Post by cawfee
Hi!
First time poster here, though I've been reading on and off and consider this forum to be a great source of information on all the finicky rogue details. Here's a little comparison / question of "am I doing this right" to rid me of some confusion that still lingers.
My entire rogue time until recently has been spent as a Combat Swords and later Fist build, which has served me nicely in raid runs pre-WotLK, and I haven't really considered speccing into any other tree until I hit 80 and noticed that my DPS (even PvE) was ... well, rather mediocre.
Up until that point, I've been using this build:
Boring Combat Fist BuildThen one day I stumbled across two cheap
Paper Cutters on the AH and thought "hey, let's give this Mutilate thing a try!". Said and done, I made myself a tree based on what seemed like a good build for frequent Crits and CP generation, and ended up with this:
My First MutilateBased on my (probably false) consideration of HfB as a PvP thing (and me mainly being involved in PvE), I left it out and it worked wonders for my damage. Mobs that took 10+ seconds to die with Combat were now felled with 2 Mutilates and an Eviscerate, and the CP generation was insane. I was even doing well in Heroics, SnD never dropped once and I was knocking out Ruptures and Expose Armor left and right.
And then I got into raiding once again, and was out-DPSed by three Combat Fist rogues in sub-par gear.
It's a little unnerving at this point because Combat seems to produce higher overall DPS in numbers for me (based on Recount), yet has gotten completely useless in soloing or grinding; Mutilate is amazing for just that, but seems lackluster in raids despite all the poisoning, Rupturing and Envenoming going on. I keep thinking that maybe I'm Doing It Wrong™ but I've pieced my Mutilate rotations together from what seems to be a logical order of things, namely (and this is based on single-target Raid encounters):
- open with Garrote or Ambush
- SnD
- Envenom, knocking SnD up to 20
- Mutilate
- Rupture
- Mutilate
- Expose Armor
-> (filling in all missing single CPs with Shivs)
... and this gets me to 1200DPS max. The aforementioned rogues with their Combat build were at a constant 1800 or higher with roughly the same gear as me. So after all this wall-of-text-ing, here are the core questions:
- Is Mutilate, if used correctly (and please feel free to correct me regarding build or rotation issues) a viable Raid PvE spec that can even remotely be considered on par with Combat, or am I trying to do something here that's just not possible?
- Am I silly for assuming Combat Fists/Daggers is inferior to Mutilate in grinding and solo PvE? Maybe I'm making too many mistakes in the rotation, but there's only so much you can do with SS, Evis, Rupture and SnD, right? Even though the weapon DPS (Greed MH LPC OH) is almost three times as high, things just ... don't die, even with a decent Crit chance.
This is all mainly to weed out some misconceptions I've had about the specs overall, and forgive my insolence if there's any because, as said, I've been stuck in the stupid "Combat for leveling / for the win!" mantra and never quite got over it. Thanks in advance for your input, flames or whacks on the head, and have a nice day :>
Post by Cyprin
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=f0ef0exoVboIzAo0xV0hZxbRotation:
* Before combat, get 3 stacks of Hunger for Blood up.
* Start up Slice and Dice however you please, really.
1. Mutilate to 4+ Combo Points
2. Make sure Hunger for Blood isn't going to drop soon. Refresh it if it will.
3. Is Rupture up? If yes, Envenom. Go to step 1.
4. Does Slice and Dice have >12 seconds left? If no, Envenom. Go to Step 1.
5. Rupture. Go to Step 1.
9% damage from a talent is nothing to scoff at.
Mutilate is our highest non-bugged PVE spec.
(Meaning, HAT will outperform it, but once the CP generation with HAT is fixed it'll be back underneath Mutilate.)
Never shiv. Muti until you have 4 cps and move to the next step as mentioned above.
Post by cawfee
Thanks a bunch for all the replies, all the links and tips are really useful. I've been playing around a bit more with the specs and have come to appreciate HfB in Mutilate as well as optimizing my Combat rotation, and came to the overall conclusion that Mutilate is probably the spec for me in the long run.
I've also recently acquired
Mirror of Truth as an added incredible DPS boost to my builds. I'll keep experimenting, but you guys have been great help :D
