COMBAT>>?>>>>>
I. The Spec
Currently, there is ONE viable Combat spec:
20/51/0:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#fhg00tLZMgVo0cxqru0xRt:kNh With the 3.3 Deadly Poison change, Instant Poison is now hands-down the best choice of poison for all specs MH. This is currently the best spec for making use of Instant as Combat, awkward though some of the point allotment may appear.
If you are at a point where you might still consider using Rupture (it won't be hard to gear yourself past that point with 3.3), move the points in Improved Eviscerate to Blood Spatter (2/2) and Ruthlessness (3/3).
II. The Glyphs
For sustained damage, the following Glyphs are optimal:
Glyph of Sinister Strike
Glyph of Killing Spree
Glyph of Eviscerate
Glyph of Tricks of the Trade can be competitive if you trade Tricks with another Rogue regularly, and you're both willing to glyph for it – the best glyph to replace in this case is Eviscerate.
Use Glyph of Rupture in place of Eviscerate until you are using an Eviscerate-Only cycle.
For fights with significant AoE, replace Rupture/Eviscerate with Glyph of Fan of Knives.
III. The Weapons
-Speeds
--Main Hand: Slow
--Off Hand: Fast
The biggest differentiation between Mutilate and Combat is the weapon choice. While Mutilate is only compatible with Daggers, Combat can make use the plethora of melee weapons Rogues have at their disposal.
The Combat trees various “weapon specialization” talents break down the available weapon choices into three groups:
Close Quarters Combat (CQC): Fist Weapons and Daggers
Hack and Slash (HnS): Swords and Axes
Mace Specialization: Maces
While which path you chose to take can be a matter of personal preference, it is generally advisable to let what weapons you have acquired dictate your choice of “weapon spec.” It’s a bad idea to stubbornly use your two Maces when you have a significantly better pair of Swords sitting in your bank, for example; such practice only hurts your DPS, and makes you less valuable to your raid. As a Combat Rogue, you should roll on every usable melee weapon that is an upgrade. Again, don’t pass on a weapon just because it doesn’t belong to the “weapon specialization” you’re using now; your spec is only as good as the gear you have to fuel it.
Let’s look at Sinister Strike, the Combat combo point builder:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q u o t e:
Sinister Strike Rank 12
45 Energy Melee Range
Instant
Requires Melee Weapon
An instant strike that causes 180 damage in addition to your normal weapon damage. Awards 1 combo point.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sinister Strike is essentially a Main Hand swing that you get a combo point for, and that in turn costs Energy. Because the Energy cost is fixed, you’ll get the biggest bang for your buck by using a slow Main Hand weapon to maximize the damage done by each Sinister Strike.
The Off Hand a key part of your Combat DPS due to the talent Combat Potency, which has a chance to give you Energy every time your Off Hand auto attack hits. Faster weapons allow for more frequent auto attacks, obviously, meaning that faster Off Hand choices will generate more Energy in a given duration.
IV. The Poisons
-Poisons
--Main Hand: Instant
--Off Hand: Deadly
Poisons are a prominent part of Rogue DPS for any spec; without them, one loses a significant amount of damage.
Following the change to Deadly Poison, consider that both Instant and Wound Poisons have a much higher chance to proc - about 50% more, actually. Because of this massive buff, Instant Poison is now the MH poison of choice using the above spec to maximize it's effect.
Deadly Poison is typically the Off Hand poison of choice. The strong scaling with AP coupled with the lack of PPM mechanics (Deadly Poison has a fixed proc rate regardless of weapon speed) make it an ideal candidate for faster Off Hand weapons. Add to this the new functionality (proccing the MH poison at five stacks), and you have a poison that's rough to go without.
V. The Cycle
Combat cycles used to be fairly static, but changes to the game have made it less feasible to retain such unmoving cycles. Aldriana has coined terminology to describe the three cycles he currently believes have some viability:
High Rupture: At especially low gear levels, it may be prudent to prioritize Rupture above all else. In a traditional format, you might look at this cycle as 5r/3s, though your mileage may vary. Basically, you goal is to keep Rupture up 100% of the time, and Slice and Dice (SnD) otherwise when it does not interfere with your Rupture.
