Legion - Assassination Discussion

[Infernix]

This is still a net buff to poison though right? I dont care which way the spec plays, but this is still a step forward in terms of damage.

This is my question. Is Master Poisoner/Agonizing Poision now worth taking over Hemorrhage/Exsanguinate?

Is it close enough to not matter? Is it still worthless compared to H/E? Does it matter at all?

[precious]

In my own little dreamworld this would be ideal :
-Revert Exsang to its previous state and make it baseline
-Make hemo baseline
-Nerf bleeds buff poisons a bit more and make them scale with mastery just like poisons do
-Replace hemos missing talent with a bleed buffing one so we can choose between bleeds and poisons
-Replace Exsang missing talent with a reworked Crimson Tempest (Requires Combo Points, 45sec CD, Apply Rupture to all targets in 15 yd radius)

You cannot have diff classes with same mastery effect. Baking bleeds inside mastery will never happen.

[omeomorfismo]

without taking master poisoner is a buff
with master poisoner is a buff for deadly poison (instant+dot) with more than 2 proc every 3 sec. pretty sure that is a neat gain even in this case.
now we need simulation to know how mastery change

[TheRogue]

Even with five stacks, and unless exsang is even more gutted. Agonising poison might still not be a great choice even just down to the energy regen we get from exsang.

[GT4]

I haven't done any in-depth testing but with the adjusted numbers in simc, DPS for the standard spec went down by up to 10%. With the standard profile, changing talents to anything else was still a DPS loss. Going full poison (master poisoner + alacrity) and changing crit/versa to mastery/haste also netted a huge DPS loss.

[Mask]

I haven't done any in-depth testing but with the adjusted numbers in simc, DPS for the standard spec went down by up to 10%. With the standard profile, changing talents to anything else was still a DPS loss. Going full poison (master poisoner + alacrity) and changing crit/versa to mastery/haste also netted a huge DPS loss.

Well the good news is, with these nerfs and with Assassination currently scaling the worst of the 3 specs, I would guess it is the most likely spec to get significant changes down the line in 7.1 or 7.2 to bring it up to where it should be. Maybe they will then also properly balance the mastery perk and the talent choices in such a way that bleed focused Hemo and Exang builds aren't the only viable way to play the spec.

[RobertoCarlos]

I think they are going to be twerking the dials on poison/bleed damage all of legion. Lets just hope the pendulum just doesn't swing too far.

[hlodvig1505]

Well the good news is, with these nerfs and with Assassination currently scaling the worst of the 3 specs, I would guess it is the most likely spec to get significant changes down the line in 7.1 or 7.2 to bring it up to where it should be. Maybe they will then also properly balance the mastery perk and the talent choices in such a way that bleed focused Hemo and Exang builds aren't the only viable way to play the spec.

We can also follow the old SV hunter pattern.

Well tbh there's only one thing i dislike about all these nerfs - we are made to play outlaw. Even after the bleed nerf we've decent ST dps but outlaw is simply better at everything.

[Deleted]

GG Blizzard, a step closer to the poison but there's still things to do, here is a list:

- Apply to Mastery: Potent poisons and Master poisoner for Envenom, Bag of tricks, and Creeping venom.
- Replace Thuggee by Flying daggers (PvP talent) and vice versa.
(Thuggee : The Garrote silence effect works out camouflage but its effect reduce by 1sec.)
- Delete Agonizing poison and replaced by System shock(PvP talent); and System shock replaced by Hemotoxin: 45sec cooldown / Reduces the target's maximum health by 15% for 15 sec. Requires a bleed effect to be active on the target.
- Modified Alacrity.
(Your finishing moves have a 20 + (20 * ComboPoints)% chance per combo point to grant 1% Critical strike for 20 sec, stacking up to 10 times.)
- Replace Death from above by Crimson tempest.
- Replace tooltip Venom rush by that of Overkill.
(http://www.wowhead.com/spell=58426/overkill).
- Nerf damage Garrote and to applies Serrated edge and Gushing wound(artifact).
- Shadow walker reduces the cooldown of ShadowStep by 3sec.
(Artifact : 3/6/10/13/16/20 sec)
- (Artifact) Shadow swiftness when you use ShadowStep, the cooldown of Sprint is reset.
- Replace Assassin's blades(artifact) by Vile Poisons.
(Your lethal poisons have a chance to resist dispel and damage / effects are to increase by 5%.)

[kumarshah]

If you take Agonizing Poison then it replaces Deadly Poison right?

Doesn't that make it just a badly thought out talent...

Agonizing should be replaced with something that affects Evenom

[Celfydd]

Agonizing should be replaced with something that affects Evenom

Envenom does affect the application rate of Agonizing Poison.

[Todesbote]

Agonizing should be replaced

Something I and many others have said for months during the beta. The talent is just horrible. It's horrible for being an uninteresting flat %-damage talent. It's even more uninteresting because it replaces Deadly Poison which quite frankly should be the core of our spec identity seeing how the Artifact ability and many traits interact specifically with Deadly Poison. We have said this over and over and over in the feedback threads. Nobody cares at Blizzard.

