long live assassination

[Deleted]

1. Its not like the intelligent rogues were playing combat while it was crap just because theory crafting said it was fine. People immediately saw the difference and the majority quickly switched to assassination. If assassination was truly equal, there would have been more people in the last 5 months that noticed just like there was a huge amount of people in early cata that noticed combat wasn't equal. You say theres less people using it thus less tricks and tips, but part of that is due to it being an inferior option. Sub also has a comparably small amount of people using it and therefore would suffer from the same problems, yet sub shows up assassination on most fights.

I think you don't see my point there. You are absolutely right in everything you said, but you are talking about the past. Imagine that there would be a hotfix tomorrow that would increase damage of some Assassination talents. Do you think rogues would start switching and doing theorycrafting based on those new numbers? No, because the "race" is already over and so it does not matter. We'd see some posts like "yeah, Assassination got buffed so it's okay to play it", but nobody would actually do some extensive testing, rewrite guides, update modelling tools etc. It's usually those very good players that dedicate their time for this, but at this point of the game, those players are just farming 8/8hc every week or don't play at all. This is what I am talking about and why I believe that we don't have so many people testing and trying current Assassination in BiS gear.

As for your second point, please name some examples where can we actually observe how does one spec compete against another. Thinking about heroic bosses, every single one of them has something that favours one of the specs. Possibly some normal modes might be taken into consideration (Morchok and Zon'ozz), but normal kills records are even more inflated by players overgearing the content and messing around with numbers. So I just don't see this "plenty of actual testing" that is unbiased, but correct my if I overlooked something.

[Ryme]

Personally, I would not be so sure that Assassination is (still) the sub-par spec.

I can see three problems here:

1. ShadowCraft does not model legendary daggers. So it's uknown what is theoretical DPS maximum of each spec, we simply do not know. The only thing we do know is that Assassination works significantly better with the proc and thats exactly what might change things a bit.
2. There is not a single patchwerk fight in Dragon Soul so we don't have any empirical data either. So once again, we do not know how current Assassination performs compared to Combat on a single-target tank'n'spank fight.

Simulationcraft models it, it also models the Ultraxion fight fairly well too.

From what I recall, on your standard fight, sub was at the top, and the difference between assassination and combat was very small and even placed assassination ahead on my sims. This difference gets larger the more movement and downtime is involved since combat is about GCD capping with minimal wait time, whilst you get quite a bit of wait time in assassination. - NOTE: this is only true with legendary daggers. Without them, assassination is behind.

Also, assassination is just fun with legendary daggers. Envenom spam hits damn hard

[Kael]

As for your second point, please name some examples where can we actually observe how does one spec compete against another. Thinking about heroic bosses, every single one of them has something that favours one of the specs.

Doesn't this largely invalidate the need for a test? If a spec is better for a fight mechanically, or has increased numbers because of a mechanic... the other spec(s) are not competitive for that encounter.

[Sesshou]

Doesn't this largely invalidate the need for a test? If a spec is better for a fight mechanically, or has increased numbers because of a mechanic... the other spec(s) are not competitive for that encounter.

Exactly. The point is that it isn't actually competitive this tier. That means on fights in this tier. Could the reason be entirely due to mechanics in the fights this tier? Sure (though it probably isn't 'just' that). Whether or not it could hypothetically be competitive on non-existent, imaginary fights is completely irrelevant.

Encounter mechanics favoring a spec is not a "bias" because you are testing how well the spec performs in a given environment. The only way those mechanics can qualify as a "bias" is if you are using actual live encounters to get information about hypothetical encounters. I don't care if assassination does 200k dps in some optimal fight that doesn't exist in the game. If it isn't competitive in the in game encounters, it isn't competitive.

I think you don't see my point there. You are absolutely right in everything you said, but you are talking about the past. Imagine that there would be a hotfix tomorrow that would increase damage of some Assassination talents. Do you think rogues would start switching and doing theorycrafting based on those new numbers? No, because the "race" is already over and so it does not matter. We'd see some posts like "yeah, Assassination got buffed so it's okay to play it", but nobody would actually do some extensive testing, rewrite guides, update modelling tools etc.

