One Rogue's Journey

Disclaimer: Although some of what is discussed here could be applied to Mutilate this article is focused on the Combat build and style of play.

So, as a rogue, our number 1 priority of our rotation is to maintain 100% Slice and Dice up-time and our number 2 priority is to maintain as high a Rupture up-time as possible. We then attempt to slip in as many Eviscerates as possible without breaking priority 1 or 2.

Hello dead horse, how nice to see you again. How have you been? Dead and stinky huh? That’s a shame.

Yeah, yeah, quiet down, I’m just reiterating some important rogue tenants that are relevant to the points I’m about to make.

Fine, fine, pad your post with repeated information. Be my guest.

Jerk.

Noob.

Right, now that that is over with, back to the topic at hand.

Today I’m going to talk about Energy Pooling, namely when you should be doing it. Energy Pooling is the tactic of waiting a few seconds for your energy to regenerate a little bit before throwing a finishing maneuver.

Why (and when) would you do this?

Let’s take a look at a real world example:

Real world?

Don’t get smart with me, you know what I mean. So, the example:

You have 5 combo points, plenty of time left on Slice and Dice, 3 seconds left on rupture and 35 energy, what do you do? Well, in this situation I feel you have 3 choices.

1. Eviscerate
   You can Eviscerate right then and there and then proceed to Sinister Strike your way back to 5 combo points for a Rupture. There is nothing particularly wrong with this choice, except that it is going to cost you some rupture up-time since rupture will for sure fall off before you can get back to 5 combo points (you should never throw a less than 5 cp rupture). Of course, this loss of up-time could be even worse if you have to refresh Slice and Dice before you can get your rupture up again.
2. Rupture
   You could just reapply rupture right away. If successful you are keeping your up-time up but you are missing out on a couple of ticks of the previous rupture’s damage, wasting them and defeating the purpose of keeping your up-time so high.

   I say “if you are successful” because it is possible that you will run into the “a more powerful spell is already active” error when trying to overwrite your previous Rupture. What is this error? Well, the damage of rupture is based on Attack Power, namely, the amount of Attack Power you have when you first apply it. Rupture will also not allow you to overwrite a stronger version with a weaker version. Therefor, if you applied the Rupture during a trinket proc or other AP buff that is no longer present when trying to apply the new Rupture you will get this message and probably end up spamming the Rupture button until the previous application drops off, which would actually unintentionally be option 3:

3. Pool your energy until Rupture drops off, reapply and then dump your energy. If you simply wait the few seconds for the previous Rupture to drop off and then immediately reapply you get the extended up-time of option 2 without the loss of Rupture ticks. The extra energy you built up can then be “dumped” with a few quick Sinister Strikes (which you would have had to wait for energy to do using method 2). You see, you only gained, you didn’t lose (as long as you didn’t let your energy cap out, more on that below).

You see, energy pooling can be very effective in helping your Rupture up-time which will give a little boost to your DPS but there is one thing you must avoid at all costs with pooling.

DO NOT LET YOUR ENERGY CAP OUT

Let’s say it one more time for good measure.

DO NOT LET YOUR ENERGY CAP OUT

If you’re energy caps out, you are losing DPS every second (that’s energy you could be spending on combo moves which would allow you to regen more energy, and so on and so on).

An important thing to remember is that Relentless Strikes will give you 25 energy for a 5 point Rupture, therefor the “cap out” level when pulling is actually 75, not 100.

So, you’re probably asking, “Zaltu, you handsome, handsome man, what are the exact conditions in which I should pool?”

That, my friend, is something you have to figure out for yourself. Meaning, there are no hard and fast rules beyond what I have mentioned previously. The only way to get a feel for it is to add the concept to your knowledge bank and practice it. It will eventually become second nature. A quick and dirty tip I can tell you now is that it is better to throw an extra Sinister Strike than let your energy cap out.

Energy Pooling is boring. Stab stab stab stab!

Yeah, but it’s a good technique.

Your face is a good technique.

Thank you?

I hate you.

Split DPS is a weekly bi-weekly whenever I feel like it column where the two opposing side of my personality attempt to one up each other in a battle of wits where no one can win. The statements herein are opinions and should be taken with enough salt to give a cow a heart attack (cows have multiple hearts you see).

The buzz around patch 3.2, Call of the Crusader…

Or as I like to call it “Call of the Meh”

Why do you have to interrupt me when I’m doing the introduction?

Because your introductions, much like you, are lame. I’m sorry though, you were saying, something about bees?

