Legion - Assassination Discussion

[Deleted]

I upgraded my Shoulders (Mantle) and a couple hours ago I got the Head legendary. I sim ~20k DPS more with the Legendary Head + Shoulders.

Instead of: Legendary Shoulders + Boots.

Of course I switched CoF (now running Foci 905 + NBF 905).
Simdps is now: 1027255 with 917 iLvL equipped.
Using 2x MA relics. I tried simming - replacing the 2 MA relics with Gushing Wound relics (I have 2 with same iLvl) - but I would lose 5k ~ without MA relics.

This head is nice :> But if I can upgrade the Boots I think its better to switch again (as long as I dont have the 4x T20)

seems like your gear setup before the legendary helmet was weak. The helm is just a very nice stat stick, the effect is meh. There is no way that the helm outdps the bracers. zoldycks are actually the strongest legendary by a large margin (in 4p T20).

[Deleted]

seems like your gear setup before the legendary helmet was weak. The helm is just a very nice stat stick, the effect is meh. There is no way that the helm outdps the bracers. zoldycks are actually the strongest legendary by a large margin (in 4p T20).

I think its mainly because of the 970 GS (Head also has Mastery > Crit main stats - which makes it even more powerfull with high iLvl) and ye - wrists are awesome if we have 4p T20 - which I obv. dont have yet. But thats why I wrote I will switch back to boots as soon as I can upgrade them to 970 (like I did with shoulders).

But I was fascinated that I got that much DPS increase. Its also interesting that even without CoF + Boots you still should go MA relics.

[Tier539]

Anyone calling for PB to be an on-use button realizes it would need to be nerfed into the ground, right? Like, at least 60-70% less damage? Sometimes I'm not sure if y'all are trolling or just delusional.

Go look at the top parses on Maiden. This guy got a couple good Poison Bomb procs during TB or Vendetta, and one really good one during TB+Vendetta+Vanish+damage buff. And look how absurd that damage was. If everyone could do that right now on demand, lining multiple charges of it up with Vanish and adds, the damage would be absolutely busted. There wouldn't be a better spec in the game for AoE OR Single Target.

So, be careful what you wish for. I wouldn't mind seeing it as a button too, but realize that it would need to be nerfed massively for this to happen.

I'm fine with that. Giving us on demand AoE puts us in control of our own damage and takes it out of the hands of RnG. The variation in parses right now is almost Roll the Bones level of absurd. You can vary between top dps and bottom dps based on PB procs alone.

[thottstation]

Is it true that Cloak of Shadows cannot immune you from Kil'Jaedan's Armageddon strikes?

I'd test it myself, but it's kinda important right now that I not risk literally killing everyone just to experiment.

[Xanatu]

Is it true that Cloak of Shadows cannot immune you from Kil'Jaedan's Armageddon strikes?

I'd test it myself, but it's kinda important right now that I not risk literally killing everyone just to experiment.

Armageddon is physical.

[pies1]

And utterly overpowered.

The trait should be removed and it should become either a weakened baseline AoE finisher or a similarly potent talent that makes us deliver some ST damage in favour of AoE.

The Q and A stated there's going to be no significant changes to it mechanically until 8.0, at which point it's likely to be shoved in an AoE talent tier with crimson tempest and venom rush.

[DakonBlackblade]

I love those PB procxs, they feeling really good in aoe scenarios. I don't want it to be removed but I would like to have it as a Button with 2 to 3 charges. That would be nice.

They said 8.0 tough

[shaunika123]

man they're so wrong about toxic blades it's not even funny

they draw the havoc DH comparison, but it's so not the same
a: those are two major long cd cooldowns vs two low cd cooldowns
b: they're just flat damage buffs with zero interaction to anything
c: havoc DHs rotation is as uninteresting as it can get, so yeah maybe separate cds could work, however assa rogues have to worry about CP management, energy management, debuff/buff management, all of which directly interact with kingsbane and toxic blades, the issue is however, that with all of them being so scattered and uneven, people just succumbed to spamming them on CD instead of any thoightful interaction like pooling energy and/or CPs for a big burst combination of KB+TB, preparing your dots in a way that you dont have to refresh them but can focus on envenom/sot uptime during those buffs that's a lot of interaction

the fact that they made them not sync up actually makes them more boring for assasination, since you just press them on cooldown like you would any other ability and your rotation doesnt really change at all.

assasination used to have this super smooth rotation with a nice rythm, where continuous CP and energy management was the key instead of some big cooldown management, and they literally made it into an awkward whack-a-mole,

drawing the havoc DH comparison was horrible

assa didnt need more cooldowns it was never a cooldown spec(in fact it used to be proudly the opposite), it never really fit with it's thematic rotation, it was always about short buff/debuff maintenance and it's relation to energy/cp management in a continuous and sustained manner.

toxic blades completely missed the mark, it didnt make the rotation smarter, it turned it into a "press everything on cooldown" sort of shitty and awkward mess. and i cannot believe they cant see that.

sure assa was never the end all be all of "difficult specs" but it still had an enjoyable simplicity with it, with enough interaction to make you enjoy the game, you still had to pay attention to a bunch of stuff, but because it was so smooth people started to think it's brainless.

hint: just because something doesnt feel like a chore to play doesnt mean it's not good. a lesson you could also learn with feral dps

[Varolyn]

Idk about you, but I don't think having a poison that sometimes took 5 secs after the pull to get one stack is exactly "smooth." I'm not saying toxic blade is the perfect answer, but you can't deny AP was one of the laziest talents in all of legion, and brought back stacking poisons, a thing removed in mop and never should have seen the light of day, again.

What was a funny comment by the devs though regarded assassination's ability to target switch. In MoP and especially wod, sin could switch to priority targets quite well, because you only need rupture and DP on the target, and sometimes you would get lucky and get dispatch procs to make it even better. I know the numbers weren't all there, but I still think that assassination was at it's pinnacle mechanically during MoP and WoD, at least in pve. I soo wish dispatch would come back....

[pies1]

hint: just because something doesnt feel like a chore to play doesnt mean it's not good. a lesson you could also learn with feral dps

On the topic of feral this cracked me up

I'd expect a more common trend of talents having a simple added effect that boosts DPS so the talent can be tuned without introducing an overly large pacing swing (seen already with many recent redesigns: Soul of the Forest, Legacy of the Void, Boulderfist, Reverse Entropy, and so forth).

So literally reverting to WoTLK talent tree.

[Tier539]

man they're so wrong about toxic blades it's not even funny

they draw the havoc DH comparison, but it's so not the same
a: those are two major long cd cooldowns vs two low cd cooldowns
b: they're just flat damage buffs with zero interaction to anything
c: havoc DHs rotation is as uninteresting as it can get, so yeah maybe separate cds could work, however assa rogues have to worry about CP management, energy management, debuff/buff management, all of which directly interact with kingsbane and toxic blades, the issue is however, that with all of them being so scattered and uneven, people just succumbed to spamming them on CD instead of any thoightful interaction like pooling energy and/or CPs for a big burst combination of KB+TB, preparing your dots in a way that you dont have to refresh them but can focus on envenom/sot uptime during those buffs that's a lot of interaction

the fact that they made them not sync up actually makes them more boring for assasination, since you just press them on cooldown like you would any other ability and your rotation doesnt really change at all.

assasination used to have this super smooth rotation with a nice rythm, where continuous CP and energy management was the key instead of some big cooldown management, and they literally made it into an awkward whack-a-mole,

drawing the havoc DH comparison was horrible

assa didnt need more cooldowns it was never a cooldown spec(in fact it used to be proudly the opposite), it never really fit with it's thematic rotation, it was always about short buff/debuff maintenance and it's relation to energy/cp management in a continuous and sustained manner.

toxic blades completely missed the mark, it didnt make the rotation smarter, it turned it into a "press everything on cooldown" sort of shitty and awkward mess. and i cannot believe they cant see that.

sure assa was never the end all be all of "difficult specs" but it still had an enjoyable simplicity with it, with enough interaction to make you enjoy the game, you still had to pay attention to a bunch of stuff, but because it was so smooth people started to think it's brainless.

hint: just because something doesnt feel like a chore to play doesnt mean it's not good. a lesson you could also learn with feral dps

I agree. I actually enjoyed the talent when I was playing it sub optimally and saving it for the last 9s of KB everytime. It feels smooth and works out well. When people kept saying to just use everything on CD, I didn't believe them because the way it played it really seemed as if blizzard designed the ability to be paired with vendetta/KB. On the opener it feels great if you wait until 9s left in KB. Now the spec is just hit all your shit whenever the fuck and pray for PB procs while the are up. I sometimes get tempted to save CDs, but I know if I don't use them for a few seconds and get a PB proc in that timeframe I'm going to be sad so i just hit them as quickly as i can.

I do like the feel of our AoE abillity more now though. It is passable and sometimes really good.

[Deleted]

I think the PB part was the most worrying. They went from RPPM, a shitty system (since it is RNG), to an even shittier system we have now. Now he 'wants' PB to have this Card Deck RNG system, which is kind of like RPPM. I mean if you 'consumed' your last proc just before the adds spawn you are pretty much screwed like in RPPM (except if you got very lucky and got another proc). We will likely track our procs with a weak aura (like with ShT) and, when the adds are about to come up and a proc is due, save all energy to dump as much envenoms as possible and pray for procs.

I hope they will stick with the talent route and not just change the RNG of PB. Our 100 tier is lame anyways.

[omeomorfismo]

man they're so wrong about toxic blades it's not even funny

they draw the havoc DH comparison, but it's so not the same
a: those are two major long cd cooldowns vs two low cd cooldowns
b: they're just flat damage buffs with zero interaction to anything
c: havoc DHs rotation is as uninteresting as it can get, so yeah maybe separate cds could work, however assa rogues have to worry about CP management, energy management, debuff/buff management, all of which directly interact with kingsbane and toxic blades, the issue is however, that with all of them being so scattered and uneven, people just succumbed to spamming them on CD instead of any thoightful interaction like pooling energy and/or CPs for a big burst combination of KB+TB, preparing your dots in a way that you dont have to refresh them but can focus on envenom/sot uptime during those buffs that's a lot of interaction

the fact that they made them not sync up actually makes them more boring for assasination, since you just press them on cooldown like you would any other ability and your rotation doesnt really change at all.

assasination used to have this super smooth rotation with a nice rythm, where continuous CP and energy management was the key instead of some big cooldown management, and they literally made it into an awkward whack-a-mole,

drawing the havoc DH comparison was horrible

assa didnt need more cooldowns it was never a cooldown spec(in fact it used to be proudly the opposite), it never really fit with it's thematic rotation, it was always about short buff/debuff maintenance and it's relation to energy/cp management in a continuous and sustained manner.

toxic blades completely missed the mark, it didnt make the rotation smarter, it turned it into a "press everything on cooldown" sort of shitty and awkward mess. and i cannot believe they cant see that.

sure assa was never the end all be all of "difficult specs" but it still had an enjoyable simplicity with it, with enough interaction to make you enjoy the game, you still had to pay attention to a bunch of stuff, but because it was so smooth people started to think it's brainless.

hint: just because something doesnt feel like a chore to play doesnt mean it's not good. a lesson you could also learn with feral dps

that's not true.
envenom's buff was always, since wotlk, our "cooldown" where we must squeeze all the possible damage for dp procs.
now they have extended that concept with kingsbane and the new talent, we must always play arond the incoming CD, we have always more room of optimization in a way that's more noticeable than before.
yes, the pb proc give use high variance in wowprogress %, but having consistently high kingsbane damage is still necessary.
i really have hard time to see the boring part in this

