New Combat Dagger Build

Taken directly from an email conversation:

If you want to own DM up, the most important thing, beside l2p, is spec all the high DPS buffing talents. So lets look at the DPS gained from the arguable talents (raid buffed DPS, using Tier 3 gears. Numbers roughly got from Chalon's current DPS calculators):

Adreline Rush (Direct-scaling):
Assuming you are doing 1400 expected/average backstabs, AR is 150 energy, or 150 / 60 * 1400 = 3500 damage, over 300 seconds, or a mere 11.7 DPS per talent point.

Murder (Direct-caling):
Assuming you are doing 750 DPS, murder adds straight 15 DPS when it applies, or 7.5 DPS per talent point.

Ruthlessness (Semi-scaling):
Assuming you are using SnD only, every 30 seconds, the actual CP/s = 0.6 / 30 = 0.02 CP/s
SnD DPS is around 110 of the overall 750 DPS, so each CP is worth 110/5 * 30s = 22 DPS/CP * 30s = 660 D/CP

0.02 CP/s * 660 D/CP = 13.2 DPS, or 4.4 DPS per talent point

Relentless Strikes (Direct-scaling):
Assuming you are using SnD only, every 30 seconds, so its an extra 25 energy every 30 seconds.

25/60 * 1400 = 583 damage, over 30 seconds = 19.4 DPS per talent point

Lethality (Semi-scaling):
Assuming 40% Crit, and Backstab DPS assumed to be 233. Working backwards, Backstab DPS is 122 ( 0.3 * 122 + 0.7 * 122 * 2.3 = 233).

So Lethality = 122 * 0.3 = 36.6 DPS per 5 talent points, or 7.3 DPS per talent point

Improved Poison (Non-scaling):
Assuming no VP, 15% Hit, 2.0 speed MH and OH, Backstabbing rogue.
20% * 130 * (90% * 1 + 95% / 4) = 29.575 ~ 30 DPS per 20% proc rate.

30 DPS per 20% proc rate => 3 DPS per 2% proc rate, or 3 DPS per talent point

Conclusion:

1. (Assasination Tier 2) 3/3 SnD is absolutely needed for combat daggers. Murder produces better DPS/talent point compare to Ruthlessness, so 2/2 Murder.
2. (Assasination Tier 3) Lethality is 7.3 DPS per talent point vs. Relentless Strikes' 19.4 DPS per talent point. 1/1 Relentless Strikes + 4/5 Lethality.
3. (Assasination Tier 3, Combat Tier 7) AR is 11.7 DPS/talent point, but would require 3 talent points investment (2 fillers), so its actually 11.7 DPS/ 3 talent points. The other choice is 1/5 Lethality @ 7.3 DPS + 2/3 Ruthlessness @ 4.4 DPS each, netting you 16.1 DPS/ 3 talent points.

The resulted build is:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/rogues2/talents.html?005223105000000005325000055010020005000000000000000

Overall efficiency: 2/2 Imp SS, 3/3 Imp Gouge, 2/2 Imp Sprint as fillers (total of 7). The rest are all DPS producing talents, vs. 15/31/5 build with total of 9 fillers.

Hope this helps. Feel free to correct my errors.

World of Rangecraft and Rogues

Since 1.11 is in public beta and 1.12 is on the horizon, its a good time to bring up some of the issues thats detrimental to the rogue class (and my feral pussy cat).

1. Vanish
Oh ya, when is blizzard going to fix this shit. Nothing beats vanishing and knocked right out due to mid-swing attacks, heat-tracking arcane missles, and pet of all seeing. Vanish was working at an acceptable level during 1.8 to 1.9 and now its broken as fuck similar to pre 1.7. What the fuck is this.

And vanish is almost useless in PvE raids as combat pulses will knock you right into combat. Nothing beats seeing hunters getting up from FD after a raid wipe. I disenchanted my Jumper Cable XL.

I suspect vanish bug is due to.....

2. Location Validation Bug/ Server-Client Dissync
This is the worst shit ever. No other class can imagine how bad this is. It's comparable to, say, a mage casting Arcane Explosion right on top of a rogue and yet the rogue is not getting damaged. It's completely bullshit.

Blizzard doesnt seem to be aware of this shit since they play test on Intranet servers. But all rogues living outside of Orange County and has a ping above 30ms should have experienced "Your target is too far away" error messages of some sort.

