evaluating Mutilate/HfB, continued

By way of example, here is my WWS report from my very first ever venture into Zul'Aman. Should probably start with a caveat - I suck at the moment. I haven't been raiding much, have a totally new build, and a new Nostromo to get used to. So, expectations suitably lowered, let's proceed...

OK So this report is from the following bosses: Nalorakk, Akil'zon, Halazzi (including a wipe), and finally a shot across to Karazhan to drop Attumen. 5 fights, 51/4/6 HfB.

• I violated the first commandment twice, both on Halazzi (although one was a wipe, so that doesn't really count). Slap on wrist.
  
• first of all: the chart (bosses only, trash doesn't really count). Damage out looks good, second only to Gank who is a pretty awesome rogue (10/51/0 Combat Swords). 1176 DPS which is well below my theoretical maximum from the spreadsheet of 1980. Of course that is unattainable with ramp up times etc, but I should do better than 1176. Damage in looks OK for melee DPS, below the tanks and above the ranged classes. Gank does a better job at avoiding being hit. Heals, looks like I did a good job of taking care of my own healing, but if I was better at avoiding getting hit I wouldn't need it so much! Still, I'm glad I wrote that /userandom healing macro to spam.
• On to boss fight individual stats. Swing at 36% is low, that is because I'm still getting used to keeping SnD up with Eviscerate/Rupture. 20% of my Swing misses, so I could use some more +hit. Only 13 Eviscerates and probably roughly the same number of Ruptures seems a bit low. Flipping to Gains, Buffs & Debuffs explains that to some degree - 12 SnD gains in 5 boss fights! So I let it drop at least once in each fight, which diverted combos to reinstating it. Back to Abilities - 5 (4 + 1 crit) Envenoms looks ok (assuming at the end of the 4 successful fights, plus a mis-hit extra). The single Backstab is a remnant of Combat Daggers muscle memory :) Eviscerate crit % is very low at 11%, I should probably save Cold Blood for Eviscerates as they do kickass damage when they crit.
• Back across to Gains, Buffs & Debuffs: Gained HfB 16 times! 0 is the number I'm looking for there, as it should be active before the fight begins. So I let it drop on average thrice in every fight. Not good at all, that's 180 energy in each fight, or three Mutilates - which means 7 or so combos, so all in all it's 12k or so damage per fight, just from letting it drop (about 7% of my damage on Nalorakk). It also means I spent a period of the fights (no idea how long) doing 9% less damage than I could have been. 5 gains of Lust for Battle, 3 of Ferocity and only 2 of Drums of Battle mean I'm not using trinkets and drums nearly enough. I don't have Haste potions, so that's missing, as is Thistle Tea which I haven't used in awhile. Probably should get back into the tea.
• External buffs: Windfury is totally absent, 8 Unleashed Rage and only one Battle Shout? Flip to the shammy shows he was dropping Windfury, so I should have dropped my offhand Instant to grab the Windfury buff.

So there's a lot of fun stuff there, and a few good lessons for me.

• Keep HfB and SnD up!!! HfB drops cost me about 7%+ off my possible DPS.
• Keep trinkets and drums going
• Cold Blood -> Eviscerate Mutilate/Envenom, see the next blog post
• Look out for Windfury no longer required, see the next blog post
• Get the Tea going again