Thus for High Rupture, we have the priority:
Rupture > Slice and Dice
All Ruptures should be at 5 Combo Points.
Low Rupture: Closest to the traditional 3s/5r/5e, Low Rupture prioritizes Slice and Dice ahead of Rupture, but certainly still uses Rupture. Your target is ~70-80% Rupture uptime, and 100% SnD uptime. Never let SnD fall off. Eviscerate at as many Combo Points you feel you can get while having enough time to build CPs for SnD/Rupture.
So, for Low Rupture, we have the priority:
Slice and Dice > Rupture > Eviscerate
All Ruptures should be at 5 Combo Points.
Eviscerate-Only: At some gear level, you will find that swapping glyphs and talents to buff your Eviscerate further will improve your DPS beyond that of a Rupture cycle. At this point, your cycle becomes incredibly simple: build to 5 Combo Points, refresh SnD at any amount of Combo Points if it's about to fall off (less than 2 seconds left), and otherwise Eviscerate when you've reached 5 Combo Points.
Eviscerate-Only cycles use the priority:
Slice and Dice > Eviscerate
All Eviscerate should be at 5 Combo Points.
Note that Aldriana's Combat Spreadsheet will recommend any of these cycles based on your gear. A link to the Spreadsheet can be found in Section X.
VI. The Stats
The most fun part of character progression is making sure you’ve hit all your caps; unfortunately(?) for Combat Rogues, however, you have only one cap to focus on, and that is:
-HIT RATING
There are three categories affected by Hit Rating that pertain to the Rogue class (these numbers assume 5/5 Precision):
Yellow Hit (Abilities)
99 Hit Rating to cap
66 Hit Rating to cap with Heroic Presence
99 Hit Rating to cap on a Raid Debuffed* target
66 Hit Rating to cap on a Raid Debuffed* target with Heroic Presence
Spell Hit (Poisons)
315 Hit Rating to cap
288 Hit Rating to cap with Heroic Presence
237 Hit Rating to cap on a Raid Debuffed* target
210 Hit Rating to cap on a Raid Debuffed* target with Heroic Presence
White Hit (Auto Attack)
722 Hit Rating to cap
689 Hit Rating to cap with Heroic Presence
722 Hit Rating to cap on a Raid Debuffed* target
689 Hit Rating to cap on a Raid Debuffed* target with Heroic Presence
*Raid Debuffs affecting Hit include Improved Faerie Fire (Balance Druid) and Misery (Shadow Priest). These debuffs provide the same benefit but do not stack.
The important two are the Yellow Hit and Spell Hit caps. Beyond those two, stacking hit (that is, to the White Hit cap) is a bad idea; the DPS gained from the extra auto attack hits will be far outweighed by the DPS lost from not stacking AP or Agility. Also note that it’s fair to assume that you’ll always have at least one Boomkin or SPriest, as well as a Draenei (if you’re Alliance), in the raid; as such, it is not advised to gem for Hit above the “raid” Spell Hit cap for your faction.
-ATTACK POWER (AP)
This is the bread-and-butter stat for a Combat Rogue. Once you’ve reached your Hit cap, this is the go-to stat before you've obtained four pieces of Tier 8. Attack Power is cool! It makes you hit stuff harder, and hitting stuff harder is good. Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise.
Stacking AP over Agility is advised at lower gear levels, due to the nifty talent Savage Combat, which gives you four percent (4%) more Attack Power. As Attack Power gems give twice the amount of AP as Agility gems, AP is the advisable course to take when gemming lower-end gear to best maximize the benefit of the talent.
-AGILITY
A pretty cool stat itself, Agility (Agi) increases a whole bunch of your stats per point, including:
- 1 Attack Power
- 0.02% Critical Strike Chance
- 2 Armor
- Some Dodge Chance
The Critical Strike Chance does not initially make up for the lack a second point of AP (the exception being four-piece Tier
when considering DPS only; from a min-maxing perspective, two (2) AP (rather than one (1) Agility) gives a superior increase to DPS at lower gear levels, especially as Combat (due to the Savage Combat talent).
