I’ve noticed a lot of changes happening but maybe there isn’t a big enough voice for rogue tanks out there. Main Gauche is completely useless and here is why:
I am taking rogue tanking very seriously. I created a TPS calculator and DPS sim for rogue tanks. I tested every possible rotation I could think of and I don’t understand what main gauche is good for. Before I tell you why main gauche is bad, let me explain how rogue tanks work currently.
- All rogue abilities seem to trigger threat at 150% of the damage, already we are at a disadvantage, with no base threat ability we will be out-scaled.
- The best spec for rogue tank is Riposte spec right now.
- Rogues have the best avoidance/mitigation of any tank right now.
Keeping that in mind, we want to generate as much threat as possible as our #1 priority. According to my sim, the best rotation for threat is keeping up 5 points of rupture and using saber slash. My healers say i’m easier to heal then any of our other tanks so I will at maximum use 1 point blade dance.
Conclusion:
Sacrificing saber slash for main gauche is a 1/3rd dps and threat drop, even with riposte.
The bleed of saber slash scales off of AP and generates threat and the damage is mainhand damage. There is absolutely no reason to use main gauche, even in pvp you would not want to use it, which is sad considering the requirements to get the rune were expensive and very time consuming.
Possible fixes:
Give main gauche a massive threat boost. Increase the damage main gauche does. Don’t make it offhand damage. Increase the parry chance by a lot. Make it worth using for somebody.
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I havent even tried to get it on my rogue. I just use saber slash.
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Just wanted to add, my character name and server is Sisco - Lone Wolf not Healthy.
Hopefully they spend some time on this…it seems weird to create a brand new spec for a class and then just leave it partially finished.
This also seems like an easy fix…they could just cause things to generate more threat without changing any damage values.
it is an interesting take, in your sims how do you calculate your parry percentage and riposte returns? considering you’re running with the flat 10% parry rate from blade dance and no main gauche parry window what’s your rate of riposte?
I agree - I think Main Gauche is substantially outshined by saber slash.
I also can’t think of a situation where you would use MG, other than against enemies that can’t bleed. Even on Akumai, where taking hits is substantially more costly to the raid than the average encounter, it is a noticeable downgrade.
I’d love to see it given some attention. Here are some ideas I have, but I’m not sure if these would really make it viable (it may just need a rework):
- Increase the threat/damage done by the ability substantially
AND
- “While the buff is active, parrying any attack will generate X energy”
OR
- “While the buff is active, riposte has its CD reduced by X seconds and will generate a combo point when used”
OR
- “While the buff is active, parrying any attack will trigger a retaliation, doing OH weapon damage”
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Also, I would love to see your TPS and DPS tools if you’re willing to share!
Bump for Riposte numbers, I’m getting tired of dropping hints haha.
The only reason i can think of for Main Gauche is later phases where mitigation is more important, but that doesnt do anyone any good now.
Also i like the idea of parries reducing the riposte cooldown.
This isn’t necessarily true since Tank Rogues are essentially slightly modified DPS Rogues, always DWing, benefit from every kind of scaling buff, consumable, etc. I’m not saying it isn’t a point of concern, but going forward with our other skills and DPS-oriented talents, I’m not necessarily worried about our TPS.
However, a good place to put exceptionally high DPS/TPS modifiers are Riposte, Main Gauche, and Ghostly Strike.
This will undoubtedly change in favor of maintaining S&D with BD and using whatever is left over for the most damage efficient finisher we can utilize. This will be future rune and talent dependent.
Main Gauche needs a damage/threat boost and a shorter CD, otherwise you give up WAY too much for not having essentially steroid Sinister Strikes with a bleed component.
The Parry amount is plenty TBH since it is going to only get better as our baseline Avoidance climbs higher and higher, and even the lack of 100% uptime isn’t a problem, it just needs to be a bit closer to Saber Slash to justify taking.
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The sim is accurate, had to modify my code to get the riposte count. It runs in real time (though i could modify the timescale) all abilities are accurate. I have tested all blade dance points using main gauche on CD and it’s always the same, I do about 100+ dps with saber slash and it goes down to 60.
In a 2 minute long fight against a level 29 mob: (the last boss in BFD is actually level 29)
Test 1: Rotation = Main Gauche/Riposte/Sinister strike on CD, blade dance x2, rupture x5 (gives highest dps while still using blade dance)
Riposte count: 12
DPS: 53
Notes:
1x blade dance gets around 51 dps and 9 riposte’s
5x blade dance uptime with 1x snd gets around 48 dps and 13 riposte’s
Test 2: Riposte/Saber slash on CD, 5 point rupture, 1 point blade dance. ( I hardly use blade dance unless I’m taking too much damage)
Riposte count: 2-4 (low but still better than 5% crit over riposte)
DPS: 117 dps
I have charts showing uptime, cumulative threat over time and DPS/TPS throughout a fight if you want to see them I can send them to you.
