Legion - Assassination Discussion

[Deleted]

Assa again isn't mentioned in the new ptr notes. I still wont give up my hopes for an AP removal / useable AoE burst.

[Essem]

I think its starting to get too late now for a straight up AP removal and <insert new talent here> testing, just going to have to deal with being glued to one target and no proper AoE. All we can hope for is that we are atleast top tier single target.

[permp]

Assa again isn't mentioned in the new ptr notes. I still wont give up my hopes for an AP removal / useable AoE burst.

They will broke even more assa rogue.

I bet that SUB will be the nice spec in the beginning of 7.2.5 and than they will try to buff assa with those useless 4% buff until they broke again and nerf.

[Deleted]

Not even suprised at all. They probably have their hands full with Outlaw, since they shattered that spec into pieces, and Sub because of the many changes which don't really work out as they want to. Sin is a mostly working and coherent spec; it is just needs to be tuned by the numbers. The removal of AP is therefore probably not their highest priority for rogue class tuning. It is still somewhat infuriating to see not a single rogue change, next to absolutely no response on the PTR threads (this is a problem with other classes as well). There are about 20 pages of rogue feedback up right now on the PTR forum, and - in typical Blizzard fashion - not a single blue response was given. Oh but the team wanted to increase the presence on the PTR forums tenfold, right Josh?

[Won7on]

New PTR sets changes and Assassination still IGNORED.

Sub is looking like it's gonna be the best of both worlds in 7.2.5. They're even getting bonus damage vs targets affected by Nightblade, effectively making it like our T19 4P. They're getting a good AoE talent to spec into. Shadowstrike problems are being fixed. Symbols of Death is being changed to something actually interesting. As if to put the nail in the coffin and say "forget the other specs, you should play Sub only", they're putting Sprinting over water back in for Sub.

IMO it's pretty clear right now that once you're happy with your Ass weapon, you should start putting points into the Sub daggers and set your loot spec to Sub for legendaries too in preparation for 7.2.5.

[SSJones]

Sub is looking like it's gonna be the best of both worlds in 7.2.5.

It depends largely on how they tune the damage numbers. Most of the mechanic changes for sub so far have been huge nerfs to damage output, and the effect of shoulders/boots. We'll have to see how they bump the pure numbers capability back up.

[Toogoodman]

Sub is looking like it's gonna be the best of both worlds in 7.2.5. They're even getting bonus damage vs targets affected by Nightblade, effectively making it like our T19 4P. They're getting a good AoE talent to spec into. Shadowstrike problems are being fixed. Symbols of Death is being changed to something actually interesting. As if to put the nail in the coffin and say "forget the other specs, you should play Sub only", they're putting Sprinting over water back in for Sub.

IMO it's pretty clear right now that once you're happy with your Ass weapon, you should start putting points into the Sub daggers and set your loot spec to Sub for legendaries too in preparation for 7.2.5.

It is interesting to see, however, they're doing a ton of mechanical changes to sub. I can see once they're happy with how Sub and Outlaw are playing from a rotation basis, they start tuning numbers for all 3 specs. I would like to know where Assassination is going though, once im 52 points into assassination ill be catching sub up to 52 as well just in case (i have all BiS sub legendaries as well so im good there). I enjoy assassination right now, i enjoyed Exang/Hemo the most at he beginning of the xpac, but i dont see them buffing those numbers to where they need to be for the spec to be viable, we can only hope they're smart about they do to the specs.

- - - Updated - - -

I'm starting to think that the way you begin to fix Assassination AoE is straight up with some huge buffs to Fan of Knives. Sure, there's other issues, like Poison Knives not working with AP, Poison Bomb, and the fact that FoK relies on Crit for CP generation when we haven't really cared about Crit since EN (and our BiS legendary actively devalues crit, in fact)...

... But still, when you have a Legendary that gives you 100% crit, and another legendary that gives you 1050% INCREASED DAMAGE, and that ability still can't even hit for 1M... I think the base damage of the ability might just be abysmal.



After playing Sub and feeling that Shuriken Storm is actually somewhat powerful, FoK feels like tickling your enemies by comparison.

- - - Updated - - -

Completely unrelated:



These stat weights...???

Anyone else seen Mastery sim higher than Agi or did something weird happen in my sim?

This is with 11k Mastery already btw. I knew it scaled well because of double-dipping AP and Envenom damage, but I didn't know it scaled that well.

So i agree with you, FoK needs a serious buff. If theyre going to commit to getting rid of AP then they need to replace the talent with something like "Deadly Assassin" which would, lets say, increase the damage of Deadly Poison by 100% (making it a true poison spec). This would do a few things, MP would be the obvious go to still, Mastery would hold the same value, and with a buff to FoK, we could do some SERIOUS AoE when spreading deadly poison to all targets. This is really the only way i see the spec being more balanced in the AoE department without some stupid "AoE poison button".