And on top of this, you have the lag issue that kills all rogues. Sure lag effects all classes, but a 1 second cast Arcane Explosion will still hit a rogue, but a 1 second cast Kidney Shot will be "Your target is too far away" or "You are facing the wrong way". Range classes simply suffers minimally from lag compare to melee classes.

3. Damage Mitigation Scaling
So we are rogues. We fight in melee range (5 yards). We wear leather armor of value ranging from 1500-2500. Fine.

But why the fuck are hunters wearing mail and fight at 30 yards? It's not like any melee class can kill a hunter in PvP even if they wear cloth. So what's the logic here? Making an impossible-to-kill class to invincible?

And the caster armor scaling just perplexes me. A good PvP caster can have around 3000-4000 armor with 4000-5000 HP self buffed. That's roughly 35% melee damage mitigation. And rogues only have 1500-2500 armor. Something is wrong here.

Further, melee damage mitigation increases as melee DPS, but magical damage mitigation does not increase as magical damage increase? WTF is wrong with Blizzard designerss fuck up brain? Sure I can wear FrostR to counter frost damages, but I would still get pwnt by the mage with his pom pyro and fireballz. Comparatively, a mage can wear high armor set and wtfpwn rogues AND warriors. I woulda kill for a single set that has high stam/high ap AND resist to all schools of magic by 40%.

4. Stats Points Valuation
So why are we getting so much strength? Why not just translate the fucking strength into AP for us. It's exactly the same thing and yet cheaper. Even higher armor will be better. It's as dumb as putting strength on hunter's mail or putting agility on priest's cloth.

BTW translate the 1% dodge on BF boots/shoulders into Agi or Stamina please.

5. Damage Scaling
Oh hey dumbfucks, 1 damage/healing increase caster damage by 1. 1 attack power increases rogue damage, uh, by 0.07. So what's the situation here? Rogue's burst DPS is way lower than warlocks at the moment. Sure we can ambush->backstab for a godly 2500-3000 damage, and we would be kited to death from 100->0.

Ya sure, we can do 100->0 stunlock combo when the hour/minute/second hands of the clock overlap, but that would take us more than 15 seconds to do so. How long does a warlock/mage need to kill a rogue? 10 seconds max.

Every other class can burst DPS, and they all burst DPS better than rogues. Well, perhaps not paladin but they can't even be killed anyway.

More on Sword Spec Modeling

There has been some discussion and validation of Sword Specialization mechanics on the Rogue forum recently, and the results are exactly the same as I stated in both 3/2/06 and 3/3/06 post.

1. Sword Spec proc off only swords.
   
2. OH sword spec proc triggers an instant extra MH attack.
3. Special attacks triggers an instant extra MH attack.
4. Sword spec proc is an normal mainhand attack and will cancel attack-in-motion and resets your MH attack timer.
5. Sword spec will NOT proc off enchant/weapon/poison procs.

There are 3 cases that will trigger a sword spec proc: 1. MH normal attack 2. OH normal attack 3. Special attack. And it will be the determining factor in modeling sword spec proc dps.

Case 1: MH normal attacks

MH attack triggers another instant normal attack from sword spec. No swing timer is "wasted" as the sword spec proc is instant. Thus you gain 100% of the damage.

Effective MH sword spec proc damage = 100% * MH damage.

Case 2: OH normal attacks

OH attack triggers an instant MH normal attack.

t=0: Attack initialized. Both MH and OH swing at the same time.
t=OH_Speed: OH attacks. Procs sword spec. MH attacks instantly and resets the swing timer.

Thus, swing timers will reset to initial engagement state everytime OH attack procs sword spec, with the wasted MH swing time equal to OH speed.

Effective OH sword spec proc damage = [1 - (OH Speed/MH Speed)] * MH damage

Yes, your OH sword spec proc will do less effective damage, as the only "time"/"damage" you gain is the part you get for free but not yet swung. i.e. MH speed minus OH speed.

Case 3: Special attacks

Similar to OH proc modeling, assuming you aint doing anything stupid like SnD/Evis/Rupture.

Effective MH sword spec proc damage = [1 - (MH Speed/4)] * MH damage

Example:

2.8 Speed MH, 1.8 Speed OH.

MH Sword Spec Proc = 100% of MH damage
OH sword spec proc = 36% of MH damage
Special sword spec proc = 30% of MH damage

The overall sword spec proc effective damage (weighted average) will be 54%.

