Rogues and Raiding

[un4]

Some people have been asking me questions about what gear they should get, what specs to use, etc. for raids.
Talents:

Combat swords is probably the best raiding spec there is for us.  The talent gives a 5% raw damage increase at hit cap, which is a lot more than you'll see out of other specs.  The classic combat swords is linked below.  Note that the three points in vile poisons are just so you don't miss the remaining three.  You can put them pretty much wherever.
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=f0eboeZGcV0rVzxMGot

For daggers, combat daggers will give you the best results.  Use pretty much the same build as you do for swords, just putting those three points into improved backstab.

Finally, there are gadgety specs like mine - the classic ADRH (Adrenaline Rush/Hemo) spec.
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=fZhdVbrVt0M0oZxrIobhRox
Put whatever weapon spec is appropriate in if you don't use maces.  ADRH with swords does about 3-5% less direct personal damage, but the raid gains the hemo debuff damage bonus and your talent dirty deeds will be a huge bonus (20% damage increase) on all targets under 35%.  Try not to have too many hemo rogues in the same group, as hemo doesn't stack.

I wouldn't even try raiding with mutilate or ShS (shadowstep) ambush.  ShS has no sustained damage, even with swords or maces, mutilate is poison-dependant, and both require you to be behind your target the whole fight.

During fights:
Use your 3/5/5s.  That's why they're there.  If you don't know what that is:
3 = three CP (combo point) Slice and Dice (SnD), 5 = 5 CP SnD, second 5 = 5 CP rupture.  Rupture deals damage over time with less threat than any other damaging finisher we have.

Most bosses will be immune to stuns.  Don't waste the energy trying.  Don't make a habit of stunning mobs if you have a threat-based tank, either.  Stuns can wipe raids if you're not careful.  If your raid somehow has no warriors, pop an expose armor early on to make up for the lack of sunders.

Gear:
No rogue in this guild is at hit cap.  These are the approximate ratings that you want for the listed raids if you're going to convert on the majority of your damage.

Kara/Gruul Starting = 200-250
SSC/Tk Starting = 280-300
BT/Hyjal Starting = 320+

They seem intimidating at first, but I'm in pre-kara gear and I have 196 hit rating buffed.  A rogue with low hit rating attacking a boss from the front will wipe the raid.

After that, your AP and crit are the next things to increase.
http://www.shadowpanther.net/ has a great guide to what to wear.  Don't forget to keep your health up - we get smeared by a lot of bosses and then the raid DPS goes down.  Don't worry about resilience... if you get aggro, you're probably dead anyway and should vanish before you get attacked.  Expertise is nice, but hit rating is better until cap.

[un4]

Poisons:
For pretty much every fight, instant MH deadly OH or instant/instant will be your best bets.  Mutilate, obviously, needs the double deadly poison for initial damage.  Mind-numbing poison won't do much except on trash, bosses are probably immune to wound poison, and crippling poison's only good for trash.  If you're having aggro problems, swap to anesthetic poison - if you don't have it, it's a gimped instant poison that does no threat.  Otherwise, keep up the feinting and you'll be OK.

[usonian]

Shadowpanther is an amazing website but be sure you are looking in the right place for ideas about upgrading.  If you are looking to increase your raid DPS then look in the PVE section under Armor Charts.  The gear in this section is ranked with more importance given to +hit, AP and crit with less importance given to stamina, resilience, etc.  As with any gear list though, use this as a guide and see how pieces fit into your wardrobe before replacing items that may give a set bonus or something this list may not consider.

As far as attack rotations go, the 3/5/5 strategy works well when you are in a long boss fight for sure, but you might not have that much time while fighting trash.  As a general rule, just try to keep Slice and Dice up constantly and only use rupture if you're sure it can run it's course.  A 5 combo point Rupture when a trash mob is at 20% health and 3 seconds from death is a waste.  Either use your evicerate or dump those combo points into another full Slice and Dice before the mob dies if you are doing a lot of target swapping.  You should try to never let a mob die with combo points up as that is also a waste of possible DPS.

[Melonni]

Thanks, Un4.

I've found Roguecraft 101 to be handy with my new rogue's gearing up. Something that stood out to me regarding +Hit (and how this differs from a caster) is:

The hit and expertise caps are NOT magic numbers that every rogue [or any rogue] must reach. Whether you're in T4 or T6, there are NO MAGIC NUMBERS for how much hit or expertise rating you "should" have. There is no special benefit to being capped with either stat, nor is there any special benefit to reaching an arbitrary threshold. The purpose of listing the caps here is so that you do not accidentally overshoot either cap by equipping too much hit rating or expertise rating.

With a mage (and other casters afaik), we're always pushed to get the spell hit up to its proper cap soon as possible, but it works differently for a rogue - though of course Hit and Expertise will scale better to improve raid DPS at the tier4 level.

[un4]

They say that, but the numbers don't lie: more +hit, more damage, better CP generation, and more energy if you're combat.  Get close to those caps before you go crazy with the crit or AP.

[usonian]

The hit cap with is 442 for dual-wielding rogues (363 with 5/5 precision) which is just a ridiculous amount of hit, especially with the gear level we're working with now.  I think the idea is to not sacrifice everything for hit, it's a balance just like everything else.

[un4]

For those of you who still don't believe in hit ratings, check out the WWS from last night's SSC.
Bourne, 295 buffed hit rating versus Dvalin 212 buffed hit rating:

His gear is better than mine, especially trinks, rings, weapons, and bracers.  I lagged out during Lurker and Leo and goofed my spec because I'm an idiot.  However:  Bourne had 0.9% of his SS miss, versus my 2.7% SS miss.  His other special abilities never missed... I had a 0.5% rupture miss.  Bourne's swing missed 2.9% of the time.  Mine missed 10.5%.

