Music: Sweet Sorrow – Ferry Corsten
Filefront link: here
An overview of the basic cycles to go through when raiding as mutilate, with audio commentary by myself.
Gear in Video:
8/8 Slayers, Shiv of Exsanguination, Shard of Azzinoth, Angelista’s Revenge, Stormrage signet ring, Shadowmoon destroyer’s drape, Choker of Endless Nightmares, Madness of the Betrayer, Ashtongue Talisman of Lethality
I want to start this by saying outright that mutilate is mathematically inferior to combat specs at equivalent gear levels. That being said, it offers competitive dps. Why spec mutilate? To quote Loate’s mutilate guide "You should spec Mutilate if you are looking for a dynamic playstyle that requires you to juggle numerous variables when deciding what abilities you should use; as well as being able to do both casual PvP and PvE without respeccing constantly. Mutilate offers the freedom of choice; the insane combo point generation means you will be using finishers you forgot you had." Not to mention its fun, and you get to see big numbers! Post puncturing wounds, mutilate is the strongest dps spec for dagger rogues.
Spec to go:
41/20/0
For more information on the specs for pve mutilate, check out my article on different rogue specs.
What poisons to use:
If windfury: Mainhand – windfury, Offhand – deadly poison
If no windfury: Mainhand – deadly poison, Offhand – deadly poison
What weapons to use:
The daggers with the highest dps available to you. Preferably a slow mainhand. The reason speed doesn’t matter as much is that without potency the only thing weapon speed presents is faster poison applications. A slower set of weapons will produce higher mutilates, but since your dps is mostly from white attacks, the dps and statistics on the dagger are most important. For example, I used Fang of Kalecgos in the past over Vengeful Gladiator’s Mutilator.
Dps Cycles:
- Begin with 2 Mutilates, or shiv mutilate depending on how long it takes for poison to be applied to the mob.
- Slice and dice
- Depending on Ruthlessness Proc, Mutilate 1-2 times and rupture
- Depending on Ruthlessness Proc, Mutilate 1-2 times and envenom
Past this point, things get a bit messy, or don’t, depending on your luck.
These are the general rules to follow while dpsing:
1 – Always keep slice and dice up
2 – If your slice and dice is going to expire before your energy regens to full and you have 4-5 cp, wait until your slice and dice expires then renew it
3 – Your second finisher should be rupture. If rupture isn’t up and slice and dice is up, use it as your finisher.
4 – Envenom should be used when slice and dice is up and rule 2 is not applicable, rupture is up with a substantial amount of time remaining.
5 – Unless your energy is going to reach full, do not use a finisher until your find weakness and ashtongue trinket buffs are about to expire. This ensures that they are always up during dps.
6. – Mutilate until 4 or 5 combo points before preforming a finisher. Always preform a finisher at 4-5 combo points.
Tips:
+ Thistle tea is your friend. A relatively inexpensive consumable that generally adds another free mutilate to your cycles.
+ Don’t be afraid to let energy regenerate. You don’t have to constantly spam mutilate, save energy when your buffs are active to keep your buffs up.
+ If a mob is about to die, use envenom.
+ Be aware of your deadly poison stacks before using envenom, 4-5 stacks is usually sufficient to get the most out of this ability. If you are in a position to envenom and don’t have the right amount of stacks, generally wait it out and rupture. This probably means less uptime for you buffs but is usually the best decision.
Related posts:
Wouldn’t Eviscerate be optimal over envenom? Since envenom eats up your DP stacks, and DP realistically is more DPS over its duration. Granted you do significant burst when you pop your envenom with vile poisons talented but then you need to stack it to 5 again, during which time you’ll have done equivilent or more damage witht he DP ticking unless you crit.
Comment by Shizuka (Sargeras) — May 28, 2008 @ 6:10 am
You’re never supposed to envenom in pve (not trash)
Letting 5 stacks of DP tick is more DPS!
The math > you
Comment by Koko — May 28, 2008 @ 6:55 am
On trash envenom is weak but this is regarding bosses. When you are steady dps’ing a boss, envenom with talented deadly poison is superior to eviscerate unless the boss has very low armor (ie. reliquary of souls). Coupled with haste in pve, deadly can usually restack to 5 quickly. The dps lost from stacks ticking is inferior to the damage gained by using envenom with a 5/5 vile 1/5 imp poison spec.
Comment by Akrios — May 28, 2008 @ 9:04 am
Out of curiosity, looking at the 41/20/0 spec posted on a previous blog, why di doyu use 1/5 imp poisons and 1/2 Master poisoneer instead of say, 2/5 imp poisons of 2/2 poisoneer? Personally I’d probably go with 2/2 poisoneer, but I’d like to hear your input.
Comment by Shizuka (Sargeras) — May 28, 2008 @ 9:21 am
What do you think is needed as minimum equipment for that multilate raid spec?
I mean.. is a “normal” combat sword built better for rogues without epic gear or kara items?
Comment by Lerallan — May 28, 2008 @ 10:37 am
Combat swords will out-perform any build at any gear level, people who play Mutilate simply want a change of pace, but still stay competitive.
Comment by Karzerus — May 28, 2008 @ 10:47 am
The best theorycraft at EJ recommends a 3-5s/5-5r cycle. 3 finisher cycles only catch up for rogues with 2pc T5, and even then it’s close.
All the math there also suggests that using Envenom is worse than using Eviscerate. You need unreachable levels of AP for Envenom to outdo Eviscerate when the DP stack loss is accounted for.
That being said, the difference between those decisions is small enough that you won’t notice from personal anecdotal data. However, you will, on average perform better by following the math.
Comment by Jakani — May 28, 2008 @ 3:18 pm
As mentioned in the video commentary, Akrios explains how if u don’t have enough stacks on deadly poison he will eviscerate. When comparing the two with all other builds EXCEPT mutilate, eviscerate is the clear choice due to the fact of losing the 5 stacks of Deadly Poison which is a loss of roughly 45 dps until these stacks are renewed on the target.
However, with his PvE Mutilate build that includes 1/5 Improved Poisons coupled with Stormstrike and Misery and the fact that Mutilate is a special that attacks with both weapons, his Deadly poison stacks will be applied much faster than other builds. Therefore the loss of DPS from poisons will not be affected as much and and since Envenom is more Damage Per Energy due to the fact its not mitigated by armor, in MOST cases this will be a better decision.
I’ve spoken to members of Elitist Jerks and they have told me that their spreadsheets concerning high end raid DPS are not focused on Mutilate since it is a inferior spec for overall raid DPS. Which makes sense, but as Akrios mentioned he is well aware that combat specs will outperform in raid DPS but if you are looking for something different and definitely more fun, give Mutilate a try.
Comment by Nition — May 28, 2008 @ 3:54 pm
Fair enough. It’s true the spreadsheets are not focused on mutilate per se, but there is a pretty decent model on the DPS sheet, and it’s the best we have at the moment. And though the 2-finisher models come out ahead of the 3-finisher models, it’s only by 10 DPS or so, easily unnoticable. It may even be within the margin of error for the sheet as well.
Eviscerate vs. Envenom has been mathed to death, so I won’t repeat the math here. What’s been found repeatedly is that even with the odds stacked in Envenom’s favor, it still comes behind Eviscerate. Again, you won’t notice just by watching your own performance, but you will perform better, on average, if you follow the math.
Comment by Jakani — May 28, 2008 @ 5:44 pm
this is a rogue site lets see the math shithead
Comment by Owens — May 29, 2008 @ 6:10 am
If you have some extra combo points and want to refresh AToL+FW, you’re supposed to run out of and DEADLY THROW.
I wanna see a video of some 25k deadly throw pls. Best ability available to the class, since Disembowel got removed.
Comment by Abzoloot — May 29, 2008 @ 11:11 am
Ok then:
In the video he uses 1.9 and 1.8 speed daggers. I’ll give him the benefit of the faster as his offhand, the 1.8.
With Slice and dice running, a 1.8 speed comes down to 1.33 speed (with 2pc Slayer’s). At that speed (and assuming both hit and expertise cap), it takes 4.16 seconds, on average, to proc Deadly Poison (taking into account 1/5 Imp Poisons). That means you’ll get your 5 stack back in 20.78 seconds. A 5 stack is worth 90 DPS, so if you hadn’t wiped it, you would’ve done 1870.2 damage. Since you’re restacking, you can expect to do about half that, meaning you lost 935.1 poison damage. That’s how much harder your Envenom needs to hit than Eviscerate to make it a fair trade.
In the below calculations, I’m using a 7685 armor boss with sunder armor and faerie fire, no curse of recklessness, and assuming no armor pen on gear (which is used in the video, I just don’t need it to make my case).
eviscerateDamage(armorReduction) + 935.1 = envenomDamage(vilePoisons)(Misery)
(1045+.15AP)(.675) + 935.1 = (900+.15AP)(1.2)(1.05)
1640.5 + .10125AP = 1134 + .189AP
506.5 = .08775AP
AP = 5772
So unless you have 5772 AP, Eviscerate makes the better choice. Even with stacking procs I don’t imagine you’re getting that high. If you have a 1.3 speed offhand, it comes down to only 2807.9 AP. I’d say for most rogues, though, if you have that much AP, you probably have a better dagger, and if you don’t, you’re probably not hit and expertise capped either.
Also note that Envenom can be resisted, and is effected by your spell-hit rate. That means you get a resist 17% of the time. This makes Envenom’s DPE worse, further improving the case for eviscerate. Eviscerate also gets better if you’re not hit and expertise capped, like most rogues.
Comment by Jakani — May 29, 2008 @ 11:55 am
I forgot to account for poison resist rates during restacking. This changes the needed AP to:
7948 for a 1.8 offhand
4380 for a 1.3 offhand
Comment by Jakani — May 29, 2008 @ 12:01 pm
I’ve played around a little bit with Mutilate in a raid setting. And I must say even with it’s inferior dps, it’s way more fun to play then combat. You have many more things to watch and just an overall more challenging spec to play.
Comment by Nurakul — May 29, 2008 @ 4:39 pm
A few points Jakani
1 – 20.78 seconds to get a 5 stack back is ridiculous, I’d say on average I’ll have a poison stack back to 4 – 5 within 10 seconds or shorter. This is not an exaggeration, getting back to 5 stacks in 5 seconds happens often as well. 20 seconds to get 5 stacks would be a rare occurance.
So that means the poison damage lost for envenom over eviscerate isn’t near what you suggested (935). You also have to take into account a 40 percent crit rate on envenom.
2 – you’re not taking into account 1 point in master poisoner when considering poison resists.
3. 17 percent resist on envenom? This isn’t true, unless you’re taking partials into account or something, if that’s the case I wasn’t aware this was possible.
4. Consider other haste buffs like BL, haste pots, etc, and the fact that deadly procs off specials
I’m not saying your wrong about eviscerate and I’m going to test is out, but it’s not as clear cut a decision as you make it out to be
Comment by Akrios — May 29, 2008 @ 7:31 pm
jakani ur a retard, lol @ envenom gettin resisted
Comment by fus — May 29, 2008 @ 10:32 pm
@Akrios:
1 – I’m certain that sometimes your poison stack goes right back up. That’s the nature of randomness. You stated in the video even that sometimes when it’s time to Envenom you don’t have a full stack, that means it can take well over 20 seconds for you to get your stack back as well. On average, there’s no way it’s 10 seconds. To average 10 seconds, you need to do 1 proc every two seconds, at a 32% application rate and a 12% resist rate the total chance of a proc on a successful attack is .2816 . You’d need to reach a swing speed of .2816 * 2 = .5632 to proc that much. That is, with your 1.8 dagger, 300% haste. Good luck reaching that.
So unless you’re getting terribly lucky, you’re not getting your stack up as fast as you think you are. Here’s the math I used to get my 20.78 figure:
1.8 / 1.35 = 1.33 swing speed
1.33 / .32 = 4.16 seconds/proc
4.16 * 5 = 20.8 seconds for a 5 stack, on average
That’s the math without the spell resist factored in. With it, it changes to:
1.33 / (.32 * .88) = 4.72 seconds/proc
4.72 * 5 = 23.6 seconds for a 5 stack, on average
I didn’t take into account the crit rate on envenom because you have the same crit rate on eviscerate, so it doesn’t need to be considered.
2 – I will admit I’d forgotten that when I made the extra post, but I didn’t want to keep spamming new comments (edit feature please?). It doesn’t matter anyway, because the original case was strong enough, the addition of poison resist rate only makes it worse for Envenom. I did make the changes necessary to the above calculations.
3 – I’m fairly certain Envenom can be resisted, as I’ve seen it show up in my combat text. When it is resisted, I’m not sure if you lose the combo points or not. My guess is that you don’t, so you can just re-envenom again (but you do lose some energy). Eviscerate can be dodged as well, but the dodge rate isn’t as high as the resist rate, and quick recovery reduces the dodge penalty anyway (unsure if it affects resists or not).
This mechanic may have been changed. If it has, I don’t need it anyway.
4 – I’ll grant that haste effects will help you get your stack up faster. But none of those effects are 100% uptime (unless you have 4 drummers), and you still won’t reach the 300% haste needed for 10 second reapplication anyway.
It’s also true that I didn’t account for mutilate being able to proc poisons. I didn’t because it’s a fairly small effect.
As far as averages go, during those 20 seconds your stack isn’t full, you can expect to do 3.46 mutilates (though I’d be shocked if you did, since you do 1-2 mutilates then energy queue while waiting for AtoL and FW to fade), adding an additional .97 procs, which takes your expected application time down 4 seconds or so, still not enough to overcome what you need to.
It is true that due to the energy queuing, you’ll mut very quickly after a finisher, meaning your attacks are more concentrated near the start so you’ll tend to lose less than half of the total poison damage.
I do appreciate you being open to dicsussion on the matter in a civil way, Akrios.
@16:
If you have proof that it’s not resistable, please bring it to the discussion. Otherwise, don’t be an idiot.
Comment by Jakani — May 30, 2008 @ 12:08 am
Envenom can be resisted fully, and yes, you lose the stack of poisons as well as the combo points.
Comment by Abzoloot — May 30, 2008 @ 10:29 am
Really abz? But a 17 percent resist rate just seems high to me, maybe master poisoner comes into effect. I’d be curious as to the exact chance of a resist, i’ll have to test it.
Comment by Akrios — May 30, 2008 @ 2:00 pm
Master Poisoner definitely does affect Envenom. That would change the resist rate to only 12%. If you do WWS, you can check your reports there and see what’s happening.
Comment by Jakani — May 30, 2008 @ 3:41 pm
um, mayb im just lucky cuz i havent noticed any envenom resists, can 1 of u guys post a screenshot of envenom being resisted? thx ;D
Comment by fussa — May 30, 2008 @ 4:48 pm
I don’t think anyone cares about the double post and good job on owning akrios hes bad
Comment by Owens — May 31, 2008 @ 2:08 am
The arguments for envenom being better than eviscerate are rather bland.
Envenom is by far less efficient than eviscerate. Even with misery, SS, and your situational buffs working in favor of envenom, uptime is not as great as one would claim. A 1.8/1.9 dagger even with 2 piece T6 and haste rating and expertise capped is still slower than my 1.4 combat sword, and there are many times where DP just does not stack as fast as I’d like. 1 pt. imp poison talents over that is not going to make or break you.
Envenom is best for trash, not for bosses. Trash mobs have less chance of having applied armor debuffs (ie no 5 sunders, no faerie fire/CoR etc. That is where envenom is useful in PvE, not on a boss.
Comment by Ming — May 31, 2008 @ 11:44 am
What mod is that showing his total Mutilate crits?
Comment by Puii — June 1, 2008 @ 6:01 am
Why would you use envenom and not eviscerate?
Also there really isnt much of a cycle for mutilate I thought, just get 4/5 CP then make sure you keep up SnD/Rupture and use eviscerate when you got a lot of extra time/cp..
Comment by Delz — June 3, 2008 @ 7:46 am
how come nition never posts
Comment by Deeoz — June 8, 2008 @ 9:20 pm
I read a guid on Roguespot suggesting not to spec Mutilate till 70. I just hit 50 and Mutilate looks like it would be fun! Is there a good reason not to spec Mutilate before 70 – other than combat swords is better.
Comment by Kyle — June 9, 2008 @ 4:35 pm
Anyone know what mod that is showing his total mutilate crits?
Comment by Puii — June 10, 2008 @ 6:15 am
@ Kyle, Mutilate isnt good till 70 because to do damage u have to stand behind the target, and it takes a mob a lot longer to die, than with say Shadowstep or Combat Swords.
Comment by Crithappenz — June 11, 2008 @ 4:39 am
@ fussa
You haven’t seen envenom resist, because it cannot be resisted. That’s like try to say rupture can be resisted, its on a different table (melee attack table). Only abilities on the caster spell table can be resisted. Envenom, however can be dodged, parried, and it can miss.
Comment by Etio — June 17, 2008 @ 10:14 pm
You will probably need like 4 months of raids in any specc to be actually able to see any wide differences from one specc and the other. A single raid results are mostly given by luck, buffs, special proccs, crits that comes on mongoose while windfury is up and all these micro-variables a human’s eye cannot detect. Mutilate is fun, it gives you a lot of CPs to play with.
you just won!
Combat sword is imba.
If you play to drool at your position in the vanity-meter, go for combat sword.
If you play for fun, grats
Comment by Khana — June 20, 2008 @ 8:34 am
Question about Cold Blood. Usually when I raid Mut I use CB early, so that it may come up again during the fight to be used again, however, unlike combat’s 2min CD of blade flurry, it really doesn’t provide as massive a DPS increase.
So, would it be a better DPS increase saving CB for those times that both ruthlessness and relentless strikes doesn’t proc, leaving you energy starved as well as lacking CP to get a finisher in one Mut (In order to keep up the SnD/Rup/ Evis-Evnom rotation)
Comment by Kenzi — June 23, 2008 @ 1:53 am
I RULE ALL OF U
Comment by Stfuppercut — June 23, 2008 @ 11:32 pm
@ 31. Khana – Finally a Person who actually gets it.
If you want to have fun and not be bored during a boss fight, and is not concerned with being “Best that you can be”, pick Mutilate.
Have fun with it, experiment with it, completely disregard it and continue being combat, to each their own.
Comment by Morabio — June 25, 2008 @ 6:11 am
To Jakani:
Since when did a rogue just auto hit..? You are doing mutilate also. I have never seen deadly stacks not been up after 15 sec.
Tho yes its a fact that evicirate takes out envenom
Comment by Ayon — June 26, 2008 @ 5:31 pm
@ Puii: Parrot is one of those Addons.
@ TE: Nice Vid, won’t pick on that 2 finisher vs. 3 finisher or Evis vs. Envenom thing anymore, thanks for the good work and thanks for bringing Mutilate back to our minds, maybe some guys will respec and be as overwhelmed as most of us were when we tried it out for the first time.
Comment by Desa — June 26, 2008 @ 6:21 pm
Could you guys possibly make a Combat Swords dps cycle video, that would be great.
Thanks
Comment by Lokiz — June 30, 2008 @ 5:18 pm
Combat swords cycle is simple (on bosses): open with garrote, SS 2-3 times, then but on rupture. SS 3-4 times and then put on rupture. Reapeat. If u have a fast offhand +15 energy will come nearly ever 3-4 offhit, so energy won’t be a problem at all. Save ur bladefury and adrenalin rush till tank have a lot of threat, and use faint as much as possible. U don’t want a hit from a higher level boss, trust me.
Atm i am farming honor to get S2 MH, and soon i will can buy the Mutilator for badges. So probably i will respec to CM on this week… Can’t wait.
Btw I lvl from 50 with mutilate, till 70. Someone say its slower, but hell. U may kill slower, but u don’t have to stop to eat after every 1-2 fight, u can kill 4-5 mobs without stops. and thats nice. and lvling is much much more fun, cause u always have to move behind, watch ur energy, etc…
Comment by Moonkiss — July 1, 2008 @ 6:13 am
* at the start put on SnD not rupture, sorry my mistake
Comment by Moonkiss — July 1, 2008 @ 6:14 am
I’m currently spec’d Mut, but have been thinking of going combat swords now as we are getting into upper raids and 25 mans. Anyone do a mut spec and actually make a difference in bigger raids?
Comment by IceburgTX — July 2, 2008 @ 9:56 am
[...] 毁伤贼如何输出，附带视频，原帖及在线视频观看地址：http://roguerogue.com/?p=39 [...]
Pingback by World of Ming » PVP 和 PVE的天赋选择，毁伤贼如何输出 By Eviscerate系列的作者Akrios（8T6） — July 6, 2008 @ 10:15 am
/wave
Comment by hiyyyyyyy — July 20, 2008 @ 5:53 am
I’ve been Sub for a long time, camping the 59 bracket in PvP. The survivability is there but i do such LOW dps.
I respecced to mut and LOVE it. i don’t have to rely on being stealth for decent numbers. i just have to worry about being behind the target, and with crip it’s not hard.
Most likely i’m going to stay Mut til 70. And I’ll see what i’m going to do when i hit 70.
Comment by Ensaine — July 22, 2008 @ 8:11 pm
with him using DP on MH and OH couldnt that get 5 stacks back up in 10 seconds like Akrios said?
Comment by stony — August 20, 2008 @ 8:48 am
Its called RNG, if youre lucky enough to get enough fast CP generation and youre ahead of your normal S+D/Rup rotation, then you can envenom.
more into RNG, with all the poison specs from assasination youre getting fast poison applications (should be). Envenom isnt effected by armor, and with a stormstrike shaman in the raid, its definently doing more damage than evis would and keeping your deadly stacks up.
imo..
Comment by Tom — September 9, 2008 @ 5:00 am
Does the increase dps with 10% for offensive abilty’s also count for rupture?
Or can someone explain wich skill or wich dmg is offensive abilty’s?
RogueRogue.com mutilate dps cycle is prety nice. But i think use 1/2 Mutilate and then Eviscerate or Evenom (depens on deadly stack) Will do much more dps on trash. Dont think S.D and Rup works good on trash because mods die fast. But if you going to use the 1/2 Mutilate and then Eviscerate or Evenom (depens on deadly stack) make sure you got much agilty and crit in your armor, becuase you will get your dmg from yellow attacks. Sequestions are welcom.
Kind regards Cylux
Comment by Cylux — September 25, 2008 @ 12:55 am
Good stuff.
Regarding the Enevenom vs. Evis convo, doesnt matter anymore. Hit the PTRs and check the new talents. On test dummies, me at lvl 70 with the new muti build, my 5stack is up in about 5 seconds. If you dont believe me, dont throw your bs numbers or opinions at me, because i’m not going to do that to you. Get on the PTRs and test it yourself and you’ll see my findings. If you are truly lazy, i might make my own vid and youtube it, but i’d rather not. Test it yourself before you speak. I do my own theorycrafting, more than most to what i’ve seen, but you can only number crunch so much. Get the heck out there and test it yourself. I can’t tell you how many times i’ve ran through webstats, combat logs, theorycrafting addon results, etc, and find something completely and utterly unexpected to test further.
And also, you have to take into consideration of lag, RNG, luck, and miscalculations. Nobody knows EXACTLY how wow works. Its all speculation, observation, and calculation. Hence the “theory” in Theorycraft.
/end rant
I can’t wait till you get your testing done with the PTR changes so I can compare my findings with your own.
With my findings on the PTR, I found that a 4-5pt env/4-5pt rup combo is optimal so far. Granted, that’s after you do a 1pt env from a point from garrote at the beginning. Yes, a 5pt env will refresh a 1pt snd to a full 5pt snd. And you can’t forget hunger for blood, I do a hunger after every evnenom. With all that, I still have time to pool energy while maximising SnD, Rup, and Hunger.
I have practically full bt gear, season 3 swords, and DST. I tested combat swords in comparison to mutilate with season 2 MH dagger and 1.8spd offhand badge dagger. Unbuffed, for about 5 mins strait, combat pulled off around 1100dps on a test dummy, and mutilate pulled off around 1450-1600dps.
Lets see your findings…
Comment by Faruthia — October 1, 2008 @ 2:57 pm
P.S. sorry for not naming the daggers specifically above, i’m at work and just picked up whatever daggers I could quickly pick up so I can xfer them to the PTRs.
Comment by Faruthia — October 1, 2008 @ 3:07 pm
Akrios whats your opinion on PVE Mutilate in WOTLK? Im eager to see your opinion on it.
Comment by Adrasiel — October 11, 2008 @ 7:15 am