Please help me be less bad.

[Deleted]

Hello friends,

I've recently returned to the game after having not played seriously since the end of Wrath and am in need of some help.

Now, the story is that I managed to convince my wife to play and she's gone in hard on the game. We've gotten to doing some light raiding (HC EN once a week) and fairly low mythic +'s (4-7). I play Assassin rogue and she is a feral druid, and between us we have piss-poor AoE. We're yet to waste a keystone (doing up to +6/+7) but I always end up feeling really bad if we miss out on chests on easier keys because, whilst my boss DPS is pretty good, we really struggle to melt through the trash in time.

I'm running a mastery-centric MP/AP build and trying to rupture a couple of targets for energy regen, FoK spam on bigger packs and basically praying for a poison bomb proc, otherwise my damage is horrendous. My question is thus; A) is my rotation just wrong? B) Should I just focus on one mob and treat it like single target? C) Would Exsang be a better choice just to have a bit more on demand damage?

My ilvl is a sad 867 with 150% mastery and a shocking 22% crit.

Tear me apart boys!

[Khaeladin]

I applaud your willingness to request feedback, but there's a couple of things you need to provide if you want useful insights.

1) We don't even know what your toon looks like gear-wise. Please provide an Armory or a profile link; this will also help us see what kind of talent choice you're running.

2) You're running relatively low-level mythic+; mob kill times generally are not to the length that assassination sustained AoE DPS would be as favorable as bursty AoE from, say, a demon hunter. Assassination AoE, while better now due to the normalization of rupture damage, still has some ramp up compared to other DPS classes with on-demand burst. I don't know feral druids very well, but my suspicion is that they're probably somewhat similar as well so the comp you two run probably doesn't favor the level of mythics you're running.

3) The way you describe your DPS priority is too vague. With all due respect, that would like me be saying "On a boss, I keep up rupture and garrote and spam envenom. My DPS is bad; please help!" While on paper it sounds fine, optimal DPS performance comes from more specific things like your uptime on targets (how much are you actually sticking to a target), how aggressively you're positioning to stay behind the target, are you clipping your ruptures/garrotes too early, etc. Again, too many unknowns that are still a question mark with the description you've provided.

Hope that gives you a place to start.

[Tier539]

Exsang is going to be better for M+, however sin rogue in general is going to have poor aoe unless the mobs live long enough for your bleeds to tick. AP in M+ is not going to work well, I suggest running MP/Vig/Exsang. Even then, your aoe will not be good without bomb procs, that is the nature of the class right now. If you can, try to go Outlaw in M+ since the aoe is a lot more reliable with that spec.

[shaunika123]

dont play assa in m+ if you dont have someone with insane AOE in your grp like a fire mage

level your outlaw or sub to a decent amount and play that

[Deleted]

I never have issues with running M+ as assass though, sure, we arent DH/DK/Hunter quality when it comes to aoe, we cant get no 6mil+ aoe dps, but I frequently get between 1-1.6mil aoe atleast, sometimes 2+ if bomb lucky(+ pots). It all depends on comp, if you alrdy are heavy aoe dmg group, having assass rogue is really good for bosses, especially during tyrannical weeks. In my group i always top boss dmg, while my friends take care of the trash.

[Deleted]

dont play assa in m+ if you dont have someone with insane AOE in your grp like a fire mage

level your outlaw or sub to a decent amount and play that

why not? iam ranked 1 rogue (8 overall) on my realm as assasination, cleared serval 15+ keystones.. and 4 days ago i got cloak so now it can just get better

[shaunika123]

why not? iam ranked 1 rogue (8 overall) on my realm as assasination, cleared serval 15+ keystones.. and 4 days ago i got cloak so now it can just get better

because the OP was talking about 7+ not 15+
obviously in 15+ assa is good esp with tyrannical (altough i'd still play sub)
and obviously the cloak makes the spec semi AOE

but that's hardly in OPs ballpark yet

i'd love to see you do any kind of performance in +7 as assa compared to fire mages, DHs, monks, affli locks hunters, or basically anything that isnt an assa rogue lol

[milkbonez]

Assassination really doesn't shine till 10+ when mobs have higher health and tyrannical/fortified really let you ramp up the damage.