Tier 3 Rogue Set, Bloodelf Racials, and Naxxramus Items

I've been so fucking busy over the past few months with company earnings and various conferences so cbf updating this blog. But here comes E3.

BoneScythe, 9 piece Rogue Tier3 Set.
Set Bonuses:
2 Piece: Your normal melee swing has a chance to invigorate you, healing you for 90 to 110.
4 Piece: Your Backstab, Sinister Strike, and Hemorrhage critical hits causes you to restore 5 energy.
6 Piece: Reduces threat caused by your Backstab, Sinister Strike, Hemorrhage, and Eviscerate abilities.
8 Piece: Your Eviscerate has a chance per combo point to reveal a flaw in your opponent's armor, granting 100% critical hit chance for your next Backstab, Sinister Strike, or Hemorrhage skills.

Bonescythe Helm
+28 Strength
+30 Agility
+29 Stamina
+2% Chance to Hit
+2% Chance to Crit

Bonescythe Ring
+30 Agility
+10 Stamina
+1% Chance to Hit.

More here.

Analysis

2 piece:
Godly. It's effectively a free Crusader enchant without the AP buff or cracked up Lifestealing enchant without the 30-45 damage.

4 piece:
O M F G. Crank in some numbers. Assuming a 30% crit rate and no special attacks, the energy regen rates (energy regened per second) are:

Hemo: 5 energy/3.5 seconds * 30% = 0.43 E/s
SS: 5 energy /4.0 seconds * 30% = 0.38 E/s
BS: 5 energy /6.0 seconds * (30% + 30%) = 0.5 E/s

Although a fixed energy regen appears to favor abilities that costs less energy, it actually benefits Backstab the most after factoring the crit rate from Improved Backstab.

No special attacks involved is a pretty valid assumption when Ruthlessness (R) and Relentless Strikes (RS) are factored into the situation; 25 energy finishers becomes effectively free.

Eviscerate, only 35 energy finisher, is also free when you factoring in the energy regen. Assuming a typical 20 second to build up 5 cp for SF dagger builds and 30 second to build up 5 cp for non-SF dagger builds, the energy regened are 10 and 15, making Eviscerate effectively 25 and 20 energy respectively, inline with other finishers.

So this 4 piece set benefits Seal Fate builds tremendously, with a 5% energy regen rate per attack. Further, it would turn the 25 energy finishers into 15 energy finishers. Combined with R and RS, you would actually GAIN energy when they proc!!!

6 piece:
Junk. Who needs reduced aggro anyways when you can vanish. On top of that, we can feint when we are running too high on damage meters. BTW, according to the test server data mining, it reduces the threat generated by specials by 8%.

8 piece:
Nice for rogues, but it would be best paired with SF builds where energy/combo point generation dominates the DPS output.

Overall I would think 4BS/5DD would rock in PvP.

Naxxramus Items

King's Fall (105-158 Damage, 1.80 Speed)
+16 Agility
+1 Chance to Crit
+1 Chance to Hit


The Hungering Cold (138-257 Damage, 2.70 Speed)
+15 Stamina
+40 Attack Power

Hammer of the Sun (104-194 Damage, 2.00 Speed)
+4 Agility
+4 Strength
+4 Stamina
+10 FR
+10 SR
+1 Chance to Crit

BloodElf Racial

• Arcane Affinity - Enchanting increased by 15
• Arcane Torrent - Silence all enemies within 8 yards for 2 sec. In addition, you gain 20 Energy, Mana or Rage for each Mana Tap charge currently affecting you.
• Magic Resistance - All resistances increased by 5
• Mana Tap - Drains 50 mana from your target and charges you with Arcane energy until cancelled. This effect stacks up to 3 times.

AoE silence that centered around the player. God damn. That's going to be OP for Rogues/Warriors. Stun/Charge + Arcane Torrent. Godly.

Melee Attack Ruleset

Miss + Dodge + Parry + Block + Crit + Hit = 100%

For example, if I have 30% Crit, +0 Hit and my target has 5% Dodge, 5% Block, 5% Parry, then in ONE DICE roll,

00-04 Miss (5%)
05-09 Dodge (5%)
10-14 Parry (5%)
15-19 Block (5%)
20-49 Crit (30%)
50-99 Hit (50%)

so if the magical Blizzard dice rolled 35, it will be a crit, and so forth.

