Damage optimised rogue

[Brista]

Basically no rogue is going to be short on damage.

This sounds like a philosophical issue. If I can hit something without it dying I'm short on damage, that's my view ;)

The primary issue is your tank. This will regulate the damage you can safely do. Frontloading damage doesn't really help in these cases, you end up sitting out a few seconds so he can build threat, so are you really frontloading then?

Bear in mind I'm new to WoW so I'm basing my experiences on other games. But I'd say yes, I'm frontloading. Going before the tank has established aggro is not an option so a few seconds of him establishing aggro would be there regardless. I'll aim to develop a feel for when I can start killing without peeling the mob off the tank and do as much as I possibly can in the first 4 or 5 seconds of the fight. My alternative is to inflict DoTs which will not be so good against anything we kill fast

So it's frontloading in the sense it's at the front of my participation, it's not at the front of the group's activity in the fight

You definitely can't just jump in and dump all your energy at once at the start of battle.

Well, yeah as I said, I'll let the tank build aggro and use Feint. I would like to try a "dump all my energy at once" build but I quite accept it may not work out well

It seems to me that with Feint one can dump all one's energy at once since if hate generation from damage is too high one simply spends less Energy on damage and more on Feints. You still get one combo point per Feint

Generally I much prefer to meter my attacks so instead of waiting, then jumping in and frontloading all my damage, I will jump in earlier, but do my attacks more slowly. This way if a mob breaks away towards the casters I have the energy required to frontload THAT mob and potentially save the priest.

OK, I recognise the value of this but with 4 others in the group, all very likely with valid methods of rescuing this situation, plus options available to me from the basic skillset like Gouge, I don't want to spend talent points speccing for this. I envisage spending an evening killing stuff fast, not an evening peeling mobs off the healer. Sounds like this situation is more the kind of thing I should be using my Thistle Tea for

Your proposed sequence has a 2 point eviscerate (that has chances of being 3-4 pts, 5 if you're REALLY lucky)?

Point taken, I'll wait for 5 points

Between that energy and the 20 energy per tick you have enough energy to do something else right after the eviscerate or 1 second later to get the 20 energy at the tick. Because of this, the time for thistle tea is during CP generation, not after a finisher.

Ah that's very interesting, I hadn't thought of that

If you're planning on using much tea, I HIGHLY suggest being an herbalist.

Definitely, herbalism sounds just my cup of tea... :rolleyes:

In short, do not take thistle tea for granted.

Right

However, assuming I can generate excess gold and assuming I can acquire optimal gear there may come a time when I've nothing left to spend money on. Seems that tea would be a good way to burn gold for exp if I get that far

You should not need to feint after you vanish, because your threat level will be way down on the list vanishing that late.

Understood

Because of this, keep in mind the ramifications this has if a cloth wearer pulls aggro.

Understood

With seal fate, I think dagger spec is a no brainer.

Yup, I think that's what I'll try

Lastly, I would probably move the 2 points from imp. sprint to imp. evasion

You make a very convincing case and you've also underscored that as I surf the wave between damage and aggro I'm going to get in over my head rather a lot!

Thanks for your comments, another terrific post :)

Edit: apologies, something's gone wrong with the Quote tags but I can't quite see what