[Deleted]

Assassination really doesn't shine till 10+ when mobs have higher health and tyrannical/fortified really let you ramp up the damage.

this basically, unless youre lucky and have the leggy cloak

[Deleted]

First things first: You will never do insane levels of dps on trash on lower level m+. This is even more true if your dps partners are good. So if you run Mage, Moonkin, Sin rogue you will have very low trash dps for lower end M+.

Here are a few tips that can help.
Use AP but change poisons in between trash and bosses. You will get used to it but it is very important that you do thisPlay with subterfuge (lvl 30 talent). Your opener is: GR 1st target. GR 2nd target, GR 3rd target, 3 CB Rup on the 4th. Fok, Envenom spam. You need to adapt this basic idea based on the fight length. If the mobs are living passed the Garrote duration your energy will dry up and you will will not be able to spam fok. In this case you will need to use every other finisher to apply a rupture. This needs a lot of feeling for the fights so if you do not boost m+ with regularity I would suggest you use your Outlaw spec.

A talent build could look something like this: 2/2/3/3/1/1/1

Keep in mind that damage is not the only thing that matters in M+. Deaths and poor play in regards to affixes can cost you more than missing some dps on the meters.

[Deleted]

I applaud your willingness to request feedback, but there's a couple of things you need to provide if you want useful insights.

1) We don't even know what your toon looks like gear-wise. Please provide an Armory or a profile link; this will also help us see what kind of talent choice you're running.

Yeah, probably should have thought about that. Go easy on me, relics and stat priorities are a little bit all over the place as I'm just getting back into the game.
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...uljrimm/simple

3) The way you describe your DPS priority is too vague. With all due respect, that would like me be saying "On a boss, I keep up rupture and garrote and spam envenom. My DPS is bad; please help!" While on paper it sounds fine, optimal DPS performance comes from more specific things like your uptime on targets (how much are you actually sticking to a target), how aggressively you're positioning to stay behind the target, are you clipping your ruptures/garrotes too early, etc. Again, too many unknowns that are still a question mark with the description you've provided.

Whilst I appreciate your help and see your point, there isn't a huge deal more I can say on trash other than keeping rupture on two or three targets with garrote and then investing FoK combo points into 4 or 5 point envenoms and hoping for a miracle poison bomb. I suppose a more appropriate way of phrasing my point would be is there a break point of mobs to start using FoK over single target and DoT spreading?

As an example of my somewhat limited capabilities currently, here is a log someone shared of our first HC Xavius kill last night. Don't know who to credit for the log as we pulled in some favours to pad our roster a little bit. I dropped garrote too much as it was only our 4th pull of the boss and I wasn't too clear on where to be, you can interpret that for being a little on the low side. Otherwise it's probably a fairly good example of my playstyle.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...done&source=11

Use AP but change poisons in between trash and bosses. You will get used to it but it is very important that you do thisPlay with subterfuge (lvl 30 talent). Your opener is: GR 1st target. GR 2nd target, GR 3rd target, 3 CB Rup on the 4th. Fok, Envenom spam. You need to adapt this basic idea based on the fight length. If the mobs are living passed the Garrote duration your energy will dry up and you will will not be able to spam fok. In this case you will need to use every other finisher to apply a rupture. This needs a lot of feeling for the fights so if you do not boost m+ with regularity I would suggest you use your Outlaw spec.

A talent build could look something like this: 2/2/3/3/1/1/1

Keep in mind that damage is not the only thing that matters in M+. Deaths and poor play in regards to affixes can cost you more than missing some dps on the meters.

This is very interesting. I hadn't really considered taking subterfuge over nighstalker but as an energy regen idea it does make a lot of sense. As for your last point, I'm naturally a fairly cautious player and (especially with my shitty legendary) tend to prioritise not dying anyway, i'd just like to feel like less of a burden when it comes to 2 or 3 chesting things.

Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to reply though, it's greatly appreciated. To those saying "go Outlaw" sadly the answer will always be no, I just don't enjoy the spec at all, it really doesn't appeal to me.

[Akka]

You're not going to have any kind of good AoE with Assassin rogue, period.
Either focus on high-priority targets, switch to Outlaw spec when there is going to be a lot of trash, or shrug and accept you're going to do bad DPS on packs.

[Deleted]

You're not going to have any kind of good AoE with Assassin rogue, period.
Either focus on high-priority targets, switch to Outlaw spec when there is going to be a lot of trash, or shrug and accept you're going to do bad DPS on packs.

Don't get me wrong, i'm not expecting miracles and to be topping meters, I just want to go from "completely fucking useless" to "not holding the group back". Getting some advice may well help me to do that.

[Deleted]

There is some good news and some bads news for you.

As of the newest patch Exanguiante with versatility/crit outshines AP even on single target.

Bad news is you have to get versatility/crit instead of mastery.

If you are running mythic plus with a chainpulling tank alacrity is a a dps increase over exanguinate(for mythic plus).

The way assassination does aoe dps in mythic plus is 2-3 ruptures, do an envenom and spam fok while envenom is up. Hope for poison bomb procs obv.

AP is really, really bad for aoe. FoK deals pretty much no damage with AP and envenom scales very poorly with AP aswell as once you reach 5 stacks, well thats it.


AS the other guys have said however, this does require some ramp up time. Mythic 5+ with your feral girlfriend should mean thigns dying slow enough that you can do some reasonable aoe. The higher you go, the better it becomes.

Edit: Also Akka is not right.

Assassinations aoe dps in higher mythic plus far outshines that of outlaw. Its basicly the reason people where bringing them for high mythic plus groups, and not outlaw rogues.

Also also:

If i where you guys and i where focusing on mythic plus, i'd get my gf to reroll balance or a different class. Feral is just terrible for mythic plus

[Eythorian]

Some of the things that helped me in m+ dungeons: (running from 5-8 on average)

Apply Deadly Poison before trash even though you're speced into AP. Apply Garrote on one target (from stealth), Mut/FoK until 4-5 CP, put Rupture on at least 3 mobs. Spam FoK and do Envenom on 4-5 CP. Keep an eye on Rupture on all targets and reapply it when the timer is below 7.2 secs (8.0 with 6 CP if you chose that talent). When doing boss (single target with not many adds) apply your AP again. Might also help to pop a Prologned (Old War if you have the $$$ to spam it) potion before pulling if you need to burn something down really fast.

[Akka]

Don't get me wrong, i'm not expecting miracles and to be topping meters, I just want to go from "completely fucking useless" to "not holding the group back". Getting some advice may well help me to do that.

The best advice I can give is to switch to Outlaw for packs.

[Deleted]

-Doesnt show or explain rotation he is following
-Asks for critique on rotation
-OK THEN

[Akka]

Edit: Also Akka is not right.

Assassinations aoe dps in higher mythic plus far outshines that of outlaw. Its basicly the reason people where bringing them for high mythic plus groups, and not outlaw rogues.

If you're going to claim that the commonly-held lowest AoE spec is outdpsing the commonly-held highest AoE spec, you're going to provide some more in-depth explanation I'd say.

[Deleted]

-Doesnt show or explain rotation he is following
-Asks for critique on rotation
-OK THEN

-Reads first post in thread (not the post where I link armory, logs and rotation
-Post snarky comment
-OK THEN

[Deleted]

If you're going to claim that the commonly-held lowest AoE spec is outdpsing the commonly-held highest AoE spec, you're going to provide some more in-depth explanation I'd say.

Actually you are the one saying its bad. Its not commonly-held the lowest AoE spec. And also if you think outlaw is the highest aoe dps spec in the game i'm going to have to laugh at you. With the recent nerf to BF regen and how well assassination scale on longer living trash. I dont know if your problem is that you are running Mythic plus 5-8 where trash dies instantly?