What am I doing wrong?Follow

I hit level 80 recently and continued levelling up my leatherworking so that I could make my character a little better. I realize that I don't have the greatest choices for gems (I have a stam gem on my valorous bonescythe pants because it was cheap and I didn't have time to find something better). I am not sure if my problems come from my gear or if I am just doing something wrong but I seem to have pretty terrible dps lately. I just recently switched to mutilate build and I am only doing 1300-1500 dps in heroics.

I know that most of my gear needs to be upgraded but I still seem to be very low on the damage meters. I usually do CS > SnD > mutilate x2 > eviscerate if 5 cp (sinister strike if not) to refresh SnD. This is my character I am currently specced for mutilate. I only started my rogue in May this year (started playing in February this year) so I don't have a whole lot of experience with the class as some people do. Any suggestions for what I could do to improve dps or better spec possibly? Your input and advice would be greatly appreciated.

Excuses are for noobs! =P

But seriously: On bosses use Envenom, not Evis. Sinister Strike is pointless, use Mutilate for combo points. And repeat after me: There are no rotations for mutilate builds, only priorities. SnD > HfB > Rupture. There are a ton of threads about this stuff here, just read up a bit, but them's the basics.

For trash I tend to not worry about much but having HfB up, SnD if it's a multi-pull (and most are) and just Evis my way through the AoE.

Good luck!

I wasn't really sure if I should be using envenom and really only use sinister strike seldomly as I have mostly forgotten it exists. The biggest issue (annoyance?) I am having is people in gear much worse than mine are doing far more dps than I am (other classes). For example, huntards are now hitting 2000 dps even when they aren't really great players (not knocking the class I have one thats level 70, its just annoying). Shamans do more damage than me, I am really struggling to put out decent numbers and I am wondering if it will continue to be this way or if it will change much as my gear upgrades. At this point I haven't really seen huge increases in dps when I've gotten quite a few new pieces of gear while my friends have a fair leap with just one new piece of gear.

Your dps should improve if you use the suggestions above. Also, it's kind of a cop-out to say you dind't have time to re-gem. Port to org, buy gem, hearth ack. Takes 30 seconds. Also, unless the armory was messed up, I didn't see a single enchant, even on your epics. Also, hit rating is way low, even for mutilate. Exp is at 15, I think the cap is somewhere around 27 or something, but you'd have to read up on that.

Personally for trash I like to use Wound/Wound

open with garrote
snd straight away
mut (4+)
evi

keeping HfB and using fan of knifes if a large pull

For bosses Deadly/Instant
Garrote
Mut (4+)
SnD
Mut (4+)
Rupture
Mut (4+)
Env

try to make finishers 4+ and keep up HfB

for glyphs use rupture/snd and either garrote or vigor depending how you're specced

edited for clarity

Edited, Dec 26th 2008 10:01am by jcbdrzr

Should have been clearer, the 'mut' simply means mutilate x times until you have 4+ combo points.

And for the boss rotation, that was meant to env not evi, although using evi and wound for trash does seem to up my dps.

Previous post edited

Edited, Dec 26th 2008 10:01am by jcbdrzr

If I feel like I need it I might go ahead and just drop a Shiv to fill out that last CP or poison stack I need, but otherwise it goes largely unused. Though largely if you're just doing it for the CP and you have the energy for it you might as well go ahead and use Mutilate anyway. You wind up eating a CP or two, but the trade off is vastly superior damage so I'd just reserve Shiv for when you absolutely need a DP stack right then and there.

Shivving for that fifth point is very situational and rare in my experience. With a decent crit rating you shouldn't find yourself so energy starved that another mutilate (with it's enormous damage compared) is out of the question..... at least mostly. Once in a great while it's good to have Shiv available (if you have a very fast off-hand). But, again, very rarely.

With every experiment I've done rotations have fallen apart within just a few iterations. Playing mutilate is not like playing combat where abilities and timers fit nicely into a simple rotation. Forcing mutilate into a rotation you will clip your timers, or worse: let one fall off. Seriously consider that mutilate is about priorities and learn to be flexible. Once you get into the habit of managing energy and not mindless spamming it's really not that hard. And I for one definitely see more damage output from mutilate than from combat. IMO, if you're min/maxing for raid, there's no other choice (well, 'cept HAT if you have the right group!).

Also note that 4-point ruptures and envenoms are not a sin. 5 is better (with Relentless Strikes especially), but 4 won't get you kicked out of the mutilate club.