[Won7on]

man they're so wrong about toxic blades it's not even funny

they draw the havoc DH comparison, but it's so not the same
a: those are two major long cd cooldowns vs two low cd cooldowns
b: they're just flat damage buffs with zero interaction to anything
c: havoc DHs rotation is as uninteresting as it can get, so yeah maybe separate cds could work, however assa rogues have to worry about CP management, energy management, debuff/buff management, all of which directly interact with kingsbane and toxic blades, the issue is however, that with all of them being so scattered and uneven, people just succumbed to spamming them on CD instead of any thoightful interaction like pooling energy and/or CPs for a big burst combination of KB+TB, preparing your dots in a way that you dont have to refresh them but can focus on envenom/sot uptime during those buffs that's a lot of interaction

the fact that they made them not sync up actually makes them more boring for assasination, since you just press them on cooldown like you would any other ability and your rotation doesnt really change at all.

assasination used to have this super smooth rotation with a nice rythm, where continuous CP and energy management was the key instead of some big cooldown management, and they literally made it into an awkward whack-a-mole,

drawing the havoc DH comparison was horrible

assa didnt need more cooldowns it was never a cooldown spec(in fact it used to be proudly the opposite), it never really fit with it's thematic rotation, it was always about short buff/debuff maintenance and it's relation to energy/cp management in a continuous and sustained manner.

toxic blades completely missed the mark, it didnt make the rotation smarter, it turned it into a "press everything on cooldown" sort of shitty and awkward mess. and i cannot believe they cant see that.

I agree with everything 1000000% and I wish I'd phrased the TB question better. But I only had ~10 minutes to type that whole post up since the Rogue community completely failed to organize any sort of compiled post. If I'd had hours to prepare and write the question ahead of time, I would have pointed out how managing this many debuffs and individual CDs feels like juggling too many different balls, which is the real issue with TB. When you have to keep up Envenom, keep Garrote/Rupture rolling, track several other debuffs, and optimally use 4 staggered CDs, the spec just feels like a mess. It's clunky.

sure assa was never the end all be all of "difficult specs" but it still had an enjoyable simplicity with it, with enough interaction to make you enjoy the game, you still had to pay attention to a bunch of stuff, but because it was so smooth people started to think it's brainless.

hint: just because something doesnt feel like a chore to play doesnt mean it's not good. a lesson you could also learn with feral dps

Yup. Give me a well-designed 3 button spec with good flow any day. I'd much rather play that than a messy clusterfuck of buttons that don't align, where CDs clash and the spec feels like it's constantly at odds with itself.

7.1.5 Sin had:

Basics: Keep up Garrote, keep up Rupture, Ven+KB every 45 seconds, Vanish every 3rd Ven
Advanced: Clip SoT, keep up Envenom during KB (without letting DoTs drop), keep up SoT during BotA, properly pool and set up for Vanish to get 4x Envenoms in

The spec was smooth and had a good flow. It wasn't rocket science, but it had some depth. The current Assassination does not have a good flow. I got a lot of hate in the Rogue discord for daring to express this opinion.

Honestly, the Rogue community disappointed me quite a bit yesterday. Going into that thread and seeing compiled posts from Mages, Monks, Hunters, Shamans - virtually every class, really. Great, lengthy posts where the class discords co-operated together on a number of questions. And Rogues had nothing, prompting me to make my own post*, which I had to rush since I had not prepared one. Then I posted it to the Ravenholdt discord and got attacked by some full-time shitposters over my opinion that 7.2.5 Assassination sucks balls. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

* Stjern did make a post after I did but it was like 3 lines, one of the questions was an absolute joke (Shadow Techniques lol), and the Grappling Hook question was a real softie too. The PB question was the only one attempting to address an important issue with a spec.