[Mask]

Something I and many others have said for months during the beta. The talent is just horrible. It's horrible for being an uninteresting flat %-damage talent. It's even more uninteresting because it replaces Deadly Poison which quite frankly should be the core of our spec identity seeing how the Artifact ability and many traits interact specifically with Deadly Poison. We have said this over and over and over in the feedback threads. Nobody cares at Blizzard.

Assassination is the only spec that gets to use poisons now. Blizzard needs to make poisons AWESOME in the spec. I really wish poisons were more of a focus than bleeds are - I don't even like having to manage multiple bleeds and debuffs. Or at least let people spec to be poison focued and awesome at poisons, or let them spec to be awesome at bleeds, and let both be viable. Give us deadly, and agonizing, and leeching and crippling all SIMULTANEOUSLY for anyone who wants to put their talent points there.

[Gilor]

I don't even like having to manage multiple bleeds and debuffs..

Of course this is the problem ... the reason Sin was unplayable by serious players in WoD was because they'd continued to make it ridiculously simple so they nerfed it's damage to fit. With the addition of a few bleeds at least we have a chance of being allowed to do real dps. They could easily change the flavour of the abilities to be poisons rather than bleeds but please don't make us the same as MM hunters with nothing to do cos they'll hold us back on dps again.

[Mask]

Of course this is the problem ... the reason Sin was unplayable by serious players in WoD was because they'd continued to make it ridiculously simple so they nerfed it's damage to fit. With the addition of a few bleeds at least we have a chance of being allowed to do real dps. They could easily change the flavour of the abilities to be poisons rather than bleeds but please don't make us the same as MM hunters with nothing to do cos they'll hold us back on dps again.

Balancing the game so that specs (or classes) that have more bars to look at do more damage than those that have less to look at is very poor game design imo. Especially when we are talking about this game where gaps can easily become 10% or 20% between the good specs and the bad specs. Some people want more control and more finesse over what is happening, and should be able to have the option to play in that way (talents are great at this) - other people might want to relax and not have to focus on so many things to manage while playing. Both should be viable and should be *close* to each other in effectiveness (within 1-2%).

[omeomorfismo]

Of course this is the problem ... the reason Sin was unplayable by serious players in WoD was because they'd continued to make it ridiculously simple so they nerfed it's damage to fit. With the addition of a few bleeds at least we have a chance of being allowed to do real dps. They could easily change the flavour of the abilities to be poisons rather than bleeds but please don't make us the same as MM hunters with nothing to do cos they'll hold us back on dps again.

lol, combat was always a very good spec despite being more stupid than assassination :|

[Celfydd]

Envenom damage has been increased to 60% Attack Power per point (was 50%).
Deadly Poison instant damage has been increased to 17% Attack Power (was 14.2%).
Rupture damage has been decreased to 25% Attack Power (was 30%).
...
So agonizing poison is an extra stack now and rupture was dropped off by 5% of attack power im not sure how much of a nerf that is, So does this change anything?

Looking at the current damage breakdowns by source, this is a 3% buff (Deadly Poison and Envenom contribution to overall damage), and an 8% nerf (Rupture contribution to damage), for a total nerf of 5% damage, grosso modo.

[Chemii]

I got infracted when saying Blizzard hasn't got a clue what they are doing with Rogues a month or so back. All this does is highlight that statement and how badly designed the class is currently.

You know it's bad when a free MMO does a class design they stole from you, better than you.

[Generical]

Not like this, Blizzard. Not like this.

[Gilor]

Balancing the game so that specs (or classes) that have more bars to look at do more damage than those that have less to look at is very poor game design imo. Especially when we are talking about this game where gaps can easily become 10% or 20% between the good specs and the bad specs. Some people want more control and more finesse over what is happening, and should be able to have the option to play in that way (talents are great at this) - other people might want to relax and not have to focus on so many things to manage while playing. Both should be viable and should be *close* to each other in effectiveness (within 1-2%).

Maybe, but it was Blizzard's clear design decision for rogues (and others) in WoD. They wanted to reward specs that required more effort and Sin is an example of how they punished simplified specs with poor damage. Have they indicated that philosophy has changed? I hadn't noticed it.

lol, combat was always a very good spec despite being more stupid than assassination :|

Trying to remember when combat was ever a first choice spec before ... Ulduar? I remember people seemed to like it back then though I stuck with Sin at the time. They cranked it's ST up again in early MoP but heavily nerfed it back again when it caused the AOE to get too high. Otherwise combat was only the AOE spec which you switched to from your proper ST spec , whether Sin or Sub.

Looking at the current damage breakdowns by source, this is a 3% buff (Deadly Poison and Envenom contribution to overall damage), and an 8% nerf (Rupture contribution to damage), for a total nerf of 5% damage, grosso modo.

I spent a long time dummy testing this after it went live and was surprised to find my overall numbers pretty much exactly the same on live so not sure how it's a nerf. Not that live results matter anyway - looking forward to new sims.