Poisoned Dagger

Build 9014

2008-10-01T07:25:00.000-07:00

Talents
Assassination

Focused Attacks now gives 2 energy regardless of the rank.

Combat

Vitality increases your Energy regeneration rate by 8/16/25%. (Up from 3/6/10%)
Blade Twisting changed to : Increases the damage dealt by Sinister Strike and Backstab by 5/10%, and your damaging melee attacks have a 10% chance to Daze the target for 4 sec.
Aggression has been moved from Tier 5 to Tier 4. Now increases the damage done by Sinister Strike, Backstab, and Eviscerate abilities by 3/6/9/12/15%. (Up from 2/4/6/8/10%)

Glyphs

Glyph of Garrote - Reduces the duration of your Garrote ability by 3 sec and increases the total damage it deals by 20%. (Old - Increases periodic damage dealt by Garrrote by 45%, but decreases the duration by 3 sec.)
Glyph of Preparation - Decreases the cooldown of Preparation by 2 min. (Old - Your Preparation ability also instantly resets the cooldown of Blade Flurry, Dismantle, and Kick.)

Looks like they are finally giving Combat an increase in DPS compared to BC. Vitality is an attractive choice, Aggression is higher up and a bit more powerful and Blade Twisting is now a decent dagger PvP talent. Glyph-wise, eh.

I know the devs have some great theorycrafters working for the rogues but the major damage component of Combat builds is white damage. SS accounts for maybe 10% total damage output. Energy regen wasn't an issue in BC for combat and shouldn't be here either. 25% is nice but it still only comes to about 3e/s with CP. Who knows, maybe we'll see an additional item added to combat, like adding a CP after 10 crits.

Build 8982

2008-09-25T06:33:00.000-07:00

Talents
Assassination

Focused Attacks changed to : Your melee critical strikes have a 33/66% chance to give you 1 energy. (Old - 100%/100% , wasn't implemented) (Fixed tooltip, reads 33/1, 66/2, 100/3 as that's how it works)
Find Weakness damage increased reduced to 2/4/6%. (Old - 3/6/9%) (1-2% DPS nerf for a pretty crappy talent, head scratcher)

Combat

Killing Spree cannot hit invisible or stealthed targets anymore. (Nor should it. If you were opening with this instead of Garrote/CS, then shame on you)

Subtlety

Opportunity now works all the time. (Old - Only increased the damage of attacks from behind) (Another tooltip fix as this has been working for some time now)

Overall, 2 tooltip fixes, a bug fix and a very very slight DPS nerf. Nothing to holler about. That being said, Combat is still in major need of some work.

2008-09-19T21:08:00.000-07:00

Skills
Combat

Gouge awards one combo point once again. (as it should)

Subtlety

Tricks of the Trade now costs 15 energy. (for a skill with a 30s cooldown, this doesn't make sense)

Talent
Assassination

Hunger for Blood now only attempt to remove a Bleed effect. (Old - any harmful physical effect) (removes pretty much all PvP use)
Deadly Brew now only has a chance to apply Crippling poison (plain and simple nerf to an overpowered skill)
Improved Poisons now increases the chance to apply Instant and Deadly poison to your target by 2/4/6/8/10% (Down from 3/6/9/12/15%) (this is taking it a bit too far)

Combat

Savage Combat now also increases your total attack power by 2/4%. (good DPS builder)
Vitality has been changed now increases your Energy renegeration rate by 3/6/10%. (does this synergy with Combat Potency?)
Aggression has been moved from Tier 6 to Tier 5 and changed to 5 points. Now Increases the damage of your Sinister Strike, Backstab, and Eviscerate abilities by 2/4/6/8/10%. (I don't think they understand Combat builds with this change...)
Endurance now increases your total stamina by 2/4% additionally from the Sprint / Evasion cooldown reduction (4% isn't much but it does make this filler talent better)

Subtlety

Filthy Tricks now the cooldown of your Tricks of the Trade and Distract abilities by 5/10 secs and Preparation by 2.5/5 min. (ehh...)

This is a very odd push, with some significant reduction in DPS on the assassination tree, to the point where there seems to be no benefit of going Mutilate anymore. It's a real head scratcher.

Statistic in Wrath

2008-09-19T06:36:00.000-07:00

If you're currently raiding in BC, then odds are you're sitting at about 300 To Hit and maybe 300 Haste Rating. Currently, the former is available mostly on gear and the latter, mostly through trinkets/buffs. Why are people here? Well, Combat builds offer the best sustained DPS builds and they focus on auto-attack damage, which requires To Hit due to the 28% miss chance. Haste Rating just makes you swing faster, it's a good thing but only something to focus on after you've increased your To Hit to a reasonable amount.

For example, in Tier 7 gear, the items Blizzard figures are the baseline for top end gear, have Agility, Stamina, +Hit, +Critical Chance and +Attack Power. Haste has only recently been seen as a desirable stat as it wasn't readily available before 25 man raids.

