Assassination Rogue 7.3

[Carrn 284]

1 hour ago, Progression said:

Thanks for your reply. My original post was pretty undetailed. Your findings are a trend that I'm seeing as well - I wonder if focusing on crit/vers equally after ~120% mastery is the way to go.

Maybe we found our first 'plateau'?
- Prog

Really depends - if you have only 15% crit then 120% Mastery will have very little benefit to you, and getting 15% extra Crit will be super important. Similarly, if you have 85% Crit, an extra 15% Crit will do comparatively little to your overall damage

The stats are all relative - because you can only have 2 per piece of gear, you're limited in your choices, but you do need some of each. 

[Guest Flockaflame]

I am with him... his guide needs to be edited more... it hasn't changed anything ... just the talent and build part

[Valks 2,375]

On 10/13/2016 at 2:01 PM, Guest JVguy said:

Why does the assassination talents say to take agonizing poison, but the poison section says always use deadly poisons as your lethal poison?

Quoting from the guide here:

Quote

Your Lethal Poison should always be  Deadly Poison, unless you are talented into  Agonizing Poison. If you are using  Agonizing Poison, you should always use it over  Deadly Poison.

Where are you seeing to use deadly over agonizing?

[Valks 2,375]

4 hours ago, Guest Flockaflame said:

I am with him... his guide needs to be edited more... it hasn't changed anything ... just the talent and build part

What do you feel still needs changing at this point?

[Espion 0]

I feel like there should be a section for Mythic + Dungeons. I have been having issues with friends playing Mythic + as assassination using the suggested Venom Rush talent. The problem with venom rush is that it's really good for single target but for the majority of the dungeon the tank is trying to chain pull constantly and to have consistent damage through out the dungeon is kind of difficult as an assassination rogue. I'm not understimating sin rogues in cleave I know they do really good AOE damage with ruptures on all targets but on alot of the trash mobs it also depends on how your artifact weapon procs "100% Rupture damage" and especially the "Tricks of Trade" traits. So I decided to give "Death From Above" for more cleave (total damage) damage a chance. Single target I was surprised as I was doing top DPS on most of the boss fights. Death from Above casts an automatic envenom once you land and buffs the envenom by 50% more damage, I would end up crits having envenom crits up to 1.3 million. And for the cleave it's consistent AOE damage. I don't think this talent should be ignored for Mythic+ specifically let me know what you guys think!

Also let me add I'm using Master Poisoner talent and AP Stats are :40% crit and 130%mastery. I feel maybe also master poisoner works better for me with such high mastery. I would like some feedback on this as well. Thank you for all your work on the guide!

Edited October 16, 2016 by Espion

[Furty 51]

18 hours ago, Espion said:

I feel like there should be a section for Mythic + Dungeons. I have been having issues with friends playing Mythic + as assassination using the suggested Venom Rush talent. The problem with venom rush is that it's really good for single target but for the majority of the dungeon the tank is trying to chain pull constantly and to have consistent damage through out the dungeon is kind of difficult as an assassination rogue. I'm not understimating sin rogues in cleave I know they do really good AOE damage with ruptures on all targets but on alot of the trash mobs it also depends on how your artifact weapon procs "100% Rupture damage" and especially the "Tricks of Trade" traits. So I decided to give "Death From Above" for more cleave (total damage) damage a chance. Single target I was surprised as I was doing top DPS on most of the boss fights. Death from Above casts an automatic envenom once you land and buffs the envenom by 50% more damage, I would end up crits having envenom crits up to 1.3 million. And for the cleave it's consistent AOE damage. I don't think this talent should be ignored for Mythic+ specifically let me know what you guys think!

Also let me add I'm using Master Poisoner talent and AP Stats are :40% crit and 130%mastery. I feel maybe also master poisoner works better for me with such high mastery. I would like some feedback on this as well. Thank you for all your work on the guide!

