#0 - March 18, 2008, 6:20 p.m.
| Executioner vs. Mongoose - The Final Truth |
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Introduction
Yes It's an old story, but I want to clarify a few things and the next time someone asks, or posts bull%##! I'll just link to this post :)
I hope this will be the last thread about this matter until WotlK. I've put in some work in anticipation to convince everyone of you, because I'm sick and tired of a) the gazillions of questions "what enchant for my welfare epix weapon?" and b) the very same amount of just plain wrong answers. This post is based on the LATEST rogue mechanic knowledge our rogue community discovered and developed. As a regular reader of EJ forums for several months I think I can say I didn't miss any important things that would change the outcome of this post.
This question is asked every day on these forums and ppl are still giving misleading information, gut feelings and their subjective opinions about this matter. Hard facts and theorycraft were missing and statements like "mongoose procs less often than exec in my wws reports" or "SS hits harder under exec than under mongoose proc" are worthless and not contributing. The most common misbelief is "Exec on MH when you're at T6 gear level". This definition is a) not exact enough and b) simply not true. There is indeed a point where exec surpasses mongoose, but more about that later.
To those who truly read my post and still disagree: Come with hard facts, provide more convincing theorycraft, water-proof evidence, or a better spreadsheet than the one I've used. (No, the rogue dps spreadsheet from DMM is not as exact as the gear spreadsheet in terms of procs, and I think the results would be the same anyway.)
- To those who say "TLDR", scroll down to the "conclusions" part.
- Flames (ZOMG joo suck you don't have warglaives!!!11), cookies etc. are welcome :)
- BTW: this is all about PVE, although I heard that M/M is the way to go for arena aswell.
The contestants
- Mongoose: http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=27984
Permanently enchant a Melee Weapon to occasionally increase Agility by 120 and attack speed slightly.
- Executioner: http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=42974
Permanently enchant a Melee Weapon to occasionally ignore 840 of your enemy's armor.
Mongoose buffs can stack when applied to both MH and OH weapons. Executioner buffs do not stack, they only refresh the existing buff, thus dual exec is out of question, remains us E/M vs. M/M. 15 sec duration for both.
One sentence about other weapon enchants: 20 agi, crusader, +7 dmg, etc. can't compete with mongoose / executioneer at all. This applies for all builds and all kinds of weapons rogues could possibly have. You might want to put a cheaper enchant on a blue weapon while you're farming your S1 stick, but that's just temporary and should not be considered for epic weapons which won't get replaced soon. It's your decision in the end anyway.
The Battle
Before we're able to compare those 2 enchants we need to know both proc rates. Our theorycrafting friends on EJ have done the nasty work for us and slapped poor DM mobs/servants for >100k eligible attacks 1). Results are (assuming they're ppm effects) that both lie at ~1.20 ppm. Aldriana pretty much summed it up: "This is, all in all, reasonable consistent with the theory that the proc rate is the same as Executioner, and both are around 1.15-1.2 PPM."
Let's look at the boss armor values next and see how damage reduction works.
- Raid boss armor values 2):
Serpentshrine Cavern:
Hydross the Unstable: 7700
The Lurker Below: 7700
Leotheras the Blind: 7700
Fathom-Lord Karathress 6200
Morogrim Tidewalker: 7700
Lady Vashj: 6200
Tempest Keep:
Void Reaver: 8800
High Astromancer Solarian: 6200
Al'ar: 7700
Kael'thas Sunstrider: 6200
Hyjal Summit:
Rage Winterchill: 6200
Anetheron: 6200
Kaz'rogal: 6200
Azgalor: 6200
Archimonde: 6200
Black Temple:
High Warlord Naj'entus: 7700
Supremus: 7700
Shade of Akama: 7700
Teron Gorefiend: 6200
Gurtogg Bloodboil: 7700
Reliquary of Souls:
- Essence of Suffering: 0
- Essence of Desire: 7700
- Essence of Anger: 7700
Mother Shahraz: 6200
Illidari Council:
- Gathios the Shatterer: 6200
Illidan Stormrage: 7700
So, almost all bosses have 6200/7700 armor. With raid buffs: 5x sunder armor -2600, curse of recklessness -800, faerie fire -610, resulting in 2190/3690 armor after debuffs.
Formula for damage reduction (DR%) is 3):
DR% = Armor / (Armor - 22167.5 + 467.5 * MobLevel)
For a fully debuffed boss (SA x5, FF, CoR) the increase from ArP is:
100 ArP: 0.79%/0.71%
200 ArP: 1.59%/1.42%
300 ArP: 2.41%/2.15%
400 ArP: 3.24%/2.89%
500 ArP: 4.08%/3.64%
AS we can see, ArP truly scales the more you can stack of it. That's most likely the reason for the common opinion that exec outscales mongoose with some ArP gear. In other words: If you have 1000 ArP and reduce boss armor from 2000 to 1000 you will see a smaller dps gain as reducing from 1000 to 0. Please note that you can't reduce boss armor past 0 - every additional point of ArP would be useless. This also means that exec is already overkill for 6200 bosses and the following -very common- gear stup:
6200 armor boss
-2600 (SA)
-800 (CoR)
-610 (FF)
= 2190
- 175 (T6 gloves)
- 175 (T6 shoulders)
- 126 (Illidan ring)
- 126 (ZA chest ring)
- 1000 (Warp-Spring Coil) 4)
= 588 armor
An executioneer proc (840) would bring you 252 ArP beyond the cap, and yes there will be times when both WSC and exec procs are up.
So this situation clearly goes to mongoose, but let's assume a situation where we can get as close to the cap as possible with the best possible gear. If mongoose wins with loads of ArP stacked and on fully debuffed 6200 armor bosses, then exec is even worse in all the other cases: 7700 armor, no CoR up, no WSC/MotB/ArP rings.
Rogue mechanics are complex. Many rogues tried (and failed) to bring maths to this forum proving which one of this enchants is better. It's not possible to bring everything into consideration starting with exact cycles, combat potency, sword spec/WF procs, DST/WSC uptimes and so on. The best model for combat rogue simulation was developed on the EJ forums. In order to get the best possible results I consulted Aldriana's gear spreadsheet 5), which takes all relevant mechanics into consideration. You can equip the gear you want, change boss armor and activate the desired (de)buffs.