The result?  32% more damage.  Stack your hit.




On an unrelated note, Relentless Strikes is amazing, and should not be left out if you're trying an alternate raid spec like ShS.

[usonian]

Hit is definitely one of our most important stats to build up.  I'm right around 300 hit (with spicy hot talbuk) in my dps gear and I think it is invaluable for putting out the damage I can do.  When gearing up for hit you have to force yourself to somewhat ignore your AP and Crit levels as they WILL drop most of the time when stacking hit.  For example, my PVP gear puts me at about 1800 AP and 30.5% Crit with only 101 Hit.  When I switch over to my DPS gear my AP drops to about 1740, Crit is around 28% but hit is at 278 unbuffed.  Granted I'm missing some PVE gear that would help Hit AND AP / Crit, but there is no way I could put out enough damage without sacrificing some AP and crit for Hit.

[un4]

Recount has some issues for me... the %miss it gives for each of my attacks is almost exactly half of what WWS reports.  Anyone else have that problem?

[Belandand]

Here's a quick reference thing that I developed myself based off of observation and forum posts. Stat importance breakdown (ONLY analyzed for combat specs):

Daggers: aim to bolster hit rating and crit. Using Karazhan as the benchmark for later raiding content, a rogue should aim for a minimum of 26% crit chance, 185-200 hit and 1600 AP to be considered able to progress to gruuls etc etc

Swords/Fists: these two specs are almost mirror images of each other in many ways- CP rotation, staple moves. Ideally aim for a hit rating of 185-200, 23-26 crit chance and 1800 AP. With these minimum stats, your dps should not suffer come gruul's/mag's.

Aagain, there is not set law here- I am just using my own personal observations and rogue forum based information. I was originally sub, but then switchd to combat daggers, then swords and finally fists.

[un4]

I'm viable in GL, but not optimal, and I have about 1400 AP with 210 hit rating and 25% crit unbuffed.

[Belandand]

Keep in mind that no matter how much good stuff you have, some fights just break our balls. Case in point- Al'ar.

Oh and I have another issue I'd like to bring up. Though I am relatively new to the guild, I have noticed that the groups cater to ranged dps- namely ranged casters. I remember one time looking at group setup and noticed that the locks were in a group with a moonkin. Whereas the best dps enhancing buff I could get was ferocious inspiration. Weighing the dps increase against each other, obviously the locks benefit more from the moonkin aura and as a result, their dps goes up. The aura itself greatly augment their shadowbolt dmg and even helps with the tier 1 5 pt talent- the buff that procs on mobs everytime a lock gets a shadowbolt crit. When I started raiding with you guys and checked the WWS reports, I was both disappointed and shocked as to the dmg the warlocks were doing. But then I realized that the raid group itelf didn't really comprise of too much melee dps. As a matter of fact, I was the only physical melee dps there that time. Now I've been to Kara. ZA and TK before with friends and my old guild. Each time I went with them, they put me in the feral druid's group. They often had an enhance shammy as well. Dps warriors were a rare occurrence. But my point is, with just the feral druid aura, my dps went from 750 ish to the 800s (I believe it was 840). With the enhancement shaman, my dps went from 750 to the really high 800s (860ish if memory serves). With both the druid aura and the shammy buff- and excluding every class dps buff except for MotW, my dps passed over 900. When I went to TK, I was afforded the opportunity to see my dps with the full array of physical dps increasing buffs- feral aura, MotW, shammy buff, paladin buffs etc. My dps was close to 1100.
And if anyone is wondering as to why the hunters can outdps the rogues, I can only say that for ranged, many mob/boss fights go relatively easy on them. Examples include the Prince fight (enfeebles) and the dragonhawks in TK (the push back). More time to dps means more chances to land critical hits.
Bottomline, I'd like to see a little more favor towards the physical dps classes. Again, I am not angry or annoyed but just a little frustrated as how the ranged gain the upperhand when I know we have some rogues that can seriously dish out lethal dmg.

[Arcdelad]

it used to be the opposite...raid group comp is something I hear a lot of complaints about in from various people right now...

we USED to put a DPS warrior, BM spec hunter, enhancement shammy, a rogue, and myself (feral druid) in a melee group and it would be dubbed the "dps super group" becuase those 5 would be dps 1-5 on the chart...

this was great, but then the argument was made that we were out-threating our tanks...

then there are complaints from casters about "why are there two elemental shammies in the same group" or "why cant i get in with the boomkin" or "why is the shadow priest in with the mages and not the healers" and on and on...

basically its hard to make everyone happy with what we have and itll never be perfect, BUT if you have a question, send a message to one of the officers and they will look into it...this whole issue is changing with the new patch anyway, so its almost worthless to debate anymore...

[Belandand]

Raid wide buffs- so I've heard. But I'm just mentioning it because during my off hours- no work, schoolwork etc- and providing that my connection doesn't explode, I will be raiding with you guys on Fridays and Saturdays (maybe Thursdays and Sundays if time permits). And yea, I was a raid leader in my old guild before coming to you guys- the pressure to perform 100% is excruciating. I just didn't want to add to that stress of the raid leaders. That and I didn't feel, as a new member, that I had any exclusive right to demand being put into a specific group 

[Arcdelad]

youve been a great guildee from what I can see and have impressed a ton of people...never hesitate to send me or anyone else a tell...i think most people will tell you i do take anyone's concerns seriously and try to address them...dont think like you ever bother me.