What specs to play on what fights in HFC

[Deleted]

The Shadowcaller adds are not important and can just be passively cleaved down. If you have a weird group comp that doesn't have much passive cleaving it might be okay to go Combat, but in general those adds aren't priority and we're better off focusing single target. The Dominator adds are super important to kill, but my group was killing them in 10 seconds on heroic. That would waste half of Vendetta (or more if its glyphed), so Sub seems like the better choice over Assassination as well.

I've just done it as combat, to passively cleave down adds. As for going sub, it just feels weird since you can use 2 min CD at the start of the fight, since they won't be up for when the robot dies, and that is when hero is popped so you lose out on a lot of dmg. But if you go combat you have more control over your CD's I found that I could use them twice, and still have them up for when the robot dies.

[Holycrap1]

People who are against Combat on shadow lord iskar are way ahead of themselves. Did him the other day on HC, and me being Combat pretty much saved the day. Of course Subtelty is going to be BIS when people have gear and you do mythic, but when you come in fresh with BRF gear, specially now after the demo nerf, a lot of comps need the AOE damage to down the adds in time. And as one person above me mentioned, our CDs are perfectly aligned for every add phase as of now which means we will do top DPS on meters and on the prio target.

[Deleted]

Gonna share my 13/13 HC experience (also did 12/13 on both my other 2 rogues [yeah, don't ask]. Keep in mind this is for HC and not Mythic

Hellfire Assault - Honestly, Combat. Having constantly 3 stacks of Venom Rush allows you to do really goos ST on priority targets, such as the first add, and the Warlocks metamorphing in the melee. Melees are not that much supposed to go full ham ST on Engines so you better just act as a cleaving machine the whole fight, because contrary to what you guys think Combat is hella good for that

Fealreaver - Comb.. jk. Sub pros : Very good ST Sub cons : Positionning requirements can be a bother, your damage during bomb phase is completely shitty compared to others, and it gets really annoying to use ShD and SR on cooldowns because she tends to use Blitz just as when you can use them, so you have to delay it a lot during the P1s

Assa pros : Also very good ST, no position requirements, more useful during bomb phase than Sub Assa cons : Vendetta can be furstrating to use, you have to be sure you will use the full duration before she Blitz/Flies

I would choose Assa over Sub on this fight, better overall.

Kromrok - Sub, because your ST will be very good and you'll still ber able to mass FoK the boss for Evis during Hand phase. If your raid REALLY struggle with hands dmg, you can consider Combat, but your ST will be shit. I don't see why Assa would be better than Sub on this fight so I don't even mention it.

Council - Assassinate, ST off the roof with Multi-Rupturing, you can still DPS Gurtogg if you get chosen whereas you won't be able to Backstab with Sub. Combat is good for the first minute while cleaving Gurtogg and the Blademaster, but you'll quickly realize you're useless after Gurtogg dies

Kil'rogg - Forget Combat, there are plenty of classes that can go in the Visions and do better than you with their buff. Assa is obviously a better choice than Sub if you don't go down because your overall Boss dmg and BigAdd Switch will be better than sub's painful switch

Gorefiend - I don't really know if there is a big difference between Assa and Sub on this fight, both your Vendetta and Shd/SR will be up for the first Feast. Assa will have a better Switch on the Charger add which needs to be dealt with asap, as well as the Casters, so overall I guess I would recommend Assa. Sub can pull huge numbers on Feasts phases once you get 2p though

Socrethar - Due to the occasionnal add spawning, I'd recommend Assassination over Sub, you have a better switch and your ST will be better with rupture/poisons on adds

Iskar - Ok, this gets tricky : My opinion is that Combat is a fucking good spec for this fight. As people said, you can easily manage your CDs so that you get completely ham on each important add phase and pulling very good ST (Priest, Priest/Construct, then Raven/Priest/construct. People here need to understand that your ST damage when the boss is not in transition does not matter, all you have to do is manage the winds and the chakram, Combat is exceptionnal for dealing with his add phases and the 20% phase with the 3 adds to DPS is absolute madness for Combat with BL and your CDs, you melt the Raven and cleave the shit out of the Priest and the Construct wich become the next priority targets

Yes, Sub with 2p will offer a better burst on the Raven, but you will get out of gas for the remaining 2 targets and your ST as I said does not matter on the boss between add phases. At least for HC. Just try Combat on him with a good gear and you will understand why it is so good for priority damage and overall performance.

