Mists of Pandaria: All Specs - Page 31

• Aldriana · 08/24/12, 12:33 PM

I strongly suspect Assassination just opens with a Mutilate - it generates about the same number of combo points, does about the same damage, but has a chance to proc Blindside, which will likely be enough to keep it ahead of Ambush.

In terms of stat priorities: we really don't know exact values yet - the numbers are still being run. My best guess for Assassination is that we're going to want to run 7.5% hit and expertise, but what we do after that is just impossible to say. Due to the Blindside mechanic, my guess is that Expertise becomes more important such that we will make it a priority to cap; and since poison hit mechanics have changed such that hit past 7.5% will only benefit white attacks, we're likely to stop there as opposed to continuing on to 13% like we currently do. In terms of haste, mastery, and crit... there's no particular reason to believe that haste and mastery will have significantly dropped in value, but crit will have gotten better due to to 200% poison crits. Whether its *enough* better to overtake haste and/or mastery is really anyone's guess until the new modeling gets finished.

Grimwolf · 08/24/12, 7:55 PM

Originally Posted by Aldriana

I strongly suspect Assassination just opens with a Mutilate - it generates about the same number of combo points, does about the same damage, but has a chance to proc Blindside, which will likely be enough to keep it ahead of Ambush.

Do you think this will be true even though the Ambush is free?

• Aldriana · 08/24/12, 8:47 PM

Do you see "cost" as a consideration anywhere in my analysis?

Alternately: assuming a 30% crit chance, Ambush generates 2.3 CP and does 325% weapon damage. Mutilate generates ~2.5 CP, does 200% MH damage, 200% OH damage, and has a 30% chance to give you a free Dispatch for another 400% weapon damage, plus another 1.3 CP. Assuming your OH does roughly half the damage of your MH, the comparison is thus

Ambush: 325% weapon damage and 2.3 CP
or
Mutilate: ~420% weapon damage and ~2.9 CP.

You tell me.

All that said, as was pointed out to me by a friend this afternoon, Garrote cannot be totally discounted - it gives you some time to get SnD running before you need to start rupturing. It is not immediately obvious to me which is better between Gar, SnD, Mut, Mut/Dis, Envenom and something like Mut, Mut, Rupture, Mut/Dis, SnD.

Grimwolf · 08/24/12, 10:07 PM

Sorry if my response came across as snarky. I only meant it as a simple question. I have a great deal of resect for your opinion and would never treat you with sarcasm. Your comparison is off, however. Ambush recently got buffed to 470% with daggers in build 15983. So it goes back to my simple question, is .6 cps worth 55 energy at the beginning of the fight?

• Aldriana · 08/24/12, 10:15 PM

Ah, right, misread the tooltip. Um... tough to say. Neither strikes me as obviously superior. We'll have to wait for more detailed numbers to be run.

Pathal · 08/25/12, 2:10 AM

Has anyone taken a look to see if [Golad, Twilight of Aspects] is still at an inherent disadvantage after 5.0.4?

Two big issues to overcome were instant poison damage, and main gauche damage. With DP staying at 30% chance, Golad should have the poison advantage now, but main gauche damage isn't really changing, and the emphasis on slow weapons for Killing Spree damage also reduces the potency of two 1.8s daggers.

It shouldn't matter much in the long run, but it might be interesting for the future if someone has checked this out.

nextormento · 08/25/12, 7:04 AM

yellow_hit:	3.00
agi:	2.99
mastery:	2.24
dodge_exp:	1.81
haste:	1.52
crit:	1.29
white_hit:	1.08
str:	1.05

These are the EP weights I'm getting for a lvl85 assassination rogue in a reasonably close to BiS gear. Hit to the cap, agility and mastery remain as the top stats; expertise caping is indeed a lot more attractive (and possibly unavoidable in current itemization). Crit, however, is not taking any significant lead: the 200% poison crits compensates for the loss of Puncturing Wounds Lethality and the Glyph of Backstab.

Take them with a spoonful of salt: while we have better multi-level support, I'm not really looking much at levels other than 90. Development is still ongoing, so they're bound to change, but at this point I don't expect to find anything major that would turn the table upside down. Also note that those don't look *anything* like the EPs we'll have at lvl90.

Wally1169 · 08/26/12, 12:48 PM

Thanks for the level 85 weights - they'll come in handy when 5.0.4 goes live this week. Have you theorycrafted the talents at all yet for a feel of what we should pick on Tuesday when the servers come up?