By the time you've reached four pieces of Tier 9, however, it again becomes initially unclear whether AP or Agility is better. As it turns out, however, Agiltiy remains the superior choice post-T8, as the benefit of the Critical Strike chance given by one point of Agility is increased by every point of AP you have; that is, at some point, you will have enough AP such that the crit you get from Agility will outweigh the second point of AP you've lost.
Exactly where this breaking point is unclearly, largely because the four-piece Tier 8 bonus greatly inflates the value of Agility prior to this breaking point. It is reasonably safe to say, though, that at and after four-piece Tier 8, you should gem Agility.
Also worth noting is that Agility does a fair amount to increase your survivability; at lower gear levels, you might consider gemming Agility over AP for the extra dodge chance and armor, but gemming AP will still yield (slightly) higher DPS prior to four-piece Tier 8.
-ARMOR PENETRATION
To give a fast and flawed description of its function, Armor Penetration increases the amount of enemy armor ignored by your non-Bleed attacks. Opposite of Haste, each point of Armor Penetration Rating is better than the one before it, since it increases the chance to do whatever crazy thing it does. Eviscerate Combat benefits most greatly from ArP, since the vast majority of damage you deal will be physical (poison damage isn’t mitigated by Armor to begin with).
The difference between stacking ArP and AP or Agi in Tier 7 or Tier 8 isn’t that huge; in Tier 7, it’s likely negligible, and in Tier 8, the difference is negligible. The big jump comes in Tier 9, where lots (most) of the gear you’re come across has ArP on it, making hitting the ArP cap not only possible, but easy.
ArP is capped (understandably) at one hundred percent (100%), which equates to 1400 Armor Penetration Rating. Should you choose to use the Grim Toll, Mjolnir Runestone, or Needle-Encrusted Scorpion trinkets (using them together in any combination is inadvisable), you should gem and gear to not exceed the ArP cap when the trinket proc is active.
In T10, stacking ArP to the hard cap is generally the best way to go, in spite of increased contribution of poisons to total damage. Many items have ample ArP on them (good examples include Deathbringer's Will and the crafted leggings), and hit hitting the ArP cap should be feasible as you acquire more ICC gear.
-CRITICAL STRIKE RATING
Critical Strikes are always fun – those big numbers light up anyone’s evening. Stacking Critical Strike (Crit) rating isn’t actually the best idea though, as the DPS it gives tends to be inferior to, say, Attack Power or Agility. Still, when you come across the odd Yellow Socket, if the socket bonus does anything to boost your DPS, the best option is almost always to socket it with an Orange gem – AP/Crit or Agi/Crit, depending on where your gear is at.
-HASTE
Haste is a very “meh” (someone else’s word) stat. The only real function it serves is to decrease the time between auto attack swings, as Rogues mostly operate on a one (1) second Global Cooldown to begin with. A fair amount of Physical DPS gear ends up with Haste on it, and it’s not something you should make a special effort to avoid.
Haste is inferior to certain stats (see Attack Power, Agility), and can be especially bad at low gear levels. As your gear improves, however, the value of the Energy provided by Haste (through Combat Potency) begins to increase, and Haste will begin to outclass Crit Rating as the secondary stat of choice.
Worth noting is that each point of Haste Rating is less valuable than the one before, as the percentage decrease in swing time per point of Haste itself decreases as you gain more Haste – if that all makes any sense.
-EXPERTISE
Expertise is far from a strong stat for Combat Rogues. The talent Surprise Attacks makes your finishing moves unmitigatable – with enough Hit Rating, they will always land. This tends to diminish severely the value of Expertise, as it only affects Sinister Strike and auto attack. It is inadvisable to go out of your way for Expertise, but it can still provide a minor DPS benefit to you (especially at higher gear levels).
At the end of the day, Expertise will do less to help your DPS than an equivalent amount of AP or Agility. You get 10 free from Weapon Expertise; you’ll be fine without more.
For reference, the dodge Expertise cap is 26 Expertise, or 214 Expertise Rating.
For quick rule-of-thumb guesstimations, use the following to determine what’s better:
Yellow Hit > Spell Hit > ArP > Agi = Haste > AP> Crit > White Hit > Expertise
The above varies greatly depending on your gear level, however; as above, Agi outclasses AP in Tier 8, and ArP outclasses them both in Tier 9. If you want a definitive answer as to what is best for you, only one (timeless) response will suffice: