Rogue Mechanics FAQ
Originally written by Kyphosis on EU forums – added here with his permission.
1. General
1.1. Do I generate more energy if my maximum energy is higher (due to Vigor, PvP set..)?
1.2. When are players unable to dodge/parry/block?
1.3. When are mobs unable to dodge/parry/block?
1.4. What’s weapon normalization?
1.5. What’s the hit cap?
1.6. What are diminishing returns and how do they work?
1.7. What rogue abilities are subject to dimishing returns?
2. Special abilities
2.1. What abilities are “combo moves”?
2.2. What’s an opener?
2.3. Can openers get dodged/parried/blocked?
2.4. Does dismantle remove any stats from my target?
2.5. Why does Distract sometimes fail against players?
2.6. Can I have more than 75% dodge chance when using Evasion?
2.7. Cloak of Shadows seems bugged. What’s going on?
2.8. No, really. Cloak of Shadows IS bugged. It doesn’t protect against Death Grip, Hammer of Wrath..
2.9. Deadly Throw sometimes fails or doesn’t work in time. Why?
2.10. I use Tricks of the Trade on my target but I see no buff!
2.11. Does Tricks of the Trade do anything other than a damage buff in PvP?
2.12. Can Shiv be dodged/parried/blocked?
3. Sap
3.1. What’s this sap macro people keep talking about?
3.2. My sap macro has some targetNearestDistance thing that makes it way better than yours
3.3. How can I use garrote/rupture/cheap shot/expose armor.. without breaking sap (or gouge)?
3.4. But.. wouldn’t a macro with /stopattack work?
3.5. But.. how about a macro that swaps weapons?
3.6. How is it possible to ambush + sap?
3.7. Can mobs with stealth detection be sapped?
4. Talents
4.1. Dual wield specialization: will my off-hand weapon deal 75% or 100% damage?
4.2. Lethality: do my crits hit for 230% or 260% damage?
4.3. Does Lethality affect Ambush when I use Shadow Dance?
4.4. Does Honor among Thieves proc off of your own crits?
4.5. Does Focused Attacks proc off of Fan of Knives?
4.6. Do Fleet Footed and Camouflage stack?
4.7. Why does Setup no longer generate combo points when I use Cloak of Shadows against spells?
4.8. How much damage does Cheat Death absorb?
5. Stealth
5.1. How does stealth work?
5.2. What’s this Vanish bug I keep hearing about?
5.3. How much time do I need to get out of combat and “restealth”?
5.4. Why do pets follow me even though I’m in stealth?
5.5. People say Death Coil, Blind, etc, can be “vanished”. What does that mean?
5.6. How is it possible to react to a PvP trinket+CC, if trinket triggers no global cooldown?
5.7. Can vanish fail because of your own attacks?
5.8. Why do bosses kill me after I vanish?
5.9. Sometimes I use Cheap Shot on rogues or druids but they don’t get out of stealth!
5.10. Any other confirmed stealth bugs?
5.11. Is it possible to parry/dodge while in stealth?
5.12. In which cases can I be in stealth and in combat at the same time, outside instances, and how does that affect me?
5.13. How long do I have to wait since the moment I vanish/stealth while carrying a battleground flag before I can pick it up again?
5.14. Does fall damage break stealth?
6. Poisons
6.1. What’s the proc chance of every poison?
6.2. How does poison damage work?
6.3. How does Envenom work?
1.1. Do I generate more energy if my maximum energy is higher (due to Vigor, PvP set..)?
No. Rogues generate a fixed amount no matter the size of the energy pool, 10 energy every second, increased only by talents (technically just Vitality and Overkill).
1.2. When are players unable to dodge/parry/block?
Players cannot dodge/parry/block attacks from behind, while casting, or while under any effect that makes them unable to control their character (stuns, fear, etc). Dismantled players cannot parry or block.
1.3. When are mobs unable to dodge/parry/block?
The same situations apply except that mobs can dodge attacks from behind, reason why expertise is quite useful for PvE even though rogues *cough* do it from behind.
1.4. What’s weapon normalization?
Special attacks such as Backstab, Sinister Strike, etc, deal an instant attack based on your weapon damage. This weapon damage has two components, one from the weapon itself, and another one based on your attack power, just like the damage from autoattacks, except for an important difference:
In the case of your autoattacks or “white damage”, the additional damage from AP is modified by the weapon speed so a certain amount of AP adds the same DPS no matter the speed. For example, if you have 3000AP and your main hand is a sword with a speed of 2.6 seconds, 3000AP will increase your weapon damage by 3000/14*2.6 = 557.1 If it’s a 1.3s dagger it’ll increase its damage by 3000/14*1.3 = 278.6 In both cases the DPS is increased by 3000/14=214.3 dps.
When it comes to special attacks however, this extra damage is not multiplied by the weapon speed but rather a fixed factor based on the kind of weapon. All swords, fists and maces multiply the AP-based dps by 2.4, while daggers multiply it by 1.7. This is what’s called normalization. The exceptions of weapon-based attacks are Riposte and Ghostly Strike, which scale in the same way as autoattacks.
The hit cap is the amount of extra +hit you need to overcome the base miss chance your attacks have. This figure is different depending on the relative levels of the attacker and the target, and the kind of attack: special attacks -such as sinister strike or eviscerate-, poisons, and autoattacks. The amount of hit rating you’ll need to reduce the miss chance by a given % will increase with the level – just like all othe ratings. Whatever your base miss chance is, your autoattacks will have an additional 19% penalty due to wielding two weapons.
PvP) The hit cap of interest is the one applying to special attacks (mostly combo moves and finishers). Against targets of your own level it’s 5%. Note however that some talents will increase this figure (for example an enemy with Heightened Senses would apply an additional 4% against Blind, because it’s a ranged attack), as well as targets being Night Elves (+2% miss)
PvE) Long explanation. See http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?sid=1&topicId=7120154092&ST=EU-815970-iSvnAHju55xpfe3s3rPHlZ969nEtDBV9DT0 for all the details 
1.6. What are diminishing returns and how do they work?
There are many effects in game affected by these so called diminishing returns (DR). All these effects are distributed in groups or “DR categories”. A target affected by a spell or ability from one of these categories will reduce the duration of other effects from the same category unless 15 seconds pass since the effect wears off. If another effect takes place before these 15 seconds, its duration is halved. A third effect will have its duration divided by 4, and then the target will become immune until 15 seconds pass.
It’s important to realise timer begins when the effect ends: the cooldown of Kidney Shot is 20 seconds, while its maximum duration is 6. If after using KS you decide to use it again as soon as it’s up, its duration will be halved: 20-6=14 seconds, not 15. You have to wait at least 1 more second to use it on the same target without suffering DR.
Some abilities that show DR in PvP don’t in PvE (for example, mages can keep mobs “sheeped” forever by re-casting polymorph before it ends without penalty)
“DR” is also used to refer to stats that decrease their effectiveness the more you stack them. For example, the amount of dodge rating needed to achieve an extra 1% dodge chance is higher the higher your base dodge chance is. Parry and block work the same way.
1.7. What rogue abilities are subject to dimishing returns?
In PvP: Sap and gouge share DR category with other incapacitating effects (such as engineering grenades), and polymorph. Blind shares DR with Fear (it used to do with Cyclone, introduced during TBC to nerf druid/rogue arena teams, and recently changed to this). Kidney Shot shares DR with all so called “controlled stuns”, or stuns not based on procs (Hammer of Justice, Deep Freeze, Bash..). Cheap Shot shares DR with Pounce. The silence effect of Garrote shares DR with all other silence effects.
Obviously all of them suffer DR with themselves.
In PvE: Stuns. Other than that, you can freely gouge/sap/etc as much as you want (or cooldowns allow).
2.1. What abilities are “combo moves”?
Any ability able to generate combo points is a “combo move”.
Any combo move that requires stealth (garrote, cheap shot and ambush).
2.3. Can openers get dodged/parried/blocked?
Never, although they can miss. Vanish+Cheap Shot is a valid counter to Evasion or Deterrence, for example.
This is because they’re openers, and not because they’re used while in stealth. Openers during Shadow Dance can also only miss, but -for example- backstab used in stealth could be dodged.
2.4. Does dismantle remove any stats from my target?
No. It just prevents your target from blocking/parrying or using any ability that requires to have a weapon or shield equipped. Their stats (including armor) remain the same.
2.5. Why does Distract sometimes fail against players?
If the enemy is moving/turning with the mouse, distract will make the player turn for a split second but the direction will be immediately corrected a moment later, so distract may have little or no effect.
2.6. Can I have more than 75% dodge chance when using Evasion?
Yes. There is a maximum base dodge chance, i.e. the amount of dodge you can stack through stats (agility, defense and dodge rating), but Evasion and Ghostly Strike apply after this. You can go beyond this limit to temporarily achieve 100% avoidance.
2.7. Cloak of Shadows seems bugged. What’s going on?
Some players claim there are circumstances under which CoS doesn’t remove all debuffs, but so far there doesn’t seem to be any consistent proof. If there are bugs, they’re certainly not easily reproducible.
There are three main reasons why people think CoS is bugged when it may not be.
First, its mechanics were changed with patch 3.0. Now instead of providing a 90% resist chance as it used to it adds 90% miss chance to the caster. This means extra hit rating (but not spell penetration) from gear and talents improve casters chance to get through it while, after the unification of melee&spell +hit, hybrid classes have seen their spell hit increased.
Second, there’s a theory around saying that, just like, thanks to latency, spells/effects can affect you after vanish, the same applies to CoS: some spells will hit after CoS without suffering the 90% penalty because technically they were cast before CoS. That would often look like CoS failing to remove debuffs, although so far it is just a theory.
Finally, it appears the miss chance is calculated when the caster shoots, while resisting or absorbing it (for example using bubble, mage wards etc) depends on the target, so that’s computed once hit by the spell. If CoS adds a miss chance, using it against missiles already flying has no effect because it affects the caster and not the target, and in general the chances of failing due to latency are higher now because of this. That would also make it look like spells were getting through CoS more often than what a 90% miss chance might suggest.
DG is a physical effect so Cloak of Shadows shouldn’t work against it (or Hammer of Wrath for that matter). However it can be *cough* reflected, grounded by totems, etc. Blizzard would have to make up their mind about what kind of attack DG is, but it’s not clear that’s a bug. Hammer of Wrath is also a physical attack that.. deals holy damage. Etc.
2.9. Deadly Throw sometimes fails or doesn’t work in time. Why?
Deadly Throw is tied to your swing timer (autoattacks). If you just hit with your melee weapons you won’t be able to immediately use DT; you’ll instead have to wait until your weapons are “ready”, and the slower the weapons the longer the delay. It wasn’t always like this, but currently if you want to make sure DT works you have to spam it.
2.10. I use Tricks of the Trade on my target but I see no buff!
Tricks of the Trade is.. well, tricky, in that when you use it.. nothing happens to your target. It only becomes active when you attack: as soon as you start beating someone up, your friend will get a nice +15% damage buff, but not any sooner. And even though the cooldown is 30 seconds, timer doesn’t start until you attack; for this reason, if you use TotT and you don’t attack you won’t be able to use it again in one minute.
Note that the range limitation exists when you cast TotT, but not when the buff goes off. You can use it, run “out of range”, and then attack someone, and your mate will get the TotT buff. Careful however if you open on mobs, as they’ll hit you once before going to the “TotT’ed” target.
2.11. Does Tricks of the Trade do anything other than a damage buff in PvP?
Yes, but not much. Threat-related effects interfere a bit with pets. If a hunter’s pet is on agressive mode, you TotT a friend and then attack the hunter, the first thing the pet will do is attack your friend. Of course as soon as the hunter orders the pet to attack you the fun is gone.
2.12. Can Shiv be dodged/parried/blocked?
No.
3.1. What’s this sap macro people keep talking about?
When you hit “sap” and you have no target, it doesn’t automatically target an enemy, unlike other rogue abilities. When a rogue is looking for a stealthed target and finally sees it, he first has to select it and then sap. For this reason people look for macros to make this targetting automatic, so they can just spam this sap macro, and as soon as the target shows up, it gets sapped. There are some -although minor- variations but the basic idea is always the same:
/cleartarget
/targetenemy
/cast Sap
This clears your current target, targets the nearest enemy and uses sap.
3.2. My sap macro has some targetNearestDistance thing that makes it way better than yours
I know, I used to have it, but the very old targetNearestDistance has no effect now. It made it possible to limit the targetting distance to 10 yards so you could only target things in sap range, but this doesn’t work anymore (and it’s been like that for a while already). Since it does nothing, there’s a good chance your macro will eventually fail if you don’t clear your target, as it may get stuck trying to sap a distant enemy.
Special attacks have a wider arc than autoattacks: it’s possible to use these abilities without letting your autoattacks go off. To test this, sap a mob from behind, and turn 180ยบ so you’re back-to-back. Then start turning to face the mob again while you spam cheap shot. At a certain point cheap shot will hit, but your weapons won’t (mob will be afflicted by both sap and cheap shot). Keep turning until your autoattacks go off. That’s the angle you have to avoid.
So no matter what some “pro” players may say, technically you don’t have to turn fast with your mouse, as it’s just a matter of positioning: even keyboard turners can do this.
It is thus possible in PvP to sap, cheap shot without breaking sap and restealth for 2 “free” combo points, what some rogues humorously call “ghetto premed” as it works as some kind of poor man’s Premeditation. It won’t work in PvE as having aggro will prevent you from getting out of combat.
All special attacks can proc poisons from the main hand weapon, so you have to either have no poisons in this slot or coat the weapon with crippling or mind numbing poison, or you’ll break the incapacitating effect.
3.4. But.. wouldn’t a macro with /stopattack work?
No. As soon as you use a special attack, both weapons will try to hit as well. /stopattack will work but won’t stop these very first hits.
3.5. But.. how about a macro that swaps weapons?
The only reason such macros work is that equipping weapons delays your autoattacks. This may be ok, but you’ll eventually have to turn away from your target or cancel your autoattacks relatively fast if you don’t want to break sap/gouge, and it may still not work if your latency is too good.
3.6. How is it possible to ambush + sap?
This exploits latency issues between the clients and the server. If you ambush&vanish (you can do it simultaneously if you put both in a macro) and immediately start spamming sap, your sap can be accepted before your target is flagged as in combat. You can do the same with FoK, etc.
This can be done with Shadow Dance as well, although in both cases it’s something “cool”, rather than useful.
3.7. Can mobs with stealth detection be sapped?
Yes, but in some cases it won’t be easy: you count on latency to sap them before you agro. Shadowstep+sap often works, but it’s not guaranteed. Sprinting or using engineering boots enchant to approach the mob while spamming sap, or carefully timing it can do the same. Some tests suggest that approaching from behind and jumping just before reaching the mob help as well. Waiting for them around the corner or using obstacles allows to sap without any speed boosts. Mob level affects this detection distance, so lower level mobs can be sapped normally if their agro range is low enough.
Finally, note that sometimes sap happens at the same time you agro the mob, which puts both in combat even if sap is successful.
A short demo of this can be seen in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_k9TgDGb0s
4.1. Dual wield specialization: will my off-hand weapon deal 75% or 100% damage?
75%. Off-hand weapons have a 50% penalty. DWS increases this damage by 50%. 50%*1.5=75%
4.2. Lethality: do my crits hit for 230% or 260% damage?
230%. Lethality doesn’t increase your critical hits by 30%, but the damage bonus from critical hits. This bonus is 100%, so crits obviously deal 100%+100%=200% damage; Lethality makes them 100%+130%=230%
4.3. Does Lethality affect Ambush when I use Shadow Dance?
No.
4.4. Does Honor among Thieves proc off of your own crits?
Yes. This indeed makes it an improved version of Seal Fate.
4.5. Does Focused Attacks proc off of Fan of Knives?
Yes. For each crit you will get 2 energy, but only from your main hand (unlike Mutilate); if your main hand weapon crits 5 times, you get 10, and so on.
4.6. Do Fleet Footed and Camouflage stack?
Yes. Technically camouflage doesn’t increase your speed, but reduces the speed penalty while stealthed, so with both talents speed would be 85%*115% = 97.75% in stealth. The same happens with metagems, glyph of vanish or boot enchants in that they all stack with camouflage – but not with each other.
4.7. Why does Setup no longer generate combo points when I use Cloak of Shadows against spells?
With patch 3.0 Cloak of Shadows stopped providing a 90% chance resistance against spells; now it adds a 90% miss chance to casters. Spells “resisted” during CoS actually miss, so they don’t grant any combo point.
4.8. How much damage does Cheat Death absorb?
Once Cheat Death mitigates a killing blow on you, it reduces damage taken for 3 seconds based on your resilience. The formula for this temporary shield used to be 8 times the crit reduction you get from resilience. Before patch 3.2, 82 resilience rating granted 1% crit chance reduction: therefore, to reach this 90% maximum mitigation one would need 82*90/8=922.5 resilience rating.
In 3.2 resilience formulas were changed, but Cheat Death kept using the same rating figures.
When you’re in stealth, players and mobs will generally be unable to see you, with some limitations. Behind them, they won’t be able to spot you. If you’re in front of them, that will depend on the distance and level difference. A level 10 character won’t be able to see a level 80 rogue unless standing practically on the very same spot; similar levels will give the rogue decent chances of getting an opener before being detected. Some items or abilities increase your level for detection/camouflage purposes (for example Enchant Cloak – Stealth makes you as hard to detect as someone 1 level higher).
Stealth is not invisibility. Anything that makes you able to detect invisibility won’t make you better at seeing enemies in stealth.
If players spot something in stealth, it’ll remain visible for a brief period even if it immediately moves further away or behind them.
Mobs “detect” players in two steps. First they just turn to face you and make a sound (like a grunt), but there is no agro. If you then move closer they’ll attack you. Mobs with stealth detection (you’ll see a floating eye over their heads when in stealth) have their detection distance largely increased, will see you coming from behind, and will generally keep attacking you if you vanish.
5.2. What’s this Vanish bug I keep hearing about?
You vanish but you don’t remain in stealth even though you have no DoTs, nobody has seen you in stealth or used AoE effects. That’s it.
Why does it generally happen? Latency causes attacks to be processed after you vanish. A hunter autoshoots you, you vanish, then the pending attack takes place and hits you out of stealth.
Most “missiles” (arrows, fireballs, etc) already in the air when you vanish will get you out of stealth, but instant effects or autoattacks can do it too.
5.3. How much time do I need to get out of combat and “restealth”?
This figure is believed to be at least 6 seconds, so it’s generally not possible to for example gouge (4-5.5 seconds) to restealth unless you run out of line of sight to avoid attacks that might keep you in combat. This timer is a bit buggy since there are many effects than can prevent you from restealthing that fast (lifebloom is known to sometimes keep people in combat until it “blooms”, just to mention one), so there’s no reliable, universal, figure.
If you’re in combat because of mobs and not PvP, you’ll be in combat as long as you have agro (without considering party members, dungeon instances, etc).
5.4. Why do pets follow me even though I’m in stealth?
There are several reasons.
If pets are in aggresive mode and they spot you, they’ll attack you immediately.
If you “restealth” by getting out of combat instead of vanishing, pets following you will keep doing so. Blizzard has stated this is how they want them to work. Note that a pet user may order it to attack you and then change the command to attack a different target; you may then go stealth thinking you’re safe, but as soon as the second target dies or vanishes the pet will chase you because you’ll be in its threat list (pets are little more than “directed mobs”). This is a common tactic to “tag” stealth users in battegrounds.
Sometimes no matter how safely you vanish pets will detect you too, either getting you out of stealth or simply following you without performing any hostile action. This is one of the many existing bugs about vanish/stealth, and it’s believed to have something to do with vanish not totally clearing threat from mobs. Sadly there’s nothing we can do about it
5.5. People say Death Coil, Blind, etc, can be “vanished”. What does that mean?
It’s specially common in rogue-versus-rogue duels during the openers, and generally after an ability or effect that breaks CC so the ability to be “vanished” is relatively predictable.
This often happens like this: rogue A blinds or stuns rogue B. B uses PvP trinket and blinds, but A vanishes practically at the same time. Now one of three things may happen depending on reflexes, latency and luck:
- A vanishes safely, B wastes blind cooldown and cries
- A vanishes and curses about how bugged vanish is because stealth breaks immediately, B wastes blind cooldown but oh, well, at least he didn’t vanish
- A vanishes but gets blinded and out of stealth, B rejoices
5.6. How is it possible to react to a PvP trinket+CC, if trinket triggers no global cooldown?
Indeed it doesn’t, but the trick is the lack of GCD doesn’t mean you can trinket+blind (or any other instant ability) at the same time if you put them together in a macro. If you do and use it once, your client will try to trinket and blind at the same time, but only the trinket will work because you’ll still be affected by crowd control when trying to blind. It’s when server receives your petition to trinket and says “ok, you’ve broken blind” that it gives you control over your rogue again. Then you can blind (let’s say you keep spamming your trinket&blind macro until it works), but you depend on latency (the time it takes for the pvp trinket to work) to do it fast.
At the same time you’re ready to blind, the other rogue sees you using the trinket, so he can use vanish, and if everyone’s equally fast it becomes a latency race.
So yeah, it’s possible to counter a trinket+cc action even though the trinket uses no GCD.
5.7. Can vanish fail because of your own attacks?
It seems so. There are no thorough test results that I’ve seen but many rogues including myself believe to have experienced this problem. Focused Attacks has been known for causing this as well (breaking vanish even against training dummies), but after 3.3 I’ve been personally unable to reproduce this bug again (and I’ve really tried! Videos are welcome), which considering it was very easy to do, could be good news.
5.8. Why do bosses kill me after I vanish?
When you vanish during a boss fight, you don’t get out of combat, and even though you clear all your threat from the boss aggro list, the boss “still knows you’re there”, so to speak. If you stay in stealth and people start dying, once they’re all dead the boss will come after you. On the other hand, if you’re the last man standing and the boss has targetted you when you vanish, it’ll reset.
This is why some people will say you have to vanish twice to survive a wipe: first vanish makes sure you’re the last in threat, and then a second vanish saves your life once the boss has killed everybody else and goes after you. Shadowmeld and feign death work practically the same (a NE rogue may SM+vanish or a NE hunter SM+FD, for example).
5.9. Sometimes I use Cheap Shot on rogues or druids but they don’t get out of stealth!
What happens is that the stun effect by itself doesn’t break their stealth. Generally this is not a problem because either we sap first or our autoattacks hit as soon as we CS. However, like we explained about Sap, it’s possible to do special attacks without autoattacks hitting the target. Specially if we’re turning when we use CS there’s a good chance we’ll stun our target without getting it out of stealth. Pounce does the same, except that its DoT will break stealth after 3 seconds if the druid doesn’t keep attacking.
5.10. Any other confirmed stealth bugs?
People have frequently suffered from stealth fading for no reason. Some of these bugs have been corrected, but some claim it still happens. The only one I’ve been personally able to verify, and with no real implications in common PvP, happens near low level DKs in enemy cities, where merely standing near them makes stealth disappear.
Queueing for battlegrounds breaks stealth, while doing the same for random instances doesn’t. Maybe the first case is a bug.
Vanish used while in stealth or immediately after breaking stealth will cause Overkill buff to disappear after 20 seconds even if you’re still in stealth after this period.
It is reasonable to suppose there may be more to be fixed.
5.11. Is it possible to parry/dodge while in stealth?
Yes, and (surprisingly) it won’t break stealth.
First, like mentioned above, you may sap and agro at the same time. It often happens with stealth detectors, but it can actually happen with any mob. Obviously you won’t be able to sap again. You’ll stay in combat as long as the mob is alive, or until you run far away enough. If the mob doesn’t detect stealth you can vanish and in most cases you’ll get out of combat (keep reading for the exceptions).
