zeroinitiate - A World of WarCraft Rogue Blog

Happy holidays to everyone! I hope that you guys got your Merrymaker title by now. Icecrown is on its second week and we’re all going to have to catch up with the content once the holidays are over.

I find it odd that I’m actually nursing a toothache right now. I first felt it a couple of weeks ago and when I finally consulted my dentist, I was told that an extraction was necessary. I’m fine with that. However, she was going to go on vacation which meant that we would have to postpone the procedure until Monday. In the meantime, she gave me painkillers to medicate through the problem.

So here I am, spending Christmas with a tooth that’s nagging me worse than any mother-in-law would do. If the pain becomes unbearable, I reach for my pills. This isn’t exactly the way I pictured my holiday to turn out.

Back to rogue matters: make sure that you check the EJ forums regularly as 3.3 progresses. A recent example of why it’s important is Instant Poison’s rise to becoming the main hand poison of choice, even if you’re running Combat. I tested this on my last 25-man raid and the results were very, very clear. I was even asked by two of the people we PUGged in how I was doing that much damage. Funnily enough, the point I was trying to bring up in my last post was raised.

PUG rogue: What’s your rotation? (Note that out of personal pride I never ask this from a fellow rogue. I feel like I’m not doing my job if I’m getting out-DPSed and I don’t know why. I don’t mind getting asked though, like in this case.)

Me: SnD, HfB, Mutilate, Envenom, Mutilate, Envenom.

PUG rogue: Oh. You changed specs.

Apparently, he was asking about my rotation as Combat. By the time he asked, we just downed a boss so I was in my Assassination spec. I then told him that I go Combat on trash and use whatever cooldowns are available during the fights, which is exactly what I wrote about last time.

So, how have your fights been? I like the changes because rogues are doing so much damage right now. Still, either Blizz nerfs Assassination or they buff Combat. I’m hoping for the latter. Our hunter is starting to complain though. He made a comment about how poisons are “cheap damage” at the moment. It’s actually a little funny. Back when Ulduar was relevant he was saying my damage was “all from Fan of Knives”. If it isn’t one thing it’s another, I guess.

Enjoy the holidays, folks. See you after the break.

I have this feeling that Assassination is going to get nerfed to make it on par with Combat.

A couple of months ago, rogues were at a good place. Combat and Assassination were more or less balanced. The damage output between the two specs were relatively the same. It all boiled down to your weapon preference and the fights themselves. For the former, you may have found yourself switching between specs depending on which weapon set was stronger—think better daggers versus better fists/maces/swords/daggers—or simply depending on whether you liked daggers or not. For the latter, knowing the fights themselves can be a determinant in your weapon choice. For example, Anub’arak in TotC is very AoE-friendly, favoring Combat in terms of DPS output. For single-target fights, Assassination pulled slightly ahead of Combat.

Those times are past. Assassination is clearly the leader in terms of single-target DPS. Combat is still very strong in terms of AoE so you’ll want to use it when it comes to trash pulls, but for boss fights, the daggers spec simply blows it away. On one side, you could say it’s fair. After all, why would you want to use Assassination if it only gave you a marginal increase? Now that daggers are doing so much damage, we should all be happy right? Maybe.

Consider this: in Icecrown Citadel, I’ve been switching between Combat for trash and Assassination for bosses. Why? Because it’s worth it. The AoE damage that Combat yields on trash 3k-4k greater than Assassination. I then go back to using daggers for bosses because the output is greater.

You may wonder why I’m having issues with this. The only reason is stated above: I think a nerf is on the way for Assassination and I do not want it. The DPS is great, but the effect is so marginalizing that I don’t think it’s sustainable. Is what we’re seeing a design that Blizzard intended to happen? Is “Combat for trash, Assassination for bosses” a mantra we’re going to go by right now?

Let’s get the obvious out of the way: respec to Assassination. Patch 3.3 has buffed damage output from that tree so much that Combat doesn’t even stand a chance. I no longer have the data from Recount with me but here’s what drove the proverbial nail in the coffin when I was thinking about the numbers a few days ago.

I noticed the damage increase in Icecrown Citadel. There were two rogues in the group and we were just leaving everyone behind in DPS. No one else was even close. To verify this, I decided to use it on a fight where Assassination is at a disadvantage: Anub’Arak. We usually position the adds next to Anub so melee can AoE/cleave them. It makes sense for me to run Combat during that fight so I can use Blade Flurry + Adrenaline Rush. I was clearly in the lead of the other rogue in the group until we got Anub down to 30%. When he started leeching life from everyone, I had no more adds to buff my damage so it became a single-target race in terms of DPS. Guess what? The other rogue caught up and beat me.

So that’s it. Run Mutilate/Assassination. Don’t believe me? Check out the updated Q&A at EJ.

I expect Blizz to swing the nerf bat pretty hard on this one, so enjoy it while it lasts.

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.