Zakuun - Pretty much the only full ST fight of the raid, Sub will mostly be more useful than Assa depending on your gear optimisation

Xul'Horac : Another godly Combat fight where you can absolutely murder the skada (easily 90k+ at the end of the fight) while still getting top 3 damages for Boss / Big Adds / Imps. Combat is nuts on this fight, the only cons is the Exec phase where you will deal less dmg than Sub or Assa, but you will have been so useful to your raid by murdering imps as fast as possible taht the 20% should go really smooth with a lot of space for everyone

Understand me : I'm not just speaking of "whoring" the skada for Xul and Iskar, yes it does big overall dmg, but besides Iskar's first transition where your cleave on the little arakkoas is somewhat not really relevant, you do such good priority damage overall that I don't see why would not play Combat for these bosses.

Expect for Xulhorac if your raid really needs some DPS optimisation for the 20% phase then you go Sub or Assa, but honestly it's just wasting the Cleave potential that you can bring to your raid throughout the fight. It's nuts, you actually carry.

Tyrant : The perfect Assa fight to my opinion, the first 2 adds are supposed to be cleaved off the Boss which remains the ST priority until the last add. hence maintaining poisons/rupture on adds with ST the boss allows you to do "decent" cleave on adds and very high ST on boss, which is what needs to be done. Save Vendetta for last add if need be, or just use it after he's dead to finish off the boss.

Mannoroth : Sub fight (overall), you should do nothing more after the opening phase than DPSing the boss and FoKing off the imps/Infernals for extra Evis. Might also wanna consider Assassinate for the extra burst in Exec phase, which is obviously the hardest part of the fight. Which makes me think you'll be overall more useful going as Assa, getting to 35% being no more than a spread/group dance party

Archimonde : There is already some testimonies about what spec to play on another thread so I won't really expend on this. Being Sub does not allows you to switch optimally on every Doomfire and Deathcaller, or at least not without completely losing your CDs and FW for the boss, you have to choose. Assa on the other hand is just perfect for this fight, allowing you to switch and doing godly damages on boss meanwhile, as well asn exec for the last phase which is obviously the most important part. Combat is to my opinion not really worth it because cleaving off the adds does not really do anything for your raid apart from a few extra damage on Archi at the cost of less damages on adds (or a few fire stacks if you ST the Doomfires). I would recommend going full Assa for this fight because your boss damages wil be indecent as well a good add switching before exec phase. (just watch the logs, you'll see Sub struggling and Assa shining)

I guess that's it, sorry for the crappy writing but we just killed Archi on grp 1 after doing 12/13 on 3 groups all week and I'm tired. Here's my thoughts, they're not meant to be canon of course but they can help people to decide what to play, coming from someone who did every boss 3 times this week on 3 Rogues (optimally or not). I'm playing Sub/Combat on my 3 Rogues but I saw what Assa was capable off once you get 2p and Class Trinket, so I'm pretty confident that my opinions can bring something to this discussion.

Mizoh <Ecology>

[Deleted]

So in conclusion we need 3 Specs during a run.
Considering the fact thatI havent got the archi trinket nor the new set bonuses (i think many Rogues reading this are in this position atm)
shall i go for combat/sub or combat/assa? Rough Decision in my opinion.

[Deleted]

Gonna share my 13/13 HC experience

My experience agrees wtih your evaluation, but since most players wouldn't want to retrain their specs after every second encounter to change assassination to subtlety and back, I'd suggest just sticking to Assassination wherever you don't go Combat. Even without the Archimonde trinket, the dps is viable for heroic. With the trinket, I expect Assassination to provide higher dps than subtlety at heroic ilvls.

