Energy pooling guidance

[Sarnen 0]

I just switched to Assassination, and while my dps output has jumped (I was formerly combat for all occasions), I'm curious about energy pooling.

 

What is the recommended threshhold of energy to pool? 

If envenom is down, and I have 4cp, should I be pooling and to what amount, or should I just get envenom back up (I know not to clip envenom past 1 second)?

 

Also, should I be using 4cp for envenom if thats what I have, or with anticipation, always use 5 (as the go to, barring special situations)?

 

Thanks much

 

 

Currently I'm doing about 190-200k on patchwerk fights, but I have no idea how good or bad that is for my gear.

my armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/crushridge/Kaelindra/advanced

Edited February 9, 2014 by Sarnen

[Krushinator 49]

4cp Envenoms are a defunct concept now that we have the Anticipation talent. The reason 4cp Envenoms were ever a thing is because Mutilate always gives at least 2cp, and the wasted point(s) were more hurtful to overall damage than a slightly less effective Envenom. Always use 5cp Envenoms.

 

Energy pooling is a tool that rogues use to smooth out their rotation and maximize uptime on their buffs. For Assassination, energy pooling gives us more control over clipping the Envenom buff and the Rupture debuff. I wouldn't say that there is a distinct threshold or maximum when it comes to energy pooling, it's something you get a feel for and react to on the fly.

 

Besides avoiding clipping, energy pooling is also useful when a damage cooldown is about to because usable. Since these are controlled temporary stat increases, you want to pour out as much damage as possible during that time frame. Starting with high energy means you will get to use more special attacks before the cooldown wears off than if you started with low energy.

 

If I had to pick a "threshold" for energy pooling, I wouldn't recommend going over 100 energy to be on the safe side. It's a tough concept to think of though, because if you decide you're going to pool energy then halfway through you realize that you're going to cap out before the critical moment, you've put yourself in a worse situation than if you hadn't tried energy pooling in the first place.

 

To choose a simple example, lets say you regenerate 10 energy per second, you are currently at 70 energy, 6 combo points, and there are 7 seconds left on your Rupture debuff. If you immediately use Envenom, you will definitely have time to regain enough combo points to use a 5cp Rupture just as the previous one falls off. However, if you decide to pool energy, you would reach 120 energy with 2 seconds left on your Rupture debuff; bad news however you look at it. Let's say you've decided to pool energy, and you realize at 110 energy that you're about to cap out. Now you have to use Envenom to avoid capping, and you're left with 1 combo point and 2 seconds left (after your GCD fades) on your Rupture debuff. Now your Rupture debuff is going to fall off while you regain your combo points. If the pooling had worked you would have been in a better spot, but since you spent that time in discovering it didn't work, now you are extra behind.

 

That DPS in your current gear level is fine. I would run your character through Shadowcraft to make sure your gems/reforges are in order. See https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/4646-using-shadowcraft/ for some great content on how to properly use the tool, if you're unfamiliar.

[Falcifer 7]

As far as I'm aware there's isn't a certain point to which you should pool energy, mainly because there are various factors which determine the rate at which you regenerate energy, so a rogue with more haste than you might pool to less energy than another with lower haste.

 

Also be aware that 

 

"your  Relentless Strikes passive ability, which grants your Finishing Moves a 20% chance per Combo Point to restore 25 Energy"

 

That means, with Anticipation allowing you to use 5 CP finishers, you'll always regain 25 energy when you use Envenom - although, "rotations" are more of a priority system and, with assassination, Rupture should be refreshed at less than 5 CP if it's going to fall off soon, thanks to the fact that it helps with energy regeneration.

 

As Krush says, it will take some practice to find out what works for you. I often find myself pooling energy for Envenom, only to notice that Rupture will fall off soon (definitely before my next Envenom and subsequent attacks are done) so I will refresh Rupture first. So far, I've never been in a position where I've needed to refresh Slice and Dice by using < 5CP for Envenom, but I suppose it must be possible that it will happen, but most of the time you should be using Envenom frequently enough not to worry about SnD.

 

A final thing to remember is that during times of high energy regen, you're going to be capping energy however hard you try not to, so don't worry about it at those times.

 

There are other add-ons available, but I use WeakAuras to keep track of pretty much everything. At the moment, I'm very used to all my settings and don't really have to look to see when I should be refreshing things. It's a very useful add-on and I recommended trying it (or one of the similar ones) and playing around with it.

Edited February 9, 2014 by Falcifer

[Sarnen 0]

Alright thank you for the replies.  I had another question: which should I trust between mr robot and shadowcraft? shadowcraft seems to be.. behaving erratically (if I hite hte reforge button several times in a row it will change them for no particular reason).  Shadowcraft is saying crit > haste by a small margin, robot says the opposite.  I decided to go with mr robot and regemmed out of mastery (I had been going off the rogue guide on this site and had no idea it was common knowledge weights changed in t16) and into haste. Was this the right call?

[Krushinator 49]

Right now crit and haste are so close to each other for Subtlety that it's hard to go wrong with either. Shadowcraft will reforge into one, then the diminished returns will say the other is better for the next reforge. It'll go back and forth like this.

[Sarnen 0]

oh its doing htat for assassination too. oh well, I put my money on haste.  Speaking of, for single target which IS better at say a 538 ilvl?  I haven't found anything concrete on which actually performs better, so I went with assassination for the rupture cleaving and aoe that sub doesn't have.

[Krushinator 49]

Subtlety has stronger single target output, but it is much harder to play properly.

