Mists of Pandaria: All Specs - Page 15

• Aldriana · 04/04/12, 4:30 PM

Just because it comes back quickly doesn't mean it doesn't still cost you damage. At current gear levels, each point of energy you spend on things other than DPS abilities costs you something like 500 damage, so spending 20 energy costs you 10k damage. Which is not to say you won't do it if its important - there are certainly raid burst situations where you'll eat that damage loss - but it will definitely cut back on how often we use it. This is a major reason why I think that feint should be free.

Nryka · 04/06/12, 6:48 AM

Baseline
Crimson Tempest Finishing move consumes combo points on any nearby target to slash at the flesh of all enemies within 8 yards, dealing Physical damage and causing victims to bleed and suffer an additional 30% of the initial damage over 12 sec: 1 point : [445 + 2.5 + 2.8% of AP + 148 + 2.5 + 1.4% of AP] damage 2 points: [445 + 5 + 5.6% of AP + 148 + 5 + 4.2% of AP] damage 3 points: [445 + 7.5 + 16.5% of AP + 148 + 7.5 + 7% of AP] damage 4 points: [445 + 10 + 22% of AP + 148 + 10 + 22% of AP] damage 5 points: [445 + 12.5 + 27.5% of AP + 148 + 12.5 + 27.5% of AP] damage 5 yd range, 35 Energy, Instant
Fan of Knives now generates 1 combo point if it strikes your current combo target.
Shadow Blades *New* Draw upon the surrounding shadows to empower your weapons, causing your auto-attacks to deal pure Shadow damage and your combo-point-generating abilties to generate an additional combo point when used. Lasts 12 sec. 3 min cooldown, Instant
Throw *New* Hurl a dagger at an enemy target. 30 yd range, 0.5 sec cast

Glyphs
Inscription: Glyph of Backstab changed - When you Vanish, you leave behind a brief illusion that very closely resembles you.
Inscription: Glyph of Revealing Strike replaced with Glyph of Detection - Focus intently on trying to detect something.
Inscription: Glyph of Mutilate replaced - When you Pick Pocket a humanoid enemy, you also copy their appearance until cancelled.

This seems like a major buff to our multi target DPS (FoK to 5 CP then CT for instant physical strike + physical bleed for 12 sec — and FoK procs our poisons and enchants).

Shadow Blades looks very cool, too. Instant, no GCD, no cost, ~7% uptime.

Exisled · 04/06/12, 8:10 AM

Originally Posted by Nryka

This seems like a major buff to our multi target DPS (FoK to 5 CP then CT for instant physical strike + physical bleed for 12 sec — and FoK procs our poisons and enchants).

The Crimson Tempest/FoK change does look very beneficial, however while the change may improve aoe DPS for all three specs, wouldn't they still be doing similar numbers relative to each other (i.e. Assassination would still be on top, Sub on bottom)?

Also, for combat, would Blade Flurry still outperform FoK with these changes? I can see that subtlety will definitely benefit, but if it stays as poor for aoe situations compared to the other specs as it is now, will we even be playing it in those situations?

Nryka · 04/06/12, 8:54 AM

Disclaimer, again: I'm bad at maths and my brain seems to lack logical thinking. Take my words with a grain of salt.

Originally Posted by Exisled

The Crimson Tempest/FoK change does look very beneficial, however while the change may improve aoe DPS for all three specs, wouldn't they still be doing similar numbers relative to each other (i.e. Assassination would still be on top, Sub on bottom)?

As far as things go,

Assassination does much greater poison damage thanks to various talents and its mastery. Since FoK spreads the poisons (lethal and non lethal) currently coated, it seems like it will perform very well with the new mechanics. However, CT does not benefit from any talent in Assassination.
Combat does not have increased poison damage, but it has however a much greater AP through talents. As lethal poisons benefit greatly from AP in the current beta build, it seems to make up for the lack of poison-oriented talents. CT does not benefit from any talent in Combat as far as I can tell.
Subtlety lacks the poison talents, but like Combat, its AP (through Agility) makes up for a part of the lack. However, CT does greatly benefit from Sub's mastery (increased finisher damage) and from various other talents (AoE physical DoT means target switching is less painful).

The mechanics are very different from spec to spec but I believe the devs have done a good thing here, pulling off a way to increase AoE damage of all three specs at the same time while still not favoring one spec in particular.

Originally Posted by Exisled

Also, for combat, would Blade Flurry still outperform FoK with these changes? I can see that subtlety will definitely benefit, but if it stays as poor for aoe situations compared to the other specs as it is now, will we even be playing it in those situations?

As far as I can tell, BF has been heavily nerfed: the removal of the glyph means triggering BF comes at a much greater cost. Since it still does not spread DoTs and poisons, BF will probably be bested by FoK when three or more targets are in range.

