Assassination Rogue 5.2 (53 replies to this topic)

This thread is for comments about our Assassination Rogue guide for Patch 5.2.

The Assassination article seems to be invalid. Dispatch does not have a position requirment and can be used in front of the bos. (Rotations section).

Another thing to point out, the reforging part of the guide tells us that poisons are on the spell hit table, while in 5.0.4 they use melee hit instead, this values hit after the 7.5% mark under both crit and haste.

Last one (I hope): You will want Mastery on your gloves instead of 20 agility and will never use the Assassin's Step because it does not stack with the passive movement speed increase all specs get in 5.0.4, instead you want 35 agility.

Sykela, on 29 August 2012 - 08:30 AM, said:

Thank you for all these comments. I fixed most of the issue with Dispatch and the enchants.

For the hit issue, however, here's a test I've just done with a rogue that has more than 7.5% melee hit:

8/29 11:24:56.326  SPELL_MISSED,0x01000000001F1E99,"Mnementh",0x511,0x0,0xF13079AA00001190,"Raider's Training Dummy",0x10a28,0x0,2818,"Deadly Poison",0x8,MISS

I'm not sure what to think.

The dummy is level 93.

Why is Shadow Focus marked as "situational"? Having your opener cost no energy is huge. It lets me start my rotation a lot faster. I don't see why you would go an Ambush twice. You're just postponing starting your rotation and getting to the envenoms/envenom buffs.

The misses are as Telethat stated above that the boss dummy has been (accidently) changed to level 93, making results really strange. Try reforging everything to hit and you will still miss the dummy, proving Telethars point.

Lemons, you are right too. Ambush is not as strong as Mutilate for opener, this is because the damage from Mutilate and Ambush is somewhat equal without the increased crit chance talent (Subtlety tree) and Mutilate has the chance to proc Blindside too.

The second option would be to open with Garrote instead, but it's not worth either because you will apply Rupture before there would have been 1 tick of Garrote (Rupture has faster ticks than Garrote thus should be applied asap, also note that Venomous Wounds will only proc from Rupture OR Garrote, not both).

Telethar, on 29 August 2012 - 03:32 PM, said:

I eventually figured, thanks

Lemons, on 30 August 2012 - 07:22 AM, said:

Sykela, on 30 August 2012 - 10:01 AM, said:

It's my mistake there. I did a lot of Simulation Craft testing, as testing on the dummies is really time consuming. The default Rogue_Assassination_T13H file comes with Ambush in the rotation. If you remove it, you get a slight DPS gain, something that I failed to test before (I just assumed the rotation was properly optimised). I've updated the assassination guide to reflect this.

Thank you very much guys for the constructive feedback

In the poisons section you said that Crippling Poison is a single target slow, does this mean that Fan of Knives won't have a chance to apply it to all targets it hits (i.e. bloods on heroic madness)?

In the Best in Slot section, under Weapons of Choice, there is listed that daggers with 1.4 speed go in the offhand slot. While that is true, in 5.0.4, all daggers have been changed to be 1.8 speed. So if there is a choice between which to put where, the one with the higher top end DPS should go in the main hand, since your ability damage is calculated from that number.

To respond to Unvoiced, the Fan of Knives tool tip says: "This attach has a chance of applying your active poisons at their normal rate."

The macro i use often to cast Tricks to the tank at the beginning of the fight is:

#showtooltip
/cast [@targettarget] Tricks of the Trade

and

#showtooltip
/cast [@focus] Tricks of the Trade

at the beginning of the fight, the tank should be the one pulling, so the boss should undoubtedly be targeting the tank. I steer with my mouse, so the rollover cast, while a great thing to have, is sort of clunky to use while moving. If you know who the tank is (and you obviously should), you should be casting Tricks before the actual pull so your energy regens and you don't have any GC interference, but still, this is useful for me. I use the addon Clique to mouseover casting and have a Trick click with that instead of the mouseover one, but the focus target should be the DPS target you are Tricks-ing to.

My macro for Mutilate is:

#showtooltip
/startattack
/cast Mutilate

This is useful for switching targets if you have "Stop Auto Attack" checked in the Interface > Combat menu, like I do. If you don't have enough energy to cast Mutilate, you will at least start auto-attacking. Maybe less useful now since Stop Auto Attack is unchecked by default. These 2 macros at least should help streamline DPS a tad, though not sure they are enough to make it into the guide.

Would Leeching Poison be more apealing to an Assassination Rogue due to the higher proc rate of thier poisons(Envenom)? As far as making the healer's jobs easier I mean.

