod) * [9.2R - 4.6C - 2.68]
dHemo/dR = (MH + Mod) * [9.2R - 4.6C - 1.3]
dMut/dR = 1.8 * (MH + OH + 2Mod) * [9.2R - 4.6C - 1.3]
dSS/dR = 1.06 * (MH + Mod) * [9.2R - 4.6C - 1.3]

Sub in the highest level modifiers,

dBS/dR = (1.8MH + 306) * [9.2R - 4.6C - 2.68]
dHemo/dR = (MH + 10) * [9.2R - 4.6C - 1.3]
dMut/dR = (1.8MH +1.8OH +364) * [9.2R - 4.6C - 1.3]
dSS/dR = (1.06MH + 104) * [9.2R - 4.6C - 1.3]

Plug in some decent level 70 numbers at the very high end, 500 MH, 250 OH, 30% crit

dBS/dR = 11095R - 4896
dHemo/dR = 4692R - 1367
dMut/dR = 15768.8R - 4593
dSS/dR = 5833R - 1699

TBC -> to be continued...

Mutilate, Part 2: Crit Profile

In part 1, Mutilate was evaluated from a lv60 perspective with rosy 30% crit rate and 1540 attack power. So in this post, I am going to investigate how Mutilate will scale at lv70.

I will use my mediocre gear as an example.
434 Agi

• 135 Naked
  
• 299 item

29.97% Crit

• 5% malice
• 4.65% naked
• 10.31% item agi
• 10% item +crit chance

The crit profile of Mutilate will therefore be:

• 49.04% Non Crit
• 41.98% Single Crit
• 8.98% Double Crit

At level 70, using 5 piece Gladiator gears, 2xGladiator Daggers, Gladiator Thrown, Lv70 Dungeon Hard mode Cloak, Neck, Ringx2, General's Bracer/Belt/Boots, I would have:
411 Agi

• 165 Naked
  
• 246 item
  

25.88% Crit

• 5% malice
• 165/34 = 4.85% naked
• 246/34 = 7.24% item agi
• 194/22.08 = 8.79% crit rating
  

The crit profile of Mutilate will therefore be:

• 54.94% Non Crit
• 38.36% Single Crit
• 6.70% Double Crit

Thus my mutilate crit rate went down from about 51% t0 about 45% as I level and obtain top end gear at the same time. Absolutely horrible.