Assassination Guide for Cata [12/01/2011] - Page 4

hedningen · 12/10/10, 10:56 AM

Originally Posted by neg^

I don't know much about current raidencounters, but for a few previous ones a dodged kick could mean wipe.

Then it's wasted dps anyway and you would probably have a "no dodge" gear in such encounters.

• QControl · 12/10/10, 12:05 PM

Originally Posted by neg^

I don't know much about current raidencounters, but for a few previous ones a dodged kick could mean wipe.

Sorry but a dodged kick has never meant wipe since enemies cannot dodge while they are casting a spell. All you needed was to make sure you were at the special hit cap.

• Aldriana · 12/10/10, 12:11 PM

Re: Paragon. In terms of getting world early kills, there's really two things that are needed: tons of free time to raid long hours, and general good game sense, situational awareness, reflexes, etc. - that is, you need to be good at actually playing the game, and you need to have a lot of time to do it. You'll note that nowhere on that list is "having a good working knowledge of the intricacies of the class and the ability to theorycraft optimal DPS setups".

That is: I'm not going to claim that the Paragon/Ensidia/whatever rogues aren't good players. But they're not theorycrafting experts, so any specific decision (like reforging for expertise or not) should be taken with a grain of salt - they're probably guessing, or using some other forum for a resource, or whatever. Which is not to say they don't have a competent source as well - its just that the source of their information is unknown, and the quality of it is largely unrelated to the success of the guild. In general, I think EJ is more trustworthy. You're welcome to disagree, of course, but then again, you are posting/reading here to learn more about the game, so...

Re: expertise and interrupts. If I recall correctly mobs can't dodge while casting spells, and if you're interrupting they're by definition casting, so that's actually mostly a nonissue.

Tumblebeer · 12/10/10, 12:19 PM

While hard to theorycraft, one could argue that when said rogues are raiding those long hours, a dodged finisher will strain your focus just a little more than you can cope with at hour 34 of raiding.
I am myself in one of those guilds, and I have been reforging expertise for this exact reason, even though I am a very frequent reader of these forums.
I also talked a bit to some ensidia rogues, and they seem to be thinking along the same lines.

So I'd say it comes down to what Aldriana sometimes points out: When the theoretical dps gain is pretty marginal, personal preference can be worth more.

• Aldriana · 12/10/10, 3:36 PM

That's a completely fair attitude to take - attention is of course a valuable resource in raids, and diminishing the amount that must be spent on your cycle obviously can't be bad. That said: I think the biggest problem people have with the expertise cap at this point is simply unfamiliarity. We haven't had to deal with dodged attacks for the past 2+ years, so now when it happens its counter to our expectations and takes an unusual amount of attention to deal with. But I also think if one ran with it for a few weeks, one would get used to it, and the attention hit wouldn't be there.

So if you are in one of those ultra-competitive guilds where you're pushing 50 hours a week to try to get all the fights down this week and all the hard modes next week, and can't afford the attention hit of the relearning process this week... that's fine. But after the initial rush is over, I might suggest reforging for optimality instead and using the downtime between progression periods to get used to the notion of dodged attacks and finishers, because your DPS will benefit in the long run by so doing. I haven't found it particularly hard to get used to, myself.

Ðøøm · 12/11/10, 7:53 AM

First post here so flame away. The EP value of expertise may somewhat understate its efficacy. Ignoring expertise's EP on tank-n-spank fights, on fights with mechanics like putricide or marrowgar where DPSing down adds as quickly as possible is important to the entire raids survivability, losing burst due to beind dodged could be detrimental to the entire raid or raid dps due to the add surviving longer.

Of course you can't model that but it may be worth considering how that weighs up against pure dps before dismissing expertise entirely. If it is a matter of < 0.5% dps it may well be worth capping anyway, even if it's technically sub-optimal.

Another consideration is being able to more easily keep track of your rotation. Depending on your reaction time and what else you need to keep track of during the fight, having to also worry about whether your attack is dodged or not may be a dps loss due to the additional thinking time and break in 'flow' of your rotation. I don't know whether this will actually be a problem, but it's something I intend to test for myself.

Finally, a badly timed dodge could result in SnD dropping off due to fight mechanics (e.g. if your last envenom before sindragosa took off was dodged).

How you quantify this utility vs measurable DPS I don't know but if it's a negligible DPS loss it may be worthwhile reaching the cap anyway.