I do think that several months after said hotfix we would know if it made assassination better dps than combat/sub. I do agree that people in 8/8 hm guilds aren't super likely to switch to a spec they like less to steam roll farm content, but there are certainly people in 8/8hm guilds that would switch to see how high they can push numbers.

Also, you are placing way too much emphasis on the models. You don't really "need" some model to tell you exactly what dps you can do. You can find that out in actual testing. The models are incredibly useful tools, but the lack of an amazing model isn't going to make or break a potentially superior spec. I'm sure if assassination did get hotfixed to be superior, the basic things like priorities would be figured out in far less time than the 5 months people have had (3 since legendaries) to analyze this tier.

[Deleted]

When you put it this way, sure. But you can't deny that it's something slightly different than the general consensus "assassination lacks behind in terms of DPS".

[Bitlovin]

Math and number wise, Combat excels under the perfect conditions. However, there are a lot of factors that play into it and you're never going to have 100% perfect conditions. So, I don't follow number charts to the dot and swear by them. --All from my personal experiences, not saying this is how it is for everyone. Merely stating my opinion.

But we aren't talking about abstract modeling. We are talking about actual parses. Assassin is clearly behind, and those parses give hard, real world evidence that that is the case.

If you beat a Combat rogue as Assassin right now, that doesn't mean that Assassin is competitive to Combat. It means that the Combat Rogue wasn't a good player.

[Kael]

I think you're exaggerating somewhat, Bit. If we're talking about a fight with permacleave, sure, the combat rogue has to be bad to lose, but with relatively close numbers, you only need to be a few % better than another rogue to beat them in a slightly worse spec. That doesn't mean the combat rogue was bad... it could mean the combat rogue was decent -> good and you played absofrickinlutely perfectly, and in that case, you should beat them every time.

Whether you'd beat YOURSELF playing at the SAME LEVEL of quality doesn't change that.

Also worth noting is that none of this will matter in MoP, since we'll have an entirely new set of values with new buffs, new ability weights, different energy regen, different poison mechanics, etc. and we'll have to reevaluate each spec for the relevant encounters at that time. If you're worried about your DPS at present, go with what's best for each encounter. If you're not, play whatever you enjoy, seriously.

All the heat around this discussion from both sides is silly.

[Deleted]

That doesn't mean the combat rogue was bad... it could mean the combat rogue was decent -> good and you played absofrickinlutely perfectly, and in that case, you should beat them every time.

Or that just one of you got more lucky with RNG procs.

[Kael]

Exactly. If you beat them consistently over 5 months at the same gear level the entire time, you just outright outplayed them =)

Remind me to find a terrible combat rogue to invite to our runs.

[vindicatorx]

Assassination is better with lower gear, Combat is better once you have gear or it is a fight with multiple targets, sub might be king right now but I personally dislike it. I prefer combat for the most part.

[Bitlovin]

I think you're exaggerating somewhat, Bit.

Fair enough, the Combat rogue in my example isn't necessarily a bad player, but he is not as good a player as the Assassin rogue in my example.

[Biged781]

The deeps is just as competitive as well.

No, no it's not. Equally played, combat will always come out ahead. That said, if you enjoy it and you don't need to pump out every last ounce of dps, assassination the spec you should be playing.

[Sealbinder]

To me assassination is just more fun then combat. I am not as worried about meters as I am about the amount of fun I am having. To me combat just does not feel roguish enough. Assassination and Subtlety just feel more rogue to me, being that they focus on what makes rogues different from other classes (poison and stealth). This is not to say combat is bad, it just does not feel right to me when I try to play it.

[Feintftw]

Hello thread!

This honestly sounds like a bunch of mutants (note to all you ban-happy/sensitive mods: I obviously mean this facetiously) arguing about things they don't understand (I like how no one mentions combat time, for example). I am the second rogue on this list of top assassination parses for ultraxion heroic: http://worldoflogs.com/rankings/play...ination_Rogue/ so when all you diehard combat fanboys are doing that much dps you can go ahead and tell me assassination sucks (ps: you won't be, unless you're in a guild that's killing ultrax in about 4 minutes, and you're getting 3 tricks like the top parsing russian rogue).

