Need help improving parses (outlaw)

Classes Rogue
1

Hello fellow rogues:

I’m kinda at the end of my keep your wits about you with my mythic parses. They’re pretty abysmal compared to my heroic ones (which aren’t that great either) – and I just generally need assistance improving my raid performance. I asked the rogue discord and got some ideas from them, but I figured I’d make a post here as well. Any help or advice would be appreciated.

The three takeaways I got from the rogue discord had to do with 1) holding undesirable buffs too long and letting buffs fall off; 2) not using potions enough; and 3) positioning.

Bones

I’m very well acquainted with what buffs I should be keeping, and I have a weak aura that prominently shows me what buffs I have active and their remaining duration. However, in the thick of a raid, with many mechanics happening, I’m too often forgetting to reroll a bad buff. It’s like “Okay, that buff sucks, I need to reroll it. But wait, BtE is up, lemme use that first, okay, lemme generate CP to reroll, OH CRAP, I need to do this mechanic, okay, I have max CP again, oh, BTE is back up” and then I just forget to reroll the crappy buff.

I’m thinking this could be solved if I had an additional weak aura that either put an icon on my screen or made a sound or did something to let me know I’ve got an unsatisfactory buff, so I’m less likely to forget to reroll it when too many things are happening. I have not been able to find such a weak aura. Is anyone aware of something that might help me with this?

Potions

This is kinda related to the above. It’s pretty easy to remember to use my first potion before a pull, but once I’m in the thick of things, unless I specifically remember to look down at my action bar to see if it’s off cooldown (which I don’t always remember to do when too many things are going on…) I forget to use it. Is there any weak aura or other add on that might help with this? Something as simple as an icon or sound or message that’s like “Hey jerkass. Your potion’s up.”

Positioning

This one’s really fight specific. I think the biggest one giving me trouble is Mythic Behemoth, because there’s so much downtime for me when I’m getting to and from pufferfish, into and out of spears, all while trying to keep 5 yards away from everyone else. I can use grappling hook for some of this, and the rogue discord suggested saving blade rush for movement as well.

I guess I’m just having a hard time knowing where I should be during fights. I know the mechanics, but there’s some debuffs I’m perhaps running too far out on Radiance, and other fights I’m sure. The boss fight videos and guides don’t really help with like, rogue specific tips to optimize positioning and performance on these fights. Is anyone aware of some guides or videos that might help me with this?

Gear

One last point about gear. I’d been using the 445 socketed cannonball runner trinket in all situations because it SIMs the highest on the patchwork 1 target SIM I use for raid bosses, and on the dungeon slice SIM I use for M+. It’s also higher on the meter at bloodmallet for both single and multi-target. However, the rogue discord told me it’s garbage. Something about it being bad for any fight with movement? (which didn’t really jive with it simming so high on the dungeon slice sim, nor my own experience of using it where it’s frequently doing really good damage…)

I recall similar issues with SIMs previously not taking Harlan’s dice ability to proc multiple times into account, and not valuing the mechagon trinket correctly. My question is, where do you guys find this information? I never see posts about it here. I never see it mentioned in guides that you shouldn’t be using x trinket, or that you should disregard SIMs for y trinket. Is there a rogue newsletter I’m not subscribed to? Are there any other highest simming traits/trinkets I should ignore or devalue? I’ve been running two wits in M+ because that SIMs higher than one and a snake eyes/brigand’s blitz, but I never see anyone else doing this. Is the SIM wrong about that one too?

Thanks for reading all that. Literally any tips or advice to improve my performance would be appreciated. My logs are all available at warcraft logs if anyone that’s good at making sense of those can offer me some advice.

Keep stabbin’.

2

TBH, Sin is your best bet to increase your DPS. As much as I know you don’t want to hear that, it’s the truth.

For RTB I use this: wago. io /ByYJj8EK7 - It’s not exactly what you’re looking for but they are placed in order of importance from top left to right.

The Kul Tiran Cannonball trinket is likely not great for progression, but it’s 445 and has a socket. Just on that alone it’s still going to be better than most. You mentioned Harlan’s Loaded Dice, if you have that I’d maybe pick that over it tbh. The problem with sims is they only work in a controlled environment, and mythic progression raiding is often chaotic. Sure the cannonball trinket might sim higher than x, but are you getting a lot of use out of it?

Judging from your logs, yes I looked them up, your cannonball trinket is averaging about 2.5% of your total damage, which isn’t bad. It’s basically up to you to decide if you have better options. It’s definitely not a “garbage” trinket, but you have to take into account progression and how useful it is. My opinion is, it is likely your best option even during progression. Run a sim and see where your cannonball trinket damage is and compare it to a real fight, 2.5% does seem about right.

IDK if you have enough haste to make Deeper Strategem ideal, but you may want to consider Vigor instead. Again, one of those things where DS might sim higher but in reality Vigor is better.

You definitely need to Vanish more and get more Ambushes.

As far as fight mechanics go, pay attention to what your other melee, the ones who are topping meters, are doing.

The main issue I see is you’re being reactive with your mechanics rather than proactive. You need to pay attention to timers so you don’t have that “oh crap I have to do this” at the same you need to RTB. If you get crappy buffs, just reroll as long as BtE isn’t up.

