Rogue Stats and Itemization for PvE Purposes

[Belandand]

As I wait to reinstall ALL of WoW, I thought it would be a good idea to start a thread for the discussion of stats and gear pve rogues should take into consideration as their gear up for raids.

With the onset of WotLK, I noticed that a great majority of gear shifted the focus from +HR to +crit chance/+armor pen. Throughtout my extensive quest runs in the various regions (I have the max quest achievement in every region except IC, SP and HF) I would argue that less than 5% of all quest rewards for rogues had +hit on them. Most just hit arm pen or crit chance. With this in mind, here are the new pve related stats I think rogues will need to keep an eye open for:

1. Arm. pen/HR (for sustained dmg builds- combat anything)
2. Crit/Arm. Pen (mutilate builds)

Currently, I am trying to properly balance +HR gear with +Arm pen gear with a small  focus on crit because I feel that this setup will properly benefit my build. IMO, I can see this build doing nice sustained dmg. Also, if you are gearing down this path, I strongly suggest picking up serated blades in sub (7/51/13) as you will ignore some 6xx armor of your opponent. This combined with all teh arm. pen on gear in wrath makes this talent worthy.

If you are mutilate or combat daggers, I'd strongly suggest doing a 51/15/6 setup or some variation of that. I didn't include armor pen for mutilate/daggers because mutilate ignores armor (along with the 2ndary staple move, envenom). Instead, bolster your dps with +crit to benefit from moves such as seal fate.

As for specific gear pieces, I am stillt rying to figure out my initial pve gear myself. however, I would suggest ivnesting in the trollwoven set and attaching a socket to the belt. Heroics also have really nice trinket drops (in particular H Nex). As for weapons, various factions offer graet stuff such as Wyrmcrest Accord.

[un4]

I'm gemming for hit rating.  Using the last bits of my BC gear and the new +AP/HR gems, I'm questing with 212 HR, 2400 AP, and 21% crit as combat swords.  If I swap to my HR gear and use the food buff, I'll be just over 400 HR... less than half of the cap.  I have 50-something armor penetration from gear, and am trying to avoid the major leather DPS stat: haste.  We'll see how this changes at 80.

[un4]

Note: wounding poison still does more damage than deadly.  I'm currently doing a series of tests to determine the optimal balance of poisons.

[Belandand]

According to tests that I have conducted, here's what I have found (also keep in mind that I am mutilate spec with 3/3 VP and 5/5 Imp poisons):

All tests were conducted on the Heroic training dummies in the gear I had as of since Last Friday. All encounters lasted 5 minutes (I picked this number because I feel it represents the average naxx boss fight length;  ~ is approx.):

1.  2x DP and Evis/ Rupture setup~ 1268 dps
2.  IP/DP and Evis/Rupture setup~ 1361 dps
3.  2x DP and Envenom/Rupture setup~ 1461 dps
4. IP/DP and Envenom/Rupture setup ~ 1878 dps
5. WP/DP and Evis/Rupture setup ~ 1561 dps
6. WP/DP and Enveom/Rupture setup ~ 1740 dps

** NOTE: I also included the use of my trinket twice, CB twice and never let HfB or SnD drop. Opener was always CB Ambush because this represents how I start boss fights in Naxx. You could just as well supplant CB Ambush for CB Mutilate as an alternate opener if you wish.**

Ideally, if you're combat specced, you won't have enough pts to pick up VP or Imp Poisons. Therefore, your poisons options would be WP/DP (MH/OH). I am unsure if the OH double poison proc applies to any spec outside of mutilate. If it did, the optimal poison setup would be DP/WP.

If you're mutilate specced, you MUST pick up VP and Imp Poison. The three pve poisons are IP, WP and DP. If you have 0, 1, 2 pts in Imp Poison, WP will outdps IP. However, if you have 3,4,5 pts in Imp Poison, IP will outdmg WP by a noticeable margin (I haven't exactly figured out the % increase but let it suffice to say that I was seeing more poison dmg with IP over WP with 5/5 Imp Poisons). Basically, the 10% less proc rate of IP (when Imp Poison is taken) is compensated by the higher dmg it can do.

Also something interesting to note is that there was (don't know if there still is) is a bug with mutilate that caused the OH "attack" on each mutilate to proc your OH poison 2x in a row. If this bug is still active, then the optimal poison setup for mutilate is DP/IP (MH/OH).

In summary:
Combat? WP/DP
Mutilate? IP/DP or DP/IP (bug dependent)