Fae · 04/06/12, 10:06 AM

In addition to what Nryka mentioned:

Combat has increased energy regen so it can spam FoKs more rapidly compared to Assassination. If Blade Flurry works with FoK again, that will also affect the overall damage.
Subtlety on the other hand has an external combo point generator (HAT) so it's AoE damage will be distributed more towards CT compared to the other two spec.

Overall, there is quite a few different variables for each spec so we can't simply say Assassination > Combat > Subtlety judging only by mechanics itself. To answer the question, I believe that we'll need the actual numbers, damage formulas etc. and do some math on top of it.

Sarvius · 04/06/12, 10:09 AM

FoK also suffers heavily (in its current incarnation) from completely stalling your rotation, meaning snd/bandit's guile/rupture/recup will often be at risk of falling off during aoe situations. Adding combo point generation (which is faster than SS generation) will go a long way toward remedying that situation. Couple that with the BF glyph disappearing and it seems pretty clear that blizz is attempting to make it viable for every spec.

jtstormrage · 04/06/12, 3:50 PM

Originally Posted by Fae

In addition to what Nryka mentioned:

Subtlety on the other hand has an external combo point generator (HAT) so it's AoE damage will be distributed more towards CT compared to the other two spec.

AND the bleed from Crimson Tempest should increase damage on all targets by 20% through Sanguinary Veins, making this really nice for Sub

Saan · 04/06/12, 5:49 PM

*Never mind, I was getting the Sanguinary Veins effect confused. Nothing to see here. Madsushi clears things up below.*

madsushi · 04/06/12, 5:57 PM

Originally Posted by Saan

This is under the assumption that things will be living long enough for the bleed to matter. Something that has been a problem with a lot of AoE in Cata as far as raid encounters go is that much of the things that have to be AoE'd simply would die too quickly for the bleed to tick out. This can be seen with Deadly Poison on live; there is rarely an occasion which using deadly poison would win out over wound poison for an encounter, because deadly doesn't have a chance to stack up and tick down. Hopefully there will be more longevity in AoE packs for this to really shine.

The bleed isn't as important as activating Sanguinary Vein, though. An extra 20% damage via FoK once you do one Crimson Tempest is definitely worth it. Pop CT and then spam FoK for maximum damage.

Hidden · 04/06/12, 8:21 PM

You also have to include the simple fact that FoK itself does way more damage than on live. E.g. when questing (meaning no buffs) it's already doing roughly 2-3 times as much damage as on live servers when fully raidbuffed using my 410 thrown. I'm not sure whether it scales off of weapon DPS or AP on beta server but its damage also seemed fairly balanced between using my daggers and using my axes.

Thus improved poison damage from Assassination makes much less of a difference compared to simply being able to use more FoKs due to higher energy regeneration as Combat/Subtlety than it does on live servers already.

As for adds dying too fast:
We're in a way better situation in MoP than we are on live servers. As mentioned above FoK itself already does way more damage. In addition to that DP only has one stack doing the damage of 5 stacks on live so not only do you get the full DoT damage right from the get-go but you also get the instant damage procs after a few seconds. The new finisher also does 75% of its damage upfront and adds usually spawn (or are pulled to) somewhere near to a main damage target so you can already have 5 combo points to AoE them just when they're attackable.

As for Combat:
Take all of the above and add that Combat now has way lower single target ability (and higher auto attack and proc) damage and I can easily see Combat using BF for 2 targets and FoK for 3+ targets while maybe keeping BF active for 3/4 targets to double auto attack DPS.

Edit: Some testing after the latest MoP beta patch:
BF: I'm not sure for how long it's been like this but it only copies melee abilities plus Main Gauche procs right now, not auto attacks. Thus keeping it up while using FoK wouldn't make any sense any more and you'll probably only use it to cleave onto a secondary target and start FoKing at 3 targets.

FoK: As mentioned in the tooltip, simply generates 1 CP per use now.

Crimson Tempest

Costs 35 Energy
Does proc Relentless Strikes.
Does proc Restless Blades.
While the tooltip suggests similar damage to Eviscerate, it does roughly 40% of an Eviscerate initially. A 5 CP Crimson Tempest does roughly the same initial damage as a FoK.
As mentioned in the tooltip, it's an AoE with a comparable radius to FoK.
Does benefit from Revealing Strike but only on the target(s) who have the Revealing Strike debuff.
Every single hit of it procs Blade Flurry (-> the whole finisher initial damage gets doubled).
DoT damage ticks every 2 seconds for 12 seconds (6 ticks total).
Total DoT damage doesn't seem to be 30% as suggested in the tooltip but a consistent 24% at 1 CP up to 28% at 5 CP for me.
DoT ticks can crit but unlike live Hemorrhage the DoT doesn't do more damage if the initial hit crits.
Does proc poisons.

trbodsl · 04/07/12, 12:47 PM

Shadow Blades should be a replacement for Assassination's Cold Blood ability only, not a baseline rogue ability . Cold Blood has been a lackluster CD for Assassination for years.