Ps. Everyone, these are Sesshou's median WoL percentiles over the past few months: http://raidbots.com/epeenbot/us/ysera/sesshou/ TLDR: He is bad, don't listen to his opinion

Mod Edit: User was given a warning for this post.

[Kael]

While you've done an impressive job of lining up your buffs for that parse (wow, DI, 2 different UFs, and TotT from the other rogue? NICE!) I don't see a battle squawk, you overlapped UF with lust (although I suppose that's unavoidable for such a short kill time) and your personal attack on someone else is A) unwarranted and B) totally irrelevant. The top combat ranking only used 1 UF, lost the second half of it, had an extra rogue doing tricks, and came out to a clean 60.9k DPS in a shorter fight than the one you were in. 56.6k DPS is wild and insane and great. It's still not 60.9k, which is what others here are saying.

Sessh being a good or bad rogue has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not he's right when he makes a statement. Obviously there's also a great measure of skill in playing a rogue to a #2 rank on Ultraxion, even with those absurd buffs, but if you told me to use Sinister Strike and Shiv and never use envenom, I wouldn't listen to you. So... what's your point? No one to be taken seriously here has said assassination is bad. No one in any seriousness has said that assassination is bad. They've said it is not as powerful in realistic terms (for which none of the top rankings are appropriate) for current fights this tier with current gear.

[Feintftw]

Yes Mugajak, congratulations you know how to use comparebot. What you are failing to take into account is combat time. The reason that rogue was able to parse so high (btw, his tricks uptime implied 3 tricks not 2, or at the bare minimum 2 unglyphed tricks) was because the time stamp was perfect for him to get in his last set of cds + 3:45 is so brutally fast that his lust: no lust uptime was very high relative to the parses of many bad guilds (hey man, mine included!). If you extrapolate a parse like that out to, say, 4:45, combat loses value in relation to assassination, and is, dare I say it, on par.

Furthermore, if you have no interest in looking at top parses then what is the point of arguing the relative "power" of 2 specs. All models assume perfect rotations, therefore if you're looking to compare the parses of a bunch of trash cans, factors like player skill will matter far far more. My insulting Sessh was because I see a lot of irony in a mediocre sub rogue coming into an assn vs combat thread and saying assassination sucks, months after that was no longer the case.

[Maelstrom51]

The problem with comparing top parses is that, at a high skill level, the main question is not how good a spec is but how many buffs you can stack on one player.

[Sesshou]

I like how you use a statistic that ignores all kinds of important information like length of fight, rng elements, gear level, whether or not i died to something not my fault, strat we used, etc which are all very important in the edps you are going to pull for the fight. I'm not going to say I play flawlessly, but if you go actually look at the logs its pretty obvious theres quite a few factors lowering my numbers that aren't present in the top percentiles of parses. Yeah you are probably out playing me and nice job with that 56k as assassination, but you still got beat by 3 combat rogues, so my point still stands. I don't see how you can complain about other rogues getting extra buffs when your 56k includes DI and UF...

[kilj]

combat vs ass on logs alone
Morchok.... Assination
Zonozz... Combat becuase your prob sitting on the boss cleaving the claw great good job.... You can pad with your BF
Yor...combat but only by 1.5kish
hagara.. combat by 1.1k and they prob got that extra 1.1k cuase of BF
ultraxion.... combat by 4k and it should beat assassination becuase assassination cannot backstab.....
Warmaster.... Combat by a longshot becuase of once again blade flurry cleaves...
Spine... Im sorry assassination would hold higher damage on burning tendons than combat...but almost all rogues are sub anyways since its best for the fight.
Dw... who gives a shit... Most of those people who log on that fight get high numbers becuase they are the only ones cleaving bloods.... esp now with the 15% nerf they die so fast.....

Combat excels in some of those fights just becuase of blade flurry you take it out of the equation and even with it assassination is right there....

[Sesshou]

Combat excels in some of those fights just becuase of blade flurry you take it out of the equation and even with it assassination is right there....

Thats like saying assassination is only good because of vile poisons... Obviously you should consider every ability available for each spec, and yeah theres a good amount of stuff to cleave this tier.

So you do agree that it is noticeably lower on everything except Morchok (and spine I guess) where it happens to be massively inferior to sub anyway.