Death From Above is good for AoE but overall much lower on single target. On higher levels of Mythic+ I would advise sticking to a more single target/cleave oriented build (EP/NS/DS/Thug/Alacrity/VR) but DBA might be a good alternative for extremely low Mythic+ (where large pulls are more commonplace). Since our guides are intended for a raid audience and this is a very sub optimal specialization for dungeons there will likely not be a Mythic+ section to this guide, though I am considering adding it to the Outlaw guide (as it is an ideal specialization for dungeons).

[entlassen 0]

I have a quick question about Vanish.  Is it off the GCD?  
When I play sub, this macro never fails:

/cast Shadow Dance
/cast Shadowstrike

On assassination, I have this macro which is similar in structure & intent:
/cast Vanish
/cast Rupture

(my actual macro is a bit longer, as I throw in a trinket and racial ability cast before the Rupture, as well as a /startattack at the end since the Vanish stops my autoattacks)

The Vanish + Rupture macro will usually work on training dummies and 5-man dungeons, but oftentimes in raids the Rupture will fail to go off for some reason.  If Vanish is really off the GCD, why would this happen?  Is this like a known problem that players encounter?  Maybe the split-second change in stance bar interferes with the Rupture cast? 

[Guest Skarpio]

The bis list say in head Mask of Multitudinous Eyes dropped in "Dragons of Nightmare" and that's so wrong, that helm is dropped by "Elerethe Renferal"...

The head dropped by Dragons of Nightmare is Cowl of Fright, and if you are saying for best stat mastery-crit with Agonizing Poison i think the BiS should be the Cowl... not the Mask... or i'm wrong?

[Guest Viole]

I don't know if it is supposed to be asked on friday, but here I go:

As Rogue PvE, we get 50%+ damage when using Rupture invisible (Vanish+Rup). Does it work aswel with nightelf racial? If using Racial+Stealth+Rupture is a thing, would be huge Dps gain. But I don't know if works, anyone can relate this? Like in a fight against a raidboss, is it possible to go out combat ans Stealth and stuff? If yes, should I chance my Race for Nelf, then?

 

Thanks in advance.

[Valks 2,375]

8 hours ago, entlassen said:

I have a quick question about Vanish.  Is it off the GCD? 

It does seem to be, yeah. I'm not sure why the macro doesn't work, could the start attack have an impact? Shouldn't Rupture already cause your auto attacks to start?

[Valks 2,375]

4 hours ago, Guest Skarpio said:

The bis list say in head Mask of Multitudinous Eyes dropped in "Dragons of Nightmare" and that's so wrong, that helm is dropped by "Elerethe Renferal"...

The head dropped by Dragons of Nightmare is Cowl of Fright, and if you are saying for best stat mastery-crit with Agonizing Poison i think the BiS should be the Cowl... not the Mask... or i'm wrong?

I'll get Furty to update this, thanks!

[Carrn 284]

8 hours ago, entlassen said:

I have a quick question about Vanish.  Is it off the GCD?  
When I play sub, this macro never fails:

/cast Shadow Dance
/cast Shadowstrike

On assassination, I have this macro which is similar in structure & intent:
/cast Vanish
/cast Rupture

(my actual macro is a bit longer, as I throw in a trinket and racial ability cast before the Rupture, as well as a /startattack at the end since the Vanish stops my autoattacks)

The Vanish + Rupture macro will usually work on training dummies and 5-man dungeons, but oftentimes in raids the Rupture will fail to go off for some reason.  If Vanish is really off the GCD, why would this happen?  Is this like a known problem that players encounter?  Maybe the split-second change in stance bar interferes with the Rupture cast? 