I was saying, that the buzz around patch 3.2 is starting to really ramp up and it was about time that we talked a little bit about it. What I’d like to talk about is…

Oh oh, speaking of whatever you were just talking about. It is time for Zaltu’s patented guess of the patch day. Wherein everybody’s favorite rogue – that’s me, not you b to the w’s – uses his vast, uncanny knowledge to predict the patch day with 100% accuracy.

Being a little dramatic don’t you think? You’ve guess one patch day so far.

And I was right. I call that 100% accuracy, don’t you? Anyway, stop trying to ruin my fun, why don’t you go do some math in the corner or something. So, when is patch 3.2: Call of the Meh going to be gracing us with it’s server crashing presence? Tuesday, September 1st.

Are you done?

Yeah, I’m good.

Good, now onto the topic at hand, the emblem change in patch 3.2. First, I want to give you a little bit of history. Remember when patch 2.4 came out with its slew of new and fancy gear that you could buy with badges of justice? Suddenly anyone could grab up gobs and gobs (OK maybe just one gob) of T6 quality gear from running heroics and kara.

Isn’t that how you geared up noob?

Quiet you, I’m not saying that’s a problem but blizzard seems to (or at least seemed to, more on that in a second). When Wrath was realized we saw two different types of “badges”, emblems of heroism from heroics and the ten-mans and emblems of valor from the 25-mans. This system created a divide wherein the extra rewards you could purchase with your emblems would be on par with the current tier of content you were doing. This trend continued in patch 3.1 when Ulduar was released with emblems of valor appearing in the 10-man and emblems of conquest for the 25-man.

You’re boring me. What’s the point?

I’m getting there. In patch 3.2, Blizzard is doing a 180 on this design (well, maybe not a 180, more like a 105). The 25-man versions of the raid will drop the new emblems of triumph and the 10-man will drop emblems of conquest. This is as expected but the real change is that all other emblem drops will also be emblems of conquest (From Ulduar-25 all the way down to heroics).

So you’re saying that you’ll be able to get emblems of conquest, and thus ulduar-25 level gear (T8), from running heroics? Double-U, Tee, Fffffffff

Yes, that’s what I’m saying. Personally, I understand it and I’m not at all bothered by it but I take it from you unnecessary elongation of that popular acronym that you’re not a fan.

Meh, I don’t really care, but I’m suppose to take the other side of the coin on this one aren’t I? That’s the shtick we’re doing? It’s bull really, they’re basically taking rungs out of the ladder and making it a much shorter climb.

Exactly. This follows along with giving everyone a chance to see the new content. Plus it has the added bonus of getting people back into Heroics and even the older raid, since there are much bigger reward to be gained.

I don’t think that people aren’t doing heroics because the rewards aren’t that great. I think that people aren’t running heroics because we ran them until our eyes bled when the expansion first came out and now we’re sick to death of them. You’ll have a hard time getting me into old heroics just for the conquest badges.

Yeah but you’re full of bitterness and hate.

True.

We’re still going to run the new 5-man right?

Oh hell yeah, until we’re sick of it at least.

So, I’m interested in what you all have to say about this change. Like it? Hate it? Don’t care? Blizzard has been doing a lot of flippity-floppity with this expansion. What do you think of that?

Let us know and I promise not to openly mock your opinion.

Please don’t make promises you can’t keep.

Sorry.

Hey there! Did you miss me? I missed you.

No one missed you, just give them the damn information. People come here for advice and strats not to hear about your mundane life. If you must talk about that, throw it at the bottom.

Valid point, though very meanly said.

So awhile back I did a post on Feint in Ulduar. Some time has past since then and I’ve actually seen a lot more of this little instance.

You mean more than 5 bosses?

Yes, Mr spiteful, I’ve actually seen 12 of the 13 bosses at this point.

Still haven’t killed Yogg yet though, huh?

You’re as much to blame on that as I am.

…

Nothing to said to that? Good. Back to the business at hand, let’s go through the bosses of Ulduar and see where Feint can make your healers love you. I’ll be rating the usefulness of feint on a scale of 1 to 5 stab wounds, where 1 is basically a waste of your time and 5 is a must must must use always, because everybody loves numbers.

Flame Leviathan

Usefulness: N/A

Obviously you’re in a vehicle here, so no feint.

Why did you waste space on this then?

It’s called consistency, I’m listing all the bosses.

It’s called padding your post.

Razorscale

Usefulness: 1 Stab Wounds

While using Feint will help you take less damage from the whirlwind of the adds, I don’t consider that a very viable use.

Just say it, if you get hit by the whirlwind you’re noob and even if feint saves you you’ll clearly noob it up in some other way and die anyways.

Don’t be mean. But yeah, don’t get hit by the whirlwind.

