Assassination: The nitty gritty

[Ryme]

I was hoping to have an answer to that question before someone asked it :P

It's been puzzling me too, in my mind, the ideal thing to do and indeed the thing I actually do in play is to punch out another cp builder and get a "head start" on the next cycle. However, for reasons I'm still investigating, this sims out as a loss of around 1.5k dps. This could simply be an error in the simulation, but it feels odd that it was put there in the first place to compensate for it rather than fixing the bug as is. This leads me to believe that it is, in practise, the correct way of playing despite me, as of this moment, not understanding why.

Like I say, I'm still looking in to that one

[Fellaand]

So if I am getting this correctly, we only need to get 2.5% Expertise to be good, but we will still get dodges and such from bosses on our yellow swings, so it is better to just be expertise caped so you don't have to worry about that. Which brings me to the topic of which stat is better Haste or Crit, a lot of different sites, and top rogues are going different ways. I see some rogues under 2k haste, while others are at almost 4k, and vice versa on Crit.

My current stat priority is:
Agility
Hit 7.5%
Mastery ~6500+
Expertise 7.5%
Critical Strike ~3000+
Haste ~2000

Rotation as I read through this could use a little tweaking with not Envenom Clipping as before reading this I was doing that A LOT.

Thanks.

[Lachtobi]

The stat weights vary depending on your current gear, but more importantly, they're incredibly close at the moment. Shadowcraft remains the go-to resource for current theorycrafting and will consistently reforge you away from expertise at higher ilvls. However, while this is the de-facto best way to reforge, the DPS increments are incredibly small, so unless you're fighting for world first - in which case you already know this -, you can get away with expertise capping and have one less variable to worry about (e.g. letting Rupture fall off because it got dodged at a critical moment).

But to put your question into perspective: I had a brief look at your logs and you're sitting at 48% Envenom uptime and 89% Rupture uptime on Feng 10H. They should be at ~55% and ~98% respectively. Improving those (amongst others) will boost your DPS by as much as 10%. Min/maxing exp cap will change less than 1%.

[Fellaand]

So if I am catching what you are laying down here, since I am not in a top 10 guild, nor do I see that happening any time soon. It is safer/ smarter just to go ahead and Expertise cap just so I don't have to worry about dodges and the like. As far as Feng and uptime, yes I am aware, I was having a failtastic day that day, and I will improve that after reading about the Envenom clipping. Thanks.

[Lachtobi]

So if I am catching what you are laying down here, since I am not in a top 10 guild, nor do I see that happening any time soon. It is safer/ smarter just to go ahead and Expertise cap just so I don't have to worry about dodges and the like. As far as Feng and uptime, yes I am aware, I was having a failtastic day that day, and I will improve that after reading about the Envenom clipping. Thanks.

Pretty much yes

I've run Shadowcraft's model for the last two weeks and must say it's not a big deal whichever you choose. I always clip Rupture at exactly 2sec remaining and Envenom at 1 sec remaining, so I have at least a GCDs to adapt to a parry/dodge. My only gripe with it is when I RNG out in places where I rely on burst - Energy Charges on Elegon, Ancient Protector on Lei Shi etc.

[Ulmaz]

So what do you think is gonna be the top trinkets for Assassination in 5.2? Obivously Bad Juju..but the other ones..hmm.

[Lachtobi]

So far the consensus is that Soul Charm and Bad Juju are good, and that Rune of Re-Origination is bad. Things might still change though, so it remains speculation - I suggest you head over to ElitistJerks to stay tuned, as this thread is not about speculating EV of future gear.

[Ryme]

Rune is shockingly bad, I mean shockingly in as much as I cannot believe they thought it was even passable, it's embarrassing - even a theory-crafting layman can see that losing the entirety of you your bottom two secondary stats to buff your best one is a terrible idea.

How many times do we see threads with responses that follow a pattern of "X stat increases as Y stat increases", no stat's value is mutually exclusive from any other, they all work together.