[Deleted]

My experience agrees wtih your evaluation, but since most players wouldn't want to retrain their specs after every second encounter to change assassination to subtlety and back, I'd suggest just sticking to Assassination wherever you don't go Combat. Even without the Archimonde trinket, the dps is viable for heroic. With the trinket, I expect Assassination to provide higher dps than subtlety at heroic ilvls.

This.

Even with the recent buffs to the sub through the class trinket I will still most likely play assassination/ combat just due to the way most of the encounters work on heroic so far. They seem to favour assassination more than sub and yes there is a few fights where sub might pull ahead but the amount of ST/ double targets that favour assassination is higher. Unless they crazy buff sub to make it way ahead of assassination, that is the only time I'll change just due to the nature of the fights nothing to do with personal preference.

I find it interesting that blizz were fine with sub being the go to ST spec for BRF yet in HFC when assassination starts pulling ahead they keep trying to drag sub up to its damage levels, it makes me think that they may end up going over the top just so that we end up playing sub instead.

[Fiska]

Gonna share my 13/13 HC experience (also did 12/13 on both my other 2 rogues [yeah, don't ask]. Keep in mind this is for HC and not Mythic

That was a good read, particularly due to the use of bold text. My experiences so far are identical to yours, except for Kil'rogg. In our guild I went in as Combat due to having sustained AoE.

[Deleted]

Sure, I perfectly understand people might not bother playing the 3 specs, if you wanna stick to 2, Assa/Combat (for 2 bosses + Trashs) seems indeed the way to go in Normal/Heroics once you get BHTV (or if you were an Assa scrub from 6.1 in the first place huehuehuehue)

[Deleted]

Its worth pointing out here that it is possible to play Combat on alot of the fights if your raid teamwants u to just permacleave with no target priority.

We found that this works great and i topped alot of fights on dps after doing 10/13 normal so far. Basically, other classes have much better ST burst damage so our raid leader told them to do all the add prioritising and allow the Combat Rogue to just cleave like crazy!

Its worth mentioning that we also have 3x DK dps so our overall cleave damage is high anyway.

I guess my question is... is Mut or Sub any good for ST against other dps classes? Or is it better to task stronger ST classes to do the ST add priority?

[PessimiStick]

I guess that's it, sorry for the crappy writing but we just killed Archi on grp 1 after doing 12/13 on 3 groups all week and I'm tired. Here's my thoughts, they're not meant to be canon of course but they can help people to decide what to play, coming from someone who did every boss 3 times this week on 3 Rogues (optimally or not). I'm playing Sub/Combat on my 3 Rogues but I saw what Assa was capable off once you get 2p and Class Trinket, so I'm pretty confident that my opinions can bring something to this discussion.

I generally agree with you, but I think Mut/Combat is going to be better in real circumstances for most people once they get trinket. The difference between Sub and Mut is pretty minor at that stage, and Mut requires a lot less mental bandwidth to play well, which means you can concentrate more on not standing in Fire™. I also felt Combat was better on Archimonde for me, but I didn't get the trinket until last night, so that may change now (especially once I get my last piece of tier and have a real execute phase). There are *large* portions of that fight where you have 2 or more targets in range, so you get a lot of mileage out of blade flurry.

[selectagent]

But combat single target is terrible compared to the other specs. It might be the perfect fight for combat for you, but not for the raid.

No, combat is the spec to play on this fight. The ST phase is not very long, and the adds have to die asap when they spawn. If, as combat, you are hitting 58-60K (which I am at 697 ilvl), then that is a good thing for the raid. Not sure how maxing out your dps is bad for the raid (assuming you are executing mechanics properly).

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[Daedelus]

No, combat is the spec to play on this fight. The ST phase is not very long, and the adds have to die asap when they spawn. If, as combat, you are hitting 58-60K (which I am at 697 ilvl), then that is a good thing for the raid. Not sure how maxing out your dps is bad for the raid (assuming you are executing mechanics properly).

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Yeah my opinion on this has changed - Combat cleave is godly on Iskar, since the only really important phases are the add phases.