Trading TricksFollow

Before I explain past the title, here's a disclaimer or four.
1. If you don't raid with another competent rogue..
2. If you aren't a competent rogue yourself..
3. If you can't watch another timer while maintaining a mutilate rotation and staying out of fire/etc..

There is no real need to read further.



Essentially, "Trading Tricks" means you and another rogue tricks of the trade each other for the damage buff. The 15 energy is a negligable cost for the bonus. (30 second, 15 energy cooldown for 15% damage for 6 seconds. Think Tiger's Fury with druids.) Entirely worth using and abusing.



**Theory**

Here's some basic information about trading tricks with another rogue.
- Used every cooldown, you will be trading threat with the other rogue for 6 seconds, resulting in a negligable threat gain for both of you.
- There is some serious incentive to watch the cooldown on this. If you forget to tricks the other rogue and he tricks you, you're likely to die. Expecially early on in the fight.
- Energy Pooling is/can be used to great benefit with this. Glyphed Vigor is suddenly more appeaing when you can time your rotation around 120 energy + 5 combo points + use trinket + cold blood + vanish/cancelsteath macro/startattack (for overkill) and two envenoms and 2-3 mutilates all in that 6 second period. It takes practice to use without dropping your rotation but you also are in danger of being totally awesome.
- The energy pooling into tricks tactic will only gain strength in 3.1 with the Envenom glyph


**Math**
Tricks of the trade, used on cooldown, provides a 15% damage buff for 6 seconds. Cooldown is 30 seconds. SO:

0.15*6/30 = 0.03, or 3% more damage.

And in a competetive raid, where your top 5 dps are within 10k damage of each other (I would argue most raids are like this) another 3% dps is going to make a massive difference. With energy pooling, and the somewhat complicated chaining of cooldowns as stated above, the bonus you can reap from trading tricks can be much greater than the standalone average of 3%.




**Macro**

/cast [target=Mallanim] Tricks of the Trade
/w Mallanim YOU HAVE TRICKS OF THE TRADE!!!

Replace Mallanim with the OTHER rogue's name, as it's not a self cast. Insert personalized message after the (/w) as you like. Keybind it somewhere handy.



**Misc tips**
- Combining cooldowns with vanish/overkill/tricks is a great way to boost damage, as is energy pooling.
- Pool to 95 or so energy before envenom so you can get two mutilates off during the envenom buff. Don't let this interupt your rotation, or you've lost the minor benefit this provides.
- Slow (1.8) daggers with double wound are recommended for AoE pack FoK spamming. (Remember to swap back to your fast weapons for bosses)
- If you have the hit rating, dropping a point from Precision and putting it into Improved SnD might be recommended. It gives you more flexibility in your rotation and more opportunities to pool energy so you can unload during a use trinket/envenom without dropping SnD. This is a personal choice.

Edited, Mar 13th 2009 9:43am by Banatu

Yeah I wrote it during bio as a partial tangent, partial informative post after re-starting my ADD meds this week and having 2 coffees. It's going to get a rewrite.. sometime soon. I have a few other tips and tricks for mutilate min/maxing rotations but they weren't as readily at my fingertips as this was.

And we roll with a prot pally MT who gets two misdirects and pulls over 8k tps on his own anyways.. so tricks on him isn't really an issue. But yeah, rewrite inc. Rogues, feel free to include any of your own raiding tricks to max damage/survivability whatever and I'll include it and source the necessary personas.

Edited, Mar 11th 2009 2:21pm by Banatu