As assassination, we'll usually lose all of our crit and haste to gain a lot of mastery - take a second and think about that. Now, for a chuckle, imagine it on classes with meaningful stat breakpoints.

[Triscone]

I have a great fear I have misunderstood A's rotation a bit. Am I correct in assuming that I should be doing 2, and only 2 mutilates between envenoms? That I shouldn't be squeezing in a third when possible? My envenom uptimes seem to be lower than what others have said should be seeing (50-60%). I'm much more often in the (40-50%) range. I'm coming out of fights within 5-10% of theoretical maximum in simcraft so I just assumed I was doing it right. It now dawns on me that perhaps, I could have higher uptime, and therefore more auto attacks affected by envenom's buff, if I only squeezed 2 Mut's in between each envenom.

[Mugajak]

Rune is shockingly bad, I mean shockingly in as much as I cannot believe they thought it was even passable, it's embarrassing - even a theory-crafting layman can see that losing the entirety of you your bottom two secondary stats to buff your best one is a terrible idea.

How many times do we see threads with responses that follow a pattern of "X stat increases as Y stat increases", no stat's value is mutually exclusive from any other, they all work together.

As assassination, we'll usually lose all of our crit and haste to gain a lot of mastery - take a second and think about that. Now, for a chuckle, imagine it on classes with meaningful stat breakpoints.

Worse, that doesn't translate into a "large" increase even ignoring the influx in values, and the trinket is balanced around it being an increase. The Theory thread that GC is active in seems to be taking it seriously enough to put some numbers in to say "GC, please have the team re-think this..." at least.

---------- Post added 2013-02-15 at 08:56 PM ----------

I have a great fear I have misunderstood A's rotation a bit. Am I correct in assuming that I should be doing 2, and only 2 mutilates between envenoms? That I shouldn't be squeezing in a third when possible? My envenom uptimes seem to be lower than what others have said should be seeing (50-60%). I'm much more often in the (40-50%) range. I'm coming out of fights within 5-10% of theoretical maximum in simcraft so I just assumed I was doing it right. It now dawns on me that perhaps, I could have higher uptime, and therefore more auto attacks affected by envenom's buff, if I only squeezed 2 Mut's in between each envenom.

It's not about the 2/3 discussion; you want to make sure you renew envenom with as much energy as realistically possible (short of capping) that doesn't involve wasting CPs. If you have 5+ CPs, and you're not going to energy cap, pool energy until you're almost in danger of capping during the upcoming seconds, then envenom (when rupture doesn't need renewing, obviously). As for the actual uptime -- make sure you're looking at relevant fights (pretty much just Feng) if you're trying to meet "patchwerk" uptimes for the envenom buff. You only get more envenom uptime if you STOP clipping envenoms where possible (which means you have to be clipping in order to stop) or if you spend MORE CP on envenom (which you should also be "capped" for already).

[Ryme]

They really want this trinket to work, 200% increase to stat change.

So, let's make the insanely dangerous assumption that stat weights hold their relative value in these kind of wierd situations:

Mastery @ ~ 1.15
Haste @ ~ 1.02
Crit @ ~ 0.99

Let's assume you have 3k crit, 3k haste and 9k mastery at those EP values, total EP is 16,380.
When it procs, we will then get 12k more mastery at the cost of 3k crit and haste, total EP is 24,150, so close to around 8k EP for 10 seconds, so about 8k attack power for 10 seconds equivalently. If stat weights remained the same, which they absolutely wouldn't.

Woo.

[eijin]

Cant just napkin math that because as youve said, they wouldnt. The loss in crit (poisons not critting, lower crit chance on combo point builder equaling lower envenom uptime) and lack of haste (lower number of CP builders for lower envenom uptime, and less auto attacks for less poison procs) will both lower the value of mastery tremendously. Simming it would be the best bet to have it actively update the ep values while its happening.

