zeroinitiate - A World of WarCraft Rogue Blog

“Sayang” is a Tagalog word (that’s my native language, by the way) that expresses dismay, usually over something that is a waste or was wasted. When you find yourself saying “too bad” or “what a waste”, whatever situation you used it for would be within the appropriate context of the word. Boherrac and I were chatting in-game and he asked how my DK was, to which I answered that he was stagnating and that I was too lazy to do anything with him. He dropped the word then: “sayang”.

It was enough to send me thinking.

It was sort of a wake up call. Nothing groundbreaking, mind you, but it did make me want to gear my DK again, which I did earlier by giving him a couple of gems. Well, it was more than a couple, but I realized yesterday that I haven’t even bothered to put a meta on him for his DPS set. Seriously, WTF. I also switched to Blood DPS for the heck of it. I’m already dual-wielding with Sin so I figured that using a two-handed weapon would be a good change. It’s too early to tell if I’ll actually stick to it.

Note that this was written with new rogues in mind. I recently ran a fail group on my DK and it was tough to see a fellow rogue just suck at DPS. I was tanking Anub’Arak in AN and things were going well until he burrowed and the adds came. Recount told me that I was number two in DPS, behind the mage but above the rogue. You know that a group is fail when the tank is doing more damage than the rest of the group.

So, here’s a little something to raise your DPS in heroic 5-mans:

• Go Combat. Equip your best weapons, then spec into it.
• Set the tank as your focus target (click on the tank, type “/focus”).
• Make this macro and map it to a button:
• /cast [target=focus] Tricks of the Trade
• Doing the above will cast TotT on the tank.
• Everytime your tank pulls, hit the macro, then spam Fan of Knives.
• Profit!
• For big pulls, cast Blade Flurry, TotT, FoK. Whenever BF is up, remember to stand close to two adds or more since you’re cleaving.
• For big, prolonged pulls, cast Adrenaline Rush, Blade Flurry, TotT, FoK.
• More profit!

It’s an oversimplification and sort of a repeat post, but hopefully it should get things started on the road to better DPS. Seriously. What I just saw was painful to watch.

I’ve been holding off on purchasing emblem gear because I want a tier piece to drop from VoA first. My goal is to get the tier 10 4-piece bonus going and see my DPS increase. I want to be able to nail one finisher after another. After two weeks of doing VoA, I’ve yet to see rogue leather drop so I haven’t had the chance to even roll on it yet. That’s been the story of gear for me for the past couple of weeks, even in ICC. Melee DPS leather simply does not drop in our runs.

Yesterday Festergut dropped Plague-Soaked Leather Leggings. I put it on my spreadsheet and saw a DPS increase. Just for fun I decided to put the tier 10 legs and hands just to check what my DPS would be if I bought those instead.

I was floored to see a DPS decrease.

I checked and re-checked but the numbers were consistent. If they were both at ilvl 251, getting the tier 10 legs and hands to complete the 4-piece bonus was going to lower my damage output. I was in denial at first, thinking for so long that the 4-piece bonus was really, really good. Well, screw that. The discovery then led to me checking out what pieces I should buy. I finally settled on the waist and trinket, with those being the biggest DPS upgrades according to the spreadsheet. I’ve yet to run ICC to see how my DPS turns out though. I’ll find out this week.

I got asked about Tricks of the Trade twice this week and it wasn’t by fellow rogues. The questions came from two tanks that I regularly run with. For the purpose of this post, I’m going to name them Tanks, Cow and Mandy. If they ever read this post, they’ll appreciate the subtlety behind the naming. And yes, I realize that I said two tanks yet named three. We’ll get to that in a bit.

During a 5-man run:

Cow: Do you have to cast Tricks every time I pull? Am I having aggro issues? Do you do the same with Tanks?

Me: Yes. No. Yes.

During a different 5-man run:

Mandy: Do you hold back when I pull? Like, wait for me to get aggro before you attack? Do you do the same with Tanks?

Me: No. No. No.

For the tanks out there, let me say this: we’re not casting Tricks on you because we have issues with your tanking. It’s not because we think you don’t have enough aggro. Tricks is there to ensure that aggro does not become a problem for the entire group, not just us rogues. It also allows us to unleash our DPS without worrying about threat (for 6 seconds, at least). Overall, it benefits everyone. Tricks + Fan of Knives does wonders for group AoE. Tricks + Blade Flurry + Adrenaline Rush + Fan of Knives spam makes rogues smile. So please, don’t worry about getting the buff from us. We like killing things. Tricks is there to ensure that those things don’t kill us back.

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Okay, there it is. The DPS you see above is post-nerf. ICC 25, Saurfang plus a few pulls on Festergut. See anything different from the last time?

On 25, it’s not too much of a difference given that you get all the right buffs. The nerf becomes more evident on 5 and 10-mans. We did a quick TotC 10 afterwards just to get Jaraxxus down for the weekly raid and a hunter managed to outDPS me cleanly. I think the new change warrants more testing just to see how much of a decrease it really did to us. Or maybe the number’s already out there. I’m going to need to review.

I hate to say it, but I saw it coming:

• The base damage bonus from Hunger for Blood has been reduced from 10% to 5%.
• The bonus damage rogues gain from attack power for poisons has been decreased. This applies to Instant Poison, Deadly Poison, and Wound Poison.

[Source]

Dinaer posted that the number crunchers at EJ are saying that this means a 7% decrease in damage for Assassination. I was doing nearly 7K on Festergut last night. The nerf brings that down to 6500, give or take. The actual numbers are still out so I’m waiting for the results. While I expected the nerf, the manner in which it was implemented is disturbing. Rogues are doing too much damage? Nerf HfB AGAIN. Nice. Thanks for making us WoW’s guinea pigs.

This is what I’m worried about.

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This was taken from ICC 25 earlier today.

I’m not going to write about it anymore because I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but the chart illustrates my point. A gap of nearly 2K DPS looks OP regardless of how you look at it.

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.