Just looking for help with my aoe rotation. I seem to be missing in on a lot of dps. I see other rogues consistently pulling 5m+ on aoe pulls in mythic dungeons. I seem to be around 2m. I am sure I am doing something drastically wrong. I have read that you want to have five ruptures going which I try to do. I get my indiscriminate carnage up first, but do I need to switch targets and dot up two other mobs to get five ruptures up? I usually start with garrote, 5 pt rupture, 5 point Crimson and mutilate to get spatter up. I try and do this quickly. I have seen other rogue triple my caustic spatter damage even though I have a timer and watching it closely to make sure it doesn’t drop, same with Crimson Tempest. I try and spam fok and envenoms before refreshing caustic spatter and Crimson Tempest. Just looking for solid advice and not negativity if possible. I have tried going thru the forums and don’t see much on it. Also this is just a rotation not using cds, potions etc.
A lot of Caustic Spatter damage comes not just from keeping it up, but from proper timing of Kingsbane/Shiv. You want to have Shiv up for the last 8 seconds when the damage is at its highest, because all of that Kingsbane damage is going to get spattered (always making sure to have Spatter up on your KB target, of course).
When you’re comparing your dps compared to other rogues, you need to take more into consideration than just your rotation. Granted you may be able to improve your rotation, but there are other factors at play, e.g.:
- Mob count - if you’re constantly pulling groups of 4 mobs vs 12 mobs, this isn’t a fair comparison
- Group composition - if you’re playing with dps who are bursty or just overtuned (cough enhance sham) or are highly skilled, then they can ‘steal’ dps from you
- Funnel - sin rogue gets a huge amount of damage from funnel damage - if you’re not pulling a bunch of mobs on top of targets and your comparison group is, then youll lose a lot of damage
- Group Buffs - not going to be making the difference of millions of dps, but some groups might have better synergy in terms of buffs
- Cooldown timings - some groups will organise around when their cooldowns are to be popped. Even if this isn’t done explicitly, a group that plays together often will figure out more optimal timings to pop cds vs being in a random pug and you don’t know whats coming next
- Key Level - sin rogue is a bit of a ramp class - below a certain key level (12), mobs can just die too fast before you can really shine
In terms of rotation advice, what you’re doing sounds correct but the devil is in the details. You do want to spread garrotes and ruptures when in you’re IC window, but you want to spend the minimal amount of globals doing this as possible. You don’t have to switch targets to spread bleeds with IC up because it will ‘smart target’ and auto-spread them - theoretically you should swap or use a mouseover macro but I wouldn’t focus on this until everything else is perfect. Typically I open with two garottes and two ruptures, into a CT, then start spattering.
Make sure you are blowing cds on high hp mobs or they might die before you get full value out. Make sure you’re not losing your Deathstalker’s Mark target too and you’re keeping good uptime on it. Also ensure you’re refreshing your ruptures - not only for Scent of Blood stacks but also for energy so you can spam those envenoms.
Thank you for the tips. Well written. I think I am having trouble tabbing over to put ruptures on the additional target while maintaining dots. I likely go into panic mode. I was in a key with another sin rogue and he was consistently doing 5m on trash mobs while I was around 2m at around the same ilvl. It looks like I need to get more confidence with just being consistent with my rotation. Thanks again for the tips and how well written you made it.
If you’re in a group with another sin rogue, then comparing their globals against yours via warcraft logs would be a great place to start. You’ll be able to compare where they’re using globals and how many bleeds etc they’re putting up, their spatter uptime, etc. etc. WCL even has a comparison feature so you can see your casts / buffs vs theirs side by side
To ease maintaining ruptures / garrotes you can always spend an extra global or two at the start of a bigger pull on more bleeds just so you can overlap existing ones for more duration when its easier to do so (in IC window). Then there will be less need for you to manually refresh ruptures since the pack will probably be dead by the time they fall off. You can judge when its worth to do this based on how long you think the packs will live.
If you don’t already do so, I would recommend setting up something like plater to hide all buffs/debuffs on nameplates except very important ones, like rupture and show the time renaming on them, this will make it way easier to click/tab to nameplates that need to be refreshed. You can also use a mouseover macro so you dont need to change targets at all but im not a huge fan of them since I’m a boomer and don’t always have the best mouse positioning in a hectic fight.
Using plater colours/resizing can help a lot as well. For example, I will colour all prio mobs a certain colour and all casters a certain colour so when im going into a pull i know my potential targets already. I also re-colour and enlarge nameplates with deathstalkers mark active so I know which target i should swap back to in case i lose it.
be careful target switching because you need to mutilate at least once on your main target for spatter. i back to back rupture main target and it will put rupture on targets that dont already have it and then make sure i fan a lot to build combo points. use a WA to track spatter because it is always my top damage overall.