zeroinitiate - A World of WarCraft Rogue Blog

I don’t like daggers.

There, I said it, and I’m only saying it because I want you guys to understand how difficult it was for me to switch. Do you know the irony of making the decision to use daggers and then have this thing drop the next day? My bad luck with dice rolls is crossing over to my drops.

Anyway, this post isn’t about liking or hating daggers. It’s about the current Assassination tree and what you can expect from it. This is purely from a PvE perspective, so let’s get that out of the way while we’re at it.

Like I keep saying, going from Combat to Assassination means giving up swords and replacing them with daggers. Mutilate requires you to have two daggers, so you won’t be doing the sword-fist-dagger combination that Combat allows. Be prepared to wield one weapon type only. I know it’s redundant at this point but I’m really struggling with the aesthetics involved. With Mongoose, my weapons look like electric grow sticks.

Fighting becomes a one-on-one affair. Thanks to Combat talents, it was easy to hit Evasion, aggro four to five mobs, hit Blade Flurry followed by Killing Spree and then watch all of them drop before KS ends. You lose the multi-mob killing with Assassination, but don’t worry, it’s offset by the next item.

Expect shorter fights. I’m talking 6- to 7-second encounters here. If you’re lucky, mobs will drop quicker than you can stealth back in. You can even use your stealth cooldown as a of sorts. If you can kill a level 70 mob before you can re-stealth, you know you’re doing good.

Crits, crits, crits. This is the most obvious, if not the biggest, benefit that you can get out of the tree. You should see crazy numbers out of the build so turn on floating combat text (or even better, get a combat addon) and compare. Not only should you be getting more crits, they should also surpass your old crits from Combat. The downside is that you also generate more threat, so you may want to hold off on attacking too early during raids.

That’s it so far. Hopefully I’ll hit 80 before next week.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I respecced my rogue from combat to assassination. This is because of several blogs, posts and other information on the Web that say that the tree is not only a viable option for raiding, it’s also a lot more fun. I would’ve switched to it earlier had it not been for the fact that I didn’t have any purple daggers. I finally gave in to my curiosity and respecced, buying the SSO daggers as temporary weapons. I then proceeded to do the dailies to check my performance with the build.

Here’s the verdict: I’m not going back.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that assassination is better than combat. Based on what I read, both are good specs for raiding. It’s simply a matter of preference and I have to say that I really like assassination at this point. Note that this is coming from someone who prefers swords over daggers, so I didn’t go into this with high expectations. I just wanted to see what the fuss was about.

So, comparisons. I think I’m going to have to write about the details in a separate post. The short version is that DPS in assassination is a bit harder because I have to maintain Hunger For Blood. By maintain, I mean I have to make sure it’s always stacked at the maximum (3) and then I have to remember to keep it up. The second thing that makes it tougher is the skill rotation. Mutilate is expensive at 60 energy. I have to keep Slice and Dice up while using Mutilate to acquire combo points. I already mentioned that I have to maintain Hunger For Blood too, right? I see this as a temporary problem that I have to overcome. Right now, I think I just need to find the right groove.

For the past two weeks now our guild has been raiding the 10-man dungeons during weekends. I see this as a significant step for us because we’ve never organized ourselves like this before. We actually have a raiding schedule now and I’m glad to see it. One of the things I learned during the time that I was a member of a hardcore raiding guild is that schedules have to be made and kept. Seeing it happen with ours is very encouraging.

I’ve been having a hard time classifying what kind of guild we are. At this point, I think it’s safe to say that we’re a casual raiding one. Our approach to the game is still not as serious as other guilds are, but at least now we actually take the time off to raid. I’m just hoping that we can continue the push till Wrath hits.

On a personal note, I respecced to Assassination to give it a taste. I’ll write about that later.