Now what happens in a Coldblood Evis? The Crit chance is increased to 100% but anyone who plays rogue for more than 2 hours knows CB Evis misses like fuck. So here is what happens,

00-04 Miss (5%)
05-09 Dodge (5%)
10-14 Parry (5%)
15-19 Block (5%)
20-99 Crit (80%)

So your Evis will Crit 80% of the time.

Wait, but isn't CB a 100% Crit? Yes, but here is the deal. There are precedences for each one of these attack/defense types. Crits only eats Hits. +Hit items only eats Misses. Nothing eats Dodge/Parry/Block (besides themselves and weapon skills).

Thus the precedence order is,

Miss > Dodge/Parry/Block > Crit > Hit

So what about Dodge/Parry/Block's precedence? Well, here is my speculation.

Dodge > Parry > Block

Dodge has precedence over block/parry because your target won't need to parry/block when he dodges soemthing.

Parry is higher than block because, well, everything parry and above is 100% damage mitigation.

Block is lower than all the 100% damage mitigation actions but better than taking a hit.

EDIT: creeps cannot parry or block (supposely) from behind after patch 1.3, so it is advantagous even for sword rogues to attack doggy style. I will try to transcript patch 1.3 notes when WoW is back up. (3/21/06)

Energy Regeneration Oddities

Well, if you ever played a rogue, you know your energy is rarely a multiple of 5. So here it is.

Sinister Strinket = 40 energy (45 before talents)
Backstab = 60 energy

Missed SS costs 7 energy.
Missed BS costs 11 energy.

These numbers are gathered from Kurinnaxx fight in AQ20. His sandblast reduces your hit chance by 20% (or some retarded amount like that), so I was able to keep on missing SS/BS and record at the energy penalty.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Now for my speculation on Blizzard's implementation of Energy regen/penality.

If you look at the energy lost from missed strikes per energy cost,

SS: 7/40 = 17.5%
BS: 11/60 = 18.3%

it can be save to assume its either 17.5% or 18% energy penality for missed specials.

So,

SS miss -> 40 * 0.175 = 7.0 energy (rounded to 7)
BS miss -> 60 * 0.175 = 10.5 energy (rounded to 11)

SS miss -> 40 * 0.18 = 7.2 energy (rounded to 7)
BS miss -> 60 * 0.18 = 10.8 energy (rounded to 11)

This is part of the reason that energy is rarely at multiple of 5.

Also, from my experience, energy rarely drops to 0, but only to 1.

I am suspecting the energy regen isn't perfect at 20 per 2 seconds but probably a odd number like 19.7 per second thus contributing to sometimes 21 or 19 energy regen ticks.

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Some might question my "theorycraft", but what I have done here is no more than reverse-engineering to emulate/model Blizzard's internal calculation code, with some speculations and rounding errors.

A Preview of My Next Version of DPS Calculator. Dynamically Updated (some bug of course)

			Main Hand Enchant
	DPS Chart	<= OH Poison DPS	None	Deadly Poison V	Instant Poison VI	Dense Sharpening Stone	Elemental Sharpening Stone
	MH Poison DPS =>		-	25.4	16.2	6.6	5.2
OH	None	-	-	25.39	16.18	6.57	5.25
	Deadly Poison V	20.9	20.91	46.30	37.09	27.48	26.16
	Instant Poison VI	13.3	13.33	38.71	29.50	19.90	18.57
	Dense Sharpening Stone	2.1	2.05	27.44	18.23	8.63	7.30
	Elemental Sharpening Stone	5.2	5.25	30.64	21.43	11.82	10.50
Temporary Enchant DPS =		46.3

			Main Hand Enchant
	DPS Chart	<= OH Poison DPS	None	Superior Striking (+5 Damage)	Agility (+15 Agility)	Crusader	Lifestealing
	MH Poison DPS =>		-	4.1	3.3	4.0	3.4
OH	None	-	-	4.11	3.30	3.98	3.37
	Superior Striking (+5 Damage)	1.3	1.28	5.39	4.59	5.27	4.65
	Agility (+15 Agility)	3.3	3.30	7.41	6.61	7.29	6.67
	Crusader	3.3	3.25	7.36	6.56	7.24	6.62
	Lifestealing	2.5	2.46	6.57	5.76	6.44	5.83
Weapon Enchant DPS =		7.4

Now I learned Copy and Past from Excel into Blogspot will have formatting problems. :S