You are a lot lower than what you should be, but it’s not unfixable. RTB in combination with mythic progression is probably the thing that’s kicking your butt the most.

1 Like
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I don’t disagree about assassination. I’ve just never played it. I feel like learning a new spec right now might not be the best way to improve parses. I might do more damage, but wouldn’t I likely be parsing lower than more experienced assassination rogues? My goal here is simply to improve parses. I’m facing the bench if I can’t get mine to at least 50%. I’ve always been a one toon dude. This is my only character, and the only spec I play. I like to master one thing before trying another, and I clearly don’t have the raiding part of outlaw mastered. I do awesome in M+, but the raids. I think it’s a practice issue. I’ve done M+ encounters hundreds of times. I’ve done these mythic fights 3-4 times.

I do have some dice. My other trinkets are 440 dice, 435 spyglass, the 440 socketed vers alchemy trinket, a 440 tiny electromental in a jar, a 430 inkpod, 418 mechagon trinket, 430 plumage, 430 galecaller’s. The rogue discord advised I ignore the cannon and use the next two highest SIM trinkets, which would be the tiny electromental and the alchemy trinket.

DS seems totally ideal in all ST situations for me. I ran vigor on many fights and was specifically told by other rogues that with 3x ace, it’s DS all the way. My M+ gear that I have on has me at about 21% unbuffed, along with 3 OP, I’m totally not wanting for haste there. Oddly enough, for pure ST, the SIM recommends I drop myself to 13% (still with DS), so that’s what I’ve been doing. More haste sims lower ST, but if you think more haste will help, I can run more haste. I see most outlaw rogues raiding are using DS instead of vigor, but I’d certainly try it if it would improve my DPS. (EDIT: My pure ST raid pieces have 2x BB instead of wits, so I’m also getting haste from that.)

I will make it a point to remember to vanish and ambush more. If there was a rotation helper, or some other WA that could help me remember (“Hey, vanish is up. Vanish and ambush!” That would certainly help.

Maybe part of the problem is my UI. I’m using the default, and I’m playing on a 40" TV, so my eyeballs are frequently darting from the top left to watch CP, to the bottom right to see the meters, to the middle, to see WAs, to the right, to see DBM warnings. I don’t even know how to move my DBM warnings. I’ve tried. Putting them in a place I could see them better would likely help my not being so surprised by mechanics.

I mean, I have a WA package that tracks the cooldown of all my abilities. I put it in the bottom center above my action bar, but it was too cluttered. There’s a lot of stuff like grappling hook, cloak, etc. that I’m fine tracking on the normal action bar. So I modified mine to just have BF, BR, and BtE. The stuff I wanna make sure I use every time on cooldown. I’m very bad at watching the built in CP tracker it provides. I’m too glued to using the default upper left version of the CP tracker, because the in-game center of the screen one is just too small. If I could make the one bigger, or put it under an enemy health bar or something, that would be a big help. This is also the reason I couldn’t get into assassination when I tried it. I can’t keep track of debuffs on multiple targets well with the default UI.

Also just got my third essence. I’m sure that will help slightly.

Would grinding out BotE do me any favors? So much of my damage is fueled by BtE crits, and the difference between a crit and a non-crit BTE is 100k. You can watch yourself rise and fall on the meter after spicy BtE crits/non-crits. I wonder if that huge crit boost window would be way better for someone using 3x ace. I often wonder the same thing about my gems. I still have a few vers gems, and I SIM highest with all vers gems, but I ended up going mostly crit because it just feels SO BAD to get a 6 point BtE that hits for 20-30k.

I do think some of this is gear related, and I tried telling my GM that when I was told how poor my parses are compared to similar ilvl outlaw rogues. I’ve seen too many on warcraft logs that won the azerite lottery and are able to squeeze 2-3 deadshots on top of their 3x ace. I’ve got 3x ace and one deadshot on some 435 shoulders because I can’t get them to drop in 445 form, and I’ve gotten a circlet of the enveloping leviathan 3 times in a row instead of an irontide captain’s hat. The lack of a decent coral also isn’t doing me any favors. I imagine most of the ones around my ilvl I was being compared to parse wise based on last week’s performance also had a third essence I didn’t have.

My kingdom for an irontide captain’s hat and a vest of reverent adoration. I want to have 3x ace and 3x deadshot just once this expansion.

Thanks for the input!

4

Sin is a brain dead spec. The only thing that will separate the good ones from the average ones is pooling energy and CP management, and even then the difference in damage is marginal TBH. Both are easy to learn and all the passive damage Sin has makes it easy to execute.

I don’t think BotE is what you should be using as your active. You really only need to fish for Ruthless Precision.

You’re probably okay with DS over Vigor, it’s just an ease of use suggestion.

For trinkets I’d go with the Dice and Tiny Jar.

