Assassination Guide for Cata [12/01/2011] - Page 23

Exmodel · 01/20/11, 2:39 PM

The EP values for both are assuming a perfect world where we can stay on a target and dont lose uptime for the rolling trinkets, such as Tia's. it's possible the rogues from Paragon, in dealing with HMs found that they get more from a trinket with a Proc vs having two rolling agility stacks. Atramedes comes to mind, whereas you could be using your thrown wep to keep DP stacks, and trinkets rolling...if you are kiting the beams, you generally can't stop to use a Throw to keep your stacks up. just my opinion on the matter. =)

• Aldriana · 01/20/11, 2:52 PM

Fluid Death: the argument here is that, for purposes of figuring out which item is better, it usually doesn't make sense to assign hit the value of hit. Under most circumstances, you reforge to keep your hit right at the spell hit cap. Hence, if you swap some other trinket out for Fluid Death... your hit doesn't change. You were at spell hit cap before; you're still at it now; the only thing that's changed is how much you're reforging. Thus, what you gain and lose in most circumstances is not hit but mastery. Hence, when assessing relative item quality, it often (by which I mean, almost always) makes sense to score hit with the EP value of mastery.

The point being made is that 2.6 * 380 + 1.3 * 321 doesn't equal 1387. And as I recall, the explanation for this is that for the gear set I used to generate those EP values, mastery was a bit under 1.3 at the time, and Agi might have been a bit under 2.6 as well, which explains the discrepancy.

That said: I think the real point here is that EP values fluxuate a bit, so when a static list of trinkets like that is posted, what you should take away is not that Fluid Death is worth exactly 1387 EP, but that its about 40 behind H: Prestors and about 70 ahead of H: Cyclone, and is the #2 trinket in most practical situations.

In terms of Tia's vs Key, I think it basically comes down to the relative advantages of a proc trinket vs a stacking one; consult this post for details. Its a few years old and speaking about totally different trinkets, but the general principals described their very much apply.

MikeJ714 · 01/20/11, 3:07 PM

Originally Posted by Schmoopy

Are they exactly hit capped using this trinket or are they pushing themselves way over.

My guess would be that they are using the insane amount of hit on this trinket to reach the cap and reforging the rest into some very nice mastery. You have to consider that if they have other items with hit/mastery on them. They can't reforge the extra hit on those items into mastery since its already on the gear.

If they are using this trinket and its pushing them deeply into white hit range then they must know something about this trinkets proc behavior that we do not.

Looking over their stats, this looks to be the case. Their just using the hit to push mastery into their other sockets, as all 3 of the Paragon rogues seem to be just slightly over hit cap.

That should answer your question, Relk.

Stoical · 01/20/11, 5:02 PM

Originally Posted by Schmoopy

Atramedes comes to mind

You can throw at Atramedes during air phase to keep your DP and Fluid Death/Tia's stacks up. Even if you have to kite, you can save Sprint for it, sprint way ahead, and get one throw off at ~10-12s, no reason to let your stacks drop.

stevindir · 01/21/11, 3:28 AM

Originally Posted by Azreluna

[Fluid Death] being given an EP value of 1387 confused me at first. Then I figured it out. It's 321 hit rating and 380 agility, once stacked.

Agility is 2.6 EP per point. 2.6 EP/agi * 380 agi = 988 EP

Then there's 321 rating. This can either be:

Spell hit: 1.4 EP/SpH * 321 SpH = 449.4
Mastery: 1.3 EP/Mst * 321 Mst = 417.3
Mastery/Haste: 0.4(1.3 Ep/Mst * 321 Mst) + 0.6(1.2 EP=Hst * 321 Hst) = 398.0
White hit: 0.75 EP/WH * 321 WH = 240.75.

Therefore, the total EP should be either 1437.4 (spell), 1405.0 (mastery), 1387 (mastery/haste) or 1228.8 (white hit).

It should never be white hit rating, though, because if you're over the spell hit cap, hit rating on all your gear is going to get reforged to mastery, and if that's not available, haste. The mastery/haste number works out to this, but you would first reforge hit rating on gear that doesn't have mastery into mastery, so you would only get 1387 if all your other hit rating gear already had mastery. Even if another piece of gear had hit rating and crit rating, (I'm pretty sure) you'd still be better off reforging hit to mastery over hit to haste and crit to mastery.

Long story short: [Fluid Death] is worth at least 1387, not exactly it.

That actually hurt my brain for a few seconds just looking at your calculations but after reading through the next paragraph I completely agree. You can "almost" always assume hit will count toward the spell hit cap. If your hit is counting toward white hit, you're just not gearing or reforging correctly.

Rules of Thumb:
Reforge to mastery over haste, If both stats are present, don't reforge the gear
Reforge crit to hit or exp where needed, then to mastery once caps are obtained
If you find you're awkwardly over either cap, default all your gear, look at your gems, then start reforging again.

Current Hit 1334/1332 (+2)
Current Exp 787/781 (+6)

geofferson · 01/21/11, 4:11 AM

Originally Posted by stevindir

Rules of Thumb:
Reforge to mastery over haste, If both stats are present, don't reforge the gear
Reforge crit to hit or exp where needed, then to mastery once caps are obtained
If you find you're awkwardly over either cap, default all your gear, look at your gems, then start reforging again.

