Anticipation and Combat Spec: A Strangely Ignored Topic

[Krushinator]

I've gone through the MMO-Champion and Elitist Jerks forums, and much to my dismay the topic of the Anticipation talent in relation to the Combat spec is nowhere to be found. Most of my time in raids as gone towards perfecting the use of this talent in my rotation and I'm still not there yet. I think there is a failing amongst the rogue community to really appreciate how much Anticipation can really do to your rotation. The only explanations I can come up with are either that everyone is so focused on the banality of the Assassination spec to pay attention to Combat, or people just see Combat as a Cleave = Win spec, which really diminishes Combat's potential. Sure Assassination is better for single target, but when you do spec Combat, hitting Blade Flurry just isn't good enough. Today I'm going to try to explain the ways in which Anticipation affects all parts of the Combat rotation, and how you can mold and use this unique talent for your benefit.

The most basic use for Anticipation is simply bending your timers a little, which is what people use it for now. If you're at 5cp and there's 2 seconds left on your Rupture, just SS again so you can refresh at the perfect time without giving up any DPS from energy capping or wasting combo points. There are 3 other uses for the Anticipation talent, and they are linked to Bandit's Guile, Relentless Strikes and Restless Blades.

Bandit's Guile is what makes the Combat Spec unique. It gives you 4 different buffs: a 0% overall damage buff, 10%, 20% and 30%. The buff increases sequentially based on attacking with Sinister Strike and Revealing Strike, and once the 30% buff is reached, it is active for 15 seconds before dropping back down to the 0% buff. To increase the damage buff, you have to use Sinister Strike or Revealing Strike 4 times, then your damage buff will increase by 10%. Common sense will tell you that you want to spend as little time as possible at the lower buff levels and maximize your time at the highest buff level. More specifically, you want all of your offensive finishers to be at as high a buff level as possible. That's where Anticipation comes in.

The most simple form of my theory is until you get the 30% buff level, you want to go through your rotation as if you have to get up to 10 combo points to use your finishers. Once you get to your 30% buff, you want to use as many finishers as possible to end the 15 seconds with as close to 0 combo points as possible and as much energy as possible. The reason I say to make use of all 10 of your combo points at the low buff levels is if you do that, you are using more Sinister Strikes and Revealing Strikes, which moves you through the buff levels faster. Ideally you want to enter the 30% buff phase with as many combo points as possible and as much energy as possible. If you do that, you will maximize the number of offensive finishers that occur during the 30% buff phase. When you are leaving the 30% buff phase, you want to be setting yourself up to accelerate through the low buff levels again to get back to the 30% buff phase. It will take some practice and training of your intuition, but you have to be aware of the point in the 30% buff when you will not be able to land another 5 combo point offensive finisher. Once you are at that point, you want to start pooling your energy so that when your 30% buff falls off, you can lay down a lot of quick Sinister Strikes and Revealing Strikes to move through the low buff levels as fast as possible. With experience, you will also be able to keep your combo points low at the end of the 30% buff phase to limit the number of finishers you will have to cast at low buff levels, and use whatever leftover combo points from the 30% buff to refresh your Slice and Dice.

Speaking of Slice and Dice, refreshing that buff is another thing that the Anticipation talent can help with. The Relentless Strikes talent is what makes my technique possible. Relentless Strikes is a passive ability that gives you a 20% chance per combo point spent on a finishing move to refund 25 energy. In terms of Anticipation, that means you definitely get 25 energy when using a finishing move with between 5 and 10 combo points. If you are using Anticipation properly with your offensive finishing moves, then you are always using 5 combo point finishers and always getting your 25 energy. However, you probably don't always get 5 point Slice and Dice finishers, meaning you don't always get your 25 energy.

The essence of my technique is in knowing that 5 point finishers grant 25 energy, casting Slice and Dice costs 25 energy, and offensive finishers cast with more than 5 combo points grant you the number of combo points acquired at the time of use minus 5. What I do when I see I'm going to have to refresh SnD is make sure I have 6 or more combo points, wait until there is 1 second left on my SnD buff, use an offensive finisher then immediately use Slice and Dice. In the second it takes for the SnD buff to wear down, you've been refunded the 25 energy and whatever combo points you've built up, meaning you can cast SnD right away and not lose any buff time.

Finally, Anticipation can help with the way you manage your Restless Blades buff. Restless Blades is the buff that reduces the time remaining on your major DPS cooldowns by 2 seconds per combo point used in an offensive finishing move. Using Anticipation to take advantage of this passive buff produces the least results overall, but I'll go through how to do it anyway.

