Wrath Beta - Poison Theory

First post, so let's get to it. I spend a lot of time crunching numbers and doing theorycrafting. Too much time I suppose. With the Beta ongoing and fairly large changes being applied on a near daily basis, I want to run some numbers out not only in my head but also on paper.

Poisons

Pre-BC they got the shaft, nearly everything in a raid was immune. In BC, more stuff was poisonable but there were oft times where you just lost out. Blizzard seems to be making every effort to push Rogues down the Mutilate route for PvE end-game content through the Assassination tree. If you think about it, there are no classes who use daggers in the end game for melee damage (heck even caster daggers are limited) in BC. Swords are the best bet and that's causing conflict between warriors and rogues (and soon DKs). Rather than improve daggers to provide a better DPS than swords, Blizz opted to increase dagger talents. That's fine.

Included in those changes are the updated Poison Talents. Let's go through them:

• Vile Poisons: Improved poison/envenom damage by 20%
• Envenom @ 1CP = 240 (288 w/ VP), @ 5CP =1200 (1440 w/VP)
  
• Improved Poisons: 25% chance to apply poisons (increased from 10%)
  
• Deadly Brew: Applying Instant Poison also applied Deadly Poison
• Infectious Poisons: Increas IP/DP poison damage by 20% (chance to poison dispeller, meh)
  
• Master Poisonner: Increased crit chance by 3% on poisoned targets

Additionally, they modified Poisons to be affected by Attack Power. For example, Deadly Poison used to be fairly linear in damage progression (about 4.1*lvl-107), so I expected damage at 80 to be near 220/12s. DP is now 536+0.12*AP and with 2000AP (attainable with buffs at 70, should be easy with gear at 80) you're at 775/12s. That's a 300% increase in damage! IP is now 445+0.15*AP as well, so about 745dmg instead of 190-ish.

You're thinking, "So what, 300% of 20dps is not a huge increase." Well, let's go over that again shall we?

Let's say you're in the standard raid build at level 70, and you have dual DP (220/12s) on target. Slice and Dice is up, so you're sitting at about 1 Strike Per Second (SPS/SPM). You're also near the hit cap, so you have an average 90% chance to hit your target (white damage has an inherent 28% miss chance on bosses...hit raises that). Since DP takes 12s to expire and re-applications reset the timer, in the absolute worst cast scenario, you need 5 applications per minute to keep the poison up. If we're looking at IP (about 190dmg at 80), then Ok, so let's start.

Comparisons

Combat Build - BC talents (16% increased damage)
1SPS*90%hit chance = 54SPM
54SPM*30%chance for poison = 16 applications
16 applications per minute = 1 application every 3.75 seconds, 18.75 seconds to 5 stacks.
5 stacks of DP = 106dps
IP at 16 applications per minute = 53DPS
Because of this, most people put DP on the offhand and IP on the mainhand. DP was always at 5 stacks and you gained 50% of the DPS from IP, for a total of 132DPS.


Lich King
Here we start to compare. We are still at 54SPM.

No talents, just the AP boost (assuming 2000AP).
DP = 323DPS
IP = 199DPS
Using MH=IP and OH=DP, 422DPS

Vile Poisons (+ Infectious Poisons) (+20%dmg / +20% damage)
DP= 388DPS ( 452DPS with both)
IP = 239DPS ( 278DPS with both)
Using MH=IP and OH=DP, 507DPS (591DPS with both)

Improved Poisons (+25% application chance)
54SPM*55%application = 29applications per minute (rounded down)
29applications per minute = 1 application per 2 seconds or 5 stacks after 10 seconds (faster than the poison ticks...)
DP = 323DPS (since it's a DOT, it's just applied faster)
IP = 360DPS (big increase)
Using MH=IP and OH=DP, 503DPS

Master Poisoner = +3% damage overall. Say your DPS is 1500, then you get 45DPS. Eh.

Deadly Brew (only need IP now as it automatically applied DP)
DP + IP = 552DPS


Ok, that's the foundation of numbers we need to work with. As you can see, of all the talents, Deadly Brew gives by far the largest increase. Now we need to compare two talents first, as they both appear on the same tier.

Vile Poisons vs Improved Poisons
DPS increased by 20% on all poisons vs 180% increase in IP damage and some marginal increase in DP damage due to faster application. 3pts vs 5pts. Envenom reduces the DPS of DP by using charges so the gain on that skill w/VP is offset by the reduced DPS on DP....
Verdict: Improved Poisons is the way to go, especially if you get Deadly Brew and don't have 5 stacks of DP all the time.

Even MORE damage potential ?

Using a 2+ point Envenom (remember, we're using Mutilate so every hit is 2 or 3 CP) you gain a 3-4s increase of +25% poison application for the cost of 2-3 charges. Best case, you use Envenom every 20s, worst case, every 40s. That translates into an 4.4% and 2.2% increase in poison application over a minute, so let's round that to 3%. That's 3 applications more per minute without talents and 5 more if you have Improved Poisons.

More specifically, that's 37DPS and 62DPS, with the new poisons, respectively. Since Envenom TAKES away charges, you're actually lowering the DPS of Deadly Poison the more often you use it, each stack is 65DPS. This isn't a big deal if you take 2 seconds to apply a new one but at 4s per... it's about 100DPS lost. Yet another reason to take Improved Poisons, it increases your chance to apply the next dose.

This is also why you want to avoid using Envenom at 4+points, as you lose double the DPS from DP and gain LESS THAN double the DPS from the increased chance to apply. Not worth it.

Damage-wise, it's statistically better now to use a 2+pt Eviscerate.



Conclusion

The assassination tree at 51pts looks something like this. Taking VP would require you to spend 2 talent points somewhere else.

End result is:
ImpP, DB, MP, IP for a total of:

• +25% chance to apply poisons
• +20% damage to poisons
• Only need to use Instant Poison
• +3% overall damage

Taking all of that into account, your damage goes up from 132DPS to 645DPS, a 480% increase in damage. This ignores resists and other factors since they affect both scenarios the same way, the % increase stays the same.