The bold is terrible advise. Expertise is almost as bad a crit and white hit. If you are reforging / gemming for expertise as Assassination then you are doing it wrong.

Gem for Agility
Reforge expertise and crit to Hit until spell cap (17%)
Reforge the rest of your expertise, haste and crit to mastery

PessimiStick · 01/21/11, 10:11 AM

Haven't seen this mentioned here yet, but I saw it on the official forums yesterday and verified that it works last night.
Set up your offspec to be Subtlety. It doesn't really matter what talents you choose since you won't actually be playing it, just make sure you pick up HAT. I took Imp. SnD from Combat as well.

1) Pre-pull, activate your Sub spec and group with healers.
2) Get 5 CP through heal crits.
3) Hit SnD, respec back to Assassination. (40 second SnD with talent/glyph)
4) Pull normally, and just be sure to refresh SnD with Envenom before it drops.

The mechanic that Envenom uses to refresh SnD only affects the duration, and doesn't actually re-apply the buff, so you keep the Mastery bonus from Sub for as long as you don't let SnD drop. I also used 2 pc. T6 for the initial SnD, and I was able to roll a 62% SnD for as long as I wanted while being Mut.

fadedtimes · 01/21/11, 10:26 AM

Originally Posted by PessimiStick

The mechanic that Envenom uses to refresh SnD only affects at the duration, and doesn't actually re-apply the buff, so you keep the Mastery bonus from Sub for as long as you don't let SnD drop. I also used 2 pc. T6 for the initial SnD, and I was able to roll a 62% SnD for as long as I wanted while being Mut.

That is a very interesting find. Would the main advantages be on target switching or movement fights? Having SnD drop usually isn't an issue because of how often we Envenom.

Sarvius · 01/21/11, 10:33 AM

Originally Posted by fadedtimes

That is a very interesting find. Would the main advantages be on target switching or movement fights? Having SnD drop usually isn't an issue because of how often we Envenom.

Subtlety mastery affects the amount of attack speed granted by slice and dice. So this is essentially a bug designed to give you a greater-than-40% slice and dice for free because of the way cut to the chase refreshes it. It's similar to the 1/2 pyromaniac bug. I certainly don't know whether blizzard will consider it exploitation (I would assume that they wouldn't) but the moment its use becomes widespread is the moment it will be fixed.

All that said, that's an extremely large dps boost (especially with t6, which was a creative addition). Just be sure to use it at your own risk.

zhrgg · 01/21/11, 4:49 PM

Originally Posted by PessimiStick

The mechanic that Envenom uses to refresh SnD only affects the duration, and doesn't actually re-apply the buff, so you keep the Mastery bonus from Sub for as long as you don't let SnD drop. I also used 2 pc. T6 for the initial SnD, and I was able to roll a 62% SnD for as long as I wanted while being Mut.

You can also use Glyph of SnD in your Sub spec as well as use 2pc T4 where you don't have Mastery pieces to gain ~10 seconds more on SnD duration. I think this makes it possible to last through even Atramedes' airphase (40 seconds).

Edit: It's probably possible to use Premed to get 2 CP and SnD, giving you 28 seconds total with T6, T4 and glyph. If the fight's interruptions don't exceed that duration, you don't even need to bother your raid leader to switch you back and forth between groups.

dojjie · 01/21/11, 5:06 PM

Originally Posted by zhrgg

You can also use Glyph of SnD in your Sub spec as well as use 2pc T4 where you don't have Mastery pieces to gain ~10 seconds more on SnD duration. I think this makes it possible to last through even Atramedes' airphase (40 seconds)..

Once you refresh SnD via cttc it will go back to being a 21sec SnD.
You can also use an on use mastery trinket and SnD will keep the bonus from it.

MikeJ714 · 01/21/11, 5:49 PM

Expect that to be nerfed if it works.

Soon. Be nice to use while it lasts, though.

"Changing from your Primary to your Secondary spec now causes all buffs to be canceled except flasks, elixirs, and weapon enhancements."

..Or something like that.

natox · 01/21/11, 7:14 PM

Originally Posted by dojjie

Once you refresh SnD via cttc it will go back to being a 21sec SnD.
You can also use an on use mastery trinket and SnD will keep the bonus from it.

You shouldn't do that to be honest because you'll basically start the ICD of your "real" trinket when you re-equip it.

dojjie · 01/21/11, 7:45 PM

Originally Posted by natox

You shouldn't do that to be honest because you'll basically start the ICD of your "real" trinket when you re-equip it.

Using [Skardyn's Grace] added 7% extra attack speed. That might be worth putting a trinket on ICD. But then again that doesn't really matter when Fluid death has no ICD and any rogue should be using it.

vileguy · 01/21/11, 10:20 PM

Regarding slice and dice, the duration will not be extended by first applying it as subtlety and then respeccing to assassination. The duration will always refresh to your 5 point maximum, so if you had the glyph it would refresh to the longer duration I believe. The point in doing slice and dice as subtlety is for the bonus attack speed from mastery.

I found a similar bug to this, though it's not very useful for raiding. With deadly momentum, a subtlety recuperate that gives energy regen can persist as assassination and continues to give the energy regeneration while reapplied.