While I am no longer raiding, my old raid team hasn't had mana issues since week 1. While I know in many guilds mana may still be an issue, in high end raiding with more gear I don't see that being a viable argument. Even if your guild is having mana issues, the amount of incoming damage you are stopping for the raid is ~1%. Also, in Heroic progression, tanks die almost every pull and being ready to evasion tank can be the difference between a progression kill and a wipe.

Examples of 1 shot or huge damage intake mechanics in current tier:

Ice crystal/ Chains on Heroic Stone Guard
Lightning Fists/Wild Fire Draw Flame/Velocity on Heroic Feng
90k shadow bolts from minions in dream world, 90k ticks from Voodoo on Heroic Garajal
... and on and on and on. Almost every ability in Heroic Mode hits hard enough to yank 30% of your life in <1 second (some can just outright kill you). No amount of self healing is going to save that, but an extra second or two for your healers to get you back up can.

While it may be fine for regular progression, I disagree with you on it's effectiveness in Heroic Mode. I can see both sides to the coin though, I just disagree on what poses more danger in raid.

As Aldriana pointed out in the post above me, either way, the value proposition is modest at best and not really something worth laboring over, but I was curious to hear the communities opinion on the how and why.

Anecdotal Note: This might actually be the best designed tier of talent choices, since were actually able to have a real discussion about it and bring up valid reasons to use both talents (thus creating a choice), which was the original intent of changing the talent tree to its current model.

I disagree with your statements about healer mana. Maybe this is only a symptom of 25 man raiding, but all my healers are gemming and picking up every spec of spirit they can because mana is so tight.

With regards to Gara'jal, in 25 man we are 4 healing in order to meet the very tight and hard enrage (throughput more so than mana gets to be an issue due to the regen mechanic of the spirit world). The healing from leeching poison, in addition to other offspec sources such as ret paladin insta-FoL and feral druid cenarius rotation thing, have made a discernable effect in survival and progression. Also the point has already been made, but even if cheat death saves you, it will kill the other two voodoo's and the enrage is too tight at this time to get by with anyone dead.

As far as a use for learning fights in progression, I view it as more of a handicap than an asset. Why learn the fight with training wheels when by the time you get to a kill you really should be preforming the mechanics properly? Having a fall back just builds bad habits in my opinion.

At the end of the day, I agree that neither is obviously OP (hence so much discussion). However, I would prefer to contribute the, albiet small, amount of healing that I can and continue to stride for perfection in my execution of mechanics, rather than bringing zero extra healing and having a fail safe for when I can't rely on myself to preform adequately.

I almost never make a mistake in raid. I literally can count on my hand the mistakes I made that could have killed me in DS and MSV. That being said, I have been killed by mechanics and things like chains, ice crystals, and lightning fists countless times. Why? Because sometimes other people mess up and don't handle chains properly, or bring resonance where they shouldn't or a tank dies and I have to eat a melee swing. Cheat Death isn't just a fail safe for when you mess up, it's a fail safe for when someone else messes up too.

Healing might be "tight" but I haven't heard of our healers going oom yet. These are the same healers who are used to gemming and putting on intellect gear in DS and ending 15 minute fights with 35% mana so forgive me if I don't care if mana is "tight" so long as they aren't oom. I do understand that each group and raid composition is different and if this is happening in your raid, it probably is worth the self healing. Again, this is where personal choice and intelligent decisions come into play.

Really, I think it comes down to this: all three options in the tree have some merit. For all that we like to think of ourselves as perfect players that never make mistakes, the reality is that almost all of us die outside of wipes occasionally, and for most of us the last time it happened was during this tier, and in some cases, this reset. Its not always because of our own mistake - as dizzlex notes, sometimes its because someone else erred - but the point remains, it does happen. For all that the amount of healing from Leeching Poison is minimal - particularly for Assassination - a small amount of healing is better than nothing. And for all Feint is too costly to spam, Elusiveness still has its uses.

Ultimately, it comes down to the nature of the fight. If there's a lot of steady raid damage - like on Elegon - such that you spend most of the fight not topped off, Leeching Poison will do a fair amount of healing. If there are predictable bursts of damage to heal through, like Arcane Velocity on Feng, Elusiveness will provide a good amount of mitigation. And if the main threat is unpredictable burst damage - avoidable or not - Cheat Death will save your life. The trick, of course, being that many fights will involve more than one of these - for instance, Heroic Elegon can reasonably involve all three types of damage. Thus, its always a decision of which one you find most valuable for the content you're currently working on, and while there are some wrong answers to that question (like, you'll have a hard time convincing me that Elusiveness is a good choice for Gara'jal), for most fights there is no single clear right answer.

If you don't have anyone at all for the debuff (pretty rare) then the cost to you if you glyph expose (and you would if this were your situation) would be 25 energy every 30s spent on expose or say 250 energy in a 5 min fight. You even get CPs for that now to blow on other moves.

That's 6.25 SSs (250/40) you miss out on doing and as we know SS doesn't hit all that hard (for me say 25k on average according to Simcraft). So for me that would be 156250 damage I missed out on from less SSs versus the upside of a 12% armor debuff for 5 minutes in this example. As combat over 50% of your damage will come from abilities that benefit from the armor debuff (52% in my case).

I don't know how to calculate what the 12% debuff will mean in terms of a damage increase to that 50%+ portion of your damage that is affected over a 5 min period but I am willing to bet the loss of Stealth for Rogues that it will exceed 156250. As such I have no doubt that glyphed expose would be worth it in these circumstances in a patchwerk style fight. As to whether it would be best helter skelter there might be some debate but I reckon, if you assume you are able to take advantage of the debuff you apply for the majority of the time, you are going to want to use expose (so long as you glyph it - and possibly even if you don't).