[Deleted]

I really want to know why NOBODY seems to hate that we have to take the most boring passive talent as our 100 talent. We have to pick Venom rush or we are screwed in PvE, so why is this not baseline, and why did no one ask this question. That's botherring me so much.

[skindown]

I agree with everything 1000000% and I wish I'd phrased the TB question better. But I only had ~10 minutes to type that whole post up since the Rogue community completely failed to organize any sort of compiled post. If I'd had hours to prepare and write the question ahead of time, I would have pointed out how managing this many debuffs and individual CDs feels like juggling too many different balls, which is the real issue with TB. When you have to keep up Envenom, keep Garrote/Rupture rolling, track several other debuffs, and optimally use 4 staggered CDs, the spec just feels like a mess. It's clunky.



Yup. Give me a well-designed 3 button spec with good flow any day. I'd much rather play that than a messy clusterfuck of buttons that don't align, where CDs clash and the spec feels like it's constantly at odds with itself.

7.1.5 Sin had:

Basics: Keep up Garrote, keep up Rupture, Ven+KB every 45 seconds, Vanish every 3rd Ven
Advanced: Clip SoT, keep up Envenom during KB (without letting DoTs drop), keep up SoT during BotA, properly pool and set up for Vanish to get 4x Envenoms in

The spec was smooth and had a good flow. It wasn't rocket science, but it had some depth. The current Assassination does not have a good flow. I got a lot of hate in the Rogue discord for daring to express this opinion.

Honestly, the Rogue community disappointed me quite a bit yesterday. Going into that thread and seeing compiled posts from Mages, Monks, Hunters, Shamans - virtually every class, really. Great, lengthy posts where the class discords co-operated together on a number of questions. And Rogues had nothing, prompting me to make my own post*, which I had to rush since I had not prepared one. Then I posted it to the Ravenholdt discord and got attacked by some full-time shitposters over my opinion that 7.2.5 Assassination sucks balls. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

* Stjern did make a post after I did but it was like 3 lines, one of the questions was an absolute joke (Shadow Techniques lol), and the Grappling Hook question was a real softie too. The PB question was the only one attempting to address an important issue with a spec.

Well, there was this post https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/...5686558#post-1

Sadly I wasn't at home when the class AMA happened, when I got home it was over for a while already

- - - Updated - - -

I really want to know why NOBODY seems to hate that we have to take the most boring passive talent as our 100 talent. We have to pick Venom rush or we are screwed in PvE, so why is this not baseline, and why did no one ask this question. That's botherring me so much.

Yeah it's a damn shame, I'd love to pick DfA but can't because of the major difference

[shaunika123]

that's not true.
envenom's buff was always, since wotlk, our "cooldown" where we must squeeze all the possible damage for dp procs.
now they have extended that concept with kingsbane and the new talent, we must always play arond the incoming CD, we have always more room of optimization in a way that's more noticeable than before.
yes, the pb proc give use high variance in wowprogress %, but having consistently high kingsbane damage is still necessary.
i really have hard time to see the boring part in this

you dont play around them, that's the point
you just press them on cooldown basically

you cant play around them because they're so frequent and scattered that playing around one is effectively playing against another
just look at logs, people are just spamming them on cooldown

and toxic blade and KB are so similar they might as well be the same cooldown because you "play around" them the EXACT same way

unlike for example exsanguinate, which at least works totally differently from KB and when synced even helps it out (more energy regen from faster dots=smoother SoT/envenom uptime)

if you're gonna give assa another cooldown, give it one that isnt a carbon copy of their artifact

[Won7on]

I really want to know why NOBODY seems to hate that we have to take the most boring passive talent as our 100 talent. We have to pick Venom rush or we are screwed in PvE, so why is this not baseline, and why did no one ask this question. That's botherring me so much.

It's a valid question. I'm playing Sub and DFA is fun as shit. Even MfD is a decent talent. Venom Rush is the worst kind of passive talent. There's passive talents that are rotationally interesting (for example EP, Subterfuge, Anticipation), and then there's passive talents like Alacrity and Venom Rush.