In the Expansion, things have changes somewhat. The top end gear currently available, for both PvP and PvE has Agility, Stamina, +Critical Chance, +Attack Power and +Haste/Resilience. To Hit is gone on most items. In point of fact, there are next to no items with +Hit and +Haste on them. This has to get you thinking about what Rogues should look for.

First though, let's quickly go over the stats.

To Hit - With none, you have a 28% miss chance on melee strikes and 5% miss chance on special attacks. 80 or so rating is enough to reduce the miss chance on specials to 0% and you need 400 or so to reduce the rating on melee strikes. There is a hard cap where adding more To Hit has no effect, but up until that cap, the gain is pretty linear.

Haste - Every 16 or so rating gives you a 1% boost to speed. It's also a mutiplicative stat, where you multiply your haste % sources. Most times, it's simple enough, Slice and Dice and whatever Haste Rating bonus you have. The gains are better on slower weapons and use a logarithmic curve, where the effects never cap out but reach a point of reduced effect, or what we call a "soft cap". Each weapon speed has their own "soft cap":

3.0 - 80%
2.5 - 70%
2.0 - 57%
1.8 - 50%
1.5 - 45%

With that out of the way, let's compare BC with Beta. BC builds focused on Combat, specifically with Swords with a swing speed of 2.6-2.9, where you needed a lot of Haste Rating to reach the soft cap (700+) which most people never got to. Now, in LK the optimum build seems to be Daggers, with a serious focus on the faster the better, so 1.5 speed. You only need 45% haste, which is only 200 haste rating (considering Slice and Dice). That's a very small number, easily surpassed on the raid tier gear dropping in Naxx currently.

To Hit is now going to be the same as Haste was in BC, found on enchants, gems, food and buffs. I wonder what the devs think about this?

Build - 8962

2008-09-18T07:25:00.000-07:00

New build, new changes.
Assassination
Skills

Ambush damage increased. (Check skill list for details) - All ranks were previously 335dmg
Envenom now gives you an additional 15% chance to apply Instant and Deadly Poison to targets for 1 sec plus an additional 1 sec per combo point. (Previously 25% chance)

Talents

Focused Attacks (Tier 8 ) gives your melee critical strikes 100% chance to generate 1/2/3 Energy. (Previously 30% chance)
Infectious Poisons removed.(Previously could not take)
Improved Poisons (Tier 4) now increases the chance to apply Instant and Deadly Poison to your target by 3/6/9/12/15%. (Previously increased the chance to apply all poisons by 5/10/15/20/25%)

Combat
Skills

Backstab damage increased. (Check skill list for details) Previously 225dmg

Talents

Unfair Advantage (Tier 9) now states that the effect cannot occur more then once per second. (Previously 1 per Dodge)

Subtlety
Talents

Enveloping Shadows (Tier 7) reduces the damage taken by area of effect attacks by 5/10/15%. (Previously increased your chance to avoid them)

Glyphs

Glyph of Sinister Strike -- Your Sinister Strike critical strikes have a 40% chance to add an additional combo point. (Previously 101%, which was a tooltip error)

Additionally, IP was changed to 0.1AP (from 0.15AP) and DP was changed to 0.8AP (from 0.12AP).

For those keeping track, IP is down 100dmg and DP is down 80dmg. Significant yes but the problem remains where daggers (the faster the better) will be the only PvE raid choice. The decrease to Envenom and Imp Poisons also has big DPS implications but still not enough to swap to another build. That being said, Focused Attacks just got a crazy boost. Most Rogues run 40%crit or more and at 1.5SPS or more, you're looking at about 2-3E/S gained, practically on par with Combat Potency.

I would rather they tweak combat and subtlety a bit as they definitely need the most work.

Updated Numbers

2008-09-15T07:59:00.001-07:00

Let's combine the two previous entries.

Suppose you have 1.94 SPS and want to apply poisons. Your chance to apply per second is equal to:

1.94*Application Chance*Hit Chance

Simple enough. Let's assume 100% hit chance first. Let's compare DP(30%) to IP(20%) with 2000AP, so that IP does 750damage and DP does 775/12s (64.5DPS), first with Vile Poison (20% damage)

1.94*0.2=0.38 or every 2.6s = 346DPS
1.94*0.3=0.58 or every 1.7s = 386DPS @ 5 stacks

Let's include Improved Poisons, which increases the chance by 25%.

1.94*0.45=0.87 or every 1.15s = 652DPS
1.94*0.55=1.07 or every 0.93s = 322DPS @ 5 stacks

If we look at your standard 80% hit chance....
With Vile Poisons: IP = 3.2s/281DPS DP=2.1s/386DPS
With Improved Poisons: IP = 1.4s/535DPS DP=1.16s/322DPS

With Master Poisoner, you're only using IP so that's the number we should be looking at. From numbers alone, Improved Poison is a huge improvement over Vile Poisons.

But Vile Poisons also increases Envenom. With a full stack of DP applied every 16s/7 seconds, depending on the talent, we need to look at the potential damage. Taking the former...

