Higher DPS/damage output
More engaging/active playstyle
I personally don't believe that's a fair assessment. Assassination's playstyle allows for greater raid awareness and use of feint without huge damage loss (which is nice because the spec already can't afford any more dps loss). I would say it requires less skill to master than the other 2 specs but it certainly isn't worthless (played mut for 4 years. Now I'm sub w. spambat os). Personally I prefer subt as a spec just because I enjoy it (altho the damage is nice) and I have combat os to help the guild progress. But just because someone enjoys another spec is no reason to berate them.
I never berated anybody. Assassination is a simpler spec that suits simpler people. Being simple isn't necessarily a bad thing.
I enjoy sub because maintaining good play is complex enough to warrant me staying awake throughout a raid. If I played assassination, I would probably drift off a lot more while playing because of the simplicity of the spec, and as such I would play worse than I currently do. However, more simple people may feel like assassination is engaging enough to keep them entertained during a raid, and that's fantastic.
well arcane mage has 4 damage sources and it's often the top dps, simple shouldn't equal bad dps, and mage proves it doesn't so your arguement of assa should do less dps because it's boring/easy/simple is pointless, when arcane is just as easy yet does over 10,000 dps more than assa.
Where exactly in my post did I say that I think assassination should do less dps?
I also want to point out that arcane, while having few damage sources, arguably requires more skill to pull off than assassination does.
Amt. of damage sources is a pretty poor measurement of spec complexity. If you took assassinations active damage sources you would be left with;
1. Rupture
2. Mutilate
3. Dispatch
4. Envenom
But yeah, A+ in logic there
Well that's a very assholish comment. "Hur hur you like Assassination, you're stupid." The more you have to watch, the more your raid awareness goes down. If Assassination and Sub were able to pull exactly the same numbers, you'd see most people switch in a heartbeat. There are some, like yourself, who say they enjoy Sub and might stay playing it. Thinking it's even remotely complex, yeah. It's not.
I am fully with you. The very minimum would be to get Assassination viable, but not first, in every situation : this spec should provide an alternative for people who do not want to switch spec for every fight while switching combat/sub should pull ahead on the meter as it requires much more effort.
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I agree with you.
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And this is were you may be wrong : a difficult to evaluate proportion but very real part of the instant damage poison is actually active damage thanks to the Envenom buff (this buff shoumd provide 100% poison proc). Envenom is like a small SD for Assa, the only difference with SD is the reward is very (far to) tiny (the flat +30% buff to Mutilate should be +60% but only when the Envenom buff is up). Playing Assa with MfD is also a little more complex to optimize than using Anticipation.
I agree with you on the point that Blizzard should provide a much clearer reward in term of DPS to people who are optimizing much more things in Assa. In WoD Blizzard made a step in this direction with Empowered Envenom but this is so tiny that nobody noticed.
Assa is laking AOE damage and clear reward for high level players, as to me.
Last edited by mmoc972a289242; 2015-04-24 at 06:09 AM.
What is it with this thread and people putting words in my mouth? I never said people who play assassination are stupid, I said they probably require less stimulation to stay entertained. Which is fine. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
I also never claimed sub is difficult to play, I just stated the fact that it's a much more complex spec in relation to assassination. I connected this to the argument that sure, for some people, playing a simpler spec would help your raid awareness. For me, being someone who more or less regularly performs in the 90%+ percentile, while playing in a guild where the average is far beneath that, playing a spec that isn't as simple as Assassination helps me stay engaged through progress, whereas playing it there would be a large probability that I would lose focus halfway through the night and start making mistakes.
Thanks, I already know how Assassination plays and what the design behind it is. The point of my argument was just to show how flaccid Socialhealers argument of "X amt of damage sources means this spec is easy" because to be honest, assassination uses as many if not fewer spells as Arcane, and is punished far less for mistakes, which leads me to my issue with assassination; it's so hard to screw it up. Very little ever changes in the rotation of assassination. You wait for energy, you envenom, you use two mutilates and spend proccs -> you wait for energy, you envenom .... It just goes on like that. Whatever extra combo points you gain because of crits end up spent on rupture. It's not engaging gameplay, it just isn't.
And that's not even mentioning the spec has a ridiculously clunky and once again - boring - CD.
Of course assa is harder with MfD. Every single rogue spec is.
As an answer to
“Because wanting Assassination to be on the same level as Subtlety or Combat is being "simple minded".
Means to me “ wanting to play assasination is simple minded”. So we are not putting words in your mouth, you did that yourself.
not to mention the part
So better choose your words more carefully next time.
That said: you are not deciding what engaging gameplay is to people. you can only decide that for yourself.
I, for example, liked assassination playstyle for a number of reasons:
1. I did not have to equip a fugly fist weapon.
2. I liked the execute phase
3. I liked the gameplay of pooling energy to maximize damage in envenom.
4. It was less (mindless) spammy than combat.
Where I agree with you:
I did not like the lack of cooldowns, and the fact that the only major cooldown was target bound instead of on you.
i.e. you could waste it when you had to switch targets.
I did not like the clunky multitarget rotation.
Fact: Assassination is a simple spec that lacks the depth of sub and arguably combat as well.
I said that because of this, it can be concluded that people who prefer simplicity are probably drawn to assassination.
Just because I'm saying someone is simple doesn't mean I'm saying they are stupid, you and the other people who replied did that.
Being simple and being stupid are two very different things.
I never did. I explicitly explained my issues with Assassination. I never told anybody they shouldn't play it, or that it should be performing worse than the other specs, I just said I didn't like it and why.
Will you please pay attention when you read posts instead of calling me out for things I never wrote?
Last edited by mmocfee1a3466a; 2015-04-24 at 11:19 AM.
Baseline: 10 CP limit (kill that stupid Anticipation with its charges), Shuriken Toss, Shadow Step.
Make the mobility tier about Shadowstep modifications (think warrior charge tier), add two short burst talents instead of those I baselined.
Replace the DfA aoe part with something that makes it gel with Nightstalker, or just do the aoe after the finisher!
And as a rogue I would like to see stealths and vanishes purged from other classes...
When good combat rogues started incorporating the more core parts of assassination (energy pooling for envenom) into their own rotation by CP/energypooling for higher insight levels/revealing strike expiration while also having cooldowns that require player interactivity. One could also argue that the combat 4pc adds another layer of stress and decision making to the spec that assassination doesn't have.