On my sims now, at 914 ilvl, is showing mastery as higher than agi, the higher mastery gets the more dmg out AP gives us, which is now starting to out scale agility. My sims are starting to explode exponentially, with a few upgrade i went from 900k dps on sims to 960k dps, which is insane. This also lead to me changing my neck enchant to the trained soldier, which is a huge 600 mastery enchant.

[omeomorfismo]

the problem with aoe is that our damage depends a lot on dots, that in the poisons case they tick every 3 sec.
so imho if they want to give us a resemblace of burst aoe they should implement a sort of exanguinate aoe for dp like "your next finisher burst a debuff on all enemy on 8y that raise the frequency of dp every 0.5(or 1) sec for y sec" and maybe every proc of dp is doubled
so we still must pooling for fok and finally can do some dot damage before adds die

btw the most important thing is that hemo dont become viable, i so hated the cata-wod shift-mutilate that wont suffer another macro for hemo <.<

[Won7on]

Idk, not every class necessarily needs burst AoE IMO. We're a DoT class, I'm ok with our AoE being DoTs. Obviously it sucks when you see Demon Hunters demolish packs with Eye Beam, but there are situations where sustained AoE damage is important too. I think encouraging multi-dotting for AoE is the way to go for Assassination.

Obviously, once AP is removed, we'll have DP and Rupture, and potentially 4 Garrotes still with Subt. Personally, I'd first like to see:

1. FoK to 1CP/target hit like Shuriken Storm
2. FoK buffed so it does something more than tickle.

And also a talent replacing AP that either:

• Applies a short Rupture to all targets around you, let's say 4/6/8/10/12 seconds. Might make AoE too "easy" though.
• Applies a new bleed to all targets around you, a la Crimson Tempest. Might be too complicated, with potentially 4 DoTs in AoE scenarios now.
• Amplifies or accelerates the DoT damage targets around you take, like Enhanced Crimson Tempest or a "Mass" version of Exsanguinate.

Or some combination of those. I wouldn't want just an on-use "deal 2M to everything around you" button as that wouldn't feel very "Assassination Rogue" to me.

[Mafic]

Crimson Tempest returning as a finisher would be cool. There is a lot of interesting things they can do if it is a talent choice replacing AP.

[Elyzibeth]

•Applies a short Rupture to all targets around you, let's say 4/6/8/10/12 seconds. Might make AoE too "easy" though.
•Applies a new bleed to all targets around you, a la Crimson Tempest. Might be too complicated, with potentially 4 DoTs in AoE scenarios now.
•Amplifies or accelerates the DoT damage targets around you take, like Enhanced Crimson Tempest or a "Mass" version of Exsanguinate.

My biggest beef with anything like the 3rd option listed is that it still means our ramp up time on any sort of AOE will completely suck. We'll still need to garrote > FOK > rupture, new target repeat 3-4 times then us a "mass exsanguinate etc. By the time we get our bleeds setup, the local lock/mage/warrior/dk/monk etc. will have blown them up and be moving on, unless their super high health.

If we get an AOE, it needs to be something that does decent damage in a burst. Give us something like like Crimson tempest back, or something new and fun like a seed of corruption but class fitting. "stick a bomb to the target that detonates after 5 seconds doing X amount of damage" maybe even add a mass stun onto it to give us some kind of helpful group utility in M+ dungeons.

[shaunika123]

Idk, not every class necessarily needs burst AoE IMO. We're a DoT class, I'm ok with our AoE being DoTs. Obviously it sucks when you see Demon Hunters demolish packs with Eye Beam, but there are situations where sustained AoE damage is important too. I think encouraging multi-dotting for AoE is the way to go for Assassination.

Obviously, once AP is removed, we'll have DP and Rupture, and potentially 4 Garrotes still with Subt. Personally, I'd first like to see:

1. FoK to 1CP/target hit like Shuriken Storm
2. FoK buffed so it does something more than tickle.

And also a talent replacing AP that either:

• Applies a short Rupture to all targets around you, let's say 4/6/8/10/12 seconds. Might make AoE too "easy" though.
• Applies a new bleed to all targets around you, a la Crimson Tempest. Might be too complicated, with potentially 4 DoTs in AoE scenarios now.
• Amplifies or accelerates the DoT damage targets around you take, like Enhanced Crimson Tempest or a "Mass" version of Exsanguinate.

Or some combination of those. I wouldn't want just an on-use "deal 2M to everything around you" button as that wouldn't feel very "Assassination Rogue" to me.