If I had to guess, you're getting excited because you're in a raid environment and you're spamming your buttons a little too early. Even a fraction of a second left on your GCD will mean that Rupture won't cast and you'll break your Vanish with autos

[Carrn 284]

17 minutes ago, Guest Viole said:

I don't know if it is supposed to be asked on friday, but here I go:

As Rogue PvE, we get 50%+ damage when using Rupture invisible (Vanish+Rup). Does it work aswel with nightelf racial? If using Racial+Stealth+Rupture is a thing, would be huge Dps gain. But I don't know if works, anyone can relate this? Like in a fight against a raidboss, is it possible to go out combat ans Stealth and stuff? If yes, should I chance my Race for Nelf, then?

 

Thanks in advance.

I'm not sure if it still works. Night Elves used to be able to use their racial mid combat and macro it to stealth to get another opener.

That said, all of the racials are very balanced, and it won't matter that much whether or not you change if you aren't really pushing cutting edge progression 

[Guest RogueNoob]

On 10/15/2016 at 11:21 AM, Blainie said:

Quoting from the guide here:

Where are you seeing to use deadly over agonizing?

It has been changed since my first comment has been made.  Thanks.

[Valks 2,375]

24 minutes ago, Guest RogueNoob said:

It has been changed since my first comment has been made.  Thanks.

The last update I can see is from the 7th, so I assume it was changed then. Thanks for your comment anyway!

[Guest Bleedrogue]

Is there a certain threshold of when agonizing overtakes exsanguinate?  I've run tests on training dummy and my exsanguinate build is doing more dmg than my agonizing poison build even at 100% mastery.

 

[Guest Gaelvin]

Is there a point when crit will have a higher stat weight then mastery for an agonizing poison spec?

I currently have 35% crit and 126% mastery and both Simc and Mrrobot ranks crit higher then mastery, while shadowcraft has mastery has the best stat.

Sorry if this is a noobish question..

AskMrRobot:

SimC:

Shadowcraft:

[entlassen 0]

5 hours ago, Carrn said:

If I had to guess, you're getting excited because you're in a raid environment and you're spamming your buttons a little too early. Even a fraction of a second left on your GCD will mean that Rupture won't cast and you'll break your Vanish with autos

 

I experimented with the following macro a few times just now to see what would happen:

#showtooltip
/cast [combat] Vanish
/cast [stealth] Rupture
 

The test (on a training dummy, no lag):
Build up combo points, and then auto-attack until energy is at max.  Then press the macro once.  (i.e. no on-GCD abilities are pressed before or after the macro).

Result:
My rogue will vanish, but Rupture will not go off.  I remain in stealth (autoattacks are auto-turned off from the Vanish).

Now I'm really confused.  It appears that the first line of the macro (Vanish) goes off, but not in time to give the thumbs up for the [stealth] conditional in the second line?  I don't really understand why that would be happening if Vanish is off-GCD.  Is there supposed to be some lag between pressing Vanish and the character actually entering stealth?

[Guest Karrkat]

Since I haven't seen much update with this guide lately and there has been a lot of changes, and I'd like to just place a few things I've seen help with dps.

First of all, for stats you should have 40-50% crit, and then go heavy mastery. This seems to greatly help with the damage we can push out.

For aoe, switch to deadly and for single use agonizing poison. 

All 3 best relics should be used to reduce the CD on Vendetta, especially with the third gold trait we have. 

And for food stat, go with the fishbrul special. Seems to do a lot better than the stat food.

[Carrn 284]

4 hours ago, entlassen said:

 

I experimented with the following macro a few times just now to see what would happen:

#showtooltip
/cast [combat] Vanish
/cast [stealth] Rupture
 

The test (on a training dummy, no lag):
Build up combo points, and then auto-attack until energy is at max.  Then press the macro once.  (i.e. no on-GCD abilities are pressed before or after the macro).

Result:
My rogue will vanish, but Rupture will not go off.  I remain in stealth (autoattacks are auto-turned off from the Vanish).

Now I'm really confused.  It appears that the first line of the macro (Vanish) goes off, but not in time to give the thumbs up for the [stealth] conditional in the second line?  I don't really understand why that would be happening if Vanish is off-GCD.  Is there supposed to be some lag between pressing Vanish and the character actually entering stealth?