Second, if you approach a mob and enter stealth just as you get into agro radius, it can happen that you’ll both agro (enter combat) and go stealth due to latency. This is the same as before, except that the mob is attacking you and not sapped. You can either sprint away, kill the mob, or vanish. If you spam Cheap Shot as the mob comes to you, you may still get hit, but due to latency your opener will most likely succeed.
Third, city guards ignore vanish. All faction capitals have some stealth detectors, but regular city guards, even though they don’t see through stealth, will keep attacking you if you’re in combat and vanish since at least patch 3.0 (in neutral towns they could way before that). The only way of getting out of combat in that case is to outrun them (it’s a good idea to first cripple them and then sprint+vanish not to agro more guards) or kill them. It’s the same with Shadowmeld and Feign Death, but not Invisibility.
Finally, stealth itself doesn’t make you invisible to mobs: it just limits the distance at which you can agro them. If for example you drop an engineering combat pet and vanish and it agroes a mob, after destroying the pet the mob will know exactly where you are and chase you, even though you’re still in stealth.
Just like anyone who drops a flag, 3 seconds. Flag disappears after 5, so you have 2 seconds to get it before it goes back to its original place – assuming nobody else gets it first. This allows you to for example gouge->vanish far enough to avoid surprise trinkets->CS->pick flag->KS.
5.14. Does fall damage break stealth?
No. It does for druids though.
6.1. What’s the proc chance of every poison?
Every hit with a melee weapon has a chance of applying poison (what people call “proc chance”, or the chance of poison to “proc”). There are two kinds of proc rolls: fixed, and normalized.
Crippling poison, deadly poison and mind numbing poison have fixed proc chances (50%, 30% and 50% respectively). If for example you use crippling poison, half of your hits will proc no matter the weapon you use.
Wound poison and instant poison have normalized proc chances. Their proc chance is adjusted depending on the weapon speed so on average autoattacks deal the same poison damage regardless of the weapon. The proc chance for weapon speeds of 1.4 seconds is 20% for instant poison and 50% for wound poison, and the slower the weapon the higher this proc chance is. For example, a 2.7 sword with wound poison would have a 50%*2.7/1.4=96.4% poison proc chance. This chance is calculated before haste (it only depends on the weapon itself).
6.2. How does poison damage work?
Poisons are considered nature (magical) damage. If there is a poison proc there is an additional roll for hit/resist chances like any spell. Effects that modify spell damage (Earth and Moon, Anti-Magic Shell, etc) apply to poisons as well. Poison hit chance is exactly the same as for spells. It is also believed that spell penetration affects poisons, but I’ve been unable to confirm it so far.
Poison crit chance follows the same rules. This means agility will not increase it, but crit rating will (as it affects both melee and spells). Moonkin aura, Focus Magic, etc, will modify this crit chance too. And, just like spells, critical hits deal 150% damage and not 200% like melee attacks do.
Poison damage scales exclusively with AP, not spell power.
Envenom shares some characteristics of poisons and normal melee attacks. It’s still affected by nature resistance/magic immunities/etc (it deals nature damage) but critical hits will deal 200% damage, and its crit chance is the same as all other melee attacks. It is worth noting that, being nature damage, it can go through Hand of Protection.
As the tooltip shows, its damage is based on the number of deadly poison charges on the target, as many as combo points. What the tooltip doesn’t say is that the AP scaling is affected exclusively by the combo points, regardless of how many deadly poison charges the target has: deadly poison only affects the base damage.
Let’s take for example Envenom – Rank 4 (level 80) with 4000 attack power. Ignoring talents, base damage is 215 per deadly poison charge and 0.09*AP per combo point. If there is a stack of 3 x Deadly poison and we have 4 combo points, Envenom will deal 3*215 + 0.09*4*4000 = 2085 damage. This is a very important characteristic of Envenom because the largest part of its damage generally comes from the attack power and not the size of the stack: depending on talents and armor, a 5-CP Envenom with merely 1 charge of deadly poison can often be superior to Eviscerate.
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