Edited by Mikkael053, 31 August 2012 - 09:35 PM.

honestly, there's situations for each. Leeching would be best for as they said, if you might be off by yourself, or constant raid damage. Cheat Death for large, shared impact damage that you might take the brunt of, and Elusiveness for times when you're using Feint often to avoid damage.

Leeching will certainly help the healers catch up in all of those situations. But if there is a fight where one of your other non-lethal poisons is going to be much more useful than Leeching, then it's likely better to move that talent point to one of the others. That's what's great about this new system, u can change the individual points easily per-fight if need be.

Unvoiced, on 30 August 2012 - 10:49 PM, said:

Fan of Knives can apply Crippling Poison to several targets at once. I updated the description.

Burger, on 31 August 2012 - 01:40 AM, said:

This has been fixed, thank you

Quote

These macros were useful and I added them to the guides. Thank you for providing them!

In the Slice and Dice section, you should note that Shiv doesn't generate combo points anymore, so using it as a cheap way to refresh SnD isn't an option any longer.

Togá, on 03 September 2012 - 09:11 AM, said:

I removed the mention of Shiv, thank you for spotting this

Lemons, on 30 August 2012 - 07:22 AM, said:

After several tests on the 85 Mechanical dummies, trying both Subterfuge and Shadow Focus, Subterfuge is the winner opening with 2 Ambushes. Reasons for this are as follows: Ambush is significantly more damage than Mutilate and also awards 2 combo points. As soon as coming out of stealth you have enough combo points for a lengthy first SnD, giving you plenty of time to get a full 5 combo point Rupture on the target and a full 5 combo point Envenom to start. My first test was a solid 3 minute rotation (no cooldowns) with each talent. Subterfuge + 2xAmbush  resulted in more damage/dps. My next test was simply an opener with rotation to the 1st Envenom with each talent. The result was Subterfuge + 2xAmbush was nearly 1/3 more damage than using Shadow Focus and opening with Mutilate. I ran each test several times with the same result each time. Even using Subterfuge and opening with Garrote, followed by Ambush (possible to get a Mutilate in there too), still serves as a better opener than Shadow Focus and Mutilate does.

Can there be something to be said for glyph of shiv?  shiv'ing leeching poison give 5% health back instantly.  5% health every six seconds seems pretty advantageous for constant aoe damage fights, but i dont see it mentioned anywhere.

Bubenhiimer, on 06 September 2012 - 12:23 AM, said:

I was also under this impression when I first wrote the guide. I guess I shouldn't update my guides so fast and take the time to properly test these things. It's just that when there is a heavy workload, there simply isn't enough time to do everything properly. I added this issue to my TODO list and I will investigate in due time. One problem I have is that Subterfuge is not properly implemented in Simulation Craft, and it's hard (and very long) to do tests manually.

Sneakesnake, on 06 September 2012 - 06:56 PM, said:

Your health in raiding gear at level 90 will be around 400k, so we are looking at 20k health every 6 seconds, or 3.3k health per second. To gain that, you need to cast Shiv on cooldown, spending a global cooldown for it every time. It means losing about 1/6 of your DPS for a bit of health regeneration. It doesn't seem worth it to me

ello,

By reading your guide for Assassination rogue, you suggested Shadow Focus as suggested talent option in tier 1.
I did some testing with Subterfuge, talent which is in same talent tier and i find out that its better option.
Reason is simple, you will have enough time to hit target with Ambush and Garrote, thus giving you enough Combo Points to immediately put 4-5 points Ripture on target. Downside, you will have little energy.

I manage to pull it off just fine without macro, but using this macro is safest way to insure that mentioned combo will work for sure:

#showtooltip
/castsequence [nomodifier] reset=2/target Ambush, Garrote

Also, it tier 5 you suggested Preparation as suggested option, so, using this in suggested change can further increase your burst.

For someone that took Shadowstep insted of Preparation, you can upgrade macro to work even better since Shadowstep will position you instantly behind target, shorten your idle time till you position behind target, allowing you to more smoothly use macro:

#showtooltip
/castsequence [nomodifier] reset=2/target Shadowstep, Ambush, Garrote

Choosing Shadowstep over Preparation will reduce your survivability but it will give you good bursting combo opener. This is also, a positional change which require from you to be behind the target, thus it will not be usable in some DS fights, mainly Ultra, Spine and Madness, but its quite nice for PvE leveling or PvP