Killme888 · 12/11/10, 12:36 PM

Originally Posted by Ðøøm

First post here so flame away. The EP value of expertise may somewhat understate its efficacy. Ignoring expertise's EP on tank-n-spank fights, on fights with mechanics like putricide or marrowgar where DPSing down adds as quickly as possible is important to the entire raids survivability, losing burst due to beind dodged could be detrimental to the entire raid or raid dps due to the add surviving longer.
....

Adds in boss fights are usually lower level therefore requiring very little expertise making your first point moot.

As for bad timing on envenom dodges on certain boss mechanics, you could simply just SnD right after the dodge as you weren't going to be using those cps anyways in your example.

All this is is that you have to pay a little more attention to do a bit more dps, isn't that what most of us want and have been asking for?

ZondaQ · 12/11/10, 2:07 PM

so ultimately i can completely ignore expertise, right(i mean i can have 0 expertise and still do decent damage)? So I just can reforge everything into spell hit or mastery.

Gange · 12/11/10, 2:33 PM

As long as you're not replacing expertise with crit or white hit, if you have 0 expertise, you're doing more damage than if you had spent any of your itemization points on expertise, yes.

Intruder · 12/11/10, 6:42 PM

Originally Posted by Killme888

Adds in boss fights are usually lower level therefore requiring very little expertise making your first point moot.

Indeed, caps are the reason why if any secondary stat is well-suited to add heavy fights or simply grinding trash it would appear to be mastery, since at first blush it looks quite competitive with spell hit rating but does not particularly care what level your target is. That's a pretty nice bonus given that deadly poison has the potential to do quite a bit of damage if/when blizzard introduces content that encourages heavy use of FoK.

Tangroo · 12/12/10, 9:00 PM

Originally Posted by Killme888

When a combo point generating ability (Mutilate, Backstab, etc.) is dodged you are refunded 80% of the cost.

Just curious as to where the refunding comes from. I thought it came from Quickening but I guess that's changed?

• Maestroquark · 12/12/10, 11:47 PM

For combo point generators it has always been built in. Quickening gave it to finishers, but now they have it by default as well.

sakon90 · 12/13/10, 4:21 AM

I've got an observation on the hurricane enchant, I only have it on my OH dagger, and I catch it procing the enchant effect 2-3 times. Checked my c-sheet to just be sure, and it really is stacking the haste buff to +1350 from a single enchant. Now given I haven't used any logging onto this to check the overall up-time of both enchants, but since it doesn't clip previous proc's with the new one, if it stacks so well would it potentially outweigh Landslide if it could be stacked to a certain value? Or does landslide also do that with its proc effect?

Also curious as to why DP is preferred on the thrown weapon over IP? With Vile Poisons you have a 100% chance to apply your MH/OH poisons so your stacking DP already anyways. Is that just to increase the rate of application to 5 stack DP per mob? Does the new coefficient on DP outweigh 2x application on IP that much?

Eustache · 12/13/10, 5:40 AM

Originally Posted by sakon90

Also curious as to why DP is preferred on the thrown weapon over IP? With Vile Poisons you have a 100% chance to apply your MH/OH poisons so your stacking DP already anyways. Is that just to increase the rate of application to 5 stack DP per mob? Does the new coefficient on DP outweigh 2x application on IP that much?

This is wrong. Read the tooltip again:

Increases the damage dealt by your poisons by 20% and gives you 100% of the 
normal chance of applying poisons from your equipped melee weapons 
when you use the Fan of Knives ability.

Ergo, your chance to apply your melee weapon poisons while FoK'ing is equal to your normal procc chance on those melee weapons, which is not 100%. I know that the German tooltip is wrong, as it actually says you have a 100% chance to procc your melee weapon poisons, but the original English tooltip is the correct one.

atroxes · 12/13/10, 8:36 AM

Originally Posted by mastman

I try to do ruptures with as few CPs as possible which seems better cause rupture does shit damage. Rather use those CPs for envenom which hits harder and provides envenom buff-- and most of our damage comes from poison now with our mastery.

You'll find that the reason for doing +4 CP Ruptures lies primarily in your Relentless Strikes talent. Doing 1 CP Ruptures gives you a horribly low chance of gaining the 25 energy back that you just spent. Also, the amount of ticks (chances to proc Venemous Wounds) is halfed by only doing a 1 CP Rupture, but you still spend the same amount of energy getting off that Rupture.

Keep a steady +4 CP Rupture going is the best way to ensure maximum uptime at the lowest possible energy cost.