With the primary idea of Subtlety to be a mostly PvP spec and Combat to be a multi target spec and Assassination supposed to be a single target dps spec from their inceptions, it would be nice to see Assassination for once, get a new CD to be able to stay a primary single target dps spec to the end of an expansion. With Combat most always coming out on top by the end of every expansion it makes me wonder why we don't just throw the other specs away?

Don't get me wrong, I believe all 3 specs should be viable for raiding and they have done a really good job of that since Wrath, but they have said that they put in a "dial" into every spec to be able to adjust dps up or down to balance specs and by all rights for a single target fight Assassination should be on top, Combat next and Subtlety third.

In Wrath, Combat passed Assassination by the end and in Cata Subtlety went to the top with Combat second and Assassination third. I would like to see them use this "dial" that they have implemented or give Assassination a better CD to compete on a single target other than Cold Blood.

Otherwise why wouldn't most mages play fire to be better at adds and the boss over Arcane? Same with Arms warriors right now over Fury? And usually Combat rogues over Assassination? It's nice that most of these dps classes are close to each other but shouldn't the primary single target spec be doing more single target dps?

Anachon · 04/07/12, 3:43 PM

Shroud of Concealment is now available at 76. It has a 5min cooldown, only usable while in stealth and lasts 15 seconds.
The visual effect looks like the circle on the ground Illidan and the group get at the beginning of the Well of Eternity instance.
The effect is as simple as it sounds, as long as your party/raid members stay in the circle they get the same normal stealth mode like the rogue. Mobs can see them if they stand too close in front of them and the stealth breaks after the 15 seconds, but i couldn't test it on enemies with stealth detection.
Tested it in Temple of the Jade Serpent.

• Aldriana · 04/07/12, 5:08 PM

Did a little testing of FoK and Crimson Tempest.

1) FoK, at level 85, does 1350 + .48 * AP damage, which matches what you see on the tooltip. This is significantly higher AP scaling than most of our combo point generators - Mutilate, for instance, is about half that despite costing half again as much energy - but I suspect that's intentional because it doesn't scale with weapon damage.
2) And that's significant, because weapon damage appears to be way higher in beta than on live. The legendaries tooltip is 1572 DPS on beta vs 786 on live - almost exactly double. And its not just that the DPS calculation is being done wrong; the base damage of Golad increases from 990-1840 to 1981-3680. Again, doubling.

Also note that this is not unique to the legendaries - all the weapons I've seen do twice as much damage as they do on live. I suspect they've decided they want weapon DPS to be a larger contributor to our damage, so went through and doubled the damage of all weapons, and will rebalance our DPS accordingly.
3) That said, nothing that's happening with Crimson Tempest makes any sense whatsoever. Consider, for instance, the tooltip damage with 12828 AP:

CP	Damage	Increase
1	2212
2	4043	1831
3	7391	3348
4	12013	4622
5	14855	2842

Not even the slightest shred of a pattern; compared to, say, Envenom:

CP	Damage	Increase
1	1449
2	2899	1450
3	4349	1450
4	5799	1450
5	7249	1450

The fact that CT also does more damage than Envenom might be a concern - as that would imply it might well be worth mixing into our single-target rotation. Fortunately (?) when you actually use CT, it doesn't anywhere close to that - a hit on an unarmored critter was doing between 5742 and 6198 damage in my limited testing.

Also interesting is that the bleed doesn't do 30% of the damage of the initial hit. It seems to be closer to 25.9% - that is, each tick is doing damage as though it were doing 1/7 of 30% of base damage... but there are only 6 ticks. It might also be noted that despite hits on the target dummy spanning over 100 damage (3122 to 3241) the ticks all did 139 damage, which additionally implies that its not doing 30% of *actual* damage, done, its doing 30% of some theoretical *base* damage. But it's still mitigated by armor for some reason.

In short: CT is buggy as heck right now. The tooltip doesn't make any sense and has almost no relation to the actual damage done. I suppose this isn't too surprising as they've just added it to the game - clearly there will be a numbers pass sometime before launch - but it is still striking just how little sense it makes.

Midnight08 · 04/07/12, 6:00 PM

Also, dont forget that one of the reasons FoK was so bad for combat was the slow stacking of deadly poison to 5 stacks, Most packs would rarely/never hit enough stacks to start procing instant poisons. With the new mechanics that is a non issue as only 1 stack of deadly is needed to proc the instant effects.

Bastage · 04/08/12, 2:16 AM

The tooltip seems to imply that you will be able to cast it without having a target like it is on live however you can't, will be curious to see how it ends up in future builds.