[Ryme]

I'm looking at that napkin math as a "best case scenario" really, I just don't see the value of mastery skyrocketing when haste and crit start to diminish. With that in mind, the trinket is still poor. I expect a 300% increase would be interesting, but probably broken as hell in pvp.

EDIT: screw it, got an hour, I'll see what I can pull out through sims.

---------- Post added 2013-02-21 at 04:19 PM ----------

Preliminary sims (assuming I'm modelling the trinket correctly) are bringing it as a 2k dps loss against heroic terror in the mists, dont take that as a certainty, I'm not convinced on the model yet, but it does fall in line with what I thought.

---------- Post added 2013-02-21 at 04:38 PM ----------

Secondary sims show it to be a 3k increase! I am happy to eat my own words here, but I really need to make sure the proc is doing what I tell it to do - which I'm not sure of since I have no precedence for modelling a proc that reduces stats.

---------- Post added 2013-02-21 at 04:43 PM ----------

Final edit, most things seem to point that simcraft doesn't understand procs that reduce stats, it's ignoring it almost completely and only adding the mastery. I might be able to fix this at a later time.

[Nitwit]

Final edit, most things seem to point that simcraft doesn't understand procs that reduce stats, it's ignoring it almost completely and only adding the mastery. I might be able to fix this at a later time.

Do you have evidence for this supposed bug? To the best of our knowledge, stats are reduced correctly when the trinket procs and always have been.

[Disgustipated]

Rotations & Priorities

Q: What's the best opener as Assassination in 5.1?
A: Ambush > SnD > Shadow Blades > Mut > Rupture > Vendetta > Standard Rotation. [1,2]

I was under the impression that mutilate was the best opener, considering its proc.

[Mugajak]

I was under the impression that mutilate was the best opener, considering its proc.

It's very, very, very slightly behind ambush, on average. Very very very slightly meaning <2k damage for most profiles, not 2k DPS.

Aldriana has detailed math on the subject on EJ's Assassination thread somewhere, buried deep now.

[Ryme]

Do you have evidence for this supposed bug? To the best of our knowledge, stats are reduced correctly when the trinket procs and always have been.

It's likely not a bug, more that I'm not sure the syntax I'm using to model it is right. Since I can't import the trinket it (there's literally no way for me to do this at work), I tried coding it in to the simulation profile - in a very hackish way too. Got the uptime as expected, but the proc was only adding in mastery, as far as I could tell, it never reduced the stats.

---------- Post added 2013-02-28 at 11:44 AM ----------

With the aid of a friend, I believe I've got it in and it's showing as a 1.2k dps loss to TitM. I would upload a html file of the output, but... work... hyper security focused. I can do it when I'm home, though.

[Nitwit]

It's likely not a bug, more that I'm not sure the syntax I'm using to model it is right. Since I can't import the trinket it (there's literally no way for me to do this at work), I tried coding it in to the simulation profile - in a very hackish way too. Got the uptime as expected, but the proc was only adding in mastery, as far as I could tell, it never reduced the stats.

trinket2=rune_of_reorigination,id=96546

^ should work, assuming you're running under PTR settings (not live). Also depends on which version of SimC you're using (older versions might not have the trinket implemented).

[Ryme]

trinket2=rune_of_reorigination,id=96546

^ should work, assuming you're running under PTR settings (not live). Also depends on which version of SimC you're using (older versions might not have the trinket implemented).

Haha, it's always the simplest approaches that seem to be the most elusive! Thanks, I've retested with this and again got the 1% dps loss to current level trinkets, so, looks like the trinket might still be a loss to use.

[Squirl]

Haha, it's always the simplest approaches that seem to be the most elusive! Thanks, I've retested with this and again got the 1% dps loss to current level trinkets, so, looks like the trinket might still be a loss to use.

It feels like the trinket will be pretty bad unless you start more evenly distributing your secondary stats. It was a fun experiment, but I don't think it will work out.