I've done may own test where tried to kill 500k dummy with just assault and good old one button smashing. Here is the result http://parsely.io/parser/view/103957/1. My stats are: about 86 ms ping 8.91% alacrity (845 rating) This means that my GCD should be 1.3773 s and my APM 43.564. So as expected the APM in the parse is worse (42.8) and what is most interesting the minimal time between activations of the assault is lower than GCD. About ability queue, how does it work?: a) you queue abilities and the queue is send to the server and there should be no delays or b) you queue abilities but the game allows activation of the next ability only when it recieves information that previous cast/GCD has been finished. I don't know much about these things but second option would produce delay no matter what (but then again my parse has shown lower than GCD interval between ability activiations).

My bad Sundering Assault generates 7 rage. This means that I have no explanation for the lack of rage at this point. However, it happened multiple times.

I have problem of a different kind. Several times I have stumbled upon that for the second shatter in the opener (optimal or not) I didn't have enough rage (I have Shien form active). Here is how it looks: Saber Throw > Force Charge, Enrage > Impale > Ravage > Ravage* > Shatter > Force Scream > Sundering Assault > Impale > Ravage > Ravage* > Vicious Throw > Force Scream > Shatter So rage generation goes like: Rage generated (Total Rage): +3 (3) > +9 (12) > -3 (9) > 0 (9) > 0* (9) > -1 (8) > -3 (5) > +5 (10) > -3 (7) > 0 (7) > 0 (7) > +1 (8) > -3 (5) > -1 (4) So for the second Shatter there is exactly the amount of rage needed. However, few time I was 1 rage short at this point. I tried to analyze logs and I had a flashback that at one of these instances Saber Throw gave me 2 rage instead of 3. Neither Starparse nor Parsley gave me the answer. But looking at raw combat log files I've noticed that when ability is activated it usually first consumes/generates rage, applies all applicable effects and then it delivers the damage. Could it be possible that before entering combat (dealing damage) but after acquiring rage from Saber Throw, 1 rage point disappeared due to out-of-combat rage vanishing?

Ok so I have trouble with the APM for some of the specs. The easiest to explain my concern would be Hatred since it has no off-global-cooldown abilities (if e.g. Recklessness counts to the APM which is off-global-cooldown my concerns are probably not valid) and no natural increase of alacrity. With no alacrity Hatred should have 40 APM: GCD=1.5 s -> 40 GCDs in 1 minute. With alacrity rating 833 proposed for 216 iLvL (8.808% alacrity) new GCD is 1.5s/1.08808= 1.3786s. So it is 43.5232 APM since you can fit 3.5 more GCD in 1 minute. It can be simplified: 40*1.08808=43.5232 Please correct me if my understanding of this is wrong. Another example is Vengence. With no alacrity Shatter has 12s CD and it effectively determines CD on Ravage. This means that in 1 minute you fit 5 Ravages which effectively take 2 GCD. So 40-5=35 APM with no alacrity. So shrinking rotation by alacrity rating 821 proposed for 216 iLvL (8.702% alacrity) would be 35*1.08702=38.052 APM. What's even more puzzling is the fact that e.g. Rydarus manages to go to nearly 40 APM in Vengence. I know that you should clip Ravage but from what I understand you cannot clip it so much that you can fit another ability in the rotation which revolves around 8 GCD blocks started with Shatter. I also understand that rotation of dummy parse can end at different points giving different results for APM but looking at some of his parses I don't think that this factor plays major role here.

What about old old sin bonus set (+5% shield on Dark Ward)? Is the loss of armor in hands and boots and 6-piece worth it?

What about the old old set bonus (+5% shield chance on DW). With the 4.0 changes we probably need shield and absorb more than ever. This would give DW +23% shield chance and with the random regrant of DW stacks could be very useful. On the other hand this would strip half of the armor rating from gloves and boots and make huge difference between having DW up and not. What is your opinion on this?