Yeah Vanish doesn't actually stealth you until the vanish effect ends.

I also don't think [stealth] is a valid property for macros, I believe you have to use the [stance:1] thing. I could be mistaken, I know they changed it in Legion because the bars used to not swap, but then they changed part of it back so the bars did swap

Side note, this is part of the reason why I macro as few things together as possible

[entlassen 0]

 

Quote

Vanish doesn't actually stealth you until the vanish effect ends.

I don't understand what you mean by "the vanish effect."  You press the button, and you enter stealth.  The bars change and you see the Stealth "buff" in your list of buffs.  Are you saying there is lag between when you hit the button and when you actually are in stealth?  Because I thought off-GCD abilities were by-definition instantaneous.

Also, I am pretty sure the [stealth] conditional still works.  I just made the following test macro:
/cast [stealth] Mutilate
and the macro works when I'm in stealth.

I believe the whole stance thing you're talking about was with Shadowdance, when Blizz changed the way it worked and then reverted the changes.

Anyway, if someone has any more insight as to what is happening with Vanish that is making my macro not work, I'd appreciate it.  Even if I don't use the macro, I kind of just want to know the mechanics of why it might be failing.
 

[Carrn 284]

34 minutes ago, entlassen said:

I don't understand what you mean by "the vanish effect."  You press the button, and you enter stealth.  The bars change and you see the Stealth "buff" in your list of buffs.  Are you saying there is lag between when you hit the button and when you actually are in stealth?  Because I thought off-GCD abilities were by-definition instantaneous.

I'm just talking about the buff you get when you Vanish. You don't get the Stealth buff right away.

 

39 minutes ago, entlassen said:

Anyway, if someone has any more insight as to what is happening with Vanish that is making my macro not work, I'd appreciate it.  Even if I don't use the macro, I kind of just want to know the mechanics of why it might be failing.

I just tried it myself and can't get it working. Not sure why - it seems that calling a stealth command (either Stealth or Vanish, I tried both) has a delay between casting and actually swapping stances. With the speed a macro sends commands at, it goes too quickly to count as being in stealth

[entlassen 0]

Thanks for taking the time to test it out.  It's pretty much what I'm experiencing.  I guess it's probably like you said, that there is some sort of lag going on with Vanish.  Either the stealth "buff" isn't immediately applied to the rogue, or there is delay with the actual stance/bar swaps.

If that's true, then my original macro of
/cast Vanish
/cast Rupture
which worked some of the time (as opposed to the macro with [stealth] conditional, which worked none of the time) probably applied a regular non-stealth-buffed Rupture in the times that Rupture did fire off.

[Carrn 284]

10 hours ago, entlassen said:

Thanks for taking the time to test it out.  It's pretty much what I'm experiencing.  I guess it's probably like you said, that there is some sort of lag going on with Vanish.  Either the stealth "buff" isn't immediately applied to the rogue, or there is delay with the actual stance/bar swaps.

If that's true, then my original macro of
/cast Vanish
/cast Rupture
which worked some of the time (as opposed to the macro with [stealth] conditional, which worked none of the time) probably applied a regular non-stealth-buffed Rupture in the times that Rupture did fire off.

It worked fine when I used Stealth/Vanish then manually pressed the [stealth] macro - even though I pressed the keys as soon as I could, it seemed to be enough of a delay

[Carrn 284]

16 hours ago, Guest Gaelvin said:

Is there a point when crit will have a higher stat weight then mastery for an agonizing poison spec?

I currently have 35% crit and 126% mastery and both Simc and Mrrobot ranks crit higher then mastery, while shadowcraft has mastery has the best stat.

Sorry if this is a noobish question..

AskMrRobot:

SimC:

Shadowcraft:

When you have a low value of an important stat, it will give you more benefit to pick up that stat than to stack on even more of your higher one. Stats are dynamic and will always change