Lethality vs. Imp PoisonsFollow

I don't have any math to back it up, but I'd be willing to bet that Lethality will give you a larger overall DPS boost (unless you're Mutilate, but you're not), and if you need to crip, there's always Shiv.

Hmm, armory links changed?
Testing new sig...

In arena, when you get to high levels of gear, Lethality becomes less and less viable. For me, it's not about damage with Imp Poisons, it's about stacking Wound as fast as I possibly can, because a tiny bit of my crit damage (which sucks due to resilience anyway) isn't going to make a large difference.

Lethality > Imp for PvE.

Imp > Lethality for PvP.

Depends on your gear and raid setup. If you don't use instant poison because you have windfury (and use DP on your offhand as you should) than it doesn't matter at all... lethality is the clear winner - at least at higher gear levels and hit levels where it's easy as hell to 5 stack DP with your OH in a matter of seconds. But with lower hit and the assumption that you don't have the luxury of a enh shammy in your melee group, than yeah I can see imp poisons being a bit better. For sword/mace/fist builds lethality actually isn't a large DPS increase. It's probably the weakest talent in assassination that a raiding sword/mace/fist rogue would take (aside from maybe imp evis) as far as sustained DPS is concerned. However it does have a cool effect (lets face it... 2300+ SS crits are fun...).

It's pretty easy to approximate your DPS increase from Lethality versus Imp. Poisons. We'll say Imp. Poisons only effects Instant Poison applied to your offhand. We'll say you have a 1.5 speed offhand with 0 misses and 0 instant attacks. Instant poison averages 170 damage per hit.

Poison DPS:
0/5 Imp. Poisons == 170 * .2 / 1.5 == 22.666 DPS
5/5 Imp. Poisons == 170 * .3 / 1.5 == 34 DPS

So, a 11.333 DPS increase for Imp. Poisons. This will decrease once you factor in misses and dodges. What about Lethality? Well, it will depend on your AP and crit. We'll say you've got 22% crit for a Sword build, 27% for Daggers, and 1500 AP. Your weapons will be the Season 1 Gladiator stuff. Easy early raid stats.

SS Damage:
(237 + 98 + 1500/14 * 2.4) * 1.06 * 1.10 == 690
((237 + 98 + 1500/14 * 2.4) * 1.06 * 1.10) * 2 == 1380
((237 + 98 + 1500/14 * 2.4) * 1.06 * 1.10) * 2.3 == 1588

0/5 Lethality == 690 * .22 + 1380 * .78 == 1228
5/5 Lethality == 690 * .22 + 1588 * .78 == 1390

So, how often do we use SS? We'll use the 2S/5R cycle. We'll say all energy is spent on nothing but this and that we have 0/3 Ruthlessness (too lazy to model that, it will cause the SS DPS we calculate to be a bit off).

So, how much energy do we need? We start with two SSes, that's 80, then a Slice and Dice. It will cost 25 * .6 (to factor Relentless in), or 15 energy, so that's 95. Now we need 5 more SSes, for another 200, then an essentially free Rupture, but we still have to wait on the tick. We'll assume we start from 25 energy since we should have followed a 5 point Rupture. 80 + 15 + 200 + 25 - 25 == 295, or 15 ticks. So, this cycle takes 30 seconds to complete (if we ignore Combat Potency). We also have 7 SSes in this 7 second period. So, now we can calculate our DPS from SS.

0/5 Lethality == 1228 * 7 / 30 == 286.5
5/5 Lethality == 1390 * 7 / 30 == 324.3

So, without Ruthlessness, we've got about a 38 DPS increase with Lethality. Let's try an upper bound to see what Ruthlessness could do. We'll be doing two fewer SSes, and need 80 less energy.

0/5 Lethality == 1228 * 5 / 22 == 279
5/5 Lethality == 1390 * 5 / 22 == 316

And that's a 37 DPS increase. To be honest, I'm not sure why the spreadsheet is saying you get more DPS from Imp. Poisons. I figured I'd see results about like this. Lethality scales to your gear, Imp. Poisons does not. Instant attacks are a large portion of your DPS, poisons are not. The better your gear gets, the bigger the gap gets. At relatively low gear levels with very poor crit, I could see Imp. Poisons winning out. In a raid situation when you're probably going to have ~2000 AP and 30-40% crit, Lethality is going to win by a landslide.

Edit: Just remembered that I didn't factor in SnD, but 30% haste isn't going to give the 200% boost to poison DPS required to overtake Lethality.

Edited, Oct 3rd 2007 8:27am by Nooblestick

Ahh. That's also worst case scenario for Ruthlessness, no Combat Potency and with 0 raid buffs, which will all go in favor of Lethality.

Edited, Oct 3rd 2007 9:41am by Nooblestick

Be a man's man and get Riposte. None of this sissy 41point onry in one tree nonsense. :D

It's not that it's that complicated, it's just a lot of different things to add together. Factoring in Ruthlessness is easy enough to take upper and lower bound (works well enough for our needs), Combat Potency can be calculated as energy/second easy enough, there are relatively few mechanics that are hard to model.

I'm just way too lazy. Though with your spreadsheet results backing up my logic, and being very close to our estimates, I'm willing to accept its numbers here. I try not to take everything it spits out as 100% fact. I trust the guys at EJ, but I trust myself more. Especially when you guys are here to point out when I goof something up and keep me straight.