It's as simple as hoarding a couple extra combo points while waiting for your cooldowns to become available. If you use a 5 combo point finisher when there are 2 seconds left, you are essentially wasting 8 seconds of cooldown time that the finisher could have taken off. If you instead pool a bit of energy and combo points waiting for the cooldown to come back up, you'll have fully useful Restless Blades procs and maybe you'll get an extra cooldown squeezed into an encounter when you otherwise wouldn't.

There you have it, my rant is over. If you can use the full potential of the Anticipation talent, you'll see your DPS increase on the fights you choose Combat for.

[Deleted]

I'd say it's ignored because it's generally common knowledge between (combat) rogues.

It might be a good guide for people new to combat, I guess.

[Deleted]

From my experience, the "wait for 10 combo points before using them..." tactic is a slightly risky one, simply due to the pathetic execution of Anticipation; Going that long without using your combo points can result in the loss of either all your on-target combo points, your Anticipation charges, due to unforeseen/badly timed circumstances(Target dies, forced target switch, etc...) and, in a worst-case scenario, both. Needless to say, any loss of combo points is a tremendous blow to dps, especially when you take Restless Blades into consideration.

While 5 combo points may not be the optimal way to go about it, it's much safer than waiting for the full 10 combo points while waiting for Bandit's Guile to progress.

EDIT: Not saying this as a rule, but that's been my experience with it so far, for the fights I actually do go Combat on.

[Lunareste]

I really hate to be so invasive, but: your...technique? You're pooling combo points to use at higher levels of insight, it isn't complicated. It's been an obvious and intuitive system to any mid level combat Rogue from the first day that Anticipation was introduced. I can tell you right now that your net gain from doing this correctly is two extra full insight finishers per insight cycle, possibly 3 if you have great RNG on combo point procs from Sinister Strike.

[shadowboy]

From my experience, the "wait for 10 combo points before using them..." tactic is a slightly risky one, simply due to the pathetic execution of Anticipation; Going that long without using your combo points can result in the loss of either all your on-target combo points, your Anticipation charges, due to unforeseen/badly timed circumstances(Target dies, forced target switch, etc...) and, in a worst-case scenario, both. Needless to say, any loss of combo points is a tremendous blow to dps, especially when you take Restless Blades into consideration.

While 5 combo points may not be the optimal way to go about it, it's much safer than waiting for the full 10 combo points while waiting for Bandit's Guile to progress.

EDIT: Not saying this as a rule, but that's been my experience with it so far, for the fights I actually do go Combat on.

I've not observed a problem with it.
If you are building anticipation charges you should refresh SnD with the anticipation charges--not your current combo points. On target switches use redirect to cover the anticipation charges, and in any cases the scenarios that cause you to lose your anticipation charges and/or combo points in your scenario would have lost your combo points if you took versatility or shurikan toss as well, so you really are losing nothing by pooling combo points.

I do not agree with the OP however, that pooling energy at late deep insight is ideal. You're just trading off no-insight uptime for weaker sinister strike hits (and the DP/DP-I procs they cause).

[rewynd]

Hes only saying pool @ red IF you wont be able to drop another 5pt finisher in that same red. That way, once red falls off you have 2-4 strikes to push yourself out of 0% bg quicker. You end up trading off SS's in red for a quicker 10% BG (faster 20% and faster 30%) Doing this will overall increase your BG uptimes and reduce your time idling in 0% bg.

Only if SnD pulled antic cps

@ shadow - I try to pool up some cps before blowing cds so that the following gcd can be a finisher unless ive got anticipation stack room for some strikes. (3 or 4 depending on if sb is up)

[Deleted]

Good post Krushinator. You covered the three most common uses for Anticipations, which are:

1) When at no or Shallow Insight
2) When cooldown remaining on either AR or KS is lower than CP * 2
3) When you can't get another 5 CP before SnD has <2 sec left

I disagree that you should pool energy towards the end of Deep Insight. You're effectively losing out on a 30% buff in order to make the 0% duration shorter, which kind of negates itself - but with the added risk of losing your Anticipation stacks.

I think most combat rogues who take their class seriously has learned this on their own, but it's always good to get a discussion going.

[Ryme]

The most basic use for Anticipation is simply bending your timers a little, which is what people use it for now. If you're at 5cp and there's 2 seconds left on your Rupture, just SS again so you can refresh at the perfect time without giving up any DPS from energy capping or wasting combo points.

Unnecessary, rupture will auto update the last few seconds and tack it on to the new one, it's fine to refresh between (0, 2) seconds.

