Bandit's Guile : Old School vs New School

[Krushinator 49]

As you should know by now if you keep up with Rogue news, Bandit's Guile is changing for 6.0. The spell itself is not changing, but the way we will use it is changing due to the new Revealing Strike.

Revealing Strike now deals 20% more damage, but no longer advances Bandit's Guile.

This is a huge change because it gives us a real level of control over turning the states of Bandit's Guile. Depending on how you use it, you could significantly increase the number of Eviscerates you pump out during Deep Insight, or you could significantly reduce the overall uptime of your Deep Insight.

I'm going to go over how to most effectively use this spell the old way and the new way.

OPENING ASSUMPTIONS : I assume that you will know how to use Revealing Strike properly to refresh your damage buff. I will not keep mentioning it through the rest of the post. I will also tell you that I currently only use Rupture at the end of Deep Insight phases. I find that trying to use it elsewhere and trying to maximize uptime on it really gums up my rotation and makes it harder for me to properly exploit Deep Insight.

Old School:

Currently, both Sinister Strike and Revealing Strike add to your Bandit's Guile counter, which makes the buff hard to control well. Nevertheless, here is what you're aiming for:

No Insight - You've just come off of Deep Insight, you're combo point and energy starved. This is the time to build as fast as possible towards Shallow Insight. If your Slice and Dice timer is going to run out while you're still in No Insight, be sure to refresh it with a 5 point cast. This should last you right through your next Deep Insight phase. Don't worry about building energy in this phase, just build combo points fast.

Shallow Insight - Ideally you've got more than 5 combo points at the start of this phase. You will want to keep your combo points high by Eviscerating at 9-10 combo points. If you're lucky, your old Slice and Dice timer has lasted until you have 9-10 combo points in this phase, and you can Eviscerate followed by a 4-5 point Slice and Dice that will definitely last you through your next Deep Insight. The best time for this to happen is when you have 0 or 1 stacks of Shallow Insight, but you don't have a lot of control over that. After you've refreshed your Slice and Dice, you want to start building combo points again.

Moderate Insight - The goal for this phase is to roll over to Deep Insight with as much energy and as many combo points as possible. If you're unlucky you'll have to refresh Slice and Dice during this phase, but your goal is still the same. If you must refresh it, only go with a 2 or 3 point refresh by Eviscerating at 7 or 8 points then casting. Any higher and you might land yourself in the same situation next time around.

Deep Insight - If you've set yourself up well, you've got 9 to 10 combo points, high energy and a Slice timer longer than 15 seconds. It's time to blast away. Get off as many 5 point Eviscerates as you can, and once you reach the last finisher you're going to be able to cast during Deep Insight, use Rupture instead. It will snapshot your Deep Insight (for now) and carry it forward until it expires.

New School:

Come 6.0, Rupture is out and Revealing Strike has a new definition. The lack of Rupture will make things a little easier to deal with, and Revealing Strike no longer advancing Bandit's Guile will give you a much higher level of control over the buff.

BE CAREFUL. Revealing Strike, while buffed, will still not rival Sinister Strike for damage. Also, the more you use the ability, the less overall time you will have in Deep Insight. Just because you can delay your switch into Deep Insight doesn't mean you get to fap around in the lead up and just fix everything right at the end. Your DPS will be lower if you do that.

With that in mind, most of the above information will still apply in 6.0 and beyond. No Insight you want to be building combo points. Shallow Insight you're refreshing Slice and Dice with a 5 point finisher if possible. Moderate Insight you're building energy and Combo points and refreshing Slice and Dice with a 2-3 point finisher if necessary. Deep Insight you're blasting away, no Ruptures.

Moderate Insight is the phase that will change the most in the New School. You will no longer be just hoping you end up in Deep Insight with high combo points and high energy, you can use Revealing Strike to make that happen. Once you reach 3 stacks of Moderate Insight, you'll be using Revealing Strike until you hit 7-8 combo points, then pooling your energy. Once you can no longer pool your energy, hit that Sinister Strike, Eviscerate then go to town.

Remember, the more you use Revealing Strike, the lower your DPS potential gets. You still have to play by the old school rules to max out, but now you get to cheat a little bit before Deep Insight so the potential loss for poor setup is lower. Overall, this is a good thing, so use it, don't abuse it.

BONUS : www.curse.com/addons/wow/bandits-guile-helper

This is a very useful addon for displaying your Bandit's Guile information, I highly recommend it.

[Hybrys 199]

It's worthwhile to note that SS only hits about 8% harder than RS, so it's going to be pretty flexible in terms of holding out at -1 to Deep Insight for Trinkets/Spree/target swapping/extra damage phases.

 

I'm much more excited to play Combat in WoD, in part because of this change, adding some real big skill play.

[Krushinator 49]

You are right, so I'll clarify my point. Come 6.0, there will be no reason to enter into Deep Insight with anything less than 9-10 combo points and high energy. Holding back on Revealing Strike and cheating your Deep Insight will certainly be a DPS loss. However, Revealing Strike is still weaker than Sinister Strike, even if by just 8%. So, in terms of theoretical max, fewer Revealing Strike casts means more damage output and more Deep Insight uptime.

Entering Deep Insight properly by using Revealing Strike to set up will be worth it, but if you lead in properly you won't have to use it excessively.

[Krushinator 49]

Bump for reference.

[Carrn 284]

Not sure about how old your information about this is, but it's my understanding that it's more optimal to use RvS (Revealing Strike) during Deep Insight than Sinister Strike.

 

This may not be the case since I didn't have the chance to test it on the PTR, but for WoD I'm pretty sure that this is the case

[Krushinator 49]

Do you have a source on this?

[Carrn 284]

Yeah.

 

The quick version is:

• SS is 100% MH Damage
• Combat Mastery is 225% OH
• Passively white capped

More main hand hits means more Mastery procs, and RvS costs less energy to spam with not a significant amount of damage loss compared to SS. Additionally, running Fast / Slow (Dagger / Sword) for WoD seems to be optimal by about 5-10%  compared to the more tradional Slow / Slow (Sword / Sword) weapon configuration for the same reason - OH DPS is significantly more valuable than MH DPS.

 

This also leans us towards a build that will focus on hard capping mastery, to make as much of the proc as possible, and valuing Mastery more than even Haste. This is really only possible at higher gear levels though, and I'm not sure what the values would be for a Rogue at the LFR level.

 

I need to do some of my own testing on this, but here is Shadowboy's post about it in detail, and potentially how to fix this from Blizz's end

 

http://venomousthoughts.wordpress.com/2014/09/09/combat-off-hand-in-warlords-and-the-problem-with-main-gauche/

Edited October 14, 2014 by Carrn

[Krushinator 49]

Hm, that's an interesting consequence of the changes made to Revealing Strike and MH/OH interaction. From a class design standpoint it's likely unintended, so we'll probably see a change making RvS spam during Deep Insight sub-optimal.

[Carrn 284]

I personally don't care about whether I use RvS or SS inside DI, I just don't want 70% of my damage to be from passive OH swings. It's boring as fuck.