- - - Updated - - -

you cant play around them because they're so frequent and scattered that playing around one is effectively playing against another
just look at logs, people are just spamming them on cooldown

Yes, this, exactly this. You might see TB coming up and think "I'll pool some energy" but if you spend too long pooling your Rupture will go below 9 seconds, and now you have to refresh it, and now TB is delayed, and now KB is coming up and you have to set up an Envenom, and now you've delayed TB 10+ seconds and you realize you should have just pressed it the moment it was off CD.

The spec basically has too many things to DO, so you either a) hold everything for one particular moment and make it perfect (which turns out to be suboptimal) or b) literally push every button off CD.

[omeomorfismo]

you dont play around them, that's the point
you just press them on cooldown basically

you cant play around them because they're so frequent and scattered that playing around one is effectively playing against another
just look at logs, people are just spamming them on cooldown

and toxic blade and KB are so similar they might as well be the same cooldown because you "play around" them the EXACT same way

unlike for example exsanguinate, which at least works totally differently from KB and when synced even helps it out (more energy regen from faster dots=smoother SoT/envenom uptime)

if you're gonna give assa another cooldown, give it one that isnt a carbon copy of their artifact

? you pool around both cd. the fact you use them on cd dont change this. i mean, i always loved assassination and his pooling mechanic, but frankly there isnt so much optimization opportunity with only envenom (wotlk-wod era), damn blizz even gave us that braindead dispatch (yeee weak auras pop-up) for some obscure reason. but having these 2 short cds gives this spicy difficulty in the pooling that force you to plan a lot ahead in your energy managment. yes, maybe assassination is a bit bloated of progress bar. but this is i like in a spec, not weakauras proc or streetfightercombo (like sub) specs.
and TB isnt a carbon copy of kingsbane, you can use TB to burst down priority target, unlike kingsbane that need a long setup, and since assa had always target swapping problem, surely TB helps in this.

btw if you really like that syncing you can still do it on BL, without optimizing the opener it sim the same (~1k dps interval) than a simple on CD apl, if you can squeeze 2 full kingsbane in the BL im pretty sure that the gain will be worth

sorry for the bad english, i hope its understandable D:

[Notter]

? you pool around both cd. the fact you use them on cd dont change this. i mean, i always loved assassination and his pooling mechanic, but frankly there isnt so much optimization opportunity with only envenom (wotlk-wod era), damn blizz even gave us that braindead dispatch (yeee weak auras pop-up) for some obscure reason. but having these 2 short cds gives this spicy difficulty in the pooling that force you to plan a lot ahead in your energy managment. yes, maybe assassination is a bit bloated of progress bar. but this is i like in a spec, not weakauras proc or streetfightercombo (like sub) specs.
and TB isnt a carbon copy of kingsbane, you can use TB to burst down priority target, unlike kingsbane that need a long setup, and since assa had always target swapping problem, surely TB helps in this.

btw if you really like that syncing you can still do it on BL, without optimizing the opener it sim the same (~1k dps interval) than a simple on CD apl, if you can squeeze 2 full kingsbane in the BL im pretty sure that the gain will be worth

sorry for the bad english, i hope its understandable D:

1. Like it was said, if you pool around both CDs you will:
* Let Rupture fall off.
* Let Garrote fall off.
* Miss KB envenom-buff.
* Miss a TB-buff envenom.

2. He didn't say TB is a carbon copy of KB, he said the way you play around it is the same.
They both generate 1CP, they have low CD, and you need to cast envenom during their debuff.
The only difference is that with KB, you need to clip the envenom, so you may delay it a few seconds.

3. learn to line-break...


Assassination has almost no time to pool energy. period.
Maybe with T20 it will be slightly better since garrote will cost less, but since we probably will use Deep Stratagem, I would assume the problem will remain.