The most simple form of my theory is until you get the 30% buff level, you want to go through your rotation as if you have to get up to 10 combo points to use your finishers. Once you get to your 30% buff, you want to use as many finishers as possible to end the 15 seconds with as close to 0 combo points as possible and as much energy as possible. The reason I say to make use of all 10 of your combo points at the low buff levels is if you do that, you are using more Sinister Strikes and Revealing Strikes, which moves you through the buff levels faster. Ideally you want to enter the 30% buff phase with as many combo points as possible and as much energy as possible. If you do that, you will maximize the number of offensive finishers that occur during the 30% buff phase.

Probably correct, highly dangerous to execute on any moving mob, but in a vacuum state, I can believe this to be true. I will run sims later to verify

When you are leaving the 30% buff phase, you want to be setting yourself up to accelerate through the low buff levels again to get back to the 30% buff phase. It will take some practice and training of your intuition, but you have to be aware of the point in the 30% buff when you will not be able to land another 5 combo point offensive finisher. Once you are at that point, you want to start pooling your energy so that when your 30% buff falls off, you can lay down a lot of quick Sinister Strikes and Revealing Strikes to move through the low buff levels as fast as possible. With experience, you will also be able to keep your combo points low at the end of the 30% buff phase to limit the number of finishers you will have to cast at low buff levels, and use whatever leftover combo points from the 30% buff to refresh your Slice and Dice.

I'm unsure on this, pooling energy, thereby wasting the rest of the your deep insight (30%), to get yourself into shallow insight (10%) quicker. Some real numbers would need to be crunched here, I don't want to just accept this on blind faith.

In my mind, it's going to come down to how much quicker you get yourself back into red compared to how much damage you throw away - it's not something I can just mentally work out, sadly.

Speaking of Slice and Dice, refreshing that buff is another thing that the Anticipation talent can help with. The Relentless Strikes talent is what makes my technique possible. Relentless Strikes is a passive ability that gives you a 20% chance per combo point spent on a finishing move to refund 25 energy. In terms of Anticipation, that means you definitely get 25 energy when using a finishing move with between 5 and 10 combo points. If you are using Anticipation properly with your offensive finishing moves, then you are always using 5 combo point finishers and always getting your 25 energy. However, you probably don't always get 5 point Slice and Dice finishers, meaning you don't always get your 25 energy.

The essence of my technique is in knowing that 5 point finishers grant 25 energy, casting Slice and Dice costs 25 energy, and offensive finishers cast with more than 5 combo points grant you the number of combo points acquired at the time of use minus 5. What I do when I see I'm going to have to refresh SnD is make sure I have 6 or more combo points, wait until there is 1 second left on my SnD buff, use an offensive finisher then immediately use Slice and Dice. In the second it takes for the SnD buff to wear down, you've been refunded the 25 energy and whatever combo points you've built up, meaning you can cast SnD right away and not lose any buff time.

I like the sound of this, I'm still on the morning coffee, but it does sound nice. Your wait time is wrong due to GCD requirements, but that's all wonderfully tweakable.

It's as simple as hoarding a couple extra combo points while waiting for your cooldowns to become available. If you use a 5 combo point finisher when there are 2 seconds left, you are essentially wasting 8 seconds of cooldown time that the finisher could have taken off. If you instead pool a bit of energy and combo points waiting for the cooldown to come back up, you'll have fully useful Restless Blades procs and maybe you'll get an extra cooldown squeezed into an encounter when you otherwise wouldn't.

There you have it, my rant is over. If you can use the full potential of the Anticipation talent, you'll see your DPS increase on the fights you choose Combat for.

I would hope this is standard play for most rogues, but it's worth noting for newer players as well.

[Mitchell Rane]

Well I just rolled and am currently leveling a combat rogue so I found the OP to be quite a good read. Thank you

[Deleted]

Good read, but as you said: Don't do combat on singletarget.

There are 3 fights this tier where you want to be combat: Dogs, big Bug, BugDoc.

I like combat, because of its heavy reliance on CDs you feel much more "active" than with Assa, but its just weaker and with the new item upgrade system you simply can't afford to upgrade your fist weapon before your dagger. :/

[Verain]

The biggest issue with BG is that it doesn't really live up to the ideal of stacking damage to a window. Our cools, even modified by red, aren't that great compared to fury/arms/moonkin/ret/elemental/enhance/probably more (and most of those guys don't need to wait for red). So instead this becomes ten dollars of effort for one dollar of payoff. However, it's still worth talking about, so talk we will.

Blank- no insight- I try to enter this with a good amount of energy. I will make every effort to refresh my slice during this, but that's the only finisher I will ever press in blank. I don't want to use any of our three cooldowns during this. This is also the optimal spot to refresh revealing. I normally press a revealing during this phase so I don't need to mess with it for awhile, but I don't know whether it's optimal to simply refresh revealing when it has worn out and you are about to press a finisher or a builder. Never done that math. Anyway, get rid of this one ASAP.

