by Schnaxine @ Stormrage
Generations Guild
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| 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.
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 -2400, 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
-2400 (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.
Settings for the T6 gear battle:
Buffs: CoR, 5x SA, FF,imp GotW, Imp BS, imp BoM, unleashed rage, BoK, imp HM, SoE totem, Mangle, Heroism, 120 AP flask, 20 hit food, WF on main, deadly on off.
Gear: Warglaives, cursed vision, choker of endless nightmares, 4xT6, insidious bands, belt of 100 deaths, ninja boots, illidan ring, ZA chest ring, ATL and DST. Accordingly enchanted and gemmed of course. Since we want to test the *absolute* best case for executioner (= 0 boss armor when it procs) I’ll reduce boss armor to X, so X = 4010 (debuffs) + 602 (passive ArP) + 840 (exec);
Test 1, X = 5452
E/M: 2317.18 DPS
M/M: 2311.35 DPS
WEll, I have to say that this is *very* theoretical.
1) There is no boss with 5452 armor and 2) Getting a 6200/7700 boss to 0 armor requires _very_ specific gear which is most likely worse than the cookie cutter items combined with mongoose. Even with WSC + executioneer it’s far from reality to keep the boss at 0 armor. Assuming 15% WSC and 50% executioner uptime (and lets say boss got 0 armor when both proc) we get:
7.5% 0 armor (WSC + exec)
7.5% 840 armor (WSC)
42.5% 1000 armor (exec)
42.5% 1840 armor (no proc)
Means we don’t have the desired 0 armor for 92.% of the time, thus a constant 0 armor boss (apart from RoS) is an illusion at least until we get 1350/2850 passive ArP on gear.
But let’s look at more realistic numbers. Low armor boss first, then high armor, then an average value. I also replaced the ATL with a MotB (comes closest to WSC, which is overkill on 6200 with our setup as we’ve already learned).
Test 2, X = 6200, Hyjal bosses
E/M: 2175.24
M/M: 2175.08
Both are equal and within the normal RNG deviation. Ok, that’s the best case for exec in a realistic situation. WE learn that executioner is EQUAL to mongoose in the most exec-friendly circumstance! -4010 raid debuffs, 300 ArP trinket proc, 602 passive ArP on gear. Any buff/ArP missing will turn the fight to mongoose’s favor.
Test 3, X = 7700, most BT bosses
E/M: 1947.46
M/M: 1955.20
Mongoose takes the lead by far. Any less buff/ArP would make mongoose even better.
Test 4, X = (6200+7700)/2 = 6950, average armor boss
E/M: 2054.40
M/M: 2058.68
Since noone got 2 MH warglaives for the best fitting enchant depending on boss armor, an average armor value is sufficient enough imo. In T6 content there are 8x 6200 and 7x 7700 bosses, so I just took the average. We can say that Mongoose is 4 DPS, or ~0.21%, better than Executioneer on an average boss fight with full armor debuffs and high end T6 ArP gear.
Now you gonna say: “Fine M/M > E/M for T6 stuff, but what about the new sunwell gear?
Settings for the sunwell gear battle:
Buffs: CoR, 5x SA, FF, imp GotW, Imp BS, imp BoM, unleashed rage, BoK, imp HM, SoE totem, Mangle, Heroism, 120 AP flask, 20 hit food, WF on main, deadly on off.
Gear: Warglaives, Duplicitous Guise, Hard khorium choker, T6 shoulders, shadowmoon destroyers cape, carapace of sun and shadow, T6 bracers, gloves of immortal dusk, T6 belt, leggings of immortal night, T6 boots, Illidan ring, ZA chest ring, MotB and DST. Accordingly enchanted and gemmed of course.
Passive ArP on gear:
rings: 252
gloves: 154
shoulders: 175
neck: 150
trinket: 300 on proc
total: 1031
Test 5, X = 6200, low armor boss, sunwell gear
E/M: 2422.43
M/M: 2419.76
Test 6, X = 7700, high armor boss, sunwell gear
E/M: 2160.50
M/M: 2167.58
Test 7, X = 6950, average armor boss, sunwell gear
E/M: 2283.24
M/M: 2286.05
As expected exec catches up a bit, but still, looking at average fights, mongoose comes out ahead. Min-maxers with 2 equal main hands, a raid that gives them CoR and full sunwell gear might want to have both enchants at hand, but i don’t see rogues getting a 2nd warglaive for the sake of 3 DPS on ~50% of all fights.
Conclusions:
1) Regarding the current and upcoming (2.4) best possible gear mongoose is better than executioner. This statement also applies to T6 rogues with ArP gear and a fully debuffed boss. Yes it’s possible to find gear combinations to make executioner slightly better than mongoose under certain conditions, but it would result in an overall DPS loss (not wearing 4xT6 etc..)
2) Both enchants are viable and so close in terms of DPS, you should choose the one with the nicer glow. Or the color that matches your mount.
Sources:
1) http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t19282-proc_rate_determination
2) http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t16629-raid_boss_armor_values
3) http://www.wowwiki.com/Armor
4) WSC > MotB, but that’s another story
5) http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t11882-rogue_gear_spreadsheet
Quotes from well-known rogues stating the same:
Vulajin, author of the roguecraft 101 guide: (http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t16940-roguecraft_101_a/)
Q u o t e:
Mongoose is currently considered the only viable weapon enchant for rogues. 20 agility is inferior, even on the offhand. Executioner was once thought to out-scale Mongoose as a main hand enchant towards the end of T6 content, when the rogue obtained a decent amount of passive armor penetration. However, this observation was based on a bugged model. The circumstances under which Executioner does out-scale Mongoose are now thought to be so restrictive as to rule out use of the enchant for PvE purposes.
Aldriana, author of the rogue gear spreadsheet: (http://http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t17078-raid_executioner_vs_mongoose_preliminary_numbers/p17/
)
Q u o t e:
Originally Posted by Aldriana View Post
So, um, I have some bad news for some of you. I was working on the sheet a bit today and found a rather significant bug in the Xs5r and Xs3r sheets, which, stated briefly, is counting the haste benefit on Mongoose towards your DPS whether you have Mongoose or not. What does this mean in practice? It means that if your recommended cycle was Xs5r or Xs3r (which is most combat sword/fist/dagger rogues, and some hemo rogues), then:1) Your DPS estimate was a little high, and, more relevantly:
2) The value of Mongoose was being underestimated.
So, the bad news is: the previous comparisons between Mongoose and Executioner were, basically, just plain wrong. Mongoose was being undervalued, which made Executioner look better than it really is. So the established answer of “Executioner may be slightly better at high gear levels”… turns out to be incorrect. The new answer is, basically: “Mongoose is always better.”. It’s not necessarily a *lot* better in all situations… but it’s better.
My apologies to any of you that have sprung for an Executioner enchant already.
All rogues who signed the “The answer to 90% of the threads here.” thread: (http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=3190692698&sid=1)
Assassinette, Darkoda, Gomenakia, Banned, Kyuzo, Antiex, me and some more…