At 16s per 5 stacks, and running a 4+Envenom cycle (which we saw in the last post) means Envenom happens every 18.5 seconds, so you definitely have 5 stacks on, though on average you still only have 77dps after first 3.2s, and increase of 77 per 3.2s and finally 368@16s. That's an average 2.7stacks over 18s, or an average 198DPS, a significant DPS loss.

At 7s per stack, you reach 322DPS after 7s, which is twice as fast as before and you average 4.2stacks over 18s, or an average 270DPS.

Envenom itself does on average 1080dmg (with an average 4.5 CP per use). With VP, this is increased to 1296. So, with VP you have 1296/18s = 72DPS or with IP, 1080/18s=60DPS. Eviscerate does about 1500dmg so a slight increase to 86DPS. Rupture does 90DPS (and takes 14.5s to cycle) or 117DPS with the talent(this goes down when you use other finishers.... ).

The question then becomes, why use Envenom at 4+points instead of 2+ and save the extra DPS for Rupture? Envenom increases the chance to apply a poison by 25% for 1cp+1 seconds per use, so with 4+ you have an average 5.5s. With 2+, you have 3.5s. That 25% is just like Improved Poisons....

Numbers:
VP --> 1.4s application speed for duration. 5.5 will have 5 stacks after 8.8s for 294DPS. With 3.5s, it's 270DPS.
IP --> 0.93s application speed for duration. 5.5 will have 5 stacks after 4.6s for 289DPS. With 3.5s, it's 283DPS.

Both of these only account for DP and not the damage already gained from IP. The IP damage bonus from 0.93s for 5.5s is 74DPS and 47DPS at 3.5s.

So, you have Rupture at 64DPS. You have Improved Poisons which gives an inherent 535DPS with Instant Poison. You use Envenom at 2+ (21DPS), you have 283DPS + 47DPS from DP for a grand total of 950DPS.

Other Option, you have Rupture at 44.4DPS, IP = 535, Envenom 4+(27DPS), you have 289DPS + 74DPS is equal to 969DPS.

A 4+Envenom does more damage.

Let's try no Rupture at all! 4+Envenom all the time. Cycle is 15.5s.
IP=535DPS, Envenom 4+=70DPS, DP = 289DPS, bonus 74DPS on IP for a total of 968.

A 1DPS difference is a 0.1% difference.

Statistically speaking, you should always use a 4+Envenom.

That was longer than I expected!

Weapon Swing Speed

2008-09-15T07:31:00.001-07:00

After writing the previous post, weapon swing speed came to mind. As in, how do you calculate it? Let's take a look-see.

Swings per second = (60/main hand speed/(1+haste)) + (60/off hand speed/(1+haste)) + (Special attack speed * Energy regeneration)

The first 2 parts are simple enough. Let's say you're dual wielding daggers, slow main, fast off, so something around 1.8, 1.5. Without haste, it's 33.3 swings and 40 swings respectively, for a total of 73 swings per second, or 1.2 SPS (swings per second). I round to 1 when I do a lot of calculations, that way you don't include talents or haste inherently.

As for special attacks, each "strike" requires energy and the finisher as well. Nearly all finishers hit the enemy except for Slice and Dice. Now, depending on the strike and your attack pattern, you have different speeds. Base Energy Regen is 10/s.

Mutilate --> Two mutilates followed by a Rupture --> 60+60+25 = 145energy. 3 strikes in 14.5 seconds comes to 12 strikes a minute (0.2 SPS).
Sinister Strike --> SS*5 followed by Rupture --> 40*5 + 25 = 225 energy. 6 strikes in 22.5 seconds comes to 16 strikes a minute (0.27 SPS).
Hemorrhage --> Hemo*5 followed by Rupture --> 35*5 + 25 = 200 energy. 6 strikes in 20 seconds comes to 18 strikes a minute (0.3 SPS).

Energy regeneration has a factor here where it decreases the time of your special attacks. For example, 1.5 Energy/s increase changes a Mutilate build to 0.24SPS, which is a minimal increase in regards to Swing Speed. Activating Adrenaline Rush raises the SS build to 0.53 a significant boost to swing speed. There is a near 1:1 ratio of Energy Regeneration : Special Attack speed, reduced primarily by the General Cooldown timer (1second).

So, let's look at this as a whole now. You're deep Assassination, Improved Slice and Dice, Cut to the Chase included, based Haste Rating of 200 (~12% haste). Based on the dagger information above, you have:
=((60/1.8/1.42) + (60/1.5/1.42))/60 + 0.2SPS
=(47.3+56.8)/60 + 0.2SPS
=1.74+0.2SPS
=1.94 SPS

1.94 is a pretty large number!

If you go the SS/Hemo route with a slow main, fast off (2.8/1.5) and the same stats...
=(87.2)/60 + 0.27SPS
=1.72 SPS

The build is a little slower (~22%) but still a noticeable increase over just plain attack speed.

Wrath Beta - Poison Theory

2008-09-12T09:07:00.000-07:00

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.