Green- 10%- During green I'm ok to use real finishers again, but play from the top of your anticipation pool. If I have CPs from blank, I continue to build. The thing is, you don't want to ever blow up a combo point, so if you are at 4 charges of anticipation, just finish. You shouldn't get to 5 except from a procced sinister strike. Again, my goal is to get out of icky green.

Yellow 20%- This one is real. If you had infinite energy, you would probably find a way to transition to red repeatedly as fast as you could. But you don't have infinite energy. Given your gear and what happens during the fight, you WILL have the same number of reds, because your combo points and energy are both finite. Since each red lasts the same amount of time, that's fixed. What you DO have control over is how much time you spend in blank, green, and yellow. And this means that yellow should be the phase where you pool energy to take forward into red. You want the longest yellows possible without capping, because you are stealing time from the lesser blank and green. However, if you are bursting, you probably want all cools burning for most of red, so you'll probably press them (or at least AR) in yellow.

Red 30%- you can bring cools into this or use them here. You should use all your offensive finishers here. If you have to refresh slice here great, but ideally you'll have a good S+D. I believe it is good practice to pool energy at the end of this, so that you can get out of dumb blank quickly.

[shadowboy]

Thing is, verain, the marginal gain in damage is greatest from blank to green. from yellow to red is the smallest relative gain in damage.

My observation is that generally speaking, you can ignore bandit's guile entirely except for one caveat:

Stack to 9 combo points at no/shallow/moderate insight and use 5 cps as soon as you get them in deep insight (no need to stack anticipation charges here).

Killing spree and adrenaline rush are best used before your next offensive finisher, regardless of insight level, ie, don't spend combo points on anything other than SnD if KS/AR are off cooldown.

[Verain]

Yellow to red is the smallest difference, sure. But you can choose which to minimize, and that should be blank, and which to maximize, and that should be yellow.

[shadowboy]

Not sure minimizing blank at the expense of special attacks in red is worth it--or at least worth worrying about.

[Verain]

Well, I dunno if it's worth it, that's up to you. But it seems a pretty clear increase, right? Like if you have the option to spend your 40 energy for a 1.3X sinister, or hold a moment and press it and get a 1X sinister and 1 charge of blank BG. That means you go into green 3.5 seconds later if you take the second choice. Is 30% of a sinister strike going to outpace 10% of the damage of like five white attacks and some poisons? I wouldn't think so.

[Ryme]

Though my simcraft skills are a little rusty, I'm getting that pooling before coming out of deep insight to either have almost no impact on your dps or be a significant loss. This is super early testing though, I could be doing it all wrong. I'm going to keep looking at it.

Further testing: Using SS during deep insight only to avoid energy capping and when deep insight has more than ~3 seconds left comes out as a very slight dps loss. If anyone has ideas to further improve this kind of model to what they're thinking should be done, I'll be glad to sim it out.

[shadowboy]

Well, I dunno if it's worth it, that's up to you. But it seems a pretty clear increase, right? Like if you have the option to spend your 40 energy for a 1.3X sinister, or hold a moment and press it and get a 1X sinister and 1 charge of blank BG. That means you go into green 3.5 seconds later if you take the second choice. Is 30% of a sinister strike going to outpace 10% of the damage of like five white attacks and some poisons? I wouldn't think so.

I just tested in simcraft. Pooling the last 2 seconds of deep insight with 4 or fewer combo points is a loss of ~200 dps in the T14H BiS profile--roughly a 0.2% dps loss to pool at the end of deep insight (caveat--my modification to the priority list just changed the existing RvS/SS conditions and did not check for energy capping--I chose 2 sec as a conservative pool time to minimize that).

Think of it this way. pooling that energy just means instead of doing 1 sinister stirke at no insight, you'll do two back to back, shortening no insight by ONE global. that's not even 1 autoattack. You're trading 10% of 1-2 autoattacks for 30% of a sinister strike. With T14 2-set it's even more important to hit that sinister strike button in deep insight.

[Verain]

*points at my "10 dollars of effort for 1 dollar of results" comment earlier in the thread

If the gain is so small, then it's probably not worth the cognitive pressure. That's essentially nothing, it's the same gain you get from ambushing instead of mutilating out of vanish for muti.

Thank you two much for actually DOING the sim though.

[shadowboy]

*points at my "10 dollars of effort for 1 dollar of results" comment earlier in the thread

If the gain is so small, then it's probably not worth the cognitive pressure. That's essentially nothing, it's the same gain you get from ambushing instead of mutilating out of vanish for muti.

Thank you two much for actually DOING the sim though.

That's EXACTLY what I was arguing when I said "it's not worth doing, or at least not worth bothering with"

[InFlames-]

I stopped reading at the first "rupture"