Moving your DMB timers/bars is easy. type /dbm, find the options tab, click on “bar setup”, click on “move me” on the right, and move them to the desired location. ezpz

https:// imgur. com/a/l0SvWmP - here’s a pic of my UI. It’s not really raid friendly since I don’t raid anymore, but it’s a variant of ElvUI. The squares above the energy are CPs, dead center of your eyeline. If you don’t like ElvUI you can try the addon “Move Anything” and you can move basically everything to your liking.

https:// imgur. com/a/l0SvWmP - here’s one with an active combat spec.

As far as Vanish is concerned, just make a big icon above your RtB auras that shows the CD.

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Thanks! I’m at work, but I’ll check out those auras and things to help reorganize my UI. There’s a lot of wasted space. I could really do with getting rid of the default raid frames as well, taking up a quarter of my screen real estate.

Why dice, out of curiosity, over spyglass or something? I typically go by bloodmallet, and the spyglass seems to perform better in single and multi-target as far as that goes. Is that not the best resource for this sort of thing?

Should also add the 430 inkpod is my second highest ST simming trinket, so that’s what I use with the cannonball usually. I believe that and the electromental are my next highest. So should I try dice/inkpod?

EDIT:

Just another random raid question for outlaw rogues while I’m at it. How do you guys decide when to run your MT traits/talents over pure ST? Except for fights where there’s two targets I can hit 100% of the time, I pretty much stick to blade rush and zero wits (my pure ST stuff). Would it be advisable to run dancing steel and wits on fights with any adds? Even short waves? Like Radiance, Za’qul, and Queen Azshara? I don’t parse so hot on these fights, and I’m wondering if maybe I should be wearing my MT gear for them.

EDIT 2:

Your CP tracker isn’t too dissimilar from the one I’m using. Just… something about having it in that spot, my eyes don’t wanna be there. I think, ideally, the best place for CP would be under an enemy health bar or something. I’m usually watching those quite closely. Do any of the custom UI things like ElvUI or threatplates or something allow you to implement such a feature? Double points if it can also show my debuffs on the target to help with assassination. The default one is almost in the right spot for this, it’s just too small and opaque and it disappears too often for me to make much use of it. I would really like to get out of the habit of watching the top left corner of the screen to track my CP though. That’s an old vanilla habit I can’t kick. (This is my first expansion since TBC. Played from '04-'07, quit, then came back a year ago for BFA when it launched. Always on the rogue. Just a one toon guy.)

6

Didn’t see you had Inkpod. Yea Inkpod and Dice. As far as Dice vs Spyglass, it’s just a preference thing I imagine they’re fairly equal and you already have a lot of crit.

ElvUI is very customizable and the initial setup is idiot proof. Every piece of the UI can be accustomed to your liking.

No idea. Likely just depends on how long those adds are alive probably. You’d probably want 1 maybe 2 wits for fights with adds, but I couldn’t say for certain.

They have weak auras for that.

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So, I’m at work and just perusing warcraft logs to see the gear/traits etc. of outlaw rogues with much better mythic parses, and here’s what I’m seeing:

More vigor. I’d really like to know what’s up with this. I did run vigor for some heroic fights that I did well on, but I always felt like I was doing more damage with DS. DS still SIMs higher for patchwerk 1 target and dungeonslice, but… after the cannonball fiasco, I’m no longer inclined to trust SIMs as much as I blindly used to. Is there something about vigor that I’m not aware of that would make it the better pick for some fights? If so, how do you know which fights? I just recall one of the first things a guildie (assassination) rogue told me when I was asking for help with improving parses – that you always wanted DS with three aces. Period. I had been running vigor alot, even in M+ (because for some reason, it still SIMed higher at the time… and it’s still really close in the SIMs now. About a few hundred DPS…)

Agility Gems.

I’m seeing agility gems. Why? Agility has been worth less than half of crit/vers for me for forever. Why is 120 agility better than 60 of one of those?

Crit vs. vers for gems/enchants. For most of season 1 and 2, vers was weighted slightly above crit for me, and I stacked it, to much success. Since season 3 and swapping to aces over deadshots, I’ve been favoring crit (and it sims ever so slightly higher… about 100 DPS difference with all crit gems to all vers gems) because of the absolute NEED for BtE to crit every time. To me, in every game I’ve played, a flat damage increase was always preferable to a chance to crit, because the former is occurring 100% of the time.

A lot of these guys seem to be stacking more vers. Where do you guys come down on the crit vs. vers gem debate? All crit? All vers? Does one perform better for ST and one for MT? (I know my SIMs have vers slightly ahead for ST and crit slightly ahead for MT.)

EDIT:

Should probably also mention that my four Benthic pieces are only 420, and not 425. I simply lost interest in farming more pearls after getting them to that point, and the SIMs told me it would be a .01% upgrade per piece, so it didn’t seem worth it. But, if the SIMs aren’t 100% trustworthy, it might be worth my while to get these all to 425. Seems to be what everyone else has them at.

My Benthic belt at 420 with socket also SIMs slightly lower than my current 450 socketed belt, so I haven’t been using it. If this is again a case of the SIMs being wrong (and I’ve heard that 425 socketed Benthic is supposed to be better than 455 socketed gear for the raid) – then maybe I should swap belts.

I’m also using the second best bracers, the pufferfish ones, instead of the frost damage ones, which, according to the SIMs, is costing me .01% DPS.