Let's talk about this for a hot second. So, I'm going over our WWS parse from last night's Naxx10 clear (1shot every boss... we rock), and I'm noticing at a top-level that our rogue's damage has boosted about 300-400 from the SnD buff alone... this is a REALLY big change and a very good one, but I started looking at his damage composition and saw something odd.

On Patchwerk, his main source of damage was from white swings (40% lawl), which is to be expected. However, his next highest source of damage is from Mutilate at 19% followed shortly thereafter by Instant Poison at 15%. What?! Instant poison... a passive extra damage RNG on his main hand (the slow hand) proc'd enough to account for 15% of his damage!? So, I started looking into it a bit more... Instant Poison does a crap-load of damage and with the poison buffs, he has a really good chance to proc it.

So, I started thinking "well, if only there was a direct damage attack that would 1) build combo points, 2) do decent damage, 3) cost a very little amount of energy, and 4) apply instant poison more often."


Shiv


Why not!? It fulfills every single one of my requirements (and with a 1.4 swing speed and the 4-set bonus it costs 32 energy) and it applies Instant Poison 100% of the time... awesome. So, I started playing with the numbers, and it roughly translates to Shiv being 29dpe while mut is 22dpe as long as Instant Poison always hits... but there's the caveat. Instant Poison is considered a spell, so that means that the rogue would require 17% hit to cap his poisons always hitting. He has ROUGHLY 10% hit rating raid buffed (with food), another 5% to hit with poisons from his talents in the Combat tree, and if we roll with a moonkin or spriest, he'll get enough 3% from misery/IFF... that's a spell-hit-cap.

So... the numbers work out to Shiv being the better ability for PvE dps... but I'm still skeptical, so I will have him test it out on a dummy when I get home today. I'm excited.

EDIT:
Well... that was a flop. Shiv DID improve Instant Poison's overall damage, but not by enough to get ahead of the damage lost from NOT mutilating. OH WELL, we'll keep trying out new stuff.

Yeah... it has certainly been a while since I have posted. Primarily, I would attribute it to the lack of interesting things going on, but that isn't entirely true. I have been PvP'ing less and less lately because of the horribly bursty state of arenas. Supposedly, a solution is in the works and slated for 3.1, but we haven't heard anything official on the subject yet. It is reasonably annoying going against teams with a mage and getting 2shot while guntir is chain polymorphed (yes... mirror images cast polymorph that has no diminish returns).

To keep me in the game, we've been running Naxxramas 10man and doing quite well at it. We have downed Kel'Thuzad twice in two weeks, and we're moving on to Malygos now. Our raid composition continually changes, but I have been topping the dps charts pretty regularly. I have been in a couple of Naxx25 pugs, but I cannot really dps effectively because of the lack of scaling. Blizzard started announcing changes that are slated for 3.1. Not the least of which is feral dps getting better sustained dps output along with rogues and arms warriors.

Also slated for 3.1 is the dual-spec implementation, which guntir and I are looking forward to with great anticipation. Essentially, we don't like having to respec twice a week to do arenas effectively and raiding effectively. Currently, we are not really spending a whole lot of time in the arenas simply because of the crazy state of burst. We will end up going 5-5 and lose to ridiculous teams like mage+mage just because no one can live through that burst without anti-magic shell and/or bubble and we will end up beating 5 dk+healer teams. Interestingly, our rating is slowly climbing up due to the new matchmaking system... which hopefully means that the system understands that we can beat 2200 comps but we can't beat half the random double-dps comps in the 1500-1800 brackets. Anyway, once burst is leveled out a bit, we feel we have the comp to beat. Ferals have great dps output, cc, and survivability while guntir's spec nets him longevity, good healing output, survivability, and he always brings fear and mana burn.

Tonight we go for Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad again... hopefully I get a new weapon... I need a dps upgrade like you wouldn't believe.