I hope it's something like "for the next x seconds your chance to apply poisons are increased by your mastery %, any % that goes over 100% will enable additional procs"


ie with 150% mastery you could proc DP 3 times / fok

obviously the numbers could be tuned

[Won7on]

Anectodal, and small sample size, but I'm getting way better results with Nightstalker than Subt. I dunno. Technically, Subt should be the better talent mathematically, especially on shorter fights. But as Mastery scales higher and higher, Envenom damage increases relative to Garrote, and even though the talents are 125% vs 50%, NS also gets the FULL benefit of 100% crit buff, while Garrote is only partially covered. NS is also just simpler, not requiring any alignment of Garrote and Vanish.

So I've been playing Subt since 7.2 on the advice of some prominent theorycrafters, but I think I may go back to NS since it performed very well on farm today.

[Deleted]

Yesterday i had a quick rush through NH nhc for AP and i know most fights are pretty short, but BoT barely hit 3% (very unkucky most People would say hoho), mostly it was around 2% for me. Frond's average was like 1.5%, which didn't even procc once on several bosses. It feels so depressing. I am not such a big fan of DoS, but i think i am going to swap it for frond just to reduce rng. I really need those damn shoulders, i've got nine legendaries and still no shoulders, also feels depressing.

And btw., i am kinda worried that we still cant find any sin ptr notes. I mean the removal of AP requires tweaking around it which has to be tested, tuned and balanced. The release of ToS is coming closer, so what the hell are they even doing? I am really afraid that sin will be totally messy and underperforming in the upcoming patch, which wouldnt be a problem to switch for SUB if there wasnt that fucking AP grinding. Everything about my rogue feels so sad at the moment, i've been playing rogue since BC and we always had good and bad times. But it is just horrible at the Moment.

[Todesbote]

I am really afraid that sin will be totally messy and underperforming in the upcoming patch, which wouldnt be a problem to switch for SUB if there wasnt that fucking AP grinding. Everything about my rogue feels so sad at the moment, i've been playing rogue since BC and we always had good and bad times. But it is just horrible at the Moment.

Let me try to put it in perspective. We have at least another 6 weeks until ToS. That means we will be on AK 40-42 when ToS hits. The new Paragon trait (Concordance of the Legionfall) gives us a 2000 agility proc with mediocre uptime. Each Artifact level beyond 52 will increase the proc by 200 agility. This is not even comparable with the 0.5% damage boost of the old paragon trait. Believe me I already played with Concordance and you won't even notice having it.

That said with AK 42 you will most likely be able to push all 3 specs to 52 and unlock the paragon trait for all specs just by doing world quests / weekly M+ chest / AP missions. No insane grind needed. I'm not saying that AP doesn't matter at all but it matters way less than in 7.1.5.

[Deleted]

DoS is beast on short fights
Simply godly.

[Deleted]

Let me try to put it in perspective. We have at least another 6 weeks until ToS. That means we will be on AK 40-42 when ToS hits. The new Paragon trait (Concordance of the Legionfall) gives us a 2000 agility proc with mediocre uptime. Each Artifact level beyond 52 will increase the proc by 200 agility. This is not even comparable with the 0.5% damage boost of the old paragon trait. Believe me I already played with Concordance and you won't even notice having it.

That said with AK 42 you will most likely be able to push all 3 specs to 52 and unlock the paragon trait for all specs just by doing world quests / weekly M+ chest / AP missions. No insane grind needed. I'm not saying that AP doesn't matter at all but it matters way less than in 7.1.5.

You are absolutely right. I will hit 48 today. I didnt put too much effort since i was fed up of grinding that AP. The question is, do i continue with Sin, since the following traits after you hit 48 (Balanced Blades) and concordance are pretty much useless or do i start investing into Sub just in case they really mess up on Sin, i am not sure yet, but i probably will go for Sub tho.

[omeomorfismo]

Anectodal, and small sample size, but I'm getting way better results with Nightstalker than Subt. I dunno. Technically, Subt should be the better talent mathematically, especially on shorter fights. But as Mastery scales higher and higher, Envenom damage increases relative to Garrote, and even though the talents are 125% vs 50%, NS also gets the FULL benefit of 100% crit buff, while Garrote is only partially covered. NS is also just simpler, not requiring any alignment of Garrote and Vanish.

So I've been playing Subt since 7.2 on the advice of some prominent theorycrafters, but I think I may go back to NS since it performed very well on farm today.

i still use ns in short fight or when i know that the cd return shortly before the end of the encounter
the flexibility to use for envenom and rupture imho is > the potential damage from garrote, even without 4p.
but frankly i still need to do the math to be sure xD

[Xanatu]

DoS is beast on short fights
Simply godly.

If DoS were best on short fights, you'd see it represented in the shortest single target fights.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/ranking...=Assassination

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/ranking...=Assassination

[SSJones]

If DoS were best on short fights, you'd see it represented in the shortest single target fights.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/ranking...=Assassination

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/ranking...=Assassination

Frond RNG is kinda like getting 6 buff on outlaw. Yeah it parses higher when it happens, but does that really make it better?