Ignis

Usefulness: 5 Stab Wounds

Flame Jets is your target here. You should be using cloak of skill to avoid it whenever possible but you won’t be able to cloak them all. Whenever cloak is down, throw a feint to decrease the load on your healers.

No lame math this time?

Well, since you asked. On Heroic mode, Flame Jets does 8,483 to 9,517 damage and then 2,000 damage every second for 6 seconds. A well timed Feint can halve the initial damage and about 4-5 ticks of the dot, preventing anywhere between 8,241 to 9,758 damage (8,483-9,517 /2 = 4241.5-4758.5) + (8000-10000/2 = 4000+5000)

XT

Usefulness: 5 Stab Wounds

Keep your eyes open for Tympanic Tantrum because it does 10% of your hit points every second for 8 seconds for a total of 80%. With Feint you can knock that down to 50% ( (10% *6)/2 + (10% *2) ).

…Well? No comment?

What, huh? Were you saying something? I wasn’t listening.

…

Assembly of Iron

Usefulness: 1 Stab Wound

It is possible to use Feint when a rune of death is dropped on you to negate a few of the ticks, however, I wouldn’t recommend it, it is better that you just GTFO, as they say.

As who says?

You know, they.

Oh…right…loser

Kologarn

Usefulness: 2 – 3 Stab Wounds

This big Santa Claus looking guy’s right left arm will cast shockwave periodically which does (on heroic) 13,875 to 16,125 damage to the entire raid so a successfully timed Feint will save you 6,937 – 8,062 damage. The reason this doesn’t score higher on the usefulness scale is that is very unpredictable and you really have to guess when to feint to get it off right.

Too much work, let the healers handle it.

It can feel that way, yes and if the healers aren’t struggling on this fight then sure, don’t worry about it but if they are struggling (particularly when the fight is being learned) you can help take a little bit of the strain off of them.

Auriaya

Usefulness: 3 Stab Wounds

Her sonic screech ability does (on Heroic) 190,000 to 210,000 damage divided equally among all enemies standing in front of her. This seems like a ton but divide 25 ways (as it should be) it is only 7,600-8,400, your Feint will knock this down to 3,800 – 4,200. Not essential but a nice bit of help to your healers.

I like kitties.

Yeah me too, I guess we can finally agree on something.

‘Bout time.

Hodir

Usefulness: 3 Stab Wounds

Frozen blows will cause (on Heroic) 4,000 Frost Damage to the entire raid every 2 seconds for 20 seconds. Feint will reduce 3 ticks for a total of 6,000 frost damage. It may not seem like a lot but it can really add up in the course of this (healing intensive) fight.

I like this fight, it’s cool.

I thought I said no puns?

Yeah, like I listen to you.

Thorim

Usefulness: 1-2 Stab Wounds

Like on Razorscale you can use Feint to take less whirlwind damage (a lot of which is unavoidable when in the pit) but that’s hard to time and you’re much better off just dismantling the champions before they whirlwind.

When Thorim himself is engaged you can use Feint to take some of the sizzle off of chain lightning but it is very hard to time which is why the usefulness rating is as low as it is.

This fight is the pits.

I hate you so much.

<3

Freya

Usefulness: 1 1/2 Stab Wounds

If you find yourself too close to detonated lashers and your cloak is down…

AKA, you screwed up

Please don’t interrupt, if you find yourself in this situation a quick Feint can save the day but you’re best just avoiding this situation.

In phase 2, you can Feint the explosion from the bombs she drops but, again, she should just be avoided.

Mimiron

Usefulness: 1 Stab Wound

You’d think there would be more to Feint on this fight that contains so much crazy AOE but the truth is you really just need to avoid all of that. In phase 2 he casts Heat Wave. You can Feint the initial damage but not the DOT, it’s hard to time and not worth it.

God. I LOVE robots!

Me too!

I still hate you.

Right back atcha big guy.

General Vezax

Usefulness: N/A

You shouldn’t be taking any damage in this fight.

Enjoy your kicking duty.

I’m leaving Yogg and Algalon off the list for now since I don’t have enough experience (or in the case of the later, no experience) to speak on them.

Noob.

No, you.

Touche

So that is that. Feint in Ulduar. Use it, love it.

So, where the hell have a been? Short answer is I just took a little unannounced break.

Lazy Jerk.

Shut up you. Medium answer is that life just got a little hectic for awhile and I was just really busy.

Again, lazy jerk.

The long answer is well, long, so I’m not going to go into it.

QQ more.

Shut up.

Anyway, I make no promises but I’m going to be doing my best to get back on track.