I am sure my example is primitive but it probably illustrates the point and better math minds will step in and adjust my calculations to reach the same conclusion.

Helloes!

This is a Combat question.

Wondering whether to use KS or AR+SB in the beginning of a fight, and if it is profitable to always KS on Deep Insight or not.

I know KS´s cooldown gets decreased alot when AR after KS, but is it worth not using KS on Deep Insight when not beeing able to store finishers via Anticipation to save the cooldown ruduces for when it´s on cooldown.

So the questions are:

Should I use KS on cooldown or on Deep Insight?
Should I use KS on cooldown when it is possible to store finishers via Anticipation?
Should I use KS or AR+SB in the beginning of the fight?

Thanks // Daroz

The common consensus is to not delay finisher. So the answer to the first and second question is to use KS on cooldown, unless doing it puts you in risk of failing some mechanics of the fight. About the third question the extra cp and finishers of AR+SB imply a good reduction in the CD of KS, so it's always better to use KS first to avoid wasting relentless blades procs.

Depends on your situation. There are times where you might want to stock CPs in the way you described - like when you have Shadow Blades up in Assassination, and your Envenom buff is on the target already, you don't need to refresh Rupture, and you don't have multiple targets so CT isn't really worthwhile. In a case like that, I will stack to 5 Anticipation charges and then spend them on Envenom when its about to fall or Rupture when it's about to fall.

Otherwise, I try to stay at 1-2 charges max. If you are at 4CP, use another CP gainer. This might put you up to 6/7 (5 CPs + 1 or 2 Anticipation). At that point, use a finisher and then start gaining again. There really is no reason to save up the charges in most situations.

If you are combat spec, there is the case where you are in medium insight and close to deep, where it might be worthwhile to save your charges to hvae 2 finishers during Deep insight, but I don't know enough about that spec to comment if it's worthwhile.

I think a good rule of thumb is spend 'em if you got 'em, if there is something you can spend 'em on. You should only pool CPs if you are forced to do so. Once you are comfortable with that, you can start experimenting with pooling CPs for specific situations.

During my fights I was sometimes in the case where KS is comes out of cooldown ~10 sec later than AR+SB. Everybody must know this situation.
And it is still not clear to me : what is the best choice ?

1) When AR+SB are ready perform 1 more finisher to get KS (Restless Blades), then KS followed by AR+SB.
+ AR+SB reduce the cooldown for the next KS a lot (more than 30sec).
- I lose uptime on AR+SB : waiting 1 sec for the finisher to get KS and 3.5sec during KS, also RB doesn't provide the 10 sec CD reduction for the next AR+SB

2) I use AR+SB before my next finisher, at the end I use KS
+I have the best possible use of AR+SB
- I lose at least 3 RB proc, which would give me a risk to potentionally use 1 KS less during the fight.


3) I use AR+SB before my next finisher, I use KS during the AR as it becomes available.
+ I have some RB proc from the AR+SB to reduce the cooldown of KS (but fewer than in the case 1)
+ I have a better AR+SB uptime than 1 (but not as good as 2)
+ KS witht SB and the auto attack increase from AR
- A LOT of energy lost during the KS


I feel like the 3rd is the worst.

I tend to use the 1st when I feel that I won't have another use of AR by performing the solution 2 or if I have less than 10 sec left in Deep Insight. I use the 2nd based on the fight duration (from my experience) if this solution might allow me to get another use of AR by doing so.

I would like to know the reasoning of other players. And maybe some quick napkin math to show if there is a clear winner (I haven't found an easy and more or less reliable way to do that comparison).

That's not entirely true for either Assassination or Combat. I can't speak for Subtlety because I have no interest in the spec and have never done much research.

For Assassination the goal is to maximize the number of specials you can get into an Envenom window, as well as maximize the up-time on Envenom. As such, you should be pooling your energy before casting Envenom, and using as many Mutilates and Dispatches as you can during the Envenom buff window. It is never optimal to over-right the Envenom buff unless there is less than 1 second remaining on it, even if you have 5 CP and 2-3 Anticipation.

For Combat, it is almost always optimal to go to 4 Anticipation charges. The reason being that the more Sinister Strikes you perform the further you get into Bandit's Guile. The only exception to the rule is if you are in Deep Insight, at which point you should use your CP as soon as you have 5 to spend. It is important to note though that if you have 4 Anticipation you should spend your CP and not use Sinister Strike again as you would have a chance of wasting a proc from Revealing Strike.

I only have anecdotal information to go off of, but there was discussion of this during Dragon Soul at the end of Cataclysm. The concensus was that it was never ideal to have AR up when KSp came off CD. At the time, I had estimated that you'd take off about 30 seconds worth of your CDs during the duration of AR, and would delay by that up to that much if KSp was close to coming off. However with the addition of Shadow Blades you remove far more than that, so I'm not sure what the ideal delay is. In your example though, it would be best to go with option 1 and delay until KSp was up, use it then proceed with AR/SB.

I have a question, that i searched for and could not find an answer.
I play Assassination as my preferred spec. However some fights pretty much require me to go combat [Garalon, Stone Guardians]. I haven't been the luckiest in getting drops for my OS. I have however gotten 2x [Dagger of the Seven Stars] , and also have a [The Horseman's Sinister Slicer]. From what I have read we should always go with a slow MH, however askmrrobot is telling me the double daggers are much better [about 4000 points]. Should I be breaking the slow MH rule in this case? The combat post doesn't say anything in regards to MH.