This is the most top level code setting the parry, when the auras are active/deactive it changes the variables to the correct percentages.
current_parry = main_gauche_instance.current_parry + base_parry + blade_dance_instance.current_parry
And this is the code that calculates the parry, swing timer is based on the default boss swing timer.
if time.time() >= (boss_swing_timer + boss_swing_speed)
#check if player parried
if random.randint(1, 100) <= current_parry:
mh_timer = mh_timer - mh_timer*0.4
oh_timer = oh_timer - oh_timer*0.4
print("You parried!")
if riposte_instance.active == False and time.time() >= (riposte_instance.timer + riposte_instance.cooldown):
riposte_instance.active = True
boss_swing_timer = time.time()
It’s not finished yet, I need to add the other runes like deadly brew and Envenom, I also need to give it a nice user interface. it started as a TPS calculator and through trial and error I found out threat for rogues is just 150% damage… So now it’s a DPS sim… Rogues needed a accurate and good DPS sim anyways so I’ll keep working on it and post it when I finish the runes and user interface.
You can add me on discord BoxingBruin#1311
Edit: Since I cant post more than 3x in this thread I added this. Something that is really sad, there is a rogue in my group who can pull off of me because his dps is >150% of mine due to deadly brew. A normal rogue can pull off of a tank rogue (in certain circumstances), please give us more threat.
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I still don’t know, the its just a flesh wound tooltip implies ‘actions’ have a greater threat generation not just damage, that kind of leads me to believe riposte has an additional threat component through the disarm feature, and more ripostes means more threat. I’m wondering if passive damage (bleeds/poisons) benefits from the ‘action’ based threat from the rune.
Regardless, on anything but single target tanking building up to three stacks of blade slash often means being combo point and energy starved for additional targets, I think I’m going to stick with Main Gauche and riposte for the time being. Feels more dynamic.
I agree with your premise, but I’m confused by your test.
In your second test, you’re not maintaining blade dance? Isn’t that an obvious apples to oranges discrepancy between the two tests?
Just tested in game to verify if the act of disarming gives any threat. It does not, it is only 150% the damage of riposte. Blade dance, SnD, expose armor etc do not award any threat either.
Also riposte doesn’t award combo points, yes it’s only 10 energy but it doesn’t help you build up points for abilities if you are using it on CD.
10 energy leaves plenty left over for other combo point builders for securing threat though, it takes care of a lot of the energy starvation issues people are mentioning. much more flexible multiple targets as well. riposte + sinister strike is great, you can split it between targets as well, tab riposte tab build combo points. Smoother threat, smoother energy management.
Yeah sorry about that, here is an eye for eye comparison keeping up 5 points of blade dance. I was comparing the highest dps rotations in each before for threat gen.
Riposte/saber slash on CD, 1 point snd, 5 point blade dance rotation:
Riposte count: 7
DPS: 97
Riposte/Main gauche/sinister strike on CD, 1 point snd, 5 point blade dance rotation:
Riposte count: 13
DPS: 45
As you can see, your rotation doesn’t really matter with saber slash, yes you can min max it but just spamming saber slash alone would be better than main gauche with any rotation.
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I’ve been thinking, and I feel like I’m coming to the conclusion that balancing MG is really complicated by the fact that it’s a 20 second cooldown.
Tanks optimize for three different metrics: threat, damage and survivability.
With this in mind, I feel like there are two directions they could go to improve MG:
1) Tie improvements to riposte to the MG rune
- With this approach, the damage difference is made up for in the mitigation, and the threat difference is closed by changes to riposte.
- While the MG rune is equipped, riposte has its cooldown reduced to 3 seconds, and riposte generates additional threat (the amount balanced so that using MG will generate more threat on average than using saber slash).
2) Overhaul the ability from a cooldown into a GCD attack
- Similar to above, the damage difference with saber slash is closed by mitigation. The difference is that the threat difference will come from the MG ability itself.
- 40 energy cost, doing MH weapon damage and extra threat (like sunder armor)
- 1 combo point per use
- Provides a stacking buff on each successful use, providing 2% parry, stacking up to 6%. The buff lasts for 10 seconds and refreshes on use.
What are your thoughts on these two different approaches to improving the ability?
Or, since Main Gauche is French for Left Hand, make it 250-300% offhand damage, so the damage is equivalent to a main. hand strike with the off hand weapon…
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but doesn’t sinister mean left as well? we are treading some dangerous linguistic territory, best not go down this path.
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