Help with assassination dps

[donreilly91 0]

Hey i'm having issues with my dps and I can't seem to narrow down the problem. I'm currently 523 ilvl and doin about a constant 110k dps on target dummies. I have a 489 trinket that I think might be part of the problem but i'm not too sure. I think I should be doing around 120-130k but not sure. Any pointers or suggestions would be appreciated.

[donreilly91 0]

Forgot link to my toon

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/uldum/Cron%c3%ace/simple

[Krushinator 49]

It's hard to give you specific individualized help without a damage parse from Warcraft Logs or World of Logs, but I'll give it a shot.

 

The first thing you're going to do is put your higher iL dagger in your main hand. Hopefully I'm not out of touch with this fact, but I'm fairly sure offhand weapon damage is still slightly reduced off of the displayed values, and there are still attacks that use only mainhand weapon damage.

 

Second, you've got some gem and reforge choices you can optimize. I put your character into Shadowcraft and used the optimization tools, and it bumped you up a couple thousand DPS. http://shadowcraft.mmo-mumble.com/us/uldum/cron%C3%ACe/#!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

 

This next part is the hard part without having a damage parse, so I'll just go through basic Assassination DPS information.

 

SnD should never fall. Get it applied quickly at the start and use Envenom to keep it up throughout the rest of the fight. Unless there is some huge gap of time between you hitting targets (which shouldn't happen in SoO) you won't have to directly cast SnD more than once. However, it's still good to track the buff and make sure something silly hasn't happened.

 

Rupture is a major part of your DPS. The ability itself isn't doing major damage, but it is activating the Venomous Wounds buff which gives you more poison damage and more energy return. You need as much energy as possible for the Assassination rotation because Mutilate has such a high cost.

 

Dispatch is a DPS gain over Mutilate. You should be using Dispatch immediately whenever you get the Blindside buff, and whenever the target is below 35% health. Make some sort of warning or aura that tracks both the Blindside buff and the health of your target in an obvious way.

 

Try not to clip your Envenom buff. Every time you cast Envenom you gain the Envenom buff for 1 second plus your number of combo points spent seconds, which should always by 5 combo points. During that time you get increased poison damage, and if you cast Envenom again while you already have an Envenom buff, you're devaluing the damage of your previous Envenom. There will be times when you have no choice but to clip Envenom, like when you're about to energy cap or combo cap from Heroism or Shadow Blades, but do your best not to clip the buff.

 

 

That's all I can do from the information you've given me, if you'd like to create a parse for me to analyze I would highly recommend using the Warcraft Logs website as it has far better information and an active team behind it, but World of Logs will work if you have that.

[Blackshade 1]

I can't really help you much since I checked your armory and you have a Safari's hat on, but you're under reqs for hit/expertise for one. You'll want both to sit at 7.50%. If you're having issues with reforging, there's a decent addon I use a lot, I'll link you the addon at the bottom of this post.

As I said, idk what helmet you're using, so not sure if you're under due to the fact you have an empty equip slot or not.

 

About your talents. I'd change some things around, it's not really about increasing dps as much, but survival. And survival on raids = more uptime on boss.

1st, I'd drop Nerve Strike and go for Combat Readiness. This is useful especially on add fights, sometimes you aggro a few adds. No problem, pop CR and eat the dmg, the tank will eventually pick them up and you were able to stay on boss without having to worry about leading adds to tanks or kill them. And really, Nerve Strike has no real purpose in PvE, you'd benefit more from CR.

2nd, drop Leeching Poison. It's useless really. Switch it for Elusiveness. Feint already reduces AOE dmg by 50%, plus the 30% reduction from the talent (and those 30% are valid not only for AOE dmg) which gives you a 80% reduction on splash/AoE dmg, which you get a lot on SoO. And the dmg you prevent from Elusiveneess is higher than w/e Leeching Poison would heal you.

3rd, Dirty Tricks is really useless for PvE. You'll rarely have to CC (only adds I remember we have to CC are the packs of trash before Garrosh). Having said that, all the other ones are pretty useless, this is a crap talent tier for rogues in PvE, but I'd rather go for Prey on the Weak. Why? Because in some encounters, you'll want to stun/gouge adds like immersius adds when he submerges in the water, Galakras adds to lock shammies from casting heals/waves and the bonecrushers from dealing dmg to our heroes NPCs and so on. It will increase dmg taken to 10% from all sources, meaning your teammates will also deal 10% extra dmg on the target. And if you're going to stun them at some point, why not get a benefit out of it?

 

Krush is right though, you'll want your hardest hitting weap on your main hand. Mutilate dmges with both weapons so it's not the reason for it. Envenom's dmg is magical but scaled up not only by how many CP's you use, but also scales dmg depending on your AP. Only Dispatch is influenced by your MH alone, I'm not sure. But the reason you want your MH to be the hardest hitting dagger you have is because the OH dmg is reduced when calculating your total weap dmg, but your OH also hits less times than your MH.

 

All that being said, it's only part of what you need to know to improve your DPS.

 

I'd like you to write down your rotation, and why you do it that way. Even if you provide logs, I'd like to know what rotation you're doing, how you're using your CD's and your priorities.

 

Reforge Addon (Reforgelite) http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/reforgelite

If you don't understand how to use it, I'll gladly show you how, just ask.

Edited March 4, 2014 by Blackshade

[Hybrys 199]

They're right around there caps in currently equipped gear.  I'm guessing that the helm was a key component.

 

I'm not a big fan of Assassination, but there were a couple of things that helped bring up my DPS in it that haven't been mentioned yet.

 

Get your SnD and Rupture up, then hold 5 CPs and start to pool energy.  Once you get up to ~100, you can hit Envenom, then dump your energy w/ Mut, spending your free Dispatches, until you're at ~8 CPs.  Then pool, and do it again.  Envenom empowers your poison application rate, which also happens with specials, including two chances from Mut. So using more Mut/Dispatches while Envenom is up can improve your damage by a lot.  Along with that, you can often get into a rhythm where by the time you have 8-10 CPs, lots of energy, and an Envenom still rolling, it's time to reapply Rupture.

 

It should be noted, though, that you'll see a lot of RNG swing, no matter what.