[Falcifer 7]

which should I trust between mr robot and shadowcraft? shadowcraft seems to be.. behaving erratically (if I hite hte reforge button several times in a row it will change them for no particular reason).

 

Mr Robot doesn't judge stats based on your gear. As far as I know, it uses stat weightings for best in slot gear (or very high level gear). ShC will calculate stat weightings based on what you actually have, and what your stats currently are. If you're stacking haste, for example, its value is lessened. That's not to say that it will suddenly jump down in priority, but sometimes other stats will increase DPS more (even if it's by a tiny amount).

 

If the stats are very close, as they are for assassination when you have certain gear, reforging can change stat priorities. For example, if you have the following stat weightings;

 

Haste 1.104

Crit 1.042

Mastery 1.019

 

Auto-Reforging will go for haste, which mean it gradually lessens in value, so your new stat weightings could end up being;

 

Crit 1.087

Haste 1.024

Mastery 1.008

 

Reforging again will go for crit and could end up putting your weightings back to what they were before. They will then change back and forth. With Shadowcraft, you'll either end up getting stuck in a loop jumping between two values, or you will reach a point where it won't change anything. Just pay attention to the relative increase of "DPS" compared to the amount of reforging required - going from 205230 to 205760 is not usually worth reforging every item.

[Sarnen 0]

Got it.  What do you raid as?  I mean I'm having a hard time deciding if its worth the trade off in aoe, since rupture cleaving helps assassination on multi target fights (which I seem to do a lot, although only a few are so multi mob as to go combat).

 

I'm curious what the pros go-to is and why

Edited February 11, 2014 by Sarnen

[Falcifer 7]

I'll start by saying that I joined WoW a week or so after MoP came out. I didn't really know what raiding was - I thought it was related to PvP and involved raiding a faction's city - so I didn't think I'd be raiding at any point, which is why I joined a social guild.

 

I finally found out what raiding actually was and did tons of LFR and had lots of fun.

 

When SoO came out, I did some LFR but mainly used OpenRaid to join flex groups. One night someone was asking in trade chat for an extra DPS to join a flex run, so I joined. After that I think I joined a couple more, and started doing some progress raiding with them. And now they're stuck with me.

 

The raid group has gone through various changes over the last 5 months, and only 5 out of the 10 people have been there since the beginning. We have one or two people still on the legendary quest and we don't do any min-maxing. No one is asked to change spec/talents/glyphs for each fight and we're not pushing for realm firsts. There are plenty of ninja pulls and people often forget to use flasks.

 

The only reason I say all of this is because I don't consider myself a "pro", so I can't tell you what they're doing and why they're doing it.

 

On my server (Magtheridon) if you look on wowprogress at SimDPS for rogues you'll see a variety of specs. Looking at the same list for Draenor, which is very high population realm with lots more Horde than Alliance, most rogues are combat. The Alliance-heavy Silvermoon has a similar pattern.

 

I should warn that this is only shows the spec that they were in when the site was updated. But looking through the top 1000 in each list shows a definite pattern.

 

Since Blade Flurry is a huge DPS gain even with two cleave targets, combat would do very well on most fights in SoO. If you have to choose one spec, it's a good choice (assuming you have the gear and the right items that make it so good).

 

To answer your question, I've been raiding as assassination. I've never had problems (expect when we were progressing on Normal and I still had the Sha dagger and another LFR dagger). Raid composition is very important, though, especially in 10-player raids. If your raid team lacks good cleave, combat is the obvious choice. Even for single-target, I've found that combat can do more DPS than assassination (testing on a raid dummy - combat did about 10% more than assassination).

 

I imagine that most of the top rogues go to combat because it does the most DPS overall. And you can off-spec with sub without a need for drastic reforging (you don't really need any at all). But combat does great single-target DPS anyway.

 

Right now, all three specs are viable for raiding, so unless your raid team is missing something that a particular spec will provide, choose the one you enjoy the most, or the one you can play the best.

 

Even as assassination, I don't find myself multi-rupturing a lot. But we have a few really good AoE/cleave classes, so it's not necessary from a DPS point of view. I focus on single-targeting whichever target has priority.

[Tswizzy 0]

Assassa VS combat DMG output at higher IL are so close that it comes down to utility. Combat being better for AOE and Single target in my eyes wins out because if i need heavy dmg on adds and boss. BF and go to town and splash dmg away. the ability to provide to your raid Multi target and single target is a very good thing to bring to the table.

[Blackshade 1]

I've been raiding ass'n since cata, and much has changed for rogues since then. That being said, I don't really put into consideration so many of these points to be honest. I haven't been pooling energy at all, nor have I been paying attention to energy regen that much, mainly because it's very unpredictable now, especially with the numerous methods of energy regen, as Falcifer pointed out, we have RS with gives us 20% change to gain 25 energy, there's rupture proccing energy regen from venomous wounds. And also have to mention SF that grants an extra combo with crits (and with T16 2pc SF reducing your energy cost of your cp generating spells) and blindside that gives you a free dispatch. These 2 spells could also fall down to the "energy regen" type because it eases up your rotation a lot. Also, I use vanish to get shadow focus for a 75% reduced cost at a mutilate if I feel like I need 2, 3 CPs quick to refresh a full rupture or envenom quickly.

 

That being said, I've been going crit on most things. I try to stay somewhere at 80% mastery, 28% haste and 40% crit (roughly) unbuffed and I find that useful for every fight being always top 2 dps no matter single or multiple target fights.