♦ Viper · 08/26/12, 5:17 PM

What exactly is there to theorycraft? In the level 15 tier, Shadow Focus clearly provides the most damage if that's all you care about. Level 30/45/60/75 are all effectively damage-neutral so it's a matter of personal preference. Preparation will give you one extra use of Shadow Focus but that's about it. And at level 90, Anticipation is the only useful talent unless you're constantly changing targets. Even then, with Bandit's Guile no longer resetting when you change targets, Versatility probably will only be the choice in rare situations.

• Aldriana · 08/26/12, 7:31 PM

I should note that when I ran approximate numbers on the damage benefits of Preparation for Assassination, the numbers are such that its basically only worth worrying about for the most stationary of fights. The damage benefit of an extra Vanish is no more than a second or two of DPS, which is less than you gain from a single (meaningful) usage of Shadowstep in most cases. I expect Combat to be similar. Sub might have a slightly harder decision, but even then... my guess is that Utraxion is the only fight in Dragon Soul where Prep has any advantage at all.

Verain · 08/26/12, 8:03 PM

Presumably an Ultraxxion that actually is equipped with an ass?

EDIT: Garrote yay! N/m

EDIT2 to make this not a waste of space:

I was surprised back when GC stated that they viewed prep delivering damage as a "problem" they were working to "fix" (nothing came of this statement). I found it surprising because it means that in Blizzard's universe, prep is an absolute damage increase, and shadow step is not- despite on MOST fights, shadowstep being a substantial damage cooldown. Burst of Speed is the odd man out here in pve, and step will win on almost every fight.

Wally1169 · 08/26/12, 9:53 PM

Originally Posted by Viper

What exactly is there to theorycraft?

Good point. I guess I was fishing for more there than there is (Aldriana's comments excepted)

mournfulbliss · 08/27/12, 2:41 PM

I am personally finding it very difficult to decide what I want to do with my rogue right now. I know blizzard says that they want to get rid of cookie cutter builds, but if you think about it once someone finds the talents and rotations that work the best for dps, won't many rogues be copying that? I feel like this patch is really going to ween out who really knows their class vs. who is pretending to know their class. -gulps-

♦ Viper · 08/27/12, 3:00 PM

We're left with (as before) three things to decide: spec, talents, and glyphs. Of course, they've made glyphs largely irrelevant and the only talent tiers where there's a substantial choice are the level 45 and level 60 tiers - essentially, damage reduction and mobility.

The 60 tier is going to come down to whether you want Prep or Shadowstep, and that's obviously going to depend on the fight. Prep gives an extra Vanish (marginal dps increase) and an extra Cloak (which could be useful), but I suspect Shadowstep will wind up being better in the long run just due to how much travel time it'll save.

The 45 tier is slightly more interesting as I think a case can be made for all 3 talents depending on encounter design. Cheat Death has its place in learning a boss or cheating some sort of mechanic, but in the long run you shouldn't ever need to be hit by anything that will actually kill you so Elusiveness will probably prove to be the better choice. If there's a fight with a lot of passive raid damage then I can see Leeching Poison being a benefit to the healers, but otherwise I can imagine a lot more situations where having Elusiveness would make a difference.

As for spec, it just comes down to how the final numbers tuning works out. If you're on a fight where cleave can be abused then Combat will probably dominate. However, the numbers at the moment are showing Combat to be the weakest in single-target so there's that.

Overall I'm just finding it hard to even identify a spot where I have much of a choice at all. Everything feels like a forced choice or an irrelevant choice with the new system.

Pathal · 08/27/12, 3:37 PM

Brief PSA. Tomorrow, for those of you who will raid as Combat, you don't actually want 100% uptime on RvS.

When the RvS debuff expires, you want to pool your energy so long as you are not at 5 CP (as you won't have anticipation yet). This allows you to shift energy into better sources of damage. Don't cast SS/Evisc/Rupture with RvS down, just wait it out.

So lets say you can pool a hypothetical average of 40 energy per RvS, with a completely hypothetical 20e/s after Combat Potency. That's a delay of 2s, plus the duration of the RvS debuff, giving you 18/20 or 90% uptime on RvS. The actual "ideal uptime" will change